"You're so destructive, Gurgeh," Boruelal told him. "Why not help us instead? Become part of the facility instead of an itinerant guest lecturer?"

"I've told you, Professor; I'm too busy. I have more than enough games to play, papers to write, letters to answer, guest trips to make… and besides… I'd get bored. I bore easily, you know," Gurgeh said, and looked away.

"Jernau Gurgeh would make a very bad teacher," Chamlis Amalk-ney agreed. "If a student failed to understand something immediately, no matter how complicated and involved, Gurgeh would immediately lose all patience and quite probably pour their drink over them… if nothing worse."

"So I've heard." The professor nodded gravely.

"That was a year ago," Gurgeh said, frowning. "And Yay deserved it." He scowled at the old drone.

"Well," the professor said, looking momentarily at Chamlis, "perhaps we have found a match for you, Jernau Gurgeh. There's a young—" Then there was a crash in the distance, and the background noise in the hall increased. They each turned at the sound of people shouting.

"Oh, not another commotion," the professor said tiredly.

Already that evening, one of the younger lecturers had lost control of a pet bird, which had gone screeching and stooping through the hall, tangling in the hair of several people before the drone Mawhrin-Skel intercepted the animal in mid-air and knocked it unconscious, much to the chagrin of most of the people at the party.

"What now?" Boruelal sighed. "Excuse me." She absently left glass and savoury on Chamlis Amalk-ney's broad, flat top and moved off, excusing her way through the crowd towards the source of the upheaval.

Chamlis's aura flickered a displeased grey-white. It set the glass down noisily on the table and threw the savoury into a distant bin. "It's that dreadful machine Mawhrin-Skel," Chamlis said testily.