More movement, out of the corner of his eye. The Corsair tried to move his head but the sudden pain was too much and when he opened his eyes again he was moving, sliding along the floor, leaving a trail of debris and thick blood.
“Master, I, Master, I…” said a metallic voice from somewhere above him. The Corsair let himself be dragged across the floor. Then he was pulled into a sitting position, his back to the wall.
There was a man above him, a short man in a blue suit that was torn and smoking. The man was standing by the intact machine, but was fumbling, moving his hands over the slab and the box on it like he couldn’t see. As the Corsair watched, the hands finally found the lid and lifted.
The Corsair blinked, and when he opened his eyes he was inside the machine. He was in pain now, his whole body alive with it, brilliant and sharp and fiery. He looked up, seeing the blackened walls of the workshop. There was a fire, somewhere, lighting the otherwise dark room in a flickering light that threw long shadows. Then the Corsair realized the light was not orange and yellow but white and blue, and was coming from the door that led to the power room.
The Corsair cried out in pain, screamed as loud as he could.
The man who had saved him — why couldn’t he remember who that was? He knew him, he was sure of it — was busy at the controls. The Corsair could just see the dark blue velvet over the lip of the machine. The man was hunched over, like he was in pain, like there was something wrong, like-
He turned around, and the Corsair screamed again. The man was the King of 125th Street, he remembered now, his faithful robot, the first one he’d made from a homeless person who had stumbled from the naval robot yard, not yet converted into an Ironclad sailor but put through the mental processing and then left, abandoned as Wartime ended suddenly.
The man’s face was hanging in strips from a silver skull, the artificial flesh quivering as the machine man rocked slightly on its heels, the scalp peeled over to the left. The robot’s eyes were two blackened, burnt-out holes, a liquid, thick and black and oozing, streaming out like syrup. The robot’s jaw, still clad in fake skin, moved up and down as the blind machine struggled to help its master.
“Master, I, master, I…” said the robot. It shuddered as it spoke, its hands moving over the edge of the machine, fingers flexing, searching.
The Corsair tried to shake his head, but there was a thick leather strap over his forehead. He tried to move his body, but he couldn’t even feel it. It was like it wasn’t there at all or it didn’t belong to him.
“Master, I, master, I… I will get them back. They. Can. Not. Escape.” Each forced syllable made the King rock. “Master, I, master, I… I will repair you save you make you well. Army the army the army has been activated. They. Can. Not. Escape.”
The Corsair screamed until his mouth filled with blood and his throat felt like it was being flayed with knives, as the blind robot King of 125th Street threw a lever and the lid of the machine slammed shut.
THIRTY-FOUR
The man stirred in his bunk. How long he’d been asleep, he wasn’t sure. Time passed strangely where he was, although maybe that was his imagination. Years of solitude, years of travel had taken their toll.
The signal was a constant pulsing tone, not loud enough to have woken him, just loud enough to have entered his dreams, the signal becoming a flashing blue light, the light of the gap between one universe and the next.
The man rubbed his good eye and pulled thick fingers through his white beard, and then he lay on his bunk and stared at the ceiling of the ship as the tone continued.
Maybe this was a dream too. Maybe the signal was his imagination, an auditory hallucination. Maybe it was the outside tricking him. It had a habit of doing that; he’d discovered many places on his travels, some of which were cities, whole countries where life went on. Others were places that seemed to be alive themselves.
And they liked to trick him, make him see things, make him hear things. After years of this the man wasn’t sure what was real, not anymore. Maybe he’d died a long time ago, on that day when the ice was thick and the fog was deep, the day he’d stepped into it and left the world.
“Sir?”
The man jolted on the bunk, suddenly wide awake. He sat up too quickly, his hand pressing his forehead as the room spun. He waited a moment, then swallowed and glanced at the door to the flight deck. On the control panel in front of the pilot’s seat he could see one of the row of orange lights flashing in time with the tone.
A shadow moved around the flight deck.
“I have located the source,” said the voice.
“A signal? From the city?”
“I believe this is what you have been waiting for, sir.”
The man heart raced as he listened to the tone. He blinked. The signal was… wait, the signal was…
He looked back to the ceiling. “That’s not a regular transmission.”
The shadow moved, but the other voice said nothing.
The man swung himself from his bunk, the end of his wooden leg loud against the floor of the ship. He reached for his walking stick, and went to heave himself to a standing position, but then he paused, head cocked, looking at the floor and listening, listening.
“I recognize it. The signal, it’s-”
“I quite agree,” said the other voice.
The man pulled himself up and stumbled into the cockpit, using the pilot’s chair to kill his momentum as he dropped his walking stick and stared through the main window. Outside the fog was thinning; the lights of the city were faintly visible as a multicolored smudge of twinkling stars. The frame of the bridge was barely there, a smudge dissolving into the orangey-grey world.
The man gripped the top of the pilot’s seat and licked his lips. He was alone in the cockpit. He was alone in the entire ship.
He allowed himself a small smile.
“It’s him, isn’t it?”
There was a pause, and then a second voice sounded from somewhere behind him. “I believe so.”
“So, he found his way back.”
“As you once predicted, sir. The arc of his transit returned him to the Empire State.”
The man nodded. “Like a comet in orbit around the sun.” Then he laughed, and swung himself around into the pilot’s seat. He smoothed down his mustache and beard, and glanced across the controls with his one good eye. He frowned, and lifted the eye patch that covered the other, and squinted. Satisfied, he let the eye patch flip back into place, and he clapped his hands and rubbed them together.
“I do believe we shall be in time for tea. Byron?”
“Yes, Captain Carson?”
“Trace the signal, and get a lock on its position. We shall collect them en route to Grand Central.”
“Confirmed. Tether release in five seconds.”
Captain Carson clapped his hands again and laughed. After all this time, they were going home.
THIRTY-FIVE
It was no good, and Rad knew it.
They’d charged the main group of robots in the car, and Rad was glad that Jennifer was driving because she was unwavering, fearless, as she accelerated and plowed straight into them. The robots had tried to part, to get out of the way as the car hurtled towards them, but there were a lot of them, and several went flying over the long hood of the car, some rolling up over the windshield before sliding down the side. Rad was amazed the car could stand the punishment, but looking down the length of the hood he saw it hadn’t even been scratched.
But the numbers were against them. Jennifer slowed, the car losing momentum and power. The robots still trying to get out of the green headlights that seemed to cause them so much pain were now pushed against the hood, rocking the car.