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answered. “Why?”
    “No reason.” The young man struggled to admit that he was terrified of his former automaton assistant.
    “Again, my lord, my apologies,” Master Addler said, bowing from the wash room. “I’ve also pass-coded a hard reset into their functions, just . . . in case. Not that I foresee any issues! Shall I inform the entire royal family, or members of the court? Or would you prefer to choose individuals to trust with the passcode?”
    Pff. Trust. Yeah. “Just tell me,” he answered.
    “All right, now, don’t forget it, though I don’t see how you could; it’s one of my favorites.” Master Addler tittered for a moment before continuing. “It’s–” He glanced around and turned back. “–’balderdash gas.’ Now, it’s a tongue-twister, so be careful with pronunciation! ‘Balderdash gas.’ If you please, I’ll send Newton by to dry and prepare your bedclothes posthaste!”
    “No!” Kaizen cried without thought. The door closed without another word from the old man, and Kaizen was somehow sure that Master Addler had not heard him.
     
    Kaizen nudged his bedchamber door open and crept inside.
    “ Let me help you, sir, ” a robotic voice greeted him, coasting with a clatter toward the movement of his body.
    “N-n–”
    “ I would very much like to help you. ” The bot looked just like the other Newton s had looked, tall and slender, lightly muscled with a froth of thick blond curls. He was coated in a glossy porcelain plating, circles of blush sprayed onto his cheeks and strikes of paint to mark his eyebrows. His ankles, wrists, knees, elbows, hips, neck, eyelids, and mouth were all jointed and maneuvered with an alarming severity when he moved them – or, rather, when they moved. Certainly, he didn’t do anything. He was just a jumble of gears and rods. Wasn’t he?
    The chief and most disturbing difference between Newton-3 and the others was that his eyes, the standard blue marbles, glowed with a pinprick of red in the center.
    Kaizen gulped, peering into a face that was identical to the face that had pummeled him in the chest until its knuckles broke their plating into jagged shards and cut him with long, deep lacerations that would likely never heal. He still had to be tender with the stitches down his torso.
    “I don’t need any help,” he informed Newton-3, finally finding his tongue. “Thank you, but that will be all.”
    “ You are all there is, sir,” Newton-3 went on. His head tilted on his jointed neck, so it was as if he were truly peering deeply at the man before him. “ Disappoint you, and I will cease to be.”
    Kaizen scrutinized the oddly existential bot a touch closer. Had Master Addler programmed the languages of the first set? He had to doubt it. Surely, they’d known when to get lost, and they hadn’t said such disconcertingly morose things.
    “Augh, okay, then . . . You know what you can do?”
    Newton-3 plunged into a low bow, and Kaizen grimaced.
    “You can wash the glass plating on the dome,” he commanded. “That ought to give your life meaning for the entire trip.” Newton-3 hesitated, vibrating as if attempting to assimilate this command with his system, and then rolled from the room without further ado.
    Moments later, a sharp tap came at Kaizen’s bay window, jerking him from the nap into which he’d been slipping, half-dressed, on his bed.
    The Taliko castle’s Hermetic device clinked steadily against the glass.
    Shaking Legacy’s phantom fingers from his hair, Kaizen went to the window and unlatched it, accepting the device and depressing its shell. The light emerged, flickering with the husky cadence of her voice: strong. Soft. Still alive. And commanding him, in no uncertain terms, to forget her.
     

Chapter Three
     
                  Legacy was no longer allowed to take the helm of the Albatropus, even though there was no twenty-five mile per hour speed limit imposed anymore . As Vector loved to continually remind