Nicole finished her dried apricots and crossed the room to drop the package in the wastebasket. It was nearly full. She tried to compress the waste with her foot, but the level barely changed.

My time is running out, she thought, her eyes mechanically scanning the food remaining on the shelf. I can last maybe five more days. Then I must have some new supplies. Both Joan and Eleanor had been gone for forty-eight hours. During the first two weeks of Nicole’s stay in the room underneath Max Puckett’s barn, one of the two robots had been with her all the time. Talking with them had been almost like talking with her husband, Richard, at least originally, before Nicole had exhausted all the topics the little robots had stored in their memories.

These two robots are his greatest creations, Nicole said to herself, sitting down in the chair. He must have spent months on them. She remembered Richard’s Shakespearean robots from the Newton days. Joan and Eleanor are far more sophisticated than Prince Hal and Falstaff. Richard must have learned a lot from the engineering of the human biots in New Eden.

Joan and Eleanor had kept Nicole informed about the major events occurring in the habitat. It was an easy task for them. Part of their programmed instruction was to observe and to report by radio to Richard during their periodic sorties outside of New Eden, so they passed the same information on to Nicole. She knew, for example, that Nakamura’s special police had searched every building in the settlement, ostensibly looking for anyone hoarding critical resources, in the first two weeks after her escape. They had also come to the Puckett farm, of course, and for four hours Nicole had sat perfectly still in total darkness in her hideout. She had heard some noises above her, but whoever had conducted the search had not spent much time in the barn.