Atwood had been on Mechanica long enough to know that the native Mechanicals seemed to feel a certain sense of responsibility for the humans they had brought onto their world to perform the variety of menial tasks they were unable to perform as long as they insisted upon affecting the forms of Twentieth Century automobiles and other vehicles. But that sense of responsibly toward humans didn't mean that they considered those humans to be anywhere near equals to themselves.

In fact, the Mechanicals tended to treat humans more or less like humans tended to treat the various species they had domesticated as pets. With kindness and even with considerable affection, but without ever really considering them to be on the same mental or intellectual level as themselves.

The fact, that the Mechanicals paid their human servants remarkably well, added to the mild climate and various other amenities, lured enough humans to the planet to fill at least most of the jobs the Mechanicals required of them. The human settlers seemed to accept the fact that they would never have any say in the affairs of the planet, and that the Mechanicals tended to keep the human population in the dark about any plans, purposes, or activities. This not from any dark intention to keep secrets, but simply because the Mechanicals believed that humans didn't really need to be informed about such matters.

If asked, the Mechanicals might well tell a curious human anything he or she wished to know, but there was always that sense of being patronized, as if humans were merely being humored and really had no need to know such 'grownup' types of information. Most, after receiving this kind of treatment from their employers a time or two, simply stopped asking questions. The more industrious learned ways to pick up bits and pieces of information, without asking specifically questions.

Atwood hadn't been on Mechanica as long as many other humans living there, but he had been there long enough to learn to mind his own business, and ask no more questions than necessary. This, in earlier days, had caused him now concern, for he was, for the most part, an easy-going young man who tended to worry about nothing more serious than where his next paycheck was coming from and how to meet girls. He had no problems accepting the fact that he was never going to be treated as an equal by the Mechanical ruling classes. But after his misadventures in the jungle he found himself wishing that he know at least a bit more about what had happened during the attack on the monkey camp and what had transpired afterwards.

In particular, he desired to know if the little monkey king had really been killed, assuming that the Mechanicals knew one way or another. He thought that the odds were that they didn't know, yet, if not, then why did they seem to insist on his being accompanied by what was, in effect, a bodyguard every time he left the safety of his own hospital room?

Phyllis Jacobs came to visit him most afternoons and occasionally in the evenings, though since she was now, apparently, working full shifts back at her secretary's job at the refinery on the outskirts of the city, she came only on such free times as her duties allowed. Atwood made a few careful attempts to find out what she knew about the situation, but she seemed curiously reluctant to talk about such subjects. Atwood, afraid that he might drive her away if he pushed too hard, finally gave up and stopped trying. He had the impression that the young woman knew much more than she was telling, but since most humans living on Mechanica had long since learned to hold their tongues, her attitude didn't strike him as all that unusual.

There came the day when Atwood, was very nearly well. That morning his cast had been removed from his left side and arm. Afternoon found him sitting in the chair in his hospital room watching some incomprehensible human-oriented video the staff had provided for his entertainment on the screen that was inserted into the wall opposite his hospital bed. Suddenly the garage-sized door in the wall next to the screen rolled up into the ceiling and a shiny grey Yugo pulled into the room, gunning its motor with excitement.

Atwood was relieved to have the excuse to turn off the video as he turned to the little Yugo with a broad, welcoming grin. "Well well, look what the junkyard threw out!" he exclaimed happily. "Still leaking your oil all over the streets, I see, Hecktan."

The small car beeped its horn derisively. "Hey, I'm not the one in the hospital, am I?" a somewhat high-pitched voice asked, breaking here and there at random places like a teenager suffering his way through adolescence.

Atwood toward Yugo as the car pulled up before him and dropped into the polite idling that was the Mechanical equivalent of purring. "I was wondering if any of my friends were ever going to come see me," the young man grinned. "What is it with you guys? Out of sight out of mind?"

For a moment the little Yugo seemed confused by the unfamiliar human expression, but then it recovered and gunned its motor slightly. "How can anybody visit you when every time they try to get in you've got a girl in here?" it squeaked.

Atwood laughed. "Is that somebody's idea of chivalry?" he asked. "I hate to disappoint you, Hecktan, but I've been behaving like a perfect gentleman at all times." He flexed his left arm at the shoulder. "When you're stuck in a cast it sort of inhibits romance, you know."

"I'm sorry to hear it, but what does that have to do with anything?" the Yugo asked. Then it made an odd sound somewhere deep in its engine. "Oh, I get it," it said with a chuckle. "You thought I meant- well, I hate to disappoint you, Hayden my boy, but I was just trying to tell you, in case you don't know it, this place has a rule, only one visitor at a time. And your little girlfriend has been hogging your company all week."

Atwood scratched reflectively behind his right ear. "Now that's something I didn't know," he admitted. But then he grinned. "Well, no offense, Hecktan, but if it comes right down to it, I'd rather be looking at the face of a beautiful girl than your beat-up old front fender any day."

"So would I," the car admitted with a sigh. Atwood laughed, but he said nothing. He had learned long ago that the little Yugo liked to pretend to be just as fascinated by human girls as the human young men he enjoyed hanging out with, though whether this was really an affectation to make him seem more like one of the boys or whether it was an expression of some peculiar Mechanical eccentricity he had never been able to figure out.

If any of the natives were actually to be attracted to human girls Hecktan would have been the one Atwood would have guessed to fit in that category. After all, what Mechanical in its right mind would choose to inhabit the body of the ill-fated and poorly constructed Yugo? Though there was a certain prestige in Mechanical circles in inhabiting car models that had been commercial disasters when they had first been introduced, back on the earth. For a time half the cars on Mechanica had been Edsels, though that fad had, fortunately, passed before Atwood had arrived on the planet.

At any rate, Hecktan was one of the most eccentric Mechanicals he had ever come across, and whether he choose to appear as a Yugo because he wanted to look different from the others or for some more obscure, alien-logic reason, it didn't take away from his charming personality and his apparently honest affection for his human friends.

"So what's been happening in the outside world?" Atwood asked, leaning back in his chair to rest one bare foot atop the other as he stretched out at full length.

The little Yugo rocked back and forth slightly as if barely able to contain its excitement. "All sorts of things," it squeaked. "But I don't suppose they've told you anything at all, have they?"

"Nope, nobody's told me a thing," Atwood admitted.

"Not even that saucy little girlfriend of yours?" Hecktan asked teasingly.

Atwood smiled and winked. "When she's here we have better things to do than discuss current affairs," he said.

"Yeah, I'll bet!" the Yugo sneered. Then it made a slight gurgling sound. "Do you want to hear the news or don't you?" it asked impatiently.

Atwood spread his hands. "If you have news, I want it," he admitted. "I've been going stir-crazy, shut away like this for- how long has it been, now, a full week?"

"Nine days since the monkey scum blew up the Studebaker plant," the Yugo said crisply. "Seven days since the air force bombed out their smelly camp in the jungle. Congratulations on that, by the way. From what I hear you were quite a hero out there."

Atwood grimaced. "I don't know about hero, exactly," he admitted. "I think I was sort of in shock and didn't really know what I was doing till it was all over."

"Even so, even so," the Yugo squeaked. "You've apparently made quite an impression on the higher-ups." Atwood sat up and looked at Hecktan in confusion.

"What higher-ups?" he asked.

"Oh, you know, just- people," the little car said evasively. "Ever since you killed the monkey king-"

"Killed the monkey king!" Atwood exclaimed. "How do you know about that? Anyway, I didn't," he added defensively.

"Maybe not, but everybody thinks you did," Hecktan assured him. "It's been the big news story for days, now. Why do you suppose they've been keeping such a close guard on you?"

"I don't know. Why?" Atwood asked weakly.

"To keep out the journalists, that's why," the Yugo told him. "They've been broadcasting every scrap of news they can get about you over and over, and they're desperate for an interview. It's not every day somebody manages to kill off such an important enemy."

Atwood leaned back in his chair and stared at the wall for a moment. "Then- then everybody knows about what happened?" he asked. "I mean, everybody thinks I killed the monkey king?"

"Like I said, it's been on all the news," the Yugo told him.

"Then the monkeys know it too," Atwood exclaimed in dismay.

"Assuming they monitor our newscasts, and I suppose they do," Hecktan agreed. "Why, does it matter?"

"Oh, it doesn't. Not really," Atwood said bitterly. "Just that they're going to do everything they can to get even with me. Or maybe that never occurred to whoever spread that story in the first place?"

"I never thought of that." The Yugo was silent for a moment then it made a rumbling noise somewhere in its engine. "No offense, Hayden, but I'd say you're in a bit of trouble."