do was cripple a toaster and follow the tracks.
'What happened?' Yorke asked. 'They all go bughouse and tear out their robo-bits?'
Tyree imagined a religious frenzy falling upon the 'bots. Her Daddy had been a small-time preachie, specialising in Biblical excoriations like 'if thine glass eye offend thee…' But theory didn't fit the picture.
'No, they're still here,' said the Quince. 'Scan those stains. I've seen sludge like that before. When the Virus Vigilantes launched a bioweapon against the Road Runners back in '92, that was the kind of stuff left behind. It's human compost. They tagged the effect the Meltdown Measles.'
Yorke did a little dance, scraping black goo off his boot-soles. Tyree couldn't believe that human flesh and bone deconstituted to such an extent, but Quincannon knew best.
'The air tests clean,' Burnside put in, a satchel of Blastite and fuse equipment under his arm. 'I ran the check first thing. No out-of-the-way bugs.'
'This doesn't feel viral to me,' Quincannon said. 'Scan the way the works are scattered around …'
There were robo-bits strewn in a wide circle, as if they had been wrenched apart and thrown to all points of the compass.
'This feels violent to me. This feels late 20th century.'
'Very late,' Burnside said.
'Should we call it in to Fort Valens?' Yorke asked.
Quincannon nodded. 'Trail runs out here. The way I picture it, the perps ran into natural justice. The 'bots zotzed the pilgrims then something bigger came along and totalled them. Case closed, and we should get back to our route.'
There was a distant whup-whup-whup. Tyree saw a sleek shape in the sky, some sort of mutant helicopter. The thing did a circle of the rock column and she tagged it as Private Sector. There was a discreet Japanese GenTech logo.
'Visitors,' Burnside commented.
'Best behaviour, boys,' Quincannon said, heavily depressing the irony pedal. 'We don't want a diplomatic incident.'
There was bad blood between the Quince and the Japcorps, Tyree knew. There was a dead girl in the story.
The spidercopter made a neat landing and withdrew its blades. It was a gleaming white and had no obvious windows.
'You expect them to troop out behind a robot and say 'we come in peace',' Yorke said.
'They don't need that,' Quincannon said. 'They're the new owners.'
An aperture appeared and steps unfolded. Two figures stepped down precisely. They did look like aliens. Their Self-Contained Environment suits were sexless and slimline, with filter-mask helmets that resembled samurai armour. They bowed formally and advanced.
'This equipment is the property of GenTech,' a computer-generated voice advised the patrol. 'Thank you for protecting it. Your welcome assistance is now surplus to requirements.'
It was impossible to judge whether the voice came from either of the SCE figures or the spidercopter.
'With all respect,' Quincannon said, not bowing, 'serious crimes have been committed. We're not rightly sure whether this junk is evidence or the perpetrators.'
The figures froze and inclined heads towards each other. A tiny buzz indicated a conversation.
'The air's clean,' Burnside said, helpfully. He held up his test print-out.
The SCEs took a moment. One raised an arm and punched buttons on a wrist-band. Tyree guessed the equipment was several generations in advance of the wheezy old contrivaptions Burnside had to lug around. There was a ping which, she assumed, confirmed Burnside's tests. As one, the figures touched buttons at their necks and hoods were sucked into their collars, rolling back like foreskins. Anonymous faces emerged, a Caucasian man and a Japanese woman.
'You will please help Dr McFall-Ngai and Engineer Huff gather the GenTech property,' the helicopter said. Tyree didn't quite like its tone.
'It's just junk,' Yorke said, kicking a stray leg. The Japanese – Dr Shimako McFall-Ngai, her breastplate read – cringed. In that moment, Tyree found some sort of fellowship with her; it was irrational to think a prosthesis felt pain, suggesting a welcome streak of human idiocy.
'If you will kindly have care,' Dr McFall-Ngai said. 'Delicate recording instruments are concealed.'
'You're looking for the black boxes?' Quincannon asked.
'Indeed,' the woman confirmed.
Tyree didn't understand.
'The company has been letting its experiments loose,' Quincannon explained. 'The 'bots must have imagined they were renegade, but they've been monitored all along.'
The GenTech officials methodically went through the detritus, retrieving specific doodads.
'Why didn't they use the off switch when it scanned like they were killing people?'
'There is no off switch,' the helicopter said.
'Don't be so sure of that,' said Quincannon, raising his voice unnecessarily. 'Something sure found a way to pull the plug on the 'bots.'
Tyree got the impression the helicopter was sulking. She noticed Dr McFall-Ngai shudder when the Sergeant shouted at it. Whoever generated the voice was a high-level suit. Also, a high-level creep.
Engineer Huff found something and signalled urgently. The Japanese bowed to the Cav and hurried over. 'This one still functions,' Huff said. The woman knelt like a paramedic and started working on an opened chestplate with chopstick-like implements. She was attending to what looked like a complete android. Its soft green plastic face was a Boris Karloff mask. It even had bolts in its neck.
As Dr McFall-Ngai worked, sparks flew. She muttered in Japanese.
Tyree cautiously approached, careful not to get in the scientist's light. The Frankenstein monster's eyes opened and closed like goldfish mouths. The scientist left the 'bot's chest alone and shifted attention to the head. She found a seam and pressed, opening the flat skull. A glittery crystal ball was exposed, sludged with what the Quince called 'human compost'. Lights fluctuated inside.
The scientist whistled.
'Ambitious,' she said, 'but unsuccessful.'
'Can it still think?' Huff asked.
She slipped her tool into a hole in the ball. A light in the implement's butt flashed.
'Point debatable. It can calculate but it cannot intuit. Therefore it cannot be classed sentient. It may retain limited motion controls and be programmed for repetitive functions, but this is at best a robot. As a human being, he is dead.'
Suddenly, the Frankenstein monster sat bolt upright, hinging at the waist, arms outstretched like a sleepwalker.
The scientists were pushed aside.
The 'bot's chin dropped and it rasped 'I live!'
Its heavily lidded eyes were half-alive.
'That's not possible,' Dr McFall-Ngai said, not unkindly. 'You have no brain, merely storage cells.'
An arm lashed out, tossing the woman away. She yelped surprise.
Tyree had her side arm out. So did the rest of the patrol.
'Be warned it is an offence to damage GenTech property,' the helicopter shouted.
The Frankenstein monster stood, a giant-sized Aurora Glow-in-the-Dark hobby kit. It wore shredded black coveralls. Its body was metallic. Offence or not, it scanned as if it couldn't be damaged.
'Does this thing have civil rights?' Quincannon asked Dr McFall-Ngai, who was scrambling upright.
She thought a moment, 'I would have to say no.'
Quincannon spanged a bullet off the Frankenstein monster's face, shredding plastic over its forehead. Undented metal gleamed.
The robot, no longer organic in any sense, looked up at the sky and reached out, grasping for the sunlight. It might have been smiling, it might have been worshipping.
'What's it doing now?' Tyree asked.
