Jack Yeovil - Route 666

Tyree got the impression the helicopter was sulking. She noticed Dr McFall-Ngai shudder when the Sergeant shouted at it. Whoever generated the voice was a high-level suit. Also, a high-level creep.

Engineer Huff found something and signalled urgently. The Japanese bowed to the Cav and hurried over. "This one still functions," Huff said. The woman knelt like a paramedic and started working on an opened chestplate with chopstick-like implements. She was attending to what looked like a complete android. Its soft green plastic face was a Boris Karloff mask. It even had bolts in its neck.

As Dr McFall-Ngai worked, sparks flew. She muttered in Japanese.

Tyree cautiously approached, careful not to get in the scientist's light. The Frankenstein monster's eyes opened and closed like goldfish mouths. The scientist left the 'bot's chest alone and shifted attention to the head. She found a seam and pressed, opening the flat skull. A glittery crystal ball was exposed, sludged with what the Quince called "human compost". Lights fluctuated inside.

The scientist whistled.

"Ambitious," she said, "but unsuccessful."

"Can it still think?" Huff asked.

She slipped her tool into a hole in the ball. A light in the implement's butt flashed.

"Point debatable. It can calculate but it cannot intuit. Therefore it cannot be classed sentient. It may retain limited motion controls and be programmed for repetitive functions, but this is at best a robot. As a human being, he is dead."

Suddenly, the Frankenstein monster sat bolt upright, hinging at the waist, arms outstretched like a sleepwalker.

The scientists were pushed aside.

The 'bot's chin dropped and it rasped "I live!"

Its heavily lidded eyes were half-alive.

"That's not possible," Dr McFall-Ngai said, not unkindly. "You have no brain, merely storage cells."

An arm lashed out, tossing the woman away. She yelped surprise.

Tyree had her side arm out. So did the rest of the patrol.

"Be warned it is an offence to damage GenTech property," the helicopter shouted.

The Frankenstein monster stood, a giant-sized Aurora Glow-in-the-Dark hobby kit. It wore shredded black coveralls. Its body was metallic. Offence or not, it scanned as if it couldn't be damaged.

"Does this thing have civil rights?" Quincannon asked Dr McFall-Ngai, who was scrambling upright.

She thought a moment, "I would have to say no."

Quincannon spanged a bullet off the Frankenstein monster's face, shredding plastic over its forehead. Undented metal gleamed.

The robot, no longer organic in any sense, looked up at the sky and reached out, grasping for the sunlight. It might have been smiling, it might have been worshipping.

"What's it doing now?" Tyree asked.

Dr McFall-Ngai shrugged but made a suggestion. "Having a religious experience?"

The Frankenstein monster staggered towards the spidercopter. The aperture nervously contracted shut.

"Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay

To mould me man? Did I solicit thee

From darkness to promote me?"

The creature was imploring. The spidercopter was silent.

Tyree was baffled, but Dr McFall-Ngai told her, "Milton, Paradise Lost. The epigraph to Frankenstein. All cyborgs revere the book, and the films Pinocchio and The Wizard of Oz. For obvious reasons."

With a Karloffian roar, the Frankenstein monster attacked the spidercopter. Its large, ungainly hands found no purchase on the smooth machine surface.

"It's molecule-locked ceramic," Huff explained. "Three times as resilient as durium alloy."

"That thing's a pot?" Tyree exclaimed.

The Frankenstein monster's fingers scrabbled and broke. An arm extruded from the spidercopter and a needle-beam sliced through the 'bot's neck, shearing away the head.

The thing fell dead.

"That shouldn't have happened," Dr McFall-Ngai said. "With no graymass, it could only follow programs. It could not act independently. It could not quote Milton."

"It did a pretty snazz job, missy," Quincannon said.

"Dr Zarathustra acted prematurely," the Japanese woman said. "The specimen should have been maintained in its state until a thorough examination could be conducted."

Tyree looked again at the featureless spidercopter, impressed. Zarathustra was a household name, a force in GenTech's BioDiv. If anyone born of woman lived forever, it would be his fault.

The Japanese was politely puzzled.

"This has been an Unknown Event," she concluded.

"I've heard that expression before," Tyree said. "I've seen it in reports."

The scientist looked almost afraid.

"There have been many UEs. Things that should not be have been and continue to be."

"Didn't we used to call them miracles?" Quincannon asked.

The scientist nodded vigorously, fringe shaking.

"The world is coming apart. Immutable laws have been broken. Laws of physics."

"Other laws have been broken," Quincannon said. "Laws of America. Against murder, for instance. The 'bots killed a couple of pilgrims just over the Utah border."

The sergeant was looking at Dr McFall-Ngai, but was speaking to Zarathustra inside the spidercopter.

"There's a case that anyone claiming ownership of the robo-remains could be classed an accessory. Like a dog-owner who lets his pitbull savage kids. If BioDiv were monitoring the Knock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots' actions and didn't intervene, there could be hefty charges."

The aperture reappeared, wordlessly summoning the scientists. Huff had collected a string of egg-shaped devices in a clear plastic suitcase. Dr McFall-Ngai bowed rapidly and apologetically, then retreated with her assistant into the spidercopter. The machine snapped shut, extruded blades and rose vertically in parallel with the stone column.

"That woman was worried, Quince," Tyree said.

All around them, left-over robo-bits ticked. A wind seemed to pass through. Valves still functioned, pistons clicked, joints locked and unlocked, cables contracted.

"So she should be, Leona."

Yorke picked up the Frankenstein monster's head, holding it as Hamlet held the skull. Dr Almighty God Zarathustra had left the anomalous thing behind. He wanted only evidence that conformed to expectations and would suppress anything that didn't fit in with the rigidly maintained scientific world image of consensus.

"This'd look fine in the mess hall trophy case," Yorke said.

The mouth opened, dropped, and a voiceless buzzsaw whine came out. Yorke dropped the head fast and kicked it away, shivering.

"Very funny, Yorke," Quincannon said.

Burnside scanned the painfully blue sky until the spidercopter was gone in the haze.

"Remember clouds," the trooper mused. "It's been a long time since you saw a cloud."

Quincannon took a last recce of the site and ordered everyone back to their ve-hickles.

"We should backtrack from the original incident," he said. "Pilgrims don't just come in pairs. There'll be a whole load of folks, probably in trouble."

Trouble, Tyree thought; our job.

Without the spectacles, the Summoner boiled with anger. The surface of his mind was still as glass but great rages tore and shrieked in the depths. He wished to bathe in blood. As the half-human, half-machine abominations were smitten, the Path was blooded. Another move in the ancient rite. The one-eyed girl had disrupted the ritual. The Summoner saw something in her. She was young and foolish, but behind her face was something struggling to be born, something with row upon row of shiny teeth. There was a moment when he could have killed her, but he had let it pass. After so long a wait and so close to the culmination, he needed to leave loopholes. Or else where was the challenge, where the enterprise? He could regain the spectacles. He would wipe away the one-eyed girl. But first he would be tested and proved.