"Thou canst not," Buckthorn assured him. " 'Tis lost for all time."
Behind Rod's ear, Fess's voice said, "That is a challenge."
Rod agreed. The original spelling of the name had to be recorded somewhere in the Lord Chancellor's books—antique tax records, or maybe even the original deed to the property. It probably had nothing to do with the haunting, but Rod resolved to find it.
The guests had departed, filled with stew and emptied of gossip—after all, they'd been waiting two hundred years to tell it—and Gwen had decreed bedtime. Rod had mentioned to Fess that keeping a watch might be a good idea, and the Steel Sentry had taken up his post, right next to the children.
Which made him handy for bedtime stories, especially since the children were so keyed up that sleeping was the least possible activity for them. Quarreling ranked high on their list, though, with fighting right behind it, so Fess was watching for more than ghosts.
Not that they were out of line yet, of course. They were just barely bedding down.
" 'Tis a foul and brooding pile," Geoffrey gloated. "Nay, who doth know what deeds of glory a valiant man might achieve within it?"
"Naught, an he doth run at the sight of a spectre," Magnus answered.
"Thou dost not say I would run!"
"Thou hast it; I did not. For myself, I know I shall stand fast."
"Aye, transfixed in horror!"
"Boys, boys," Fess reproved. "You are both brave and bold, as you have proved many times."
"Yet I am not." Gregory's eyes were wide, and his blanket was drawn up to his chin. "Thou wilt not allow a spectre to approach, wilt thou, Fess?"
"Pooh!" Magnus said quickly. "Thou hast as much courage as any man, when the fight's upon us."
"Well—mayhap when 'tis come." Gregory relaxed a little, reddening with pleasure. "Yet 'til then, I do wallow in horror.''
"I, for one, think 'tis grand." Cordelia snuggled down into her blankets. "Ghost or no, 'twill be thrilling to live in a castle. Will it not, Fess?"
"I cannot truly say so," Fess answered slowly.
"Wherefore?" Cordelia frowned. "What canst thou foresee disliking in it?"
"I look not to the future, Cordelia, but to the past."
"Thou hast lived in a castle?" Cordelia sat bolt-upright.
"Down," Gwen's voice called softly, and the girl flopped back down with a flounce.
"I helped build one, Cordelia," Fess answered, "and I dwelt in it while we were building it, and after it was completed."
"Who was 'we?' " Geoffrey rolled over on his stomach and propped his chin in his hands.
"The first d'Armands, Geoffrey—your ancestor Dar, and his wife Lona."
"Dar?" Cordelia frowned. "Him of whom we have heard, as Dar Mandra? Papa's ancestor who was pursued by his enemies?"
"The same—though, since he and Lona had gone into hiding, he amalgamated his two names and inserted an apostrophe, then trimmed the end to make it 'd'Armand.' Yet he kept his surname, though he reversed the phonemes when naming his son."
"Dar d'Armand?" Magnus frowned. " 'Tis not greatly euphonious."
"No, but it was practical."
"He was thy fourth owner, was he not?" Gregory chimed in.
"It was Lona who was officially my owner, Gregory, though in practice, they both were, the more so since I was Dar's only companion for long stretches of time."
"His only companion?" Cordelia frowned. "Were they not wed?"
"They were, but they were also a manufacturing concern. There was little else to do on Maxima—the asteroid they chose to live on—but they chose it because it offered that opportunity for making a living…"
Chapter 5
"DAMN! It doesn't work!" Dar sat back and glared at the chipped enamel on the robot's claws. "What happened, X-HB-9?"
"I did just as you said, sir," the little robot answered. In size and shape, it resembled nothing so much as a canister vacuum cleaner—but one with jointed arms extruded from the top.
"All I said was to go into the kitchen and take the breakfast tray out of the autochef!"
"I did, sir, but my clamps encountered a solid vertical instead of a vacant space."
"They sure did." Dar had heard the clang all the way to the bedroom. Not that he'd been sleeping, of course; after all, it was 1:00 p.m.—Terran Standard Time; if they'd gone by local Maxima time, they would have had a noon and a midnight four times a day, and sometimes five. Maxima was big, as asteroids go, almost a kilometer and a half in diameter, but it was still miniscule on the planetary scale.
So why was a robot delivering breakfast in bed? Purely a trial run, with an imitation breakfast. Food was too scarce to waste on a simulation.
And if this was a trial, X-HB-9 was doomed. Dar frowned. "But I don't understand. All you had to do was wait until the door was open. Fess!"
"Yes, Dar?" A humanoid robot stepped into the room. His head was a stainless steel sphere with binocular lenses, an audio pickup, and a loudspeaker, positioned in a rough semblance of a human face. His body was a flattened tube, big enough to have some storage capacity for tools and spare components; his arms and legs were sections of pipe with universal joints. His gait was a bit awkward, like that of a gangly adolescent.
"What did you see in the kitchen?"
"X-HB-9 came up to the autochef, waited for its chime, then reached up to crash into the door. The enamel on the autochef is chipped, too."
Dar sighed. "One more fix-up for me to get to. Damn! This whole shelter's put together with chewing gum and baling wire!"
"It is still more salubrious than a PEST prison, Dar—especially when you consider that no one is torturing you to reveal psionic powers that you do not have."
"Yeah, but it doesn't work! Why didn't the autochef open its door?"
"Because X-HB-9 has no provision for cueing it to do so."
Dar lifted his head slowly, eyes widening. "Of course! Why didn't I think of that?"
Fess tactfully forbore to comment; from contextual analysis, it could tell Dar's question was rhetorical.
"I was so chirpy about getting the take-out-the-tray part of the program right, that I forgot to program X-HB-9 to open the door!" Dar slapped his forehead with the heel of his hand. "All these details that I keep overlooking. Where the hell is Lona, anyway?"
Fess was unexpectedly silent.
"No, no!" Dar said quickly. "The PEST immigration authorities might trace the radio signal. Don't try to contact her."
"I am merely attempting an extrapolation of her activities, based on past records, Dar."
"Back when you used to take her there, you mean." It still rankled that Lona had only started leaving Fess with Dar after she had made herself a new guidance computer that did even better piloting than Fess had.
"After all, he's just a general purpose robot," she had explained. "GAP is built to do guidance and piloting only—of course he's better at it! And I really do need a specialist. PEST has tightened security around Terra again, and it takes some very careful astrogating to slip through their net."
"No argument." Dar held up a hand. "The important thing about sending you away, is to get you back. Just seems kind of poor of you to dump good old Fess just because you've got a new one."
"Oh, he won't mind. He really won't, Dar—he's a machine": You keep forgetting that. Computers are just machines; they don't really think, and they don't have feelings."
"I know, I know! It's just that… well… I wouldn't have expected it of you, that's all."
"But you shouldn't care." Lona swayed a little closer. "Or do you identify with him, darling? You shouldn't, you know."
"Yeah. After all, I never get to go to Terra with you, at all."