one of the buildings comprising Vasili’s home, turning through one-third of its circumference before drifting a few metres to one side and settling down on a flat grassy area at the top of the cliff. The craft, he saw, had Zelia’s livery painted on its hull.
Luc pulled himself up the last of the steps and found himself standing at one end of a gentle, boulder-strewn slope, leading upwards from the cliff towards the nearest of the buildings. As he watched, the rear of Zelia’s ship slid open, and over a dozen of her walking dead experiments emerged unblinking into the sunlight, shambling down a ramp.
Luc’s skin crawled at the sight of so many of them. He found he could make out subtle differences between each of them, although they all followed the same basic pattern: most of their primary sense organs had been replaced; all had pin-studded structures where their eyes should have been; all wore loose, filthy clothing little better than rags. But they were also, Luc noted with a mixture of alarm and relief, heavily armed.
He turned towards Vasili’s home in time to see one of the house mechants come rocketing over a rooftop. Before he could so much as react, one of Zelia’s monsters had fired off a shot. The mechant wobbled in the air, then span hard as a second shot hit home.
Zelia was creating a diversion.
He ran upslope towards a narrow alleyway separating two buildings and ducked down it, emerging a moment later into a smaller version of the courtyard Zelia’s flier had brought him to on his first visit. He glanced behind himself to see Zelia’s creations were now following him down the alleyway.
Two more mechants hovered into view above the courtyard, their weapons swivelling in different directions. Luc saw an open door to his left and threw himself through it, into a gloomy, unlit hallway thick with dust, its walls damp and streaked with mould.
Explosive fire flared through the doorway behind him, and he made his way deeper into the building with considerable haste. He passed through room after room, each more desolate and ruined than the last, making it obvious that outside of the library and perhaps a few other rooms, Vasili had let most of the island’s buildings fall into a state of considerable disrepair.
Luc came to a dirt-streaked window and peered out. A narrow strip of beach to his left was partly obscured by wild-growing bushes, but almost directly below his vantage point was a walled garden in far better condition than anything else he had seen so far, and a set of patio doors that were immediately familiar. By the look of it, the drop to the ground was no more than a couple of metres.
He looked around, then jogged into the next room to the left, finding a chair lying on its side. Carrying it back through, he slammed it against the window. The glass fractured and bowed outwards, but it took several more attempts before it finally shattered.
Salty air flowed in through the window, stirring up dust and dirt. Something hummed from one of the other rooms, sounding like it was coming nearer. Luc used his elbow to knock out a couple of shards of broken glass still sticking out of the frame, then scrambled over the window ledge, dropping down to land in the walled garden.
The landing knocked the wind out of him. Shots echoed over the rooftops, followed by the hum of another kind of weapon; light flashed in the air above a rooftop, and a thin trail of greasy dark smoke rose up, only to be rapidly dispersed by the wind. He pushed himself to his feet and staggered towards the patio doors leading into Vasili’s library.
Vasili’s body was long gone, as was the carpet his body had lain on, but the floor where he had fallen was still charred. Luc stared around the towering bookcases receding into the library’s dim recesses with a feeling of hopelessness. The bookcases were arranged in orderly ranks, a dozen or so on each side of the library, with couches and low tables arranged in the empty space between.
There must have been thousands of books there – even more than Luc remembered from his previous visit. It hit him how little time he really had to try and find the book Maxwell had given to Vasili, assuming it hadn’t simply been thrown out by the mechants charged with removing his corpse.
He heard the hum of an AG field through the closed door, beyond which lay the hall where he’d first met Zelia. Something then bumped against the door, and Luc instinctively ducked between two bookcases, making his way to a corner of the library that was hidden in deep shadow. His fingers itched for lack of a weapon of some kind.
The door swung open, and one of the house mechants drifted into the library. It came to a halt after a few metres, rotating on its axis until it faced Luc’s hiding place.
Something silvery slid out of a recess in its belly.
Luc grabbed the nearest, heaviest volume he could get his hands on and threw it towards the mechant. He scored a direct hit, and the machine wobbled slightly in the air. Before the machine could recover, he ran past it, diving into the shadowy recesses of the bookcases on the opposite side of the library.
The mechant corrected itself and turned to follow. It fired as Luc dived into the narrow space between one end of a bookcase and the wall of the library, feeling heat sear the back of his neck.
He kept moving, running back towards the light streaming in through the patio doors, the wall to his left and ranks of bookcases to his right. Glancing behind himself, he saw through gaps in the open shelves that the mechant had passed between two of the tall bookcases. It had come to a halt, as if suffering a moment of indecision.
Luc dashed in between two bookcases, turning until he could see the mechant through more gaps between books. It didn’t appear to have spotted him yet. Pressing his shoulders up against the bookcase behind him, he then kicked at the one before him, feeling it rock slightly on its base.
The bookcases were heavy, and therefore given to considerable inertia, but the one he’d just kicked was top- heavy, its lower shelves almost entirely empty.
Kicking at it again, he lifted both feet up, pressing them against the top-heavy bookcase, pushing hard, and then tried again, grunting with the effort.
The bookcase rocked away from him once more and tipped back towards him, before finally settling back into place with a thump. A few volumes slid noisily to the floor.
