‘It does,’ Thalia said. ‘Our best strategy is to move, and keep moving. The whiphound has a chemosensor. It’ll detect harmful elements in the air long before they reach sufficient concentration to do harm.’
‘And then what?’ the woman asked.
‘We’ll seek shelter if we have to. But our main objective is to reach my ship. You’ll be safe there.’
‘What about the others, the people we left behind in the polling core?’
Thalia glanced up at the spherical structure high above them. ‘I can’t help them now. The sphere’s airtight, so they’ll be safe from any toxins. They’ll just have to sit it out up there until help arrives.’
Parnasse inhaled through his nose and nodded. ‘Then we keep walking, the way we were going before.’
‘At least we won’t have any mobs to worry about,’ Cuthbertson said, ‘if the machines are putting everyone else under protection—’
‘No, we won’t have to worry about mobs,’ Thalia told him. ‘But I don’t want to run into any tasked servitors either.’
‘Won’t they let us through when you explain that you’re Panoply? ’ Caillebot asked.
‘One would hope so, but I don’t want to have to put that to the test. Those machines aren’t reporting back to Thesiger every time they need to make a decision. They’re running a one-size-fits-all enforcement program designed to safeguard the mass populace.’
‘Then we’ll need to avoid machines,’ the gardener said. ‘That isn’t going to be easy, Prefect. Have you any idea how many servitors there are in this place?’
‘In the order of millions, I’d guess,’ Thalia said. ‘But we’ll just have to make do as best we can. The whiphound can move ahead of us, securing an area before we enter it.’ She unclipped the handle and allowed the whiphound to deploy its filament. ‘Beginning now. Forward scout mode. Twenty-metre secure zone. Proceed.’
The whiphound raced ahead, a squiggle moving almost too fast to be tracked by the eye.
‘We’re moving?’ Caillebot asked.
Thalia waited until the whiphound had turned back to her and nodded its laser-eye handle, indicating that it was safe to proceed. ‘We’re moving,’ she said. ‘Keep low and keep quiet. Do that, and we’ll be fine. One way or the other, we’re getting out of here.’
They proceeded along gravel- and marble-lined paths, all stooping to stay below the level of the hedges. Now and then the hedges widened out to enclose a small courtyard or ornamental pond. It was less than ten kilometres to the endcap, but ten kilometres like this was going to feel more like fifty. She just hoped they would be able to move more freely once they had cleared the manicured gardens around the museum campus and entered the denser foliage of wooded parklands. Ahead lay the line of trees they had been making for since leaving the stalk.
Parnasse sidled next to her. Short and stocky, he had the easiest time of all of them when it came to stooping down. ‘Very good work, girl,’ he said quietly.
‘Thank you,’ she replied through gritted teeth.
‘But what aren’t you telling us?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You came back from the other side of the stalk with a look on your face I haven’t seen in a long time. You saw something bad there, didn’t you? Something you’re frightened to tell us in case we lose it.’
‘Just keep moving, Cyrus.’
‘Was it true, about that speech from Thesiger?’
‘I told you what I heard.’
‘But you don’t believe a word of it.’
‘This is not the time for discussion. The priority now is to keep moving and keep quiet.’ She looked at him sharply. ‘Or did you miss that part?’
‘What’s happening to those people?’ Parnasse persisted. ‘Are the machines doing something bad to them?’
Ahead, the whiphound shook its handle from side to side. An instant later it flattened itself on the ground, looking just like a coil of discarded cable with a thickening at one end. Thalia raised a warning hand to her party.
‘Hold it,’ she breathed. ‘The whiphound can’t secure the area ahead of us. Something’s there.’
The four froze behind her. The whiphound remained deathly still on the ground. It had been securing the area around a circular pond crossed by a red-painted wooden Chinese bridge. Two other hedge-lined paths converged on the same pond.
‘I think we should retreat,’ Thalia whispered.
‘You think?’ Caillebot asked.
The whiphound offered no guidance. It was adopting a maximum stealth posture, which could only mean it sensed purposeful movement. Thalia breathed in deeply, forcing herself to make the right decision. If the area could not be secured, it could not be entered. They would be right to retreat, to return to the last junction, where they could explore an alternative route. ‘We go back,’ she said.
Two servitors emerged into the area around the pond, one from either side. To the left, a gold-carapaced machine moved on three pairs of articulated legs, with a mass of segmented tentacles emerging from its cowled front end. Some kind of general-utility servitor, Thalia decided. To the right, bouncing along on mechanized ostrich-legs, was a multi-limbed household model, its black and white cladding suggestive of a butler’s uniform.
Thalia held out her hand and barked a command. ‘Abandon stealth posture. Immediate return.’
The whiphound lashed into action, scattering gravel as it uncoiled and propelled itself, almost flying into the air. Thalia splayed her fingers. The whiphound raced across the twenty metres separating the party from the servitors. The handle flew into Thalia’s grasp, the filament retracting at the last instant. Her palm stung from the impact.
She knelt down, aiming the projected red laser spot at the two machines in turn, thumbing a stud each time. ‘Mark as hostile,’ she said twice. ‘Intercept and detain. Maximum necessary force.’
She flung the handle into the air as if throwing a grenade. The filament lashed out, coiling behind the handle as the whiphound oriented itself. The filament contacted the ground, formed a tractive coil and sped the handle in the direction of the bipedal robot, which the whiphound must have identified as the softer target. Gravel hissed and spat.
‘Now we run,’ Thalia told her four companions.
She looked back over her shoulder as, still crouching, they worked back the way they had come. Both servitors were now circumnavigating the pond, converging at the foot of the bridge nearest Thalia. The whiphound flung itself into the air at the last moment, then wrapped its filament around the legs of the bipedal robot. Momentum on its own was not enough to topple the machine, but the whiphound constricted its filament, drawing tight the coils it had placed around the robot’s legs.
The servitor took a juddering step, then lost its balance. It crashed to the dirt and immediately started trying to right itself. The whiphound resettled itself, then flexed its filament through one hundred and eighty degrees to bring the cutting edge into contact with the servitor’s legs. As it cut into the machine, blue fluid sprayed out at arterial pressure. The servitor’s upper limbs thrashed the ground, but the whiphound had the better of it. Sensing that the target was immobilised, it slithered free and focused its attention on the larger machine, the six-legged utility robot that was now increasing speed towards Thalia’s party. The segmented tentacles at the front were flailing the air, giving a convincing impression of a machine driven into a berserker-like rage. The whiphound flung itself into combat again, wrapping metres of sharp-edged filament around the roots of the flailing arms. Thalia kept up her running crouch, glancing back all the while. ‘Stay this side of the hedge,’ she shouted ahead.
The battle between whiphound and servitor had become a blur of furious metal. Thumb-sized pieces of severed machine parts sprayed in all directions. The whiphound must have impaired the servitor’s guidance system, for it was moving erratically now, swerving from side to side. A larger length of severed tentacle came spinning out of the maelstrom. The sound of the battle was like a hundred lashes being administered in unison against rusted steel. The servitor slowed, one of its legs severed. Blue-grey smoke belched from under the gold carapace.