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After the fog-room operation, the group has nine small service robots. One is the familiar Cleaner who came from Residency in the first book. Eight others are new companions with no established personal names. They are not merely cosmetic duplicates. Some head for water, some prefer dust, one needs its lid tapped before moving, another follows Cleaner, and a small unit announces itself with an extremely punctual squeak. In a world that turns maintenance hardware into traps, even an uninvited cleaning workforce deserves to be counted correctly. Cleaner is one identifiable individual among them. The others have their own routines and faults, and some begin following Cleaner without orders.

Attention's modifications make the cleaners approach people with bottles and attached mechanisms. The devices are removed; the machines remain. The group takes all nine back through the portal into Cake Room, although not all cross voluntarily at the same pace. Some follow Cleaner while others need coaxing. This is the point at which the robots become part of a real household, not a menu of identical pickups. In later chapters they help organize the refuge and form a clumsy defensive screen. Their unequal skills, little habits and susceptibility to bad terrain remain part of that membership.

The squeaking wheel is only the easiest quirk to recognize. One robot goes after water and ignores dust, while another attacks dust with enthusiasm but struggles to turn left. One waits for a tap on its lid; another trails after Cleaner without being told. The largest appears to remember where a vinegar bottle has stood.

The differences emerge soon after the rescue, in the middle of an already chaotic household. They make the machines easier to tell apart long before anyone has worked out how much each one understands.

When intruders breach the refuge, the nine robots do more than continue their chores in the background. Cleaner alerts the group; other units turn toward the entrance, ram, block routes or retrieve loose components. Their movements are not a perfect hive mind. One arrives late, another cleans an irrelevant patch, and the squeaky unit gets tangled with a larger machine. The uneven coordination is the point: these are individual service bodies repurposing their abilities together, not military drones executing an immaculate squad routine. Some follow directions readily and others plainly require correction.

The household's departure brings an unlikely question: what happens when an entire cleaning crew has to choose a route? Nine robots have been keeping the refuge in order, or at least attempting to impose order on a place spectacularly resistant to it. They reach the portal room together, still attending to debris and shifting obstacles.

There the little fleet divides. Six spread around the chamber and remain at work, while Cleaner and two companions help move cargo onward. The party squeezes toward the forest with only three of its mechanical helpers. For the six in the chamber, the last glimpse is of robots carrying on with their tasks as the others depart.

The forest does not make life easy for cleaning machines. There are roots to catch a wheel, muddy tracks that seem to invite immediate attention, and an entire wilderness of dirt that refuses to stay put. Even so, three cleaners are still traveling with the group late in Book 3, including the familiar battered Cleaner from the Residency.

The other two have been part of the larger group of eight robots, but their individual habits are harder to follow after the separation at the portal. The distinctive squeak of one wheel and another robot's troublesome left turns remain memorable details of the larger crew, rather than settled names for the two forest travelers.