“I agree,” a male voice said emphatically. “And I would very much appreciate it if you would be so kind as to wear a more suitable garment during future battles. . . . I could have been damaged—or taken off-line.”
The sound seemed to originate from Norr, but had actually emanated from the coat she wore, which, in spite of its nondescript appearance, was a computer. A wearable computer that was more than a thousand years old and had once been at the center of a star-spanning system of star gates. Months before, the threesome had agreed to reunite the artifi?cial intelligence (AI) with a control center called Socket on behalf of a dead scientist.
But the AI could be imperious, not to mention downright annoying, which was why Norr responded as she did.
“If you would be so kind as to let us know when we’re about to be attacked—we’ll put you away well in advance. Come to think of it, maybe we should do that anyway. . . . I could use some peace and quiet.”
Logos didn’t like being packed away and therefore chose to remain silent. Rebo grinned. “Good. . . . I’m glad that’s settled. Come on, let’s give the driver a hand.”
Having reharnessed the uninjured angens, and attached the wounded animal to the back of the coach by means of a long lead, the carriage got under way fi?fteen minutes later. Rebo sat next to the driver with the fully recharged blunderbuss across his knees, while Hoggles remained in the coach, war hammer at the ready.
Norr tried to separate the natural apprehension she felt from the external stimuli available to her highly specialized senses but that was hard to do. So, with no assurance that they wouldn’t be attacked again, all the variant could do was to keep her eyes peeled and look forward to the moment when they put the forest behind them.
Eventually, after two hours of suspense, that moment came, as the trees began to thin, and gently rolling grasslands appeared. The sun was little more than a red-orange smear by then, and Rebo wondered how many more sunsets he would witness before he and his companions left Thara and continued the uncertain journey begun so many months before. The coach slowed slightly as it encountered a rise, the driver snapped his whip, and the angens pulled harder.
The undercarriage rattled, darkness gathered, and the stars lay like white dust on the blue velvet sky.
The city of Seros, on the Planet Anafa
The sun was little more than a dimly seen presence beyond the layers of charcoal-generated haze that hung over the city. Much had changed during the ten millennia since the fi?rst colony ship touched down on Anafa. A primitive settlement had evolved into a town and then a city. Or multiple cities, because Seros had been through many incarnations, with the latest sitting atop all the rest. None of which held any interest for the hooded metal man as he paused to examine a building, matched the image to the one stored in his electronic memory, and made his way up the front steps. The long, fi?lthy robe hung loosely over his skeletal body, servos whirred as the machine climbed the stairs, and the locals hurried to get out of his way. The mysterious androids could communicate with one another, everyone knew that, and would hurry to one another’s aid if threatened. That meant it was a good idea to leave the robots alone in spite of their propensity to ignore common courtesies, preach on street corners, and generally skulk about.
Like the structures around it, the rooming house had seen better days. The landlord claimed that it had been an offi?ce building once, back before the techno wars, but the history of the six-story tenement hardly mattered to the hundreds of people who lived there, or to the metal man as he climbed fi?ve fl?ights of stairs, pulled a graffi?ti- decorated door open, and entered the maze of cubicles beyond. Space was let by the square foot, which meant that the squats were of various sizes, depending on what a particular tenant could afford. Paths wound snakelike between the constantly morphing hovels they served. Some of the cubicles had walls made out of brick, others had been constructed with salvaged wood, but most consisted of large pieces of colored cloth draped over a confusing network of crisscrossed ropes. That meant life in the tenement was a largely public affair, in which every aspect of a resident’s life was known to those in the surrounding area, and gossip had been elevated to an art form. So it wasn’t surprising that dozens of inquisitive eyes tracked the android as it followed a serpentine path deep into the squats, paused at one of the many intersections, and took a judicious right. And since the automaton’s progress was heralded by a buzz of excited conversation, Arn Dyson would have known about the visitor well in advance, had his consciousness been resident within his physical body. But it wasn’t, which meant that when the robot arrived in front of the sensitive’s squat and whipped the badly faded curtain out of the way, the man sitting at the center of the simple reed mat made no response. The sensitive was middle-aged. His long hair was fanned out across his shoulders, and his eyes were closed. What few possessions he had were stacked along a wall made of interwoven sticks. A grubby little girl sat with arms wrapped around her knees. She regarded the machine with serious eyes. “Are you here to see Citizen Dyson?”
“Yes,” the metal man grated. “I am. Wake him.”
The little girl seemed to consider the order. If she was afraid of the machine, there was no visible sign of it. “Citizen Dyson has gone to visit the spirit planes. If you wish to speak with him, you must wait for him to return.”
“I will wake him,” the robot said, and took a step forward.
“No!” the little girl objected. “Not while he’s in trance. That could kill him.”
“Is there a problem?” The deep basso voice came from behind the automaton, and the machine was forced to give
way as a heavy entered the tiny squat. The giant’s head had been shaved, he wore a gold ring in his nose, and he was naked from the waist up. Muscles rippled as the variant moved, and the robot knew that the biological could best him in a fi?ght. “My master will pay Citizen Dyson two cronos for two hours of his time,” the android said fl? atly. The heavy looked suitably impressed. He knew that the assassin’s guild would be happy to kill someone for half that amount. “Why didn’t you say so?” he demanded. “Go ahead and bring him back, Myra. . . . The worthless spook owes me thirty gunnars—and I thought the money was gone for good.”
The waif looked from the heavy to the robot and back again. Then she nodded, scraped the wax off the tip of a wooden match, and lit a slender cinnamon stick. The moment a tendril of smoke appeared, the girl blew some of it into the sensitive’s nostrils. The distinctive odor served to stimulate Dyson’s physical body—which sought to bring the rest of him back. The sensitive shivered, blinked his eyes, and frowned. “Myra? Hobar? What’s going on?”
“You will come,” the metal man said tactlessly. “Omar Tepho has need of your services.”
“I don’t know who this Tepho character is,” Hobar put in, “but he’s willing to pay two cronos.”
Dyson looked up at the robot. “Is that true?”
“Yes,” the automaton replied gravely. “It is.”
