The Dark Lady

possible disturbance by appearing before the appointed time, I stepped onto the automatic walkway, prepared to be instantly transported to the front door— and nothing happened.
    I began to feel a sense of impending panic. The house was set back almost five hundred feet from the street, and given my physical structure and the somewhat heavy gravity of Far London, I could not possibly traverse the distance in the one minute remaining to me. I had been given three days’ notice in which to prepare for our meeting, and I would nonetheless be late.
    I had no choice but to begin walking— and the moment I did so, a mechanical voice asked me whether I desired to approach the front door, the servants’ door, the service entrance, or the door to the guest wing.
    “The front door, if you please,” I said with an enormous feeling of relief.
    “I am sorry,” said the voice passionlessly, “but my programming will not permit me to transport members of any non-human race to the front door. Will you please make another selection?”
    “I have an appointment with Mr. Abercrombie,” I said. “I do not yet know if I am to be a guest or a servant.”
    “My programming will not permit me to transport members of any non-human race to the guest-wing door. Do you wish to go to the servants’ door?”
    “Yes,” I said. “And please hurry. I must be there in thirty seconds.”
    “I am programmed to move at only one speed. Please prepare yourself; I shall begin in ten seconds.”
    I sighed and braced my feet, and shortly the walkway began moving slowly and smoothly toward the house.
    “You may not exit here,” it announced as we passed the front door, and it repeated the order a moment later as we circled the east wing of the house. Finally it came to a stop in front of a less ornate door, and instructed me to get off and enter the house.
    I did so, and a sleek, shining robot rolled up to me. It was only the third robot I had seen on Far London.
    “Are you Leonardo?” it asked.
    “Yes,” I replied.
    “You are expected. Please follow me.”
    It spun around and wheeled off down a paneled corridor, then paused and waited for me to catch up with it.
    “If you will enter this study,” it said, opening a door for me, “Mr. Abercrombie will join you shortly.”
    I walked into the study, so relieved that my tardiness would go relatively unnoticed that I was hardly aware of the instinctive uneasiness that overtook me once the door closed and I was alone and isolated again. I began examining my surroundings and prepared to be joined momentarily by Malcolm Abercrombie.
    That had been forty-five minutes ago, and I was now feeling very naked and alone.
    The study itself mirrored my impression of the man: cold, monied, aloof. It was a large room, too large really, with a number of doors, and its walls were remarkably empty of paintings and holograms. There was a polished hardwood desk facing the doorway through which I had entered, but other than an ashtray and an unused set of writing instruments, there was nothing on it: no papers, no computer terminal, nothing. The chair behind the desk was tall and narrow, and as I walked over I noticed that there was a small cushion on it to support Abercrombie's lower back. There were three high-backed leather chairs, expensive but uncomfortable, lined up along one of the walls, and between two of them was an onyx pedestal which held a small crystal bowl of Altairian design. A row of windows behind the desk overlooked an acre of shrubbery which had been meticulously trimmed into an intricate maze.
    To keep my mind from dwelling on my isolation, I once again considered the best means of addressing my host when he finally arrived. He had already indicated some displeasure with the Dialect of Affinity, and since I had not requested the meeting, I rejected the Dialect of Supplication. The problem was that I didn't know if I was a guest, which would require the Dialect of Honored Guests, or a paid consultant, which would lend itself to the Dialect of Peers. And, of course, there was always the likelihood that I was merely to be an employee for a week, which would support either the Dialect of Craftsmen or (if there were to be no social intercourse between us at all) the Dialect of Business.
    I was still pondering the problem when a door opened and Malcolm Abercrombie, dressed in browns and ambers as if to complement the decor of the room, entered the study and walked directly to his desk. A