“You’ll have other children," she said; her voice shook a little. "You'll learn more. Maybe they'll turn out better. You won't make the same mistakes."

"I shall undoubtedly make new ones." There was a lilt in Ship's voice. "I do know now that you do not always respond to reason-that it isn't enough simply to explain and expect you to assent to my conclusions. I know that you do not always share my point of view."

Zoheret pressed a hand to her lips. Her laughter had died and she was now afraid she would cry. She struggled for control as Manuel took her hand. "You'll come back."

“I have promised" Ship replied. "I shall come back some day. Tend to your radio-tell your children about me. Who knows-perhaps they will leave the surface of your world to greet me, and perhaps you will live to see it."

Zoheret shook her head, knowing Ship could not see her. She would never live that long.

"Keep your library," Ship went on. "Learn all you can. In a few generations, you can build a civilization, or you’ll begin your decline, and the way back up will be much harder. You have the tools." Ship paused. "Why do I say this now? Youve heard it before. I've done all I can. The rest is up to you.”

“Farewell," Zoheret murmured. "I hope you find whatever it is you want.”

Her resentment faded as she thought of the past year. She had wanted to give up being the leader, had wanted to walk out of the settlement and never return. The loneliness had almost driven her to this room several times, but she had kept the promise she had made to herself. Now she would have Manuel's love, Ship would have no one's. Ship had tended to their needs without a thought for itself.

I forgive you, Ship." The words came out more easily than she had expected. "I’m sorry - I was wrong. I should be asking you to forgive me." She threw her arms around the radio and laughed. “ I was foolish.”

“Indeed you were." Ship's alto voice was gentle. "Yes, you are a foolish young woman, Others were more intelligent, more compassionate, more gitted, or more single-minded and determined. You were always one who had to learn the hard way. Thickheaded-and stubborn, and too emotional. I’ll tell you a secret, Zoheret. I may have loved you the most, in spite of it. What an odd thing for me to admit-there were others who deserved it more, or who needed my love more, and I never showed my preference, but there it is. Part of me says that there must be a reason for it- that there is Something in you which provoked the response, some exceptional quality or promise. But perhaps it is simply a mystery. Human beings created me as the best part of themselves, and your lives have changed me, but there is much about you I shall never know.”

“ Let me try, Zoheret. Maybe I’ll surprise you. If I can make you happy, you might change your mind about a lot of things. I think l'd be happy with you. And I can make you happy - you’ll never be sorry. I can promise you that. I'm tired of trying to find part of you in somebody else."

“You’ll come back with a new arm. Part of it can be regenerated, and the prosthesis will be wedded to it. You’ll find it satisfactory. I’m even working on a miniature camera device that could give Luis limited vision. There are ways.”

"Then why didn't you do anything for him before?"

"Because he had to learn how to live with those limitations. It's something we must all learn in different ways. And there were other reasons. Luis was afraid of growing dependent on a piece of technology which might give him sight and then rob him of it again if it failed, leaving him more helpless than if he hadn't had it at all. And Anoki could have had new hip joints and legs, but he was afraid of the same thing. You must remember that those who built me worried about altering the human form.”

"You have judged the Earthfolk,' Ship said. "Perhaps their punishment is fitting-not because I think you have the wisdom to judge them, but because it is a practical solution to a problem. But that is where judging must end. You will resume your life here, and when your new home has been thoroughly explored and mapped, you will be taken there. If you wish to pass your judgments there, and let the rifts among you grow wider, that is your affair. If you destroy yourselves and become one with the dust of that world, leaving nothing, I shall begin again, and I shall keep trying until my seed takes root, or I am forced to consider you a hopeless species. But you will not tear yourselves apart as long as you dwell within me. If you do, I shall expel you immediately and leave you on the new world with only the weapons you seem to value so highly. Be warned -I shall be watching."

It was work, feeding themselves: They worked to eat and did not have much time for other pursuits. Most of the things Ship had taught them seemed useless here. Lillka had said that all of human history could be summed up by saying that people worked hard so that they could find ways to keep from having to work.

"Ho cheated."

"He did not. He broke no rules. You may not like what he did, but it worked - he won. Life involves trading one thing for another, Zoheret - setting priorities. You have to decide whether or not your goal justifies the means used to achieve it. Ho and his team decided that winning this Competition meant a lot to them. Your team decided that other things, such as helping injured friends, meant more. If you feel you did the right thing, then you should feel satisfied."' Ship paused.

“I think it's kind of strange for Ship to tell us we should restrain ourselves when nothing's going to happen." He gestured at the tiny white line on his lower right arm; each of them had such a mark where Ship had inserted a tiny contraceptive implant. “We can’t have kids now anyway. And when we leave Ship, we’ll have to have kids to survive. So we might as well learn how to enjoy what we have to do to get them. That’s what I think.”

She had personified Ship then. She still recalled the child- ish concept she had once held. She had imagined Ship as a person, as a nebulous and insubstantial body dwelling in the circuits, traveling along them as it watched over the children. When Ship had spoken in its alto, she had seen, in her mind, a pretty woman with a strong but gentle face and flowing silvery hair. When it used its tenor, she had imaginedakindly man with the same silvery hair and face. Even now the old images would return, unbidden, but she knew that Ship was not human. She remembered how, when she was little and still living in the nursery, Ship would hold her with its metal attachments and press her gently against its wall when she needed affection. It had seemed very human then. She wondered who had changed more - she or Ship.

“ But a lot of the science was used in wars, and a lot of the art depicts war. And they never gave up their war games and their little battles. It's as if people were made to fight." She glanced from Zoheret to Anoki. "Don't you see? It's as if it's an instinct. We have the same instincts. It means we're like them. It means we'll be just as violent."

During all the time I have traveled, whatever problems I have had, I never doubted my purpose. I had faith in those who had built me, who had given me life. However knowledge I was, they knew more - whatever wisdom I had learned, they were wiser. That was my faith. I spoke to you of their dreams, of their beliefs. That was what they gave me to reason with- the premises were theirs. Now those premises are shaken and I do not know what to believe.

The freedom of sleep was lost to the bonds of consciousness. She rubbed her temples, regretting the promise. She could go back to sleep and tell him she had forgotten. He would not mind. She sat up and stretched. If she had felt more for Dmitri, love might have excused a broken promise or a disappointment but she had only reliability and steadiness to offer him.

“…all of you here are a new human society, unhobbled by the past. The weight of history will not hold you back. You will be starting a history of your own, and in times to come, your descendants will tell legends and myths about you. You will live as human beings were meant to live. You will have a glorious destiny."

Lillka was curled up in one chair, a reader on her lap. She looked up from the flat rectangle as Zoheret and Anoki came near, then went back to her reading. Lillka lived in the li- brary; she would have spent all her time there if Ship had let her. She had grown shortsighted from all her reading, and Ship's surgical lasers had already made adjustments in her eyes.

“What are you reading?" Anoki asked her.

“Just a story."

“You shouldn't read for so long. Have Ship tell you a story, or show you one.”

“It isn't the same.'

Screens and chairs were clustered around the room; booths lined the walls. The library's microcircuits held millions of books, Ship could provide a printed copy, a slide of the book to be read with a reader, or could show an illustrated book on one of the screens. A cube as high as the ceil- ing and almost as wide as the room jutted out from the far wall. Inside the cube, holograms from Earth, the world they had never seen, could be shown.

"You and Lillka were the only ones who came to see me when I was healing,” Anoki went on. "And Willem."

“That isn't true. Almost everybody did.”

“Once or twice. And I bet it was only because Ship told them to."

They approached the library. The door slid open and they entered the large room. Zoheret would not admit it to Anoki, but she understood why he had not had many visitors while he had been in the infirmary. He often seemed bored or contemptuous. His disability also frightened others, reminding them of their own vulnerability; Zoheret had felt that fear herself. It could have happened to any of them. It might have happened to her.

“You’re doing much better, she said. "You don't need crutches anymore, and -“

“Yes, I'm doing better. I'm still not well."

“But you can do a lot more now."

“Don't tell me what I can do. You wouldn't know any thing about it. You're healthy.”