‘Mr Chairman, how many are sitting in on this.’
‘Just myself and the Lady Ladkin. This is by no means a formal Board meeting. We watched the proceedings with interest, though without, I fear, unanimity as to conclusion,’ came the first voice.
Asman nodded to the waiter and strolled out into the night, taking a winding, sand-strewn path back to the Institute.
‘Ways will go through with it,’ he thought.
Lady Ladkin’s tone was petulant. ‘Why do we need to bother with this robot? I know a dozen people who have the required combination of loyalty and mayhem.’
‘My Lady, apart from the prediction that a robot such as Ways would be used by us,’ he hurried on quickly before she could interrupt, ‘he has certainly proved himself in similar assassinations. He initiated the Novean Board debacle, for example. My Lord Pan, may I be heard?’
‘Go ahead,’ came the rumbling tone of the Chairman. ‘At present I am attending the première concert of the Third Eye Tactile Orchestra. They lack sparkle.’
‘My Lord, and my Lady, I arranged this evening as you wished, at some risk to myself. The assassin might have succeeded. US were understanding about my request, but I had to sign a waiver, and I dare say they put their best man in. Now, you know we monitor the robot. He hates the Institute, of course, and to some extent he had sympathy for Sabalos—’
‘As indeed I do also,’ said Pan, and this time Asman caught the distant echo of the orchestra. ‘I believe I met him once. His grandmother and myself were once very friendly. Old, she must be now, very old. A fine woman. Ah, we have heard the chimes at twenty-four hundred hours, Master Shallow.’
‘We must consider the boy as an instrument, my Lord,’ thought Asman patiently, picking his way between the dunes. ‘Ways feels sorry for him, but I think I have proved to your satisfaction that in actions he has no choice but to be loyal to us. As he himself said, he is a robot, and even a Class Five can be built with certain imperatives.’
‘That collar …’ began Lady Ladkin.
‘It will activate itself in the unlikely event of Ways taking any but the prescribed course,’ thought Asman soothingly.
She grumbled and was silent.
‘May I go ahead, then?’
There was another echo of music. ‘This is derivative stuff. Oh, yes, go ahead. We are secure in our predictions, aren’t we? I am not altogether happy about booby-trapping his pet – I myself have several cats, of which I am fond – but we must be practical. Proceed. I look forward to receiving your full report.’
Asman was suddenly alone among the dunes.
Dom awoke. For a while he floated, piecing his thoughts together. Then he pushed himself forward with his toe and drifted across the cabin.
Day had come to this side of the Band, although the evening terminator was visibly racing across the planet, and the Band-on-Band was fully visible.
It was a 3,000-mile-wide equatorial strip of land that girdled the fat world like a corset. Even up here Band appeared to revolve so fast for a planet that an imaginative observer half-expected to hear a background hum. It bulged. The Band was a grey-brown strip of mountain, one continuous 25,000-mile range, edged by two ribbons of blue-green grassland. They were bounded by two strips of darker sea, which reached up to the squashed poles and the white ice.
‘It’s explainable in terms of continental drift, high rotation and ancient vulcanism, boss,’ said Isaac, looking up from the autochef. ‘Or didn’t you want to know?’
‘It must be a hell of a place to live on,’ said Dom, ‘what with the sun scooting across the sky and all.’
‘The sundogs like it.’
Dom nodded. It was their world. They had evolved on Eggplant, but 600 years ago had accepted a cash grant and the deeds of Band in exchange for vacant possession. Sundogs were nice, but dangerous to live with in the laying season. So far Dom’s telescopic survey had revealed nothing but herds of sundog pups which could be seen from space as large dots at one end of thousand-mile-long swathes grazed through Band’s ubiquitous sweetgrass.
There were two narrow strips of marshland, and rivers in the mountains. There was one small lake. There was absolutely no sign of any habitation.
Dom had checked on the world. The Creapii-backed Wildlife Preservation Fund ran a small robotic observation station on the planet, as part of a treaty which also forbade unauthorized landings. The Fund headquarters said that there