join in the search, and you will think I am one of you. I shall gather the red
flowers for dead Kennington, rubbing shoulders with you, and Fritz will smile at
the joke."
I climb the cracked and hollow steps, the east already spilling twilight, and the
sun half-lidded in the west.
I emerge.
The roses live on the wall across the road. From great twisting tubes of vine,
with heads brighter than any rust, they burn like danger lights on a control panel,
but moistly.
One, two, three roses for Kennington. Four, five .
"What are you doing, `bot?"
"Gathering roses."
"You are supposed to be searching for the werebot. Has something damaged
you?"
"No, I'm all right," I say, and I fix him where he stands, by bumping against his
shoulder. The circuit completed, I drain his vite-box until I am filled.
"You are the werebot!" he intones weakly.
He falls with a crash.
.Six, seven, eight roses for Kennington, dead Kennington, dead as the `bot at
my feet - more dead - for he once lived a full organic life, neared to Fritz's or
my own than to theirs.
"What happened here, `bot?"
"He is stopped, and I am picking roses," I tell them.
There are four `bots and an Over.
"It is time you left this place," I say. "Shortly it will be night and there werebot
will walk. Leave, or he will end you."
"You stopped him!" says the Over. "You are the werebot!"
I bunch all the flowers against my chest with one arm and turn to face them. The
Over, a large special-order `bot, moves toward me. Others are approaching from
all directions. He had sent out a call.
"You are a strange and terrible thing," he is saying, "and you must be junked,
for the sake of the community."
