Saunders did not reply. He sat in the black leather seat, staring at the crowd outside the door of the Family Arms. They were staring back. Some of them were walking toward the cab. Saunders decided not to make any sound when they pulled him out. He had learned in Kashmir how to hold on to silence, and if he was strong, he would only need to hold on to it for about a minute and a half, and then it would be holding on to him.

“Good little mum-and-pop place, this is,” his driver told him. “They serve up a right fine dinner in here, they do. And you know what, mate? I think you’re just in time for it.”

By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain

THE ROBOT SHUFFLED CLANK-CLANK INTO the pitch-dark of the bedroom, then stood staring down at the humans.

The female human groaned and rolled away and folded a pillow over her head.

“Gail, honey,” said the male, licking dry lips. “Mother has a headache. Can you take that noise out of here?”

“I CAN PROVIDE A STIMULATING CUP OF COFFEE,” boomed the robot in an emotionless voice.

“Tell her to get out, Raymond,” said the female. “My head is exploding.”

“Go on, Gail. You can hear Mother isn’t herself,” said the male.

“YOU ARE INCORRECT. I HAVE SCANNED HER VITALS,” said the robot. “I HAVE IDENTIFIED HER AS SYLVIA LONDON. SHE IS HERSELF.”

The robot tilted her head to one side, inquisitively, waiting for more data. The pot on her head fell off and hit the floor with a great steely crash.

Mother sat up screaming. It was a wretched, anguished, inhuman sound, with no words in it, and it frightened the robot so much that for a moment she forgot she was a robot and she was just Gail again. She snatched her pot off the floor and hurried clangedy-clang-clang to the relative safety of the hall.

She peeked back into the room. Mother was already lying down, holding the pillow over her head again.

Raymond smiled across the darkness at his daughter.

“Maybe the robot can formulate an antidote for martini poisoning,” he whispered, and winked.

The robot winked back.

For a while the robot worked on her prime directive, formulating the antidote that would drive the poison out of Sylvia London’s system. The robot stirred orange juice and lemon juice and ice cubes and butter and sugar and dish soap in a coffee mug. The resulting solution foamed and turned a lurid sci-fi green, suggestive of Venusian slime and radiation.