The girl shrugged. "For a creation of Ivath's laboratories," she said, "you are refreshingly human. So I will treat you as one of us." Her eyes were thoughtful. "After all a robot does possess a limited power of reasoning."
"Ivath!" Orth barked the word at her. "Forget the insults for the time being. I may look funny but I'm human."
"Ivath is the director of our theater of space," she said. "This, as you know, is a huge hollow globe on whose surface world-wide dramas from the ages past are brought to life. He is painstakingly accurate in his depiction of the bygone dress, customs and speech."
Orth laughed shortly. "Even to vehicles with horses for power," he said, "and guns without gunpowder."
The girl disregarded him. "But Ivath has surpassed other directors of the past. He uses androids, living robots, and impresses on their memory cells the accurate thought and instinct patterns of their own chosen age. It is really amazing how closely their actions follow the historical patterns of the ancient past."
"You mean he sprinkles cities, forests and—robots, all around and watches what happens? No script for them to follow? No deadline or time to end it all?"
"He usually changes the entire surface of the globe every fifty years," Ayna told him. "The next drama will be that of ancient Mars before the Earthmen came, and shortly afterward."
"If it is as accurate as this mess," said Orth dryly, "it will be something to see, and worse to hear. I lived in the years of the first Martian exploration, Ayna. And I came from the Twentieth Century that your director is supposed to be presenting here!"
Ayna's face was serious. Orth felt a curious prickling sensation in his head and then everything went hazy for a time....
Eventually the blur faded. He found that they had left the forest behind and were entering a region of cultivated fields and little huddles of log and sod dwellings. The clumsy vehicle in which they sat was slowing until it was barely crawling between two rows of brick-fronted cabins.