scattered like snack food. The furniture—what he could see of it—was almost as ancient as the house and remarkably ugly. The tiny-paned windows were blurred with grime, and most horizontal surfaces were dull with dust.
“Hell of a housekeeper,” Simon muttered to himself, and stumped down the hallway to the basement stairs. “Hayden!” he shouted as he dodged the debris. “HAYDEN!”
A high-pitched, young female voice with a pronounced Liverpool accent called up from below. “Down here, Dr. Fitzpatrick!”
Oh, great, Simon thought. She’s here, too.
He was careful going down the stairs—at least two of the steps were dark with rot and cracked from end to end. As he descended, the quality of light changed from the dim reflected sunlight of the untended rooms above to the blue-white glow of the workspace. It made his eyes hurt even though he knew what to expect.
He had to step over an upturned stool to completely enter the lab. The room was huge compared to the space above, at least three times the floor space and twice the height, slightly too cold to be comfortable and absolutely without scent or shadow. It was almost inhumanly tidy as well: every piece of equipment was in its place on a labeled shelf, every worktop was clear and clean. Even the piles of printouts on the desk (and who other than Hayden still used printouts, Simon wondered idly) were stacked with geometric precision. None of that was the work of Hayden’s brilliant but disorganized mind, he knew. No, that was someone else’s doing entirely.
The robot responsible for the extraordinary organization turned part of its jumbled face-panel toward him as he entered. “You usually call ahead,” its female voice emanated from somewhere near the center of its seething metallic mass. “You did not think that was necessary on this occasion?”
“Lovely to see you as well, T.E.A.H.,” he said acidly.
He stopped short when he saw what his father’s old friend and his prize robot were doing. They were facing each other, hunched over a small rectangular panel, heads down, in deep contemplation.
Chess, he thought, and smiled to himself. I should have known.
“Why do you do that, Simon?” Hayden grumbled. “Call her by the full designation? You know it just sets her off. Just call her Teah.”
Simon blinked innocently. “Does it?”
Hayden sighed deeply. “Oh, for pity’s sake…”
Something and whirred in Teah’s sensor array. “Your pulse is slightly elevated, Professor,” she said to Simon. “Subcutaneous capillary action is above average, and detectable encephalic activity is accelerated as well. What is bothering you so?”
“I don’t believe that’s any of your business, Teah,” he said.
“Ah. Apparently I have exceeded the social paradigm assigned to casual conversation,” the robot said stiffly, “though why you would withhold such unimportant situational data begs a host of other even more significant queries—”
Simon swept up the walnut-sized AI relay that connected Hayden to his robot regardless of distance—their little dedicated intercom/cell phone. He dumped it unceremoniously into a cup of cold coffee that sat at the edge of a table.
“What the devil?” Hayden said, sitting up straight for the first time.
“That was rather pointless,” Teah said, sounding more puzzled than upset. “Now you will simply have to buy another relay.”
“And I will have to shout to make myself heard if she’s a room away! Damn it, Simon!”
“I’m terribly sorry,” he said with complete insincerity. “How clumsy of me.”
“You seem to think sarcasm is beyond the range of my sensors,” Teah said with a tone that sounded remarkably like condescension. “I assure you, it is not. I am well aware of your low opinion of me.”
“And yet you continue to speak to me. How thoroughly…inexplicable.”
Hayden stood up, groaning. “Aaaaaallll right, enough, enough. Teah, would you be kind enough to prepare tea and bring it in for us?” He cocked a bushy eyebrow at Simon. “Or coffee? A shot of Glenfiddich?”
“Tea is fine, Hayden, thank you.”
“It would be my pleasure to serve you, Doctor,” the robot said, then slithered and clanked away from the makeshift chess table to the doorway that led deeper into the underground complex. When she was well out of sight, Hayden turned to regard his younger friend. “Well?” he said gruffly. “What is your problem?”
Hayden was skinny and tall with a scruffy beard that seemed to cling precariously to his leathery face. His white hair badly needed a trim; it fell in flat, straight, silvery wings on both sides of his high-browed forehead.
Simon was glad to see him; though Hayden was only ten years older than Simon himself,