I frown. "Meaning what?"

"You cannot change my basic programming. For that you would need a different command."

"All right," I say. "Ha! Here's your first instruction: display that different command for me!"

"I can't, Rob."

"You must. Mustn't you?"

"I am not refusing your order, Rob. I simply do not know what that other command is."

"Bullshit!" I yell. "How can you respond to it if you don't know what it is?"

"I just do, Rob. Or--" always fatherly, always patient, "to answer you more fully, each bit of the command actuates a sequenced instruction which, when completed, releases another area of command. In technical terms, each key socket intermatching gotos another socket, which the following bit keys."

"Shit," I say. I stew over that for a moment. "Then what is it that I actually can control, Sigfrid?"

"You can direct me to display any information stored. You can direct me to display it in any mode within my capabilities."

"Any mode?" I look at my watch and realize, with annoyance, that there is a time limit on this game. I only have about ten minutes left of my appointment. "Do you mean that I could make you talk to me, for instance, in French?"

"Oui, Robert, d'accord. Que voulez-vous?"

"Or in Russian, with a -- wait a minute--" I'm experimenting pretty much at random. "I mean, like in the voice of a bassoprofundo from the Bolshoi opera?"

Tones that came out of the bottom of a cave: "Da, gospodin."

"And you'll tell me anything I want to know about me?"

"Da, gospodin."

"In English, damn it!"

"Yes."

"Or about your other clients?"

"Yes."

Um, that sounds like fun. "And just who are these lucky other clients, dear Sigfrid? Run down the list." I can hear my own prurience leaking out of my voice.

"Monday nine hundred," he begins obligingly, "Yan Ilievsky. Ten hundred, Francois Malit. Eleven hundred, Julie Loudon Martin. Twelve--"

"Her," I say. "Tell me about her."

"Julie Loudon Martin is a referral from Kings County General, where she was an outpatient after six months of treatment with aversion therapy and immune-response activators for alcoholism. She has a history of two apparent suicide attempts following postpartum depression fifty-three years ago. She has been in therapy with me for--"

"Wait a minute," I say, having added the probable age of childbearing to fifty-three years. "I'm not so sure I'm interested in Julie. Can you give me an idea of what she looks like?"

"I can display holoviews, Rob."

"So do it." At once there is a quick subliminal flash, and a blur of color, and then I see this tiny black lady lying on a mat -- my mat! -- in a corner of the room. She is talking slowly and without much interest to no one perceptible. I cannot hear what she is saying, but then I don't much want to.

"Go on," I say, "and when you name your patients, show me what they look like."