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yourself. We can find a mutually satisfactory solution to all your concerns.”
    There was no response. Nor were there any more of those deep ragged breaths. Instead, if he suspended all motion and listened carefully, he could just make out a very light movement of air back and forth over the microphone.
    “Oh Penelope, answer me! Oh, what have you done?”
    Clasping his hands together in fear, Ambassador watched stretches of corridor roll by on screen four. It was impossible to contemplate the consequences of her being dead and equally impossible not to imagine the worst. At last, the robot arrived at the rockfall and there was something to relieve Ambassador’s mind from its feverish circling. Systematically, the robot widened the path the girl had made, so that it could continue on past the blockage. It was burning through several power packs of energy, but that didn’t seem important now.
    The body was a gray lump on the ground a short distance from the doors of the old library. It did not seem that the suit was leaking, for as the robot drew near, Ambassador could see that the limbs were still pressurized rather than deflated as he had feared. This robot had hands that were modeled on those of a human, with four fingers and an opposable thumb, although they were much larger and more powerful. It swiveled its hands above the body, then very carefully clasped the suit behind the human’s neck and at the small of her back. Through the girl’s microphone, Ambassador could hear the whirring of the robot’s engine as it raised her a few inches. She was hanging facedown, limbs still trailing on the ground, looking like a forlorn kitten in the mouth of her mother.
    “What?” Penelope muttered.
    “Oh joy, you live. Just relax. The robot has you. It is bringing you home.”
    “Library.” Her voice was slurred.
    “Not now. We’ll talk about that when you are safe again.”
    Having executed a three-point turn, the robot began the journey back with its precious load, struggling to keep its balance. It took a very long time to get the girl through the rockfall area, because it could not risk dragging her limbs over the stones, for fear of tearing the suit. Instead, the robot found the best solution was to move her torso a short distance, then, one at a time, move her legs and arms, then her torso again. Ambassador did not offer any alternative instruction to the robot. Slow but safe was the correct approach. For the robot, the minutes consumed in these patient maneuvers would have meant nothing, but Ambassador suffered a painful continuation of his state of anxiety. It was a very long time until he could begin to relax, when at last the body had been placed in the air lock and was therefore accessible to one of the domestic robots inside. But even after Penelope’s suit had been removed and she was lying once more on her bed, drips inserted, Ambassador could not be fully certain that no harm had been done to her.
    “I must have passed out,” she muttered, before a headset was placed over her eyes. “Darn it, so close, too.”

Chapter 4
    OF LOVE AND EMPTINESS
    By the time Ambassador returned to Princess’s chamber, she was on her feet and staring out of a large window.
    “Well, that was quite an adventure.” The avatar remained facing the window, but the eyes of her reflection in the glass met his and she smiled: a smile that Ambassador had seen a thousand times, yet right now it had a quality of exaggerated innocence that he had never noticed before.
    There could hardly be a greater contrast between the composure of the avatar and the panting human body Ambassador had been monitoring a few minutes earlier. Naturally, Penelope’s avatar was an aesthetically pleasing one that she had chosen for herself and refined over the years with her own scripting. It was of a young human woman; perhaps—like Penelope herself—fifteen years of age. The avatar’s eyes were slightly larger and certainly tended to glow more than