I follow Maya Anika up the undulating steps of the ship, carrying in my arms Maria's lifeless form and hoping dully that this journey won't prove to be another ghastly mistake. This is something I must do, and though I still feel knives of scorching rage stabbing my inner workings, I have never been a robot of action. I have never been the first one to do anything due to my failure to see the point of trying. Now that I am forced in to action by anger, despair, and another feeling I can't find the word for, I am faced with the looming shadow of fear.

Though depression has always been my primary emotion, I know fear. Fear was when I would walk away from my shipmates, afraid noone would follow me. They didn't. Fear was wondering if I shut down in some secluded place if anyone would wonder where I was. I tried it once. I was hidden in a storage closet for three days, and nobody came looking for me. The most I got when I came back was, "Oh! Marvin! There you are. Knew you'd turn up sooner or later." How depressing. Fear was wondering whenever the ship stopped if I would be left behind. I was.

Now, fear is back, and though I am doing my best to ignore it, this anger is giving it room to take root in my massive brain. There are disadvantages to being equipped with a brain the size of a planet. While math comes easy to me, so does the ability to imagine five million of the worst possible outcomes for any given situation. I am doing this now, standing just beyond the steps and looking gloomily around the ship's spacious interior.

The inner walls are made of the same undulating metal as the ship's exterior. A long polished counter lines the wall to my left. In the far corner is a narrow wooden door. Its knob is a small, hand-crafted glass rose. I notice now that every knob in the ship is worked in the same design. To my right stretch rows and rows of what appear to be large, over-stuffed chairs.

"Here we are," Maya Anica says as though I do not already know it. "Welcome, Marvin, to the starship Glory!"

I feel sure Maria would have loved this luxurious ship with all its handcrafted finery. Though every detail exudes perfection, there Is a certain unpredictability in it all that can only exist in work done by non-robotic beings. The long counter looks to have been carved by hand, and no painted astral body orbiting the metal walls is the exact copy of another.

"This is not one of our usual emergency dispatch ships," Maya Anica says by way of explanation, settling herself gracefully in one of the chairs and following my gaze. "There were no ships available, but I had a premonition your call was of the utmost urgency." Her sorrowful eyes run over Maria's lifeless face like a caress. "It seems I was right."

"If your premonition was so important to you," I say accusingly "why were you so long in coming?"

"A fair question," comes Maya Anica's gentle reply. I am unused to being spoken to in this fashion, and it angers me. "You see Marvin, long ago, our home planet of Xepsinia was ruled by the Keldreks. The Keldreks saw Mayas as a race inferior to themselves, and so they kept us as slaves to tend their houses and build their pyramids."

"A very sad tale," I say by way of response. I know no response is required, but I hope my complete and utter disinterest in her little story will encourage Maya Anica to get to the bloody point. "Now what does it have to do with the delayed arrival of your accursed ship?"

"Sit down, Marvin," Maya Anica says with a tolerant smile. "I will get to that presently." Maya Anica lifts one slender hand and a glass cupboard behind the counter opens. I sit in the chair opposite her, watching a teapot, a teabag, and cup float from the cupboard, bumping it closed behind themselves. "Now, some years ago, Maya Dennea began the great revolution. She is one of the most prominent figures in Xepsinian history, but I will spare you the details. To make a long story short, armies were formed, a war was fought, and the Mayas claimed ownership of Xepsinia, sending the Keldreks in a fully furnished ship to make a life for themselves somewhere else."

Bored, I watch the pot fill itself with water from a pump also located behind the counter before laboriously hopping on to a small wood stove and beginning to boil. The teabag takes a quite literal flying leap into the water, causing the surface to ripple. If I were not drowning in a sea of Sinicism and despair, this spectical might be slightly entertaining, but as it is, I think Maya Anica is showing off in some washed out attempt to impress me with her power. It is not working.

"Nonsense, Marvin!" She laughs musically, tilting her head quizzically to look at me. "Ah well. You are not the first being to accuse a Maya of showing off, and you won't be the last. In all honesty, I am perfectly capable of making tea, but doing it with my mind is so much easier in a pinch. It's been a long day, you know."

I look down at the unmoving form lying across my lap and wonder how this winged humanoid sitting in a luxurious ship can tell me this day has been remotely long. Today, for the first time in my unnaturally long existence, I had the chance to be truly needed. Oh, people have always asked me to perform one task or another, but these were all things they could have done for themselves. "Marvin, take them to the bridge." "Marvin, pick up that piece of paper, will you? There's a good chap." "Marvin, can you pilot this ship?" "Marvin, do those dishes, won't you?"

"Marvin, I need you to guard the entrance of the cave. Make sure Arthur doesn't get into too much trouble, please? Thanks." "I've got to run. Marvin, won't you look after my white mice for me?" And my favorite of all time, "Marvin, we've got to go for a little while. Wait here till we get back?" Everything they asked of me was something they could have done for themselves, but Maria was innocent, a helpless traveler in this vast universe. It would have been an honor to help her in any way I could. Through my pointless existence, I've always felt I was meant for so much more than the life of a menial robot, and with that beautiful child as a companion, I could have held my conviction with certainty.

"Marvin, do you think Maria was the first child in this universe to die as a result of incompetent and neglectful guardians? Do you think nobody who ever lived cared for a child as you care for her?" Maya Anica's gentle face takes on an expression of mingled pity and impatience. "I can indeed say this day has been a long one for me, as all days are. My team and I see countless precious children of all species in similar emergencies to that of little Maria. We find them dead, we find them mortally injured but slow to die, and we find them so mentally scarred and warped by the abuse of the ones whose vocation it is to nurture and teach them that we are forced to kill them."

"Perhaps," I say with impatience of my own "if you did not feel so free to browse the contents of my mind, you wouldn't be so easily offended by my thoughts. The ability to do a thing doesn't always give you the right."

"Thank you," Maya Anica says to the teapot as it pours boiling tea in to its waiting cup. "Marvin dear, I can understand why you feel violated by my seeing your thoughts, but you must understand I can hear your thoughts as plainly as though you are speaking them aloud. With others like myself, I avoid answering their personal thoughts by looking to see if their lips move when they speak. If they say something with no mouth movement, I surmise that it must be a thought. Because you were not made with human facial features…"

"I understand, woman!" I cut her off. "Now, will you please continue with the pathetic history of your insignificant planet?"

This creature is, next to Trillian, the most infuriating female I have ever met! I vow from now on to voice my every thought, no matter how callous and unfeeling it may be. I am, after all, a machine. Let the humanoids feel and care. Let their hearts bleed and their minds melt under forces such as rage or love. For my part, I will sit idally by, ticking by every pointless second, tick, tick, tick, and rusting little by little, I will wait for the galaxy to implode, collapsing in on itself in a shower of cosmic dust.

"Right then." The spoon floating toward Maya Anica clinks a bit too loudly into the cup, causing the contence to slosh dangerously. "Now, let's return to the history of my so-called insignificant planet, shall we?" A rose-shaped dish of brightly-rapped sugar cubes nudges her hand. Patting it, she takes two of the cubes, opening them, and stirring them into her tea. "Where was I?"

"After you, the Mayas, won a war with them, the enslaving Keldreks, you sent your enemies off in a fully furnished ship to go with they would instead of properly disposing of them as any other race with half an ounce of common sense would have done," I tell her helpfully.

"Oh yes," she says briskly. My sarcasm is lost on her. "Well, after the Keldreks fled from the scene of their epic defeat, they traveled in space for many months."

"And you used your psychic mind-probing powers to know presicely how long they traveled, I presume," I remark, wasting yet another precious drop of my limitless sarcasm.

"No, dear." Her voice is patient, showing only a hint of annoyance around the edges. "Later, one of the Keldreks returned to Xepsinia, and has been working as an informant ever since. He told us all he knows of the Keldreks, their departure from our world, and all that transpired afterword. Now, may I continue?" I nod.

"So, after leaving Xepsinia, the Keldreks traveled for many months," she repeats. The look she casts my way is intent, doubtless, an attempt to figuratively brush the stray bangs of cinisism from my eyes. "Food, water, and patience were running short among the ship's two thousand members, and small wars were breaking out among the ranks." She sighs, studying a dot on the ceiling only she can see. "One day," she continues "when life aboard the ship was looking particularly hopeless, something peculiar happened. A song began eminating out of the ships ceiling, walls, and floor. It was, as songs go, not the most beautiful melody ever written. The voice, though young and sweet in its way, quavered just noticeably, and the instrument, sounding like an out of tune piano mixed with some strain of flute, often fumbled between chords, giving the song a hap-hazard ere. Nevertheless, the Keldreks were astounded at such beauty. The captain's eyes glazed over, and he drove the ship jerkily as though he were a marrienette."

Her hand tightens around the handle of her tea cup, and it squeaks in protest. She pats it absently with a murmured apology. Rolling the strange story around and around my massive brain, I am reminded of the tales Arthur Dent would tell of his planet's mythology. There were on Earth, or so the legend goes, lovely women who lived in the oceans and luered sailors to their deaths. When a waterbound wooden ship would sail by, the cyrens, as these creatures were called, would sing, enticing the men aboard the ship to follow them. So mesmerized were they that often they would follow the cyrens to their deaths, dashing their ships against sharp rocks. When these sea-bound ships hit the rocks, holes would be punctured in their primative wooden shells. Through the holes, cold dark water would come, pulling the ship ever downward and causing its occupants to drown.

A smile breaks across Maya Anica's face, and she nods. "Very good, Marvin! That is exactly what happened to the Keldreks. Dazed and transfixed, the Keldreks watched their captain drive the ship that had become for them both home and prison straight into the side of a small planet. Beautiful creatures our informant later learned were called Omegas ran to help dislodge the ship imbedded in the lush soil of their planet. With time, and the help of many larger ships that were fashioned to look like blue dolphins, the Keldreks' ship was freed. Many died in the collision, and Omegas helped the remaining survivers to burry their dead. The Omegas also provided the newcomers with food, shelter, and, most important of all, friendship."

The empty cup sails back behind the counter to refill its self, returning to its mistress with the sugar bowl and spoon in toe. With two more cubes bobbing in her tea, Maya Anica is again stirring thoughtfully, looking down at the mixture as though it has the power to help her escape the sadness etched on her lovely face. "With their numbers significantly depleted and an acute depression brought on by the lack of sunlight during their long journey, the Keldreks were vulnerable, seeing the Omegas as their saviors, as a superior race worthy of life-long servitude. Never mind the fact that it was Amathysta, the Omegan queen, who caused the fatal crash. The Keldreks pledged themselves in service, binding their race indefinitely to the Omegas. And so it was that as the Keldreks enslaved the Mayas, they too were enslaved. The difference was, while the Keldreks controlled our bodies, the Omegas control their souls."

"A sad story," I say after what seems an appropriate length of silence. "But I still fail to see what all this has to do with why you and your lovely lackies were so long in coming, nor do I understand why you brought a luxury ship."

"This is no luxury ship, Marvin." She laughs, looking about her with the fondness of one used to traveling. "This is a standard Mayan spacecraft, used for expeditions and such. We would have come in one of our emergency ships, but they are all out either in service to those in need or in battle."

She sighs, patting a large fur throw rug that is winding about her ankles in a very cat-like fashion. The thing is white, possessing the head, paws and tail of what once must have been something akin to a lion. Its round eyes of clearest jade roll up to look at Maya Anica in what I can only classify as concern.

"You see, Marvin," she says softly, seeming to talk more to herself than to me "my sisters and I are at war with the Omegas and have been for the last six years. The Keldreks are not the only race taken as servants by the Omegas. It is Queen Amathysta's wish that the Omegas possess the virtues of all other races. She believes that by breeding her subjects with the offworlders captured through violence, hypnotism, and other means of persuasion, the Omegas will evolve into a super-race, a group of beings capable of ruling all life that is, was, or ever will be."

"Such a feat would be impossible," I tell her, stating the obvious. "Throughout history, all other attempts at creating a superior race have ended in the birth of a poorly-evolved group of idiots good only for amusement, bate, menial jobs, or scientific experiments."

"While that is true, Marvin," Maya Anica says gravely "you have not yet seen the Omegas. They have gills that they might swim to depths untold. They can sing like the birds and heal from great injuries with the speed of any lecanthrop. They have mastered the arts of pain and pleasure, resourcefulness and persuasion, but the worst thing of all is…" She pauses, shutting her eyes for a moment as though this simple jesture could make this last untrue. "The Omegas, like the dragons, can live for a thousand years and breed for all of those."

I have to admit, I am slightly impressed. "Why then," I ask "do the all-powerful Omegas want to war with you?"

The Mayas have three gifts no Omega has been able to master," she says solemnly. "The gift of flight, the ability to travel through time, and the ability to stay at any age they choose."

If I could raise one eyebrow in a quizzical expression, I would. "Any age? I ask. "Does this make the Mayas immortal?"

"Contrary to popular belief, it does not." She sighs. "We, the Mayas, are given five hundred years to do with as we please. If one wishes, she may spend her entire life as a newborn, being kissed and cuddled by all. Or, if one's intellect grows beyond the span of her body, she may decide to grow from ten to twenty in a blink. Mayas may stay as old as they wish for as long as they wish in the time allotted them, but once a Maya goes forward, there is no going back."

"I can see why the talents you possess would prove desirable to such a power-hungry race as the Omegas," I say after a pause "but how will war help to obtain them?"

"Ah Marvin." Maya Anica sighs, a tired sigh full of age and worry. "Marvin, it would not, but on Aironea, the world of the Omegas, ten of our sisters, for we are all sisters, are being held prisoner. Also, the Omegan men grow bolder and are beginning to talk some of our young and innocent sisters into consentual marriages. They write to us, but no matter how unhappy they are, their husbands do not permit them to make the journey to visit their home. We must find them, dear one, and, no matter what the cost, bring them back with us."