Tasia laughed at him. “Unless I was there to lend you a hand, like today. But just because we don’t have settlements on beautiful planets, don’t imagine that Roamers have no homes. Our ‘home’ is among our people, wherever they may be. It’s not a location but a… a concept.”

“Like family,” Robb said. She nodded, although his comment brought back thoughts of Jess, then her father… and finally Ross and how hard he had worked to make a success on Golgen. And with that, her anger toward the faceless alien enemy that had murdered Ross for no reason rose hotter inside her.

She left her coffee untouched on the table and returned her tray to the recycler. Robb looked after her, probably wondering what he had done wrong. Tasia just wanted to be alone.

65: JORAX

65JORAX

When occasional Klikiss robots appeared on the inhabited worlds in the Spiral Arm, usually traveling on Ildiran transports, they were curiosities, treated with awe and amazement by anyone who saw them. They arrived like sentinels, self-contained mysteries, speaking little as they silently observed their surroundings.

Sometimes, apparently on a whim, the alien relics offered to help in harsh environments, working in space settlements or on airless moons. Hardy colonists usually welcomed the robots’ capacity for heavy labor, especially since it cost them nothing.

The few black machines that arrived on Earth had caused quite a stir, though they never asked for anything. The Klikiss robots seemed completely unflappable, showing no response whether insulted or treated with awe. They remained passive and never spoke about what they truly wanted. Klikiss robots inquired about nothing, made no requests. In fact, they didn’t do much at all.

The robot designated as Jorax had been on Earth for five years. In the capital city he wandered the public grounds around the Whisper Palace. Jorax had never taken a sightseeing dirigible, nor spoken a single buzzing word, but one day he had climbed aboard a powered gondola with a group of curious visitors from cloudy Dremen. Though Jorax made no move to pay the accustomed fee, the flustered gondolier had taken the black robot up and down the Royal Canal. Jorax had disembarked at the end of the ride without so much as a thank-you or a single question, but the event had given the gondolier, as well as his sponsoring boat company, much to talk about for months to come.

While Jorax loitered around the vast grounds of the Whisper Palace—“lurked” was the word some of the royal security troops used—he could have been spying, recording data on the King’s government buildings. But since the Klikiss robot never attempted to enter a restricted area or probe into questionable subjects, the Hansa could not deny him the right to be where the rest of the public wandered and gaped and took souvenir images.