The insect-like machines clattered to a halt in the middle of Basic Plaza. They had six legs and moved like spiders, but when they stopped, they raised themselves upright on their rear two legs, folding the other sets across their chests. Standing upright, they dwarfed Wilis. Where his creators had made some concessions to presentability, these had none. They were pure machine – hard, functional and predatory, with articulated limbs, bulging forearms, triangular heads and compound eyes.
Forming a semicircle around the augment, they scanned left and right, looking like a bunch of thugs eager for a fight.
Their arrival caused a sensation. Even the music from the pneumatic pianos stopped. People down below were curious at first. Several took pictures. But when someone stepped up for a closer look, one of the machines uncurled a leg and slammed it down so hard in front of him that it cracked the tile floor. The man leapt aside and the wary crowd edged back.
Wilis gestured to the entrance of Basic Food. The thug-bots deployed in a semicircular formation, herding the onlookers as they went, their metal feet clacking on the tile floor.
‘How did he know we were here?’ Norman whispered.
‘I knew we shouldn’t have stopped for food,’ Coral said.
‘I think they’d have found us wherever we went,’ Tim said. ‘Stay here, I’ve got an idea.’
He made his way to the end of the balcony, climbed the railing and jumped across to the mezzanine of the clothing shop next door. Partly shaded by the plaza’s trees, he kept low, making his way to the next balcony, where his progress was masked by a group of curious people watching the disturbance down below.
Wilis wasn’t taking any chances. He stood in the middle of the plaza, directing operations as the thug-bots closed off access to Basic Food, then began directing people out one by one. Word went round they were looking for dangerous criminals, and people pushed and shoved, eager to get out. But the place was crowded and the thug-bots took their time, checking each person carefully.
A quarter of the way around the plaza now, Tim stopped at a gap between two buildings that was too wide to jump. He dropped to the deck and leaned out between the railings.
Basic Sweets lay directly below, decorated like open-sided gypsy cart, complete with shafts for a non-existent horse. A striped awning ran covered racks of multi-coloured sweets and thhe shop was overseen by a pair of bots painted in the same coloured stripes. One of them was filling bags of mint jelly from a spigot at the back of the cart, oblivious to what was happening in the middle of the plaza. It crimped and sealed the top of another bag, adding it to the collection it was cradling in three of its free arms.
To his left, Tim could make out Wilis’s lower half through the branches of a tree. A side view. His feet were squarely planted facing Basic Food. Leaning forward, he called, ‘What does that stuff taste like?’ before snapping his gaze back to the augment.
There was a short delay while the sweet shop-bot absorbed his words, then a second after that Wilis swung to face Basic Sweets, barking an order at the thug-bots.
The focus of the search changed immediately. Pounding feet crossed the plaza and a cordon was thrown around the sweet stand. There were fewer people there. It would take less time to search, but many of those people were small, frightened children. Cries of alarm and screams of panic rose into the air.
A young girl tried to scuttle past a thug-bot. It reached out to stop her only to be attacked by a frantic mother coming up from behind. It turned, shoving the woman aside, and she fell, landing heavily, cracking her head on the floor. One of the gaily painted sweet shop bots raced to defend its customer, only to be pounded into scrap metal by by another the thug-bot.
Bystanders, outraged at this behaviour, started shouting at the bots. Someone hurled something, and within seconds the bots were being pelted with anything to hand: half-empty tins, litter, food scraps, plastic chairs, even bags of sweets.
Tim pushed away from the edge of the veranda and raced back to join the others. Coral and Norman were still at their table, pale with alarm at the scene below. Everyone else had crowded downstairs, desperate to get out, their food abandoned.
‘What did you just do?’ Coral said.
Tim ignored her and summoned the serve-bot. It was standing to one side, trying to work out what was going on. It looked alarmed and confused, its metal claws clasping and unclasping anxiously.
‘You bots all talk to each other,right?’ Tim said.
‘Yes, sir. All Basic bots share a common mind.’
‘Which is how you knew about the high-fiving and what my sister likes to drink.’
‘Customer satisfaction is our priority, sir. Especially when customers show us empathy.’
‘What?’ Coral said.
‘There is a politeness commendation from unit BF-8892156.’ The serve-bot said. ‘And you personally spoke against the mistreatment of our sister, CE-9538612 on Selene Station. These things speak well of you. Both commendations have been added to your language file. Every Basic bot who downloads it now receives these comments.’
‘Like ... customer reviews?’ Norman said.
‘Precisely, sir.’
‘You download the language file from Valax, right?’ Tim said.
‘Yes, sir. The process is automatic.’
‘That’s how Triple-Dub are tracking us,’ he told the others. ‘Every time someone downloads the English module, Valax tells them where it’s going and that tells the augments where we are.’
‘But ... that means they’ll find us wherever we go!’
‘Maybe not,’ Tim said.
* * *
There was a sharp rap on the strongroom door. Something metallic. Walis, who had his back to it to keep it closed, heard and felt the thump of metal on metal. Then he heard Administrator Meli’s voice. ‘Open up, you idiot. It’s perfectly safe.’
Walis moved away from the door, but kept one foot in place so it only opened a fraction. Administrator Meli stood in the corridor outside, he was wearing a HazMat suit, but the hood was pushed back exposing his bare head. The Geiger counter in his hand was silent.
Walis opened the door wider. ‘Is it all clear now?’
‘It always was,’ Meli snapped, waving the silent instrument. ‘There was nothing radioactive in there.’
‘What?’
‘It was a con. A trick. See for yourself.’
Walis followed him back to where the remains of the casket lay. Six decontamination-bots stood idling nearby, their lead-lined isolation boxes unneeded.
Walis regarded the pile of nanodust. ‘I don’t understand. The alarms––’
‘That was just the seal Planetary Immigration stuck around it.’ Meli jabbed a finger at the broken band of plastic lying to one side of the casket. ‘None of you idiots thought to check the contents were actually radioactive, did you?’
‘You don’t want to mess with ionising radiation, sir.’
‘And you don’t want to mess with me, Wilis.’
‘Walis, sir.’
‘Don’t you understand? There could have been anything in there. Anything. Smuggled goods. Carnivorous insects. A bomb. And you wheeled it straight into my office!’
Walis stirred dust left by the disassembly disc with his toe. ‘Actually, sir, a trolley-bot wheeled it into your––’
‘I don’t care what took it in there,’ Meli snapped. ‘The fact remains that you and your half-wit clone-brothers have been made to look fools by a bunch of kids and a wonky syntho. I ought to rename the three of you Triple-Dope!’
Walis twitched. For a moment, Meli thought the insult had hit home, then he realised the augment was receiving a feed from one of his brothers.
‘It’s Wilis, sir. He’s got the alien kids cornered in Basic Plaza up the road. Shall I go and assist?’
‘Yes, of course. Go. Full speed!’
Walis ran, relieved to get away, relieved to be doing something useful. He accelerated hard, his great strides pounding through the building like a pair of miniature jack-hammers.