The Collapsium Read Online Free Page A

containing air, for holding out vacuum. A hatch. Presently, light fanned from its upper edge, and the hatch swung downward, revealing a carpeted staircase affixed to its inner surface. This made contact with the ground, forming a perfect little exitway.
    On the other side stood a pair of dainty robots, delicate-looking things with frilled tutus ringing their waists and feathered caps slanted
just so
on their heads, their metal hands bearing ceremonial halberds that looked as if they might be twisted out of true by a strong breeze or a harsh word. In perfect synchrony, the pair descended the staircase and came straight forward, straight toward Bruno. The ship had been set down with even greater care than he’d first realized, set down by entities obsessed as much with decorum and pomp as with aero- and astrodynamics.
    Ten meters away, they stopped, clicked their metal heels, and bowed.
    “Declarant-Philander Bruno de Towaji,” one of them said—or maybe both, in too-perfect synchrony to distinguish. “We bring you the greetings of Her Majesty, and a request for your immediate audience. You are to come with us.”
    It was always strange to see robots speak, because they did it so rarely and because they had no mouths. By royal decree, it was Uncouth to build machines with faces, or hair, or genitalia, except for the express purpose of sexual perversion, which was itself Uncouth and needed no further encouragement.
    “Excuse me?” Bruno said.
    “You are to come with us,” the robots repeated, their joined voices fluid, elegant, courtly in a mechanical, clockwork-ballerina sort of way.
    “Really. Am I to know why?”
    “It is a matter of utmost importance, Declarant. The explanation of it is beyond our tasking.”
    “Beyond your tasking. I see.” Bruno nodded sagely, thinking to wonder whether his image was being recorded or transmitted, and if so, whether he looked dignified and wise or simply hermitty, possessed of too much hair and beard. “Her Majesty isn’t with you, then, all the way out here. And why should she be?”
    Why indeed, when she could simply order him around by proxy? Feeling a sudden, petty anger, he whisked off his cap and threw it at their golden feet. “Pick that up. Deliver it. It’s my reply. If Her Majesty wishes an audience, she is cordially invited to enjoy it here. My work, alas, does not permit me to travel at this time.”
    The robots considered that.
    “Her Majesty requests your immediate presence,” they finally said. “Groundless refusal is both Uncouth and inconvenient. There is no reason to be rude.”
    “Rude? Not at all. Not a bit of it. Tell Her Majesty that it pleases me, as always, to answer her every request. The requests of robot messengers, however, will hardly obligate me. You’ve interrupted important work,
expensive
work, without explanation or apology. Her Majesty is ill served by such tools as you, and is invited to petition me by the much more reliable method of face-to-face communication. Unfortunately, my network gate is down. I’m afraid you’ll have to go back and fetch her in the flesh.”
    He drew a breath, ready to say more, but stopped himself. Baiting robots was a fool’s hobby—they had no feelings to hurt, only needs and obligations to fulfill. They could be frustrated, in the same way that a deaf man could be shouted at: They saw you doing it, knew what it was, but would never be affected in the desired way. But by the same token, this made them ideal absorbers of displaced anger. Killing the messenger was fine and dandy, when the messenger was never alive in the first place, when any fax machine could recycle its smashed components back into the original robot. Not “good as new,” but actually, literally new. So he supposed a little baiting was harmless enough.
    Wordlessly, the robots turned and went back up their staircase, which lifted and closed behind them with a faint clunk and hiss.
    Bruno would regret this, or course. He would add it