“You know why I’m doing it and what’d happen to me if I was found out,” Slightman said. The whine had gone out of his voice. Now he sounded dignified and a little weary. Jake listened to that tone with growing dismay. If he got out of this and had to squeal on Benny’s Da’, he wanted to squeal on a villain. “Yar, I’ve taken a few little extras, you say true, I say thankya. Glasses, so I can see better to betray the people I’ve known all my life. A music machine so I won’t have to hear the conscience you prate about so easy and can get to sleep at night. Then you pinch something in my arm that makes me feel like my by-Riza eyes are going to fall right out of my by-Riza head .”

“I allow it from the rest of them,” Andy said, and now his voice had changed. Jake once more thought of Blaine, and once more his dismay grew. What if Tian Jaffords heard this voice? What if Vaughn Eisenhart heard it? Overholser? The rest of the folken ? “They heap contumely on my head like hot coals and never do I raise a word o’ protest, let alone a hand. ‘Go here, Andy. Go there, Andy. Stop yer foolish singing, Andy. Stuff yer prattle. Don’t tell us of the future, because we don’t want to hear it.’ So I don’t, except of the Wolves, because they’d hear what makes em sad and I’d tell em, yes I would; to me each tear’s a drop of gold. ‘You’re nobbut a stupid pile of lights n wires,’ they say. ‘Tell us the weather, sing the babby to sleep, then get t’hell out o’ here.’ And I allow it. Foolish Andy am I, every child’s toy and always fair game for a tongue-whipping. But I won’t take a tongue-whipping from you, sai. You hope to have a future in the Calla after the Wolves are done with it for another few years, don’t you?”

“You know I do,” Slightman said, so low Jake could barely hear him. “And I deserve it.”

“You and your son, both say thankya, passing your days in the Calla, both say commala! And that can happen, but it depends on more than the death of the outworlders. It depends on my silence . If you want it, I demand respect.”

“That’s absurd,” Slightman said after a brief pause. From his place in the closet, Jake agreed wholeheartedly. A robot demanding respect was absurd. But so was a giant bear patrolling an empty forest, a Morlock thug trying to unravel the secrets of dipolar computers, or a train that lived only to hear and solve new riddles. “And besides, hear me I beg, how can I respect you when I don’t even respect myself?”