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in his hands, not taking his eyes from it.
    “As you wish, Siddhartha,” intoned the LZ-Ssn in a proper British accent.
    He smiled. Ton Re’Sateron’s fine touch was evident in the reprogramming of this unit that now addressed him by name. Indulging the botanist who wished for a more life-like companion to accompany him during his experiments, Sateron had added several new features. One was a second green illumine, the “eye” that served no other purpose than to balance the “face.” The other was an auditory core stocked with colloquialisms Sateron had discovered by studying broadcast signals picked up from the orbiters monitoring Earth.
    Rotating once again, the LZ-Ssn stopped when the soil receptacle was in the proper position. The hatch opened, the tray slid out, and a small bucket of uncontaminated Elvilive soil was dispensed.
    “Oh ... please to pardon me,” Siddhartha muttered, “I need first the clippers.”
    “Coming right up.”
    The tray slid back into the receptacle, the hatch closed, and the LZ-Ssn spun again; whirrrr , open, slide—and there were four clippers with different length blades.
    Siddhartha picked the smallest. Leaning slightly forward, he pushed the clippers through a permeable barrier into a beaker of sterile solution close by his knee. With a pinging zzzzzzt, the LZ-Ssn hastily backed up in order to maintain the programmed fourteen-inch distance from the human. As Siddhartha straightened, the LZ-Ssn drifted back to its original position.
    “ Now the soil,” he said, absorbed in trimming tiny filaments from the base of the light brown root. The tranquil expression, which rarely left his face, was altered by intense concentration.
    “At your service.” Whirrrr , open, slide ... soil.
    Siddhartha’s brow furrowed uncharacteristically as he wet his lips with his tongue. Pausing to glance left then right, he murmured, “My, my ... where did I leave the trowel?”
    With an “I will find it,” the soil instantly disappeared inside its receptacle and the LZ-Ssn’s flexible neck uncoiled to a height of ten inches. Beginning a circumferential scan, one green “eye” turned red and began to blink, reverting to a solid-state condition when it homed in on the discarded instrument. The LZ-Ssn flowed forward, stopping when it was directly over the tool. Lowering an articulated arm from its central core, it delicately lifted the trowel with a replicate thumb and first finger. It was halfway back when Siddhartha cried, “Drat, I forgot the yellow marking sticks!”
    Practically skidding to a stop, the LZ-Ssn once more extended its neck coil, found the marking sticks some ten feet from its present location and hurried to the new coordinates. Gathering up the sticks with a second arm, it headed back to the human, once more positioning itself at the appropriate distance
    “I will take the trowel, thank you,” Siddhartha said absentmindedly, his attention still centered on the solam tebrosm . The articulated arm that held the trowel bent at the elbow, bringing the instrument close to the human’s left hand.
    “Happy to comply.”
    Siddhartha ignored the proffered tool and stared at the root. “Hmm ... I believe I must mist again before I plant,” he murmured. “And please to give me the digger before the soil so that I may make the hole larger. Oh my, I have dropped the clippers!” So saying, Siddhartha retrieved the fallen clippers, leaning forward at the same time to reach the beaker of sterile solution.
    Whirring as it rotated, the LZ-Ssn began to open the receptacle that housed the mister while simultaneously skittering backward to maintain its proper distance as both articulated arms swiveled rapidly to prevent injury to the human.
    Shuddering slightly, all trays disappeared, the hatches closed, the elbows straightened, and the retrieval arms retracted into the central core.
    “Siddhartha, your instructions are unacceptable. I cannot process multiple directives and imprecise