Docchi scrambled to his feet. She was coming toward him.
She showed no sign of strain. Except for a slight smudge on her wonderfully smooth and scar-less cheek, she might just have stepped out of a beauty cubicle. Without question, she was the most beautiful woman in the world. This world, of course, though she could have done well on any world—if she could have communicated with people as well as with machines.
"Where were you hiding?" Docchi asked, expecting no answer.
She smiled. He wondered, with a feeling of helplessness, if machines could sense and appreciate her lovely smile, or whether they could somehow smile themselves.
"I wish I could take you in my arms," he said bitterly.
"It's not as silly as you think," said Anti, watching from the surface of the tank. "You don't have any arms, but she has two. You can talk and hear, but she can't. Between you, you're a complete couple."
"Except that she would never get the idea," he answered unhappily.
Jordan, rocking on his hands, looked up quizzically. "I must be something like her. They used to call me a born mechanic; just put a wrench in my hand and I can do anything with a piece of machinery. It's as if I sense what the machine wants done to it. Not to the extent that Nona can understand, naturally. You might say it's reversed, that she's the one who can hear while I have to lip-read."
"You never just gabble," Docchi prompted. "You have something in mind."
Jordan hesitated. "I don't know if it's stupid or what. I was thinking of a kind of sign language with machines. You know, start with the simple ones, like clocks and such, and see what they mean to her. Since they'd be basic machines, she'd probably have pretty basic reactions. Then it's just a matter of—"