‘There’s something over there,’ the knight said. ‘I think it’s what we saw earlier.’

As they continued, Tergal controlled his agitation. Slowly, that something became visible through the haze darkening above the plain. He now recognized the wedge-shaped metallic object as the same one that had tumbled overhead. Was it wreckage from the battle they had witnessed, or something more?

‘We’ll stop by it for the night,’ said Anderson. ‘Seems as good a place as any.’

When he could see it more clearly, Tergal noted how battered the object looked. He noticed the brass man turn his head to study it for a brief while, then turn his face forward and continue on. Stone veered to follow Bonehead as Anderson goaded his sand hog towards the grounded wedge.

‘Maybe we can catch up with him tomorrow,’ said the knight, glancing after the striding brass man.

They dismounted and set up camp before proceeding to make an inspection. On one surface of the metal wedge there seemed to be a door inset, but in the poor light Anderson could find no way to open it. They did a circuit of the strange object, studied a skein of cables seemingly composed of flexible glass which spilled from a narrow duct in which Tergal could swear he saw lights glittering. The protrusions and veins, sockets and plugs on every surface were a puzzle to him until Anderson surmised that what they saw here was some component of an even larger machine.

‘It’s not a spaceship, then?’ Tergal asked.

‘I very much doubt it,’ Anderson told him. ‘I see no engines.’

Tergal remembered how, when they had watched this thing crossing the sky, it had not seemed to be falling uncontrolled, and it had travelled with apparent slowness—more like a piece of paper blown on the wind than a great heavy lump of metal.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Not really.’

Eventually, unable to see much more in the increasing darkness, they returned to their camp and suffered a long windy night, but one thankfully undisturbed by any visitors to their electric fence.

A steep slope led up a few more metres, then levelled. Above him, the sea’s surface was a rippling silk sheet, reflecting the milky luminescence of pearl crabs—like a meniscus, a barrier before him. Time stopped, and Mr Crane reached out and pressed a hand against a slightly yielding surface, but one that grew more solid the harder he pushed. Memory, but not experience, supplied the required information, and the Golem knew this barrier was insuperable to him, which was a relief because he did not want to visit the island again…

There was nothing from Skellor—no instructions from the control module and no response to Crane’s request for instructions. Issuing from the link came just a low unfathomable mutter that seemed to suck the urgency out of all actions and made imperatives so much less absolute. Crane stepped back a pace, realized he had reached one of those waiting junctures and was now free to pursue sanity.

Abruptly he squatted down, then folded his legs. In the dust before him he drew a rectangle, divided it in two down its length, then into nine sections the other way, giving him a total of eighteen segments. From his right pocket he then removed a small rubber dog, which he placed in one square. All his other toys that he took out he placed with reference to this one item: a lion’s tooth, a laser lighter, a scent bottle, a piece of crystal memory from a civilization long dead, a coin ring, also a fossil and ten blue acoms. That meant eighteen squares and seventeen items. The square that remained empty was Crane himself. Now, darkness falling, he switched to night vision, and with elaborate care he began to shift and turn the items—simultaneously shifting and turning the oddly shaped fragments of his mind.

In the early morning, during Tergal’s watch, sunrise revealed to him a shimmering wall which he kept expecting to dissipate as the temperature rose. Before this wall, only a short distance from their camp, he recognized a familiar shape.

‘Anderson,’ he said.

With a grunt the knight pulled himself out of a deep sleep, and sat upright to look around. His eyes and body were functioning, but his brain lagged some way behind.

‘What… what?’ he eventually managed, scanning the fence for attacking sleers.

Tergal pointed. ‘I once saw the Inconstant Sea,’ he explained. ‘It was like that, only spread all across desert. As I drew close to it, it drained away.’

‘Mirage,’ said Anderson, ‘caused by layers of air at different temperatures.’

‘Have you no poetry in your soul?’ Tergal asked.

‘The air temperature either side probably evens out here during the day. That’s why we didn’t see it last night,’ the knight went on.

‘It’s a wall of some kind,’ said Tergal.

Anderson looked round and stared at him. ‘That’s my guess. Why do you think it?’

Tergal pointed again. ‘Because it stopped our friend.’

Anderson squinted towards the shimmer, and the figure standing motionless before it. ‘I’ll be damned.’ He stood and glanced over at the metal object they had inspected the night before. ‘That thing probably hit the wall and bounced off it to land down here. It might be that we ourselves won’t be able to go any further.’

Tergal turned away. He didn’t really want to have to go back: there was too much happening, too much to learn. And he had learnt so much already: with Anderson he was beginning to find self-respect, much of it gained while he had covered the knight’s rescue of the brass man. Turning back felt somehow to him like going back to what he had been before. Looking in that direction—back towards the Sand Towers—he observed a distant shape he could not quite make out. Only when Stone and Bonehead leapt to their feet, hissing and stamping in agitation just before bolting, did he recognize the droon heading towards them.

As Mika continued her studies, she could not help but become aware that something major was happening in the virtual as well as the physical world. It showed itself in sudden lacks of processing space available to her, and the consequent collapses of her VR programs—which was why she was now working only through her consoles and screens. It also showed in the way any researchers who had once again donned their augs spent much of their time with their heads tilted to one side, their expressions puzzled and, more worryingly, sometimes fearful. After reaching the stage where she could stand it no longer, she used a small percentage of her system to track down D’nissan, Colver and Susan James. The latter two were not at their work stations nor in their quarters but in one of the external viewing lounges, like many others aboard the Jerusalem. D’nissan, however, was at his work station—perhaps being just as dedicated to his research as Mika.

She contacted him. ‘Something is happening.’

D’nissan’s image turned towards her on one of her screens. ‘That much is evident. Five per cent of Jerusalem’s capacity has been taken up with AI coms traffic, which incidentally started just before Jerusalem destroyed that planetoid.’

‘The destruction was perhaps the decision of some AI quorum,’ Mika commented.

D’nissan grimaced. ‘Yes, and by the timing of events one could suppose that same quorum was initiated by your assessment of the Jain structure and its “breeding” pattern.’

‘You sound doubtful.’

‘I cannot help but feel we are being gently led. It would be the ultimate in arrogance to assume that mere individual humans can make any intuitive leaps that AIs cannot.’

‘We should discuss this further,’ said Mika. ‘Colver and James are over in observation lounge fifteen. I am going now to join them there.’

‘I could do with a break, too,’ said D’nissan.