CHAPTER 15

THE CHILDREN

As time rolled by, Roz saw less and less of Mr. Shareef, but she saw more and more of the children. They were shy at first. The robot might look up from the pasture and see Jad peeking around the corner of the barn, or see Jaya spying from the branches of a tree. But the children were growing bolder.

And then one day, Roz marched into the workshop and heard giggling. She walked to the closet in the back, opened the door, and there was Jaya, smiling and trying not to laugh.

“I’m hiding from my brother,” whispered the girl. “Close the door!”

The robot closed the door.

A minute later, Jad ran in, flushed and out of breath. “Hey, Roz… have you… seen… Jaya?”

The robot just stared.

“I know she’s in here,” said Jad, and he began prowling around the room. He searched under the worktable and behind the tool chest and between all the bulky workshop machines. Finally, he marched up to Roz and said, “I order you to show me where my sister is hiding.”

The robot pointed to the closet.

Jad smiled mischievously and tiptoed over. Then he flung open the door and screamed, “Found you!”

“No fair!” Jaya whined. “Roz showed you where I was hiding!” The girl scowled at the robot. “That wasn’t very nice, Roz. But you can make it up to me by playing hide-and-seek. Count to one hundred and then try to find my brother and me. Okay?”

There was a brief pause.

Then the robot said, “Okay.”

Jaya and Jad squealed with delight and scampered out the door as Roz started counting. The robot’s sensitive ears listened carefully to the children outside. She heard quick footsteps crunching across the driveway. She heard a giggle, and the sounds of tree branches shaking. She heard a grunt, and the sounds of hay bales being shoved aside.

When the robot finished counting, it took her exactly five seconds to find Jaya up in a tree. It took her another eight seconds to find Jad in the hayloft.

“Wow, Roz is really good at seeking,” said Jad as he picked hay from his hair.

Jaya snorted. “Yeah, well, let’s just see how good she is at hiding.”

Roz was even better at hiding. While the children counted, the robot silently slipped away. And an hour later, they still hadn’t found her. The siblings stood in the driveway, defeated.

“We give up, Roz!” shouted Jad.

“You win!” shouted Jaya.

The junk pile beside the barn started moving, and Roz appeared. The robot had been sitting there all along, perfectly camouflaged among the scrap metal and old farm machines.

“The next time we play, you have to let one of us win,” said Jaya to Roz.

And the next time they played, Roz did.

The robot enjoyed having the children around. They brought a little lightness into her world, and she hoped to bring a little lightness into theirs. Life must have been dark since their mother passed away. However, Roz had another reason for wanting the children around. She needed them. Her only chance of ever returning home was if Jaya and Jad could find it in their hearts to help her escape. But this was a delicate situation. If Roz tried too hard, the children might say something to their father. If she didn’t try hard enough, she might be stuck on that farm forever.