this path at all. The river was a bad place in all kinds of ways.
And this place was not just bad but strange. There was great swells and hollows in the ground, like the ground was water in a squall. Some of the hollows was filled up with deep puddles, others was dry, but all was sudden in a way the forest usually isn’t. There wasn’t no leading up to them holes with a slope or a scarp; they was just there. And they scared me more than a little.
Then I seen the river in front of us, and it was a strip of green almost narrow enough for us to step over it. This was a good place to cross, and saved a lot of time if the other way they would of gone was round by Bulmer.
But there was something in between us and the river, and Sky slowed as she come to it. I didn’t see it right away, for her shoulder and back covered half the world from where I was. But then she hitched me up, like as if she was fixing to break into a run, and I seen it clear.
It was a thing like a great big water drum hammered together out of sheets of metal. It didn’t have no corners. All the edges of it was rounded. And there was a small drum on top of the big drum that was rounded too. It had wheels to it like a wagon, only the wheels was inside a great big metal band like a fence laid on its end.
And all of this, though it was made out of metal, was covered over in weeds and creepers and great big crusts of moss, so it was all but hid. You had got to take two looks at it before you seen it, and then on the second look it kind of jumped out at you.
I know what I’m telling to you doesn’t sound like anything that could ever be in the world. You just got to take my word for it that it was there. And I didn’t tell you the strangest yet, which was that it had a great big thing like a pipe sticking out of the topmost part. The pipe was two or three times as long as a man’s stretched-out arms, and it swung around to face us as we come. There was a kind of a screaming sound as it turned, like the thing was in pain, but that was just the metal grinding on itself.
It was tech. Tech of the old times, though almost as big as a house. And it was awake.
42
“This location is off-limits,” the tech said. “It has been temporarily secured under the authority of the interim government. Halt where you are and surrender any weapons you may hold. Failure to do so will result in your being fired upon.”
I near to pissed myself right then from sheer fright, for it sounded like the hail the drones give before they fire. But the drones talked in a voice that was all on one note, and never changed. This voice had got some breaks and drops in it, so it sounded more alive, kind of. Not alive in the way Monono’s voice was, but still you could believe there was someone inside that thing, talking to you, and not just a machine that had been made to speak like an echo bird. It was a man’s voice. I seen him in my mind as someone young but pretending to be older, trying hard to put on some shape or colour of power that he wasn’t sure was his.
This tech was different from the drones another way too. The drones was wont to give you thirty seconds before they killed you, which this tech didn’t seem to be offering.
Sky wasn’t scared though. She walked right up to the big thing, and since I was on her back I went along with her. I would of rather been anywhere else in the world right then.
“You are in defiance of a direct order from an empowered agent of the interim government,” the tech said. “State your name and your ID number, including sector suffix. Comply at once, or you will be shot.”
Sky kept right on walking. She didn’t stop until the end of that pipe was a hand’s breadth in front of her face.
“It’s me,” she said. “Sky. We met before, Elaine, a whole lot of times. I don’t