Here's the beginning of the prologue. Look out for more excerpts coming soon.
Prologue
The
robot and the inventor
A
cold wind was whipping in from the south, bringing with it flurries of hard ice
ripped off the top of seasons-long snow drifts standing like dirt-streaked grey
sentinels by the side of the road. Victor Mishin stopped one more time to tie
up his hood, but the string was frozen stiff. He scowled, cursing under his
breath. Dipping his face away from the wind instead, he turned back to make
sure the cart was still following.
From
both sides of the road, the dead eyes of Brevik’s abandoned houses watched him
with their broken door grins. From inside flickered torchlight, accompanied by the
faint peal of nervous laughter. Many became temporary crack houses and brothels
after dark, living crypts filled with the skeletal remnants of men and women
put out of work by the closing mines and factories.
The
first rock to clang off the outside of the cart’s casing made Victor jump. The
echo of laughter from a shadowy alley that followed made him shiver.
‘We
see you, old man.’
It
was the voice of a kid, throat dry from too many cigarettes and cheap local
homebrew. Brevik started its youngsters early, and only a kid would ever call
him old. Victor wasn’t yet thirty.
‘Come
on,’ he told the cart. ‘We have to hurry.’
The
machine’s head snapped up, a vaguely humanoid oval. Twin lights at the front
gave a wild flicker. ‘Rolling, rolling.’
Another
stone landed in the snow at Victor’s feet. He grimaced. Even the prepubescent
kids were built out of wire passed down through generations of miners with
playful fists, and Victor was no fighter.
‘Level
up,’ he said to the cart. ‘We have to move. Now.’
‘Roger
that, partner.’
The
cart, a silver rectangle, rocked back on its caterpillar treads and lurched
into an upright position. Smaller central treads unfolded from the ends of its
main propulsion system. It was activating its sprint mode, but in the snow and
ice its motors would only last a couple of hundred metres. It would have to be
enough.
‘Move
it,’ Victor said, as another stone clanged off the cart’s casing.
Shadows
shifted behind him as he started into a run, morphing into the shapes of four,
five, six kids as they bolted from the alleyway. Victor squeezed his eyes shut
as the cart’s accelerator runners spun in the snow, then clunked as they caught
on something buried under the surface.
He
didn’t want to turn around to see his most treasured invention pitch forward onto
its robotic face as the group of laughing urchins descended on it, thrown
stones rattling off the metal like machine gun fire, but he had no choice. The
cart was dear to him; he owed it a single icy tear frozen against his face by
the chilling wind.
He
glared for one long moment at the feral children as they engulfed the cart in a
flurry of thumping hands and kicking feet, then turned and hurried for home,
feeling at least some scant relief that its sacrifice had allowed him to get
away.
