The Duke of Uranium

They had already requested a Pertrans car and at any moment one should emerge from the metal doors in front of them, glide onto the boarding track, and let them in. Meanwhile they stood with their backs to the station, enjoying the sight of a girls' slamball team jogging by in the wide corridor.

"Naw." Jak was emphatic. "He's what, a bit under two hundred years old? And he's probably given exactly that lecture three times a year for the last hundred seventy years, masen? What are the odds that that was even Fwidya's dullest lecture?"

"One in five hundred ten. People buy lottery tickets with worse odds."

"Good job, old tove. You're using those math skills they told us were so important, masen?"

Dujuv held up his right hand, then looked down at his left palm, where he wore his purse, the supercomputer in a fingerless glove that was as basic to modern life as a wallet or trousers had been. "Is there a record for the dullest lecture in the history of the universe?"

"I only have access to records for the solar system," the purse said. "Do you want me to check those?" "Please."

"Well," the purse said, "over sixty ways of measuring dullness have been invented, and for each way, a different lecture wins."

"Were any of the dullest lectures by any of those measures ever given by Teacher Fwidya?" "No," the purse said. "No speeches of his are even ranked."

"That'll be all, you can go off-line," Dujuv said, and the purse said "G'night" and did. Dujuv squeezed his left palm, a little trick that many people did—having programmed the purse to like being hugged, they could reinforce it silently all the time, encouraging it to become a better and better purse. He dropped his left hand to his side. "Well, not only is Fwidya dull, he's also an amateur at it."

Jak shook his head. "So a failure all around. Speaking of that—let's think about ourselves. Do you want to check our scores now, or wait until we're at Entrepot?" "Let's get to Entrepot, find a good place to sit down and eat, order food, and then check. Are you scared, Jak?"

"Toktru, yeah. Terrified."

"Me too."

"Good thing we never get too scared to eat." The Pertrans car glided silently into position behind them, a face-to-face two-seater. The canopy popped open and the two toves climbed in, their knees almost touching. Dujuv said, "We want to go to Entrepot, what's the price for less than five?"

"Less than five minutes?" the car asked. This one had a warm, motherly voice. "Toktru." "Which end of Entrepot?" "Wherever there's the most food places." "Southeast terminal, then. It will be two utils." "Authorized," Jak said, before Dujuv could, so that the trip would be billed to him. Uncle Sib always seemed to just throw utils in Jak's direction, so Jak might as well spend them on his less-well-off friends.

"Please speak long enough to verify that the speakercustomer was Jak Jinnaka."

"Verified." The canopy closed. The car rose, the door to the Pertans passage opened in front of them, and they accelerated onto the line; they would be at Entrepot in less than five minutes or the trip would be free.

"Amazing how it always stops you at that point," Dujuv said. "I mean, right at that syllable. Singing—on." "Machines are very judgmental, is all. So it listens to as much as it can and then it stops me before I offend its sensibilities," Jak explained. "It's the same way that we sneaked into the school that time, by showing the camera those pictures—it was so offended it closed its eyes.