thing he was aware of was a click. He opened his eyes and rolled his head to his right, where he saw the King’s robot manservant standing over the other machine. It was holding the head of the robot in the other machine – no, it was stroking the metal cheek of the other robot with one hand.
Kane licked his lips. He wasn’t sure whether he was awake or asleep. He wiggled his toes again, and tried to remember if he’d been able to do that before, and whether that meant anything at all.
“Rest easy.” The Corsair’s voice was quiet, a whisper. It was male, and very human, muffled slightly beneath the metal face.
Kane gulped, painfully. He’d never heard the Corsair speak before; he had assumed it didn’t.
The robot lying in the other machine twitched, and the head moved slightly as the leather-covered hands of the Corsair continued to stroke its face. And there was a sound, a sigh, an exhalation from the robot in the machine, from the horizontal slot that formed the mouth.
“Shhhhh,” said the Corsair. The robot’s head twitched again and there was something else, a voice, a whisper behind the metal that Kane couldn’t hear. The Corsair leaned over his charge, like it was listening carefully to the faint words. Then it stood straight, and hushed the robot again, and turned around.
Kane closed his eyes, hoping he was quick enough that the Corsair hadn’t seen him watching what he felt, strangely, was a private moment. He tried to remember how long the other machine had been occupied, and realized the robot lying within it had appeared soon after Rad arrived.
Kane felt the sweat trickle over his eyelids, and he felt his forehead twitch. There was a gentle sound of glass on glass, and Kane risked a peek. Between narrow lids he saw the Corsair preparing the second bottle of medicine, dipping the long pipette into the bottle, drawing it up, then turning back to the other robot. As Kane watched, it carefully inserted the narrow glass tube into the slot mouth, and squeezed, emptying the dropper.
The robot in the machine jerked once, twice, as it coughed and gasped. Its head turned, suddenly facing Kane.
Through the mouth slot, Kane saw human lips, delicate and dry, maybe female. They moved, and the tip of a tongue stained pale green poked out as it tried to moisten the lips.
Kane coughed in surprise. He rolled his head back to stare at the ceiling as the Corsair, apparently startled, moved to loom over him, bending down low so the flat metal face was right over his.
Kane fought against unconsciousness, but it was no use. And maybe he was asleep already, and this was all a dream, like the flexing of his fingers and the visit from his old friend Rad and the dead woman with the blue eyes. The green medicine.
Green, like the pair of human eyes staring into his own from behind the flipped-up goggles of the Corsair’s mask.
Kane cried out in surprise, and then the darkness claimed him once more.
TWENTY-FOUR
The room was a basement or cellar, much like any Rad had ever seen. He’d stood in quite a few, he reflected, as they were places associated with bad deeds, where last stands were stood, where bodies were hidden, where victims and suspects and the innocent alike hid when above them was danger and chaos and violence.
Rad blinked as his eyes adjusted to the brightness. The glow, blue and white and alive, was coming from what looked like a furnace or boiler. Set against the far wall, it was large and square, taller than Rad, with a fat black chimney that vanished into the ceiling. There were gauges and dials and controls, a couple of large wheels and several smaller ones. It was industrial, but nothing out of the ordinary.
Except for the light. The furnace had a door, convex and square, with a large sprung handle, horizontal across the front, that was almost the size of Rad’s forearm. The door had a window, and through the window shone the light.
Rad felt ill, partly because of the effects of the unusual light – an effect he hadn’t experienced in more than a year, a sensation long forgotten but suddenly, instantly familiar the second he was exposed to the source – and partly due to the realization that the King was telling the truth about the Fissure. And if that was the case, then chances were he was telling the truth about