Docchi scrambled to his feet and there she was coming toward them, fresh and rested. There was a smudge on her cheek but she might have got that from some machine she'd stopped to investigate on the way here. Her curiosity was not limited and there was nothing mechanically so insignificant that it escaped her attention.
"Where were you?" asked Docchi, expecting no reply. She smiled and for a moment he thought she knew what he asked. He was relieved that she was safe—and that was all. Something was missing in the reactions he expected from himself but he couldn't say where. At one time he had thought—and now he no longer did. Perhaps it was an expression of the new freedom they had all achieved.
Jordan looked at him quizzically, half penetrating the screen he'd thrown over his lack of emotions. "It's not as bad as you think. She understands some things. Machines."
And a machine he was not. He wasn't even a complete human. Perhaps that was where the difference was.
"She's a born mechanic, such as never existed. It's about time one appeared in the human race. We've worked with machines long enough to evolve someone who understands them without having to study and learn. I'm that way myself, a little. Nothing like her."
They all knew that. Even on Earth they were probably busy revising their intelligence ratings. "That doesn't change our problem—her problem."
Jordan hesitated. "The idea's pretty vague but we've made one advance: we know she can think."
"We always did," said Anti.
"Sure, we did. But doctors and psychologists weren't convinced and they were the ones who were studying her. Now it's up to us."
There was a difference. No matter what they'd thought, previously they'd been patients, and it was axiomatic that the patient's ideas were largely ignored. Now they had stepped into a dual role, patient and doctor, subject and experimenter, the eye at the microscope and the object on the slide.