dark levels above. Most of the walls were brick, and most were painted thickly in a dirty white or equally dirty black.
The King laughed and kept marching forward. Rad stopped and wondered several things: what the hell he was doing here, what the hell this wacko with a beard and a blue velvet suit had to do with not just robots but anything at all, and where the hell was Kane Fortuna?
“You planning on standing there all day?”
Rad turned. Jennifer was right behind him, wry grin on her face, but he noticed that her finger was resting on the trigger of her gun.
“You expecting trouble?” he asked.
She adjusted her grip on the weapon. “Always.”
Rad huffed and nodded down the now-empty corridor. “He sure doesn’t look like a criminal mastermind.”
“Looks can be deceiving,” said Jennifer.
“You mean it’s an act?”
Jennifer waved her hand around. “Well, we are in a theater.”
The King appeared again at the end of the corridor. Even from this distance, his broad smile was easy to pick out.
“You’re dawdling! There’s still plenty to see, plenty! This way!”
Jennifer squeezed past Rad in the narrow corridor.
Rad sighed and stuffed his hands into his pockets. At least it was warm inside. In fact, it was getting warmer. Frowning, he pulled out a hand and placed it on the painted brickwork on his left. His fingertips prickled at the contact. The wall was not quite hot.
The King waved like a showman from the doorway at the end of the hall. As Jennifer approached, he bowed and gestured for her to step through. Halfway across the threshold, she shot Rad a look over her shoulder.
Rad raised an eyebrow. “What?”
“I think you’re going to want to see this.”
Jennifer turned back and stepped through the door.
The King had led them to the main stage. Rad paused in the doorway, and swept the hat off his head. He looked around, rubbing his scalp absently.
“You’ve been busy, your majesty.”
They’d entered from stage left. The performance space in front of them was a vast platform of polished wood, sweeping out towards the orchestra pit and a row of footlights, all but one blazing in the dark space. Beyond, lost in the gloom, the theater stalls stretched back and up before disappearing into the darkness. Above, the theater circle – Rad could see it still had seats, all red velvet and gold painted wood. Unlike the stalls.
The stalls had been emptied, torn out, replaced with what looked like a junkyard, metal scrap collecting against the edge of the orchestra pit like frozen waves. At first Rad thought the theater’s roof had collapsed, bringing with it rubble and tons of roofing lead. But as his eyes adjusted, Rad could see there was some kind of order, pieces stacked according to size or shape. Several clear paths – the theater’s original aisles – led straight out from the stage to the back of the room.
“I think we’re in the right place,” said Jennifer. Rad frowned and shook his head, rolling his hat in his hands.
The scrap was robot parts. Rad saw arms and legs first, then torsos and breastplates, some intact, some in halves like clamshells. Large elliptical waist joints were racked over poles like hula-hoops. There were limb components, individual feet and hands and elbows, and smaller parts that looked like shoulder collars or articulated elbow joints.
And heads. Stacked like coal scuttles, one inside the other in teetering, curved towers. Robot heads, or the external shells of them anyway.
It was a robot graveyard.
The huge stage was filled with materials too, but here the order was more regimented, the space a workshop. Trolleys, racks, shelves, and workbenches were arranged around three large tables, which looked to Rad like the slabs from a hospital mortuary. Every surface but the slabs was covered in more of the robotic parts, most in considerably better shape than the junkyard collection in the stalls. Metallic body parts that were not stacked and arranged neatly were held in various bench clamps and cradles, some opened like fruit, tools ranging from giant wrenches to fine surgical clamps protruding, wires thick and thin trailing out to the banks of equipment ranging from small tabletop boxes to floor standing cabinets. The equipment buzzed and the smell of ozone was rich in the air, and lights flashed red and yellow and blue.
“Rad, look.”
He felt Jennifer’s hand on his arm as she spoke breathlessly. He turned, and whistled.
The back of the stage was occupied by a tree, growing out of the floor on