his shoulder and handed it to the two hinged arms that extended from the centre of the droid. He tried to ignore the smile, wondering why with all their advanced technology they could not do better than the unreal, fixed grin of so many robotic employees.
"Everything I own, just about."
The Customdroid pulled the bag open and quickly searched through the clothes and various items packed within. It looked up from its work. Steve could have sworn the smile broadened.
"You don't own much."
Steve bit his lip. He wanted to ask since when Customdroids were programmed with a sense of humour, but he could not be certain what else it had been programmed for and had no wish to experiment.
"Employed?"
"Trader."
"On a passenger flight?"
"My ship got caught in a space storm about a month ago, in orbit around Gia."
"Gia?" The droid tapped into the spaceport's data banks and answered its own question. "Out in the Sale system."
"Right."
"A space storm? Don't get many of them near planets. You're lucky to be alive."
"I wasn't aboard. I was planetside doing some trading."
"With your ship still in orbit?" The droid's electronic eyes blinked with apparent surprise.
"I went down by shuttle."
"Not many traders can afford ships with shuttles." The mechanical arms handed Steve his bag and retracted into the tubular body.
"I'm a good trader. I made money."
"And now?"
"After a month without any work?" He swung his bag over his shoulder. "You've just searched what I have left."
"Well, you've come to the right place if you're looking for a good second-hand ship. We have the best dealers in the galaxy right here on Festi."
Steve smiled. "That's why I'm here."
He watched the Customdroid reverse into its alcove with a wave of a metal arm in his direction. The programming was getting more sophisticated. Much more improvement and droids would be hosting chat shows on holovision. Then again, would anyone notice?
As he walked away he heard the squeaky wheels start to roll again and that pleasant but commanding voice say "Excuse me sir" as another visitor to Festi faced the apparently trivial but probing questioning of the droid's Artificial Intelligence circuits. There could be no doubt that the Reagold Corporation believed in demonstrating its technological lead over their business rivals at every opportunity. As a trader, Steve could admire that. As a visitor, newly disembarked from a seven-hour flight aboard a crowded passenger liner, it pissed him off.
He stepped out of the spaceport into a warm summer's day. Fishing in the pocket of his trackovers, a light but tough one-piece suit much favoured by traders and designed from a merger of tracksuit and overalls, he pulled out a pair of sunglasses, slipped them on and headed for the nearest walkway, studiously ignoring the Reagold logo emblazoned on the control panel.
The weight and heat of his body triggered the travel computer and he spoke his destination into the voice recognition unit, trying to relax as he was carried at a safe, but speedy, rate towards the outskirts of Hart, capital city of the solitary land mass on Festi, an island in the poisonous, salt encrusted ocean that covered almost three quarters of the surface.
The walkway was, in fact, hundreds of separate walkways, each able to travel independently of the others and, by means totally beyond Steve's comprehension, to carry different people in different directions to destinations that may be miles from each other simultaneously.
Someone had once tried to explain to him over a bottle of MBP, a particularly rancorous wine with the full exotic name of Milestone's Blossom Paradise, known colloquially as Mind Buggering Purgatory, the intricacies and inherent technical beauty of the walkway's computer, the largest multitasking computer ever built. Steve had nodded politely while failing to understand a word, and had continued to drink until he had lost consciousness. It was something of a habit with him.
He was travelling