The Departure

‘Perhaps if you could let us in?’ she suggested.

His gaze dropped to focus briefly on her, then on Braddock.

‘I am simply bringing more of myself online,’ he explained icily. ‘Even though I cannot connect to the local network, I can that way more accurately analyse the circumstances that brought us to our current position, and from there divine a solution.’

His gaze drifted away from them as he continued speaking, till it almost seemed as if it wasn’t actually him speaking – as if the real Saul was elsewhere and had delegated the tiresome task of turning thoughts into words to some subprogram of his mind.

‘Obviously, Smith took an interest in the attack upon his old stomping ground of Inspectorate HQ London, so located Janus on Govnet, and through Janus located my bunker. His abilities are such that he could not have failed to locate Malden, once Malden had started operating as comlife. He did not fail to locate him. From his own words, Smith clearly allowed Malden to conduct his little revolution, possibly with Committee approval or possibly not . . .’

The ensuing pause was lengthy, his lips still moving according to some subroutine, then finally the voicebox re-engaging. ‘Smith was sensitive to anything involving the name Avram Coran, therefore must have tracked that identity back to reveal how I obtained it at Gene Bank . . . He’s been on top of me and Malden right from the start, I think.’ Saul refocused on Hannah, his voice becoming marginally more human. ‘But I still wonder why he allowed Malden to get away with what he did down at Minsk. I suspect Smith’s agenda might differ from the Committee’s.’

‘Good to know how we got here,’ Braddock interjected, ‘but I’d rather now know how the hell we’re going to get out.’

‘Smith has tight control of the station network, and will be watching out for me. If I try to penetrate it, he might be able to do to me what he did to Malden. I need to create a diversion and find another route in, if I am to kill him.’

There it was, stated with cold precision: kill him.

‘How, though?’ Hannah asked.

‘Robots,’ Saul replied succinctly, a statement of fact, his gaze again elsewhere.

‘If you could explain?’ Hannah suggested.

‘Once the EM shield is on, all electromagnetic communications go down. The computer networks throughout Argus Station are maintained by physical wiring and line-of-sight laser. However, for the robots both those forms of connection will only be intermittent, since they are constantly on the move. They will be running on their own programs for the duration of shielding, and only updated every time they physically connect up, or connect by laser, or when the shields go down.’

‘Smith can’t be in the robots,’ declared Hannah. ‘At least not fully. Maybe they possess stripped-down copies of his AI component within them, but there’s not enough processing space for much more.’

‘I doubt he even bothers,’ Saul said.

‘We need to find robots?’ Braddock asked.

‘We do.’

‘Readerguns are going to be a problem.’

‘Quite true, but not until we depart the rim and head inwards, to where they are concentrated. And I have no intention of going there just yet,’ he said decisively. ‘Come on, we’ve been here long enough.’

They’d reached their current narrow place of concealment via an even narrower crawlway designed for some of the very robots Saul was talking about. He now headed for the exit leading to this, then paused.

‘Solar activity must be high,’ he observed.

‘What?’ Hannah asked.

Saul continued, ‘I can see no other reason for Smith to keep the EM shield up and running, when it severely hampers his search for us.’ He glanced round. ‘Only hardwired cams and detection systems can be used, since most portable detection equipment won’t work, and those searching will only be able to communicate with each other by using hardened consoles. As we have noticed, both consoles and the access points for them are few in this section of the station.’ He nodded as if confirming this to himself, and entered the crawlway.

Hannah followed him in, Braddock close behind her.

‘Where are we going?’ Hannah demanded as Saul abruptly halted in the crawlway.

‘To find larger and more effective versions of this chap who is directly ahead of me,’ he replied.

‘What’s ahead of you?’ asked Braddock.

Hannah wormed her way further, till she was pressing against Saul. She felt him go tense for a moment, then relax as if such physical proximity had first irritated him, then been discarded as irrelevant. Up beside him, she could get a close look at what he was talking about.

‘Maintenance bot,’ she informed Braddock.

The robot was about the size of a badger, and indeed had the same body shape, but was fashioned of metal and provided with numerous pneumatic starfish feet rather than four legs. It had halted on detecting a blockage ahead of it – namely Saul. He reached out and grabbed the machine, turning it on to its side so he could inspect it. Directly underneath its front end was a connecting plug enabling it to socket into a data port and upload new instructions, should the normal radio option be closed. On the side facing up lay a single panel which Saul flipped open. Inside were various chip sockets, but obviously not what he wanted. As he turned the thing over, Hannah noted the glassy hemisphere of a laser com unit on its back, but that wasn’t what he wanted either. Opening the panel on the other side, he revealed two coiled-up cables, one for recharging and the other an optic with a gigagate plug. Hannah well knew that all optic gate sockets were manufactured to take the smaller plugs.

‘Plugging in?’ she suggested.