Friedisch nodded, his mouth full of his meal's last morsel. They returned their plates and cups to the fabricators, where every fragment of organic matter down to the last bacterium would be removed to be recycled into fresh nutrient cubes. The plates would be melted down and reformed. The station had plenty of energy, and precious little water. Refabrication was more efficient than washing the dishes.

'Tez-Lar!' said Cawl.

A bulky servitor detached itself from a charging socket and clanged heavily towards the tech-priests.

'You shouldn't give them names,' said Friedisch, though he viewed Cawl's servitor enviously. He had not accrued sufficient status or credit to afford his own.

'Why not?' said Cawl. 'You should have a little more spirit a little more individuality.'

'It's just not done!' said Friedisch. 'I wish you would think about your future sometimes. How does it look? Follow the maxim, question not, learn not. It's a warning.'

'That's not a warning not to question, it's a warning that if we don't question, we don't learn!' said Cawl.

'But only in a certain manner, Cawl.'

'Are you talking down to me, Friedisch?'

Not like you ever do that to me, thought Friedisch. 'Both meanings are meant,' he said. 'You can't see that, and it will get you into trouble.'

'Ah, my friend. One day you will have the emotional excision and you will no longer care what happens to me, though I am touched. Who needs hierarchy, that's what I say.' He leaned in to Friedisch and lifted his hand to hide a stage whisper. 'Hierarchy gets in the way of getting things done,' he said. 'You chase status all you like. Leave the great deeds to me!'

Arrogant fool, thought Friedisch of Cawl.

Mind-numbing energy parasite, thought Cawl of Friedisch.

'Anyway,' Cawl said, 'Tez-Lar likes his name, don't you, Tez-Lar?'

'Yes, master,' groaned the cyborg. The voice came through an augmitter set into his left shoulder. Tez-Lar had no lower jaw.

'He's named after the fabled master of the Motive Force, the great Srpskan-Murican,' explained Cawl condescendingly.

Friedisch gritted his teeth. Cawl had told him that only a dozen times before.

'He was a polymath.' Cawl patted his hulking servitor unit on its mulcted shoulder. 'Tez-Lar's name is a sign of my respect for those who master more than one field. It is a sign of my ambition to do the same.'

'There is nothing wrong with ambition,' said Friedisch 'But missaplied ambition will get you killed - that is what the maxim warns against.'

'My dear Friedisch, in this terrible era everything will get you killed. My ambition distracts me from how awful life is. You should try it.'

Friedisch was ambitious! He had a stinging retort ready to deploy. It never arrived.

'I shall see you for last watch sustenance?' Cawl said.