Once outside she muttered,
‘Great, so you’ve found me a Robot fanboy?’
‘You wanted tech and they’re the best.’
‘Well, I don’t have much choice in it.’ She went to say more; yet before they’d gotten ten yards from the van, they heard the door swing back open and the voice of Nell call them back,
‘You needn’t have worried, ma’am,’ said the keen technician as they re-entered. Her young assistant clattered his keyboard beside her. ‘No concerns that the sensors aren’t sharp enough, not when we’ve got a man with all the warmth of a fridge freezer walking along the High Street.’
Eris looked, amazed, at the twin images on the screens before her. One was of a tall man of unreadable demeanour walking along the pavement. He was passing that moment between a shopkeeper at his front door and a woman looking through her bag. And beside it was a parallel image of green and yellow and red blobs. There were recognisable heat-shapes for the shopkeeper and the woman... but none for the man passing between them. Even as Eris stared at the monitor, he appeared as little more than a blue-grey ghost.
Eris’s eyes were locked on the second image. Forrest, however, suffered no such paralysis, jumping past her and into the cab, and calling on the radio,
‘Units One and Two, prepare to receive a photo of one of the targets, walking west along the High Street; they’ve just passed the chemist’s. Remember, Protocol R. I repeat, Protocol R!’
‘What’s that?’ asked the younger tech.
Eris answered without looking, ‘It’s how the government decided we need to approach the robots: no bullets to the head or torso. And definitely no Tasers!’ She spoke without hardly thinking, still entranced. ‘There’s no body heat at all.’ She said this in amazement with the image right before her. ‘Maybe Beck was lying, then? Trying to throw us off the scent?’
‘There’s still a low heat trace,’ said Nell, adjusting the screen, ‘stronger around the chest. Perhaps they only give heat from their energy source?’
Eris answered with,
‘No, they have full body heat. Beck was telling the truth, I’m sure of it.’
Nell was busy transmitting the standard-photo of the artif to the agents in the street. As she dabbled with the keyboard, she offered abstractedly,
‘Well, maybe this one’s broken down? Their hot-water pulse is only a subsidiary system after all. It would be like a car still driving without air conditioning.’
‘What did you say?’ At last Eris was snapped from her reverie. ‘“Broken down”? “Subsidiary system”?’ It suddenly clicked, ‘That was what was wrong with Christopher, that was why he stole the puncture repair kits!’
Chapter 74 – The Grand Unveiling – Marsham Sands
Christopher had left the cafe, and quickly walked past the chemist’s and the shoe shop. There he found the corner he remembered from the map he had studied the previous night, and turned into a side street. Hardly needing his strong internal sense of navigation, he found his way toward the US Army’s purpose-built roadway half a mile behind the town. There he assumed a pose of someone wandering lost in the middle of the road – and waited for a vehicle.
That vehicle inevitably came, a small one thankfully. He was well aware of it before he heard the engine, and only then affected to look up and notice their approach.
They bibbed their horn, at which point he surprised them by not stepping aside but instead flagging them down. Chris sensed that the crew were stopping reluctantly; though stop they did. There were two uniformed personnel in the car. He’d have preferred one, but then this only meant a second voice to be believed when they got back to base. Chris entered the fray,
‘Hello there!’
‘Sir, this is an Army road...’
‘I’m looking for the town centre. I came out this way and now I can’t find my way back.’
‘Sir, if you just follow that turning there it will take you right back into town.’ The soldier pointed down the road that Chris had just arrived along, and so he knew full-well how to return by it. However, Chris made no move toward the exit. Instead he continued making conversation,
‘It’s very busy here today.’
‘Yes, sir, there are a lot of visitors.’
‘Because of the Robot thing?’
‘Well, sir, the US Army have said nothing official about that.’
‘I’m here to see them myself.’
‘Sir, we have to get back to base...’
‘I’m here to see the Robots. I wonder if you know when they’re coming?’
‘Sir, we have no official word on that...’
‘Oh, come on. We all know they’re going to be here today. What d’you really know?’
‘Sir, I know no more than you...’
Chris moved so quickly that the soldiers hadn’t got their weapons out before the action was half-completed. He had his left sleeve pulled up and was tracing his forearm with a penknife he had concealed in his right hand.
‘It’s along here somewhere,’ he said to himself, the mood instantly heightening.
‘Sir, put down the knife,’ called the nearest soldier, gun raised through the side window he had been talking through. The other was already out of the vehicle and angling around the bonnet.
But Chris knew that this would only take a second. Finding the invisible seam he needed, he popped the blade through his golden skin, and then pulled an eight-inch gash down toward the wrist. This was extraordinary for the watching soldiers to see, for the simple fact that the cut brought no blood.
‘Do you have a Phillips screwdriver?’ asked Chris, pocketing the penknife with his right hand while holding his injured left arm outward. ‘Probably just as well, as I don’t really want to take any more of myself apart than is necessary. Well, maybe this will be proof enough.’
Opening up the cut just enough, he showed first the soldier in the car, and then the other, where beneath the skin two silver screw heads gleamed dully in the late morning sun. He moved his arm slightly to show the black bands of artificial muscle that moved and rippled at his command.
Both soldiers stood stock still. Chris continued,
‘There are four other points on me I could cut, if you want proof that all of me is artificial.’
The radio crackled then, and the one in the car went to take it.
‘Don’t touch that, please,’ asked Chris. The soldiers in the Jeep were young and utterly without precedent. So Chris took the lead,
‘Now, I think you’ve been briefed on our possible arrival, and are under orders to be especially nice to us today. So I don’t think you’ll want to shoot me, will you?’
The men, if not lowering their guns, certainly didn’t raise them any higher. One was stunned into silence, but the other instructed, ‘Get in the car, sir.’
‘No, it’s all of us or none of us. Go back to base, and tell your commander: this very spot, in exactly half an hour. And if we’re not here, to wait as long as he can.’
At that, Christopher at last backed away towards the turn-off.
Chapter 75 – Smash ‘em All
In response to Forrest calling the alarm, Units One and Two – in the form of a slowly moving teenager for Unit One and an arm-in-arm couple for Unit Two – were both now moving their subtle way along the main road, converging at the chemist’s. Both now also had the photograph of the sighted artif on their phones. They met with barely an acknowledgement, before continuing in the direction that the other unit had come from.
With dumb luck, Chris re-entered the busy thoroughfare a moment later, to stroll back up to the café where the others were waiting,
‘Where have you been?’ asked Ellie.
‘Making contact. You have the map? Here,’ he pointed. ‘In twenty minutes.’
‘For what?’
‘For whatever the US Army have in store for us.’
‘What if it’s a trap?’
He pointed to another turn-off on the map around fifty yards awa
y from where he’d met the soldiers on the Army road, ‘Ellie, can you fetch the car and wait in it here?’
‘Why there?’
But Victor guessed, and answered,
‘This lets us bomb out along the Army road if it all goes pear-shaped.’
‘Well done, that man,’ said Chris. ‘If it is a trap, then there’s no point us all being caught.’ Chris pointed to a third location, ‘And this is our emergency rendezvous. If it does all go south, then lay low and meet here at two pm, and again at six if we’re not all there the first time.’
Beck tipped for the table, and in two pairs they left.
Soon they had given up the busy café for the just as busy streets. For all his height, Christopher was suddenly nowhere to be seen.
‘That’s what he’s built for,’ Beck reminded himself, as he bided his time and tried not to look shifty.
He listened to the conversations of the throng as they passed, all looking for something, but with a dawning realisation that they had no idea from where it would come or what form it would take:
‘Imagine it,’ mused an enthusiastic woman, ‘to see the world’s first conscious creation.’
‘How so?’ asked her husband.
‘I mean, that’s what we’re all here for, isn’t it? To meet one in the flesh, so to speak, and see if they really think?’
‘Smash ‘em up, I say,’ voiced another crowd member.
‘Oh, but Charlie,’ joked his friend, ‘you’ve come all this way and you’ve forgotten your lump-hammer.’
‘They’re unnatural.’
‘It’s people like you who give “nature” a bad name,’ called someone of an evidently different viewpoint.
But Charlie was unrepentant, declaring,
‘But look at the trouble they’ve caused. I mean, why are we going around trying to re-build ourselves? The world’s overpopulated already.’
‘I don’t know why you bothered coming here at all then,’ chided his critic.
‘No, smash ‘em. Smash ‘em all.’
Just up ahead of Beck there was a parping of horns, and a hue and cry at the side of the road.
Suddenly Chris re-emerged, and beckoned Beck around the corner – they were going to meet the Army.
Chapter 76 – Tourist Nightmare
‘This is a tourist nightmare,’ cursed Eris, after an altercation with a Winnebago on a one-way back-street. The surveillance van was on the move, and had finally spotted a new parking spot a little closer to the point of camera contact with Christopher. Forrest reversed into the restricted berth, with the cab windows facing the main road in question. The side-doors opened on to a narrow pavement beside the picture window of a cafe.
No sooner was the handbrake on, though, than a Traffic Warden slapped the side of the van with his open palm, calling through the closed windows,
‘You can’t park here. I’ve just had to move another set of tourists off this patch. In Britain,’ he declared in patronising tones, ‘we have these things called double-yellow lines.’
Eris wound the window down, and shoved her Government identity card in the man’s face, asking,
‘Is this British enough for you?’
Whether or not it was, the matter would be sorted out soon enough by Forrest getting down from the driver’s side door to talk to the Warden at ground-level.
‘So much for being inconspicuous,’ murmured Eris, as she left the passenger-side seat and went into the back of the van. She opened the side-door to slide out onto the pavement – and found herself staring directly at Beck and Christopher, who were staring directly at her.
Chris grabbed Beck by the shoulders, spinning him, and as good as pushing him along through the crowds, back in the direction in which they had been walking. He lifted the Doctor off his feet and almost carried him around a corner, and then behind another building, at a speed and co-ordination that few humans could have managed.
Eris let off two rounds along the busy pavement, before Forrest knocked the gun from her hand.
‘What are you doing?’ he shouted, picking up the gun. ‘Come on.’
She only paused a moment before following.
Behind them, the argument with the stunned Traffic Warden was swiftly made null and void, as the two techs jumped into the front seats and clumsily got the vehicle going. At the same time, they called the alarm to Units One and Two. They couldn’t get the van out of the side-road and into the flow of traffic quickly enough.
Meanwhile, the crowds of spectators and Robot hunters were now in a frenzy at the sudden commotion and gunfire. This made chasing Beck and Christopher near impossible for Eris and Forrest. Once around the second corner, and faced with no trace of their targets before them, and a wall of seething humanity behind, then each conceded they were lost.
‘Where would they go? Where would they go?’ called Eris, turning back from the scene. They had trailed their quarry to an unloved corner between shops, surrounded by garages and kerbs and wheelie bins.
Sirens were soon heard behind them in the noisy street, and too the sound of heavy engines. An olive and tan camouflaged truck pulled up at the corner, stopping traffic in both directions along the High Street, with soldiers jumping from it with rifles raised. Their intelligence had been flawless, and they had Eris, Forrest and even the lurching surveillance van directly in their sights.
‘We’re not the Robots, you idiots!’ yelled Eris at the advancing troops. ‘They’re around here somewhere, get looking!’
But the soldiers stayed still. Their commander stepped down to join them,
‘We don’t care if you are the Robots, ma’am. Shots were fired in the street, please come with us.’
‘We have I.D.,’ she offered uselessly.
‘Then we’ll find someone to verify it.’ He answered in expressionless transatlantic tones.
Chapter 77 – Breathing Again
Just yards away, lying behind a fence in the back yard of one of the High Street shops, the escapees froze. Beck was holding his breath, with Chris not needing to. They were close enough to hear every word. For minutes Eris made her case, before being bundled – quite forcibly, it sounded – into the back of the Army truck. Once they had trundled off, and with the garage area gone quiet, so Beck risked lungfuls of big breathing. He noticed Christopher was deep in thought though, the artif saying,
‘We were close there.’
‘That was amazing,’ praised Beck. ‘The speed you moved, and carrying me along with you.’
Chris speculated, ‘Our extra strength will affect us in ways we don’t yet know. However, for the time being, experiment in this area is generally curtailed.’
‘You mean while having to play human?’
Chris let his silence answer for him.
‘So what now?’ asked Beck. ‘I didn’t see Ellie or Victor in the fracas.’
Chris answered, ‘They went the opposite way to us. If they didn’t get to the car, then they could have hidden in the crowd. If they did get to the car, then they would have been heading to the meeting place before things “kicked off”. They would then have then been able to escape along the Army road as planned. I am entirely confident that they are still at large.’
Beck looked up from where they sat on the ground, observing,
‘It’s clouding over. It feels like dusk.’
‘In the sense of the business of the day being over, then that sensation might be right. Whether an Army vehicle was sent to meet us on the service road or not, I expect that in the furore it was quickly recalled to base.’
Yet Chris shook off any further darkening thoughts, instead pursuing practical concerns. ‘The town’s unsafe for us now. That was Eris, I believe?’
‘Yes, and her policeman friend Forrest.’
‘Then they have surveillance of the High Street and will have both of our faces.’
‘So, are we safe to be outside?’ asked Beck.
‘Well, Eris was driven away and her vehicle impounded.’
r /> Beck remembered, ‘These foreign bases have rules like embassies, and can run their own security up to a point.’
‘All of which gives us a few hours free of her, at least.’
‘But what of the Americans?’
Here Chris smiled. ‘It was a good experiment; I’ve learnt a lot. Despite a public reticence, a policy had clearly been shared among the staff, which clicked into place as soon as those soldiers knew who I was. They wanted me to travel to the base with them, which I only resisted so as to go back and gather the rest of you.’
‘Wow, so you were right about Ambassador Barclay’s influence?’
‘Whether or not he was running things today, they know the way I’ll get in touch, and I know the way they’ll respond. We can play the same trick again somewhere tomorrow. Anyway, come on, we need to find our rendezvous.’
Beck and Chris made their way to the prearranged point. It was at the end of the town nearest to where the A-road joined the motorway. What they found when they got there was a sorry scene.
The darkening clouds that Beck had noticed earlier had since brought a light rain. This had dampened the hair and spirits of a hundred bedraggled hitchhikers and others waiting for their lifts. They bore heavy packs over their shoulders, and still clutched soggy maps and newspapers in their hands.
There had been some excitement in the end, for those lucky enough to see it, but hopes of seeing a Robot had come to nought. Now people who had dashed to the town without thinking had to find a way home. At least, thought Beck, these weary travellers offered cover. Chris and Beck joined a group of them beneath a shop awning. One man was saying,
‘I saw them. They ran right past me, Robots definitely.’
‘Oh?’ asked another. ‘How can you know?’
‘The strength, they knocked me ten feet across the road.’
‘I thought they’d run past you, not through you?’ asked the sceptic.
‘Their eyes were glinting metal,’ added another.
‘The bullets bounced off their backs with sparks,’ said a fourth.
Christopher smiled, looking forward to reading all about it in the papers tomorrow at home... A home he no longer possessed, he remembered. Or at least that he couldn’t risk returning to while things were so tense. Even he, an artif, had been caught out by time’s cruellest trick, kidding him into forgetting the loss of what he no longer had.