More wreckage, and acres and acres of churned earth. His dosimeter was into the orange when he reached a great mountain of wreckage, which he realised was an entire building, uprooted to its foundations and dumped on its roof. Was the power source in this? He followed the arrow until it disappeared, and found himself still twenty yards from the nearest wall, though amidst a strewn wreckage of chainglass pipes and large chunks of ceramic he recognised as vats he had seen in the building his unit had entered through.
"Within five yards of your present location," Sadist again informed him.
Again he approached this as before, this time picking up a length of chainglass pipe to jab into the ground as the start point of his search, but he did not have far to go. Nearby a sheet of muddy chainglass jutted up from the earth, and just seen through it, something was moving against the underside. He stepped over, thinking for a moment he was seeing one of the insects of this world, then realised it was a black skeletal hand. He paused for a moment, not sure he wanted to see more, then felt a sudden disgust at this reaction and forced himself forwards. As he stepped round the sheet a head turned towards him, severely blackened and burnt, but with shiny metal showing through where some of the crisped synthetic skin had fallen away.
Cormac grabbed the edge of the sheet and with some difficulty, possessing only one working arm, tried to pull it away. He could not tell if it was Travis or Crean who lay there. The Golem reached up and pressed its hand against the sheet, which began to shift, and abruptly Cormac was able to pull it clear. The Golem lay with its legs and lower half of its torso buried in the ground. Cormac grabbed the arm, but the Golem failed to clasp its hand around his forearm, and otherwise seemed to be making no further effort to get free. Perhaps its power supply was down, for surely it could pull itself free.
"I see," said Sadist abruptly. "She is refusing to acknowledge my signal—allow me to speak through your envirosuit."
She?
Cormac wasn't quite sure how to go about that until through his aug he accessed the suit menu and initiated "external speaker" whereupon the ship AI immediately spoke.
"Crean," said Sadist, "Cormac has now received about half of the allowable dose of radiation searching for you, and now you have been found. However you choose to proceed henceforth, your recent experiences must be recorded—this you cannot avoid." Then, after a pause, "Get up."
Crean lurched to sit upright and it was only then that he realised one of her arms was missing. She turned, her torso revolving further round than a human torso could have, stabbed her only hand deep into the earth and levering from this point, dragged her legs free. She looked grotesque twisted round like this, but abruptly twisted back and then stood. Cormac studied her, seeing that very little of her syntheflesh remained and she looked like a charred mummy. He wondered if, without Sadist naming her, would he have known this was Crean? Did Golem females possess female ceramal skeletons, would he have known her as female by the shape of her pelvis? Too late now to know for sure for in his mind he had imposed the shape of Crean over this burned wreck.
"What about the others?" he asked.
Her head swivelled towards him for a moment. "Dead," she said, her voice perfect, which more than anything seemed to bring home her unhumanity. Humans needed lips and tongues to form their words; she now possessed neither. He took that in, some weasel part of himself trying to find some way around it. He stamped on that inclination, hard. Whatever he thought of Golem, or artificial intelligences, in this situation Crean would not have said the others were dead without being utterly sure. Cormac felt that, had she been human, this would have accounted for her apathy earlier. He felt a moment of confusion: Why should she emulate shock and grief?
"Return with Cormac to the shuttle, and then to me," Sadist instructed.
New coordinates appeared. Cormac turned, until the arrow was pointing directly ahead, and set out. There was no need to run now, and suddenly he felt so exhausted a slow walk seemed almost too much.
13
As Cormac stepped outside the school he scanned around eagerly for a sight of the war drone—the one they had seen in Montana and which now seemed to be here—but there was no sign of it.
"Bye bye, Cormac!"
He glanced round and saw Culu standing with her father.
He waved. "Bye, Culu!"
Her father was a bulky bald-headed man in baggy pyjama-like clothing that disguised the physical cybernetic additions to his torso, but which could not disguise his twinned augs, shiny chrome additions on either side of his head. Cormac's mother, on one of the few occasions she met Cormac outside the school, said Culu's father was a «traditionalist» because he felt the necessity to pick Culu up every day, and it had taken Cormac some time to figure out what she meant. Only stumbling across a historical text about twenty-first-century paedo-hysteria did he understand the old tradition of always picking up one's daughter at the school gates. His mother also said something about minority-group paranoia also being traditionalist—a comment he still did not quite understand.
The only other individual being picked up at the gates by his parents was Meecher, but Cormac suspected that had something to do with Meecher's behaviour today. He watched as Meecher's mother smacked him hard across the back of the head then pointed to their hydrocar. Meecher climbed in and sat down, while his father and mother stood outside discussing him. Cormac watched them until they climbed into the car and headed off. He waited a little longer, dawdled for a while because he did not much enjoy sharing public transport with his fellow pupils, which was apparently a trait that worried the school authorities.
Eventually he began heading down the pavement in the direction many of the other pupils had gone—towards the nearest bus stop. Still scanning his surroundings for some sight of the war drone, he noticed the presence of numerous gravcars parked here and there in the area, most of which seemed to be occupied by one or two individuals. This was odd, since usually such vehicles occupied the roofports of the residences here, or if from outside the area, they parked on public roofports. Then a shadow loomed above and he glanced up expecting to see yet another car coming in to land, only to see a scorpion, black against the bright sky.
The drone descended fast and landed hard in the road flinging flakes of plasticrete and gritty dust. Simultaneously, surrounding gravcars accelerated, blocking the road in either direction, and the occupants began piling out. With a surge of sheer excitement Cormac realised that many of these people wore ECS uniforms and were brandishing weapons, which they rested across the roofs and bonnets of their vehicles. These weren't any kind of weapon he recognised, having long, arm-thick barrels and heavy, wide breach sections covered with cooling fins. The drone spun in place, its sharp-pointed limbs scoring the plasticrete, until it came to face Cormac, then it surged forwards to loom over him.
"I do not have much time," it stated.
Cormac just gaped.
"You need to know."
"Amistad!" came a bellow from some public-address system. Now more shadows drew across and Cormac looked up to see some huge vehicle hovering above. It looked like a floating barge, but with all sharp corners and flat surfaces, all a dull greyish green he recognised as military ceramal armour.
"Amistad! Move away from the boy!" A woman in ECS uniform had approached, her hands on her hips.
The drone turned slightly to peer at her, then quickly swung back to Cormac. "Your father—" The drone seemed highly agitated, and Cormac was reminded of his mother's archaeologist friends who visited; men and women who were not accustomed to talking to children. "Your father is gone."