The Darkside Of The Sun

inefficiently shaped human robots instead of nice streamlined machines?’
    ‘Pride, sir,’ said the robot.
    ‘Hey, that’s not bad. What’s your name?’
    ‘I understand it is Isaac, sir.’
    Dom scratched his head. The home domes swarmed with robots, mostly kind but stupid Class Threes whom Dom remembered from earliest childhood as sad, boring voices with firm, child-minding hands. His mother, who seldom left her own dome, disliked them generally and did her own cooking. She said they were morons, and not a bit like the real things from Laoth. He was at a loss.
    ‘Uh, can you be a bit more informal, Isaac?’
    ‘Sure thing, boss.’
    ‘I can see you two are going to get along fine, trying to out-think each other,’ said Keja. ‘Now I’ve got to go. And Grandmother says you’ve got to go down to the main dome, Dom. For the Working Breakfast.’
    Dom sighed. ‘I’ve had about twenty lectures about it from Hrsh-Hgn in the last few days.’
    Keja stopped dead.
    ‘What’s that thing?’ she cried, pointing to the basin.
    Dom lifted the damp creature out by the scruff of its neck.
    ‘It’s a swamp ig. I call him Ig. I was – I found – I, er …’ He blinked nervously. ‘I think I found him in the marshes yesterday. I – er – things seem a little confused.’
    She looked at him, and Dom saw the concern in her eyes.
    ‘It’s all right,’ he mumbled. ‘It’s just the excitement.’
    ‘I guess so,’ Keja said, and looked down at Ig.
    ‘Anyway, he’s so ugly!’
    ‘Excuse me, madam, sir, but he is an it,’ boomed the robot. ‘Hermaphrodite. Oviparous. Semi-poikothermic. I have been supplied with a complete program on Widdershins lifeforms, sir. Chief. Right on.’
    ‘Well, don’t blame me if you catch a zoonose,’ said Keja, and flounced out of the dome. Dom looked at Isaac.
    ‘Zoonose?’
    ‘Disease communicable to humans. No chance, buster.’ Isaac strode up to Dom and held out the box. The boy dropped his pet, who began to sniff at the robot’s foot, and opened it.
    ‘It’s the certificate of warranty, workshop manual and deed of property,’ said Isaac. Dom looked at them blankly.
    ‘Do you mean I have to own you?’
    ‘Body and hypothetical supernatural appendage, boss,’ said the robot hurriedly, stepping backwards when Dom held the box towards him.
    ‘Oh no, chief. You’ve got to. I don’t approve of self-ownership.’
    ‘Chel, that’s what most humans fought for for three thousand years!’
    ‘But we robots know exactly why we were created, boss. No striving to find the innermost secrets of our creation. No problem.’
    ‘Don’t you want to be free?’
    ‘What? And have God blame the Universe on me? Shouldn’t you go down to the main dome now?’
    Dom whistled, and Ig scrambled up and went to sleep round his neck. He glared up at the robot and strode out of the dome.
    Tradition decreed the Working Breakfast be taken alone by the Chairman on the day of his investiture. As he walked along the deserted corridors Dom had the comfortably familiar feeling he was being watched. Old Korodore had the place seeded with pinheads and robot insects – it was dome gossip that he even ran security checks on himself.
    The main dome was half clear plastic, facing out across the orchards, the lagoon and marshes and finally, a thin line on the horizon, the Jokers Tower with a wisp of white cloud streaming from its tip like a banner. Dom stared at it for a few seconds, trying to hold an elusive memory.
    A pile of presents – he was, after all, half a whole Widdershins year old – were heaped around the long table. Two robots-in-waiting stood on either side of the single place setting.
    Dom had planned the meal time and again. In the end he had chosen the menu that had been eaten by every Chairman of Widdershins. It was a famous meal. According to the Newer Testament, it was the same meal that Sadhim Himself ate when he became Lord of Earth – a quarter-loaf of brown bread, a strip of salt-dried fish, an apple and a glass of water.
    There were some slight differences. The flour for Dom’s loaf had been freighted in from Third Eye. The fish was truly Widdershin, but the salt had been mined on Terra Novae. The apple was from the Earth’s Avalon, the water melted from a particle of comet. In all, the meal cost about two thousand standards. Some kinds of simplicity cost more than others.
    Korodore, a true-born Terra Novaean, which meant food concentrates, watched Dom eat with