“What do they think?” She tossed her hair in the direction of the wagon.

“They want to know how to kill it.” He looked around. “If the Jihad is the first AI to achieve full sentience, I’m not going to be the one responsible for pulling the plug. I don’t care if it thinks it’s Moses, Mohammed or Mao, it’s not getting erased.”

“The others won’t like that.”

“I’m not doing this to be popular. To be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever done anything to be popular.” He tweaked his bent glasses and looked out of his one good lens at her. “What I need to know is where your father went to access VirtualJapan.”

“There is…” she started. She thought about it, torn between loyalties, then gave up the information Petrovitch wanted. “There’s a room below the garden which can only be reached from the Shinto temple. From the floor underneath there’s no sign it even exists.”

Petrovitch blew air out between his teeth. The climb to the top might finish him off. “So how do I get to it?”

“You can’t. There were only ever two people who could go there. I’d have to come with you,” she said. She looked at him from under her fringe. “If the New Machine Jihad is part of my father, I won’t let anyone harm it.”

“I’ll have to work some things out if we’re going to do this. It’s not going to be easy, but considering none of this has been easy so far, I’m due a lucky break or two.”

“Should I be sorry that you ever became involved? I mean, I’m not, but I’m wondering if I should feel regret.”

“I don’t know,” said Petrovitch. “Wishing I could change the past isn’t something I do.”

“Why did Hijo kill my father?” she asked. “Why did he have to betray us?”

Petrovitch shrugged the best he could. “Maybe he was always planning to do so and was waiting for the right moment, for when Oshicora-san was too distracted by events to worry about his back.”

“And perhaps something tipped him over the edge. Like kissing you. He used to look at me sometimes—you know, like that. I’m not sure my father ever noticed, but I did.”

“I don’t know anything about that.” He was uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation. That and the gunfire which was creeping closer. “The only one who knows why is Hijo. If you ever see him again, you can ask him.”

“I will ask him,” she decided, “and then I’ll have him beheaded.”

“I’m sure that’ll concentrate his mind. We seem to have more immediate problems than getting revenge on Hijo.” He could see out of the corner of his eye, refracted by the broken lens, Carlisle beckoning them to join him.

As they reached him, he held out his hand to stop them going any farther.

“Zombies,” he said.

A sliver of ice touched Petrovitch’s spine. “Slow or fast?”

“Slow.”

“You’re pulling my peesa, right?” Petrovitch leaned around the corner.

A little way down the road—closer than he’d expected, which ramped up his mounting fear—was a gray, shambling horde. They wore both tatters of rags and new shirts, price tags still fluttering from pressed cuffs. They were eating, too, hands filled with unidentifiable food which they crammed to their faces.

“It’s all right,” he said, just to hear his own voice. “I know who these people are.” Then he stepped out into the road and raised his bandaged fist in greeting. “Prophet? Prophet!”

“Machine-man!” came the reply. The prophet barged through his followers, a steel pole in one hand and his mobile phone in the other. “You dare defy the New Machine Jihad? You traitor, you turncoat, you Judas!”

Clearly the Jihad had passed on Petrovitch’s promise to oppose it. “No. It’s not like that. I’m trying to save it—save it from itself.” He was still walking toward them, even as his pace slowed.

The prophet strode closer. He was bare-chested, better to show off the oil runes painted on his skin. “The Machine knows all, gives all, takes all. It turns its face from you, unbeliever.”

Petrovitch turned to Carlisle and Sonja, back at the turning into the side street. “This isn’t going the way I expected. Get back to the wagon. Close the doors. Start the engine.” He jerked his head. “Go. Run.”

He returned his attention to the prophet.

“I’ve done everything the Machine wants. How do you think I got to look like this?” Petrovitch started walking backward as the prophet spun his weapon like a quarterstaff. “I rescued Sonja Oshicora.”

“You are unworthy,” roared the prophet, and struck the road with the end of the pole. Sparks flashed out. “Unworthy to speak the holy one’s name. Seize him, brothers. Drag him down, sisters.”

The gray-skinned people kept coming at the same snail’s pace, even as the prophet urged them on. But some of them dropped their food, and raised their hands out toward him. Some of them moaned, deep in their throats.

Petrovitch ran, bile rising into his mouth. He turned the corner.

Madeleine was lying face down in the road, barely stirring, completely dazed. There was no wagon, merely the hint of blue diesel smoke and a distant grind of gears.

“Polniy pizdets.” He sagged to his knees next to her, the fight finally beaten out of him. And he’d lost the rat again. “Chain? Pl’uvat’na t’eb’a.”

31

He dared to touch her body. He rested his hand on her back and pressed between her shoulders. Muscle yielded to his touch beneath the armor.

“Maddy. Get up. If you don’t we’re going to get torn apart.”

He looked around. They were still coming. Slowly, ever so slowly.

“Madeleine?” Petrovitch bent down and put his face against hers. There was blood coming from her nose, pooling red and sticky on the ground. She looked at him with unblinking brown eyes. “Get up. You have to get up. I can’t carry you. I can’t drag you. I have six bullets in my gun and it’s not enough. I can’t protect you.”

The first of them—a man, he guessed—shuffled painfully toward Madeleine’s outstretched legs.

“I can’t do this on my own,” said Petrovitch, pressing his lips against her ear. “I thought I could, but I can’t. I need you.” He straightened up just as the man bent down, fingers clawing at Madeleine.

Petrovitch slapped him with his pistol-filled hand and the man crumpled. He looked at the gun, then at the skeletal figure on the tarmac.

“Yobany stos.”

There were three more. He dodged an outstretched arm by simply ducking under it, then planted his fist hard against one chest, two chests, three. They fell like shop-window dummies, and struggled to get up again.

Behind them, the prophet was urging them on, words of exhortation ringing through the smoke-tainted air. Petrovitch stood astride Madeleine and dared any of them to have a go.

They did. The main mass of them surged forward, surrounding him, opening and closing their mouths in silent cries, batting at him with their leathery, fluttering fingers.

And though it was awful, all he had to do was knock them down, one by one or several at a time, punching and pushing, knocking his shoulder into their wizened, starved frames and watching them tumble in a heap of bones and cloth.

They formed a circle around the two of them, a heap of still-moving bodies that any attacker had to climb over to reach them. Hands that crept out from the ring toward Madeleine were battered back with the toe of his boots.

The prophet was furious, and as the last one of his followers folded to join their fellows, he rushed Petrovitch, swinging his length of pipe. He feinted for Petrovitch’s head, then aimed low.

It caught him on the thigh, and Petrovitch staggered back, raising his bandaged hand as a shield. He tripped over Madeleine and ended up on his backside, entangled in her legs.

“Enough of this!” He brought his gun around, only to have it hammered from his nerveless grasp by another swing of the steel tube. He rolled in the direction in which it had flown, only to come face to face with a hollow-faced skull, skin stretched tight over cheeks as sharp as axe-blades. The deep-set eyes blinked dryly at him.