Molly recovered her senses with a start as she was dragged out of the tight confines of the tunnel. There was a clear, pain-free lucidity to her thoughts. The realization that she appeared gloriously free of the burden of Kyorin's memories battled for attention with the fact that it was one of the giant ant's forelimbs currently dragging her out of the dark shaft.
Then she was free on the chamber floor and about to go hell for leather as the ant pulled back, but she heard a familiar voice calling from behind the insect. Sandwalker! The Kal nomad, still in his white sand robes. Molly's eyes danced between the nomad and the insect, and as Sandwalker rested a hand on the ant's thorax, the dim chamber began to lighten. Molly realized that these walls were far too smooth to belong to any ant colony worthy of the name.
'We are deep within one of our mountain shelters,' said Sandwalker. 'And as I promised, the great sage has cured you. Kyorin's memories have been taken out of your mind. It was an operation of great sophistication to unentangle your patterns.'
Molly raised a confused hand to point at the giant ant calmly watching her through its compound eyes.
'Machines shaped in the form of our predators. What better place to hide from the slats' long-range patrols than a false ant colony in the side of a mountain.'
'I thought I was about to be eaten,' said Molly, finding her voice.
'For that I am sorry, although I believe you now know what it has been to live as one of my people for the last couple of thousand years,' said Sandwalker. 'Come, Molly Templar, my tribe's sage is eager to meet you and your friends.'
The nomad led Molly through empty corridors and chambers that had the reek of ages about them. Dusty machinery lay about the place – instruments as large as buildings – most looking scavenged, with plates removed and cables hanging out like torn intestines.
'This was a centre of science, once,' said Sandwalker. 'Built very far from the inhabited lands of my people – to protect against the exotic nature of the experiments that were once conducted underneath our feet.'
Molly was escorted into a large circular room where her friends were waiting and overjoyed to see her recovered, Commodore Black pumping her hand while Coppertracks sped past Keyspierre and Duncan Connor to speak to her. Molly was a little overwhelmed by the greeting so soon after waking. Surreally, bright panels displaying scenes and sounds of Kaliban as it had once existed surrounded them. Lush green forests filled with the familiar blue faces of the Kal, as well as long-extinct creatures she didn't recognize; nothing like the killers that were stalking the wastes now. Images so realistic she might almost have been looking through a window.
'I told you she would be fine again,' said Sandwalker, proudly. 'The medical devices we still have here date back to before the occupation.'
'So you say, lad,' grinned the commodore. 'And you've lived up to your word right enough. You're blessed lucky to still be with us, Molly. Your heart stopped out there in the desert during your last few minutes. How do you feel now?'
'Clear headed.'
'As you should,' announced a voice behind her. Molly turned. More mind-speech. So, this was him! The great sage, Fayris Fastmind, as old a creature as Molly had ever seen. A pale blue body borne along on a floating ceramic carriage, his legs hidden, his face covered in silvery metallic tattoos that glowed with energy pulses as he spoke. 'The magnetic resonance scanner I used to operate on you is the last functioning one we have in this facility. Probably the last one on Kaliban, now.'
Coppertracks looked at the Kal, the energy waves under the steamman's transparent skull circulating in excitement. 'Why, you are a metal-flesher, a man-machine hybrid.'
''Pon my soul,' said the astonished Kal, returning the steamman's gaze. His mind-voice was like the unrolling of an ancient parchment. 'And you are sentient? Self-aware? After all these years, a self-replicating machine entity. I haven't seen such as you for two millennia.'
'People similar to mine once existed on Kaliban?' asked Coppertracks.
'Oh yes,' said the great sage, his carriage gliding around the commodore and Molly. He gestured to the far wall and a panel shifted view to a lightless hall full of black cabinets. Something told Molly she was seeing one of the chambers under the mountain, a view of dust and decay now. Row after row of dead machines.
'Artificial life that was pure intellect, crushed by the Army of Shadows. Burnt out by the machine plagues the masters sent before they invaded in force.' The Kal pointed to the silvery etching glowing around his face. 'It was hard to tell where your kind began and ours ended, once. Now both our races have ended our days on Kaliban. How sad.'
'You are the intellect that was signalling to my world from Kaliban?' asked Coppertracks.
'Not I,' said the great sage. 'We dare not send such messages for fear of being tracked down. We still have a few ancient communication devices in orbit, broadcasting the original warning of the Army of Shadow's invasion out to anyone who might be able to help. You must have heard one of those.'
'We've travelled a long way to reach you,' said Molly. 'I owe you my life for healing my mind, but I have an entire world still to save.'
'You have travelled further than you know, I think,' said the sage. 'And it sounds as if you carry a heavy burden for your people, much as I have done for mine.'
Keyspierre stepped forward. 'We have not come such a distance to trade homilies, compatriot. You have a weapon to destroy the Army of Shadows. To keep my nation safe I must have it.'
'Oh yes,' chuckled the Kal, before he doubled up coughing.
Sandwalker was at the great sage's side, checking the readouts on the carriage. 'You are tiring him!'
Fayris Fastmind waved the nomad away, irritated. 'Do not fuss so, my friend. I haven't had anyone visit since I dispatched your brother to seek out Kyorin of the city-born. I will lose my reputation as a hermit if you keep on turning up like this, unannounced, with all your associates in tow.' The sage beckoned Molly forward. 'I felt the machine life bubbling inside your body when I unentangled Kyorin's memories from your mind. We are alike, you and I, both the last guardians of our land. But there is a way in which we must not be alike-' he stopped to rummage around inside his floating chair, withdrawing a golden sphere not much bigger than the tip of a finger. 'I have failed my land, so it falls to you to end the sickness of the Army of Shadows.'
Molly took the tiny sphere in her hand, smooth and slippery except where a single tiny black button broke its surface. 'What is it?'
'Why, you hold in your hand the weapon to destroy the masters.'
'Now, I don't mean any disrespect,' said the commodore, 'since it's your genius that's just saved my friend's precious life, but you must be out of your gourd if you think that mortal little marble is going to stop the Army of Shadows.'
'This is surely not the weapon?' said Sandwalker, as astonished as all the others by the sage's revelation.
'One of a pair, in fact. The other was destroyed when your brother's party was ambushed trying to take it to Kyorin. It will stop the Army of Shadows,' said the great sage. 'Starve them to death, in fact.'
Duncan Connor came over to inspect the weapon in Molly's hand. 'We point this at the Army of Shadows, press the wee button, and they all die?'
'More or less. Well, perhaps a little more, when coupled with the truth of the masters' nature. Their little secret.'
'What is it?' asked Molly.
'You have to carry my weapon onto the iron moon, the satellite currently fixed to your home in lunar orbit. The weapon only works inside the iron moon, but if this sphere is activated there, I promise you, the majority of the Army of Shadows will die, and nature will take care of the few that remain.'
'Getting onto the iron moon? That's quite a stipulation,' said Molly.
'The iron moon!' whined Commodore Black, as the shock of what this wizened little man was telling them sunk in. 'It will be full of the wicked slats and their masters and blue-faced vampires.'
'Full is a relative term,' said the great sage. 'There are by my estimate no more than a thousand masters left alive now, half of those biding their time here on Kaliban, half waiting for victory over your people on the iron moon. Perhaps twelve times that number of slats and a handful of Kal carnivores on the moon with the masters.'
