John McNally - The Forbidden City

On the top floor King and Bo Zhang waited for him to arrive. King had been alerted to the misdemeanour – “Allenby has left the building! Without an escort!” – and had agreed to talk to him about his conduct. Eccentricity might be seen as a marker of genius (or just an annoying trait) in Britain, but in China it bore no such association.

Then an emergency call came in and King had to step back and pick up a phone.

The elevator doors slid open and Al stepped out.

“Doctor! I insist we follow security protocols!” said Bo Zhang in polished distress.

“Take a chill pill, or at least get yourself one of these,” said Al, indicating the ice-cream cone. “If we’re going to work together, you have to understand my only rule is – ‘there are no rules’. Frees up the mind, y’know? Helps to think.” Al gestured expansively.

“Your working methods are your own. I am responsible for your personal safety!” snapped Bo Zhang.

From his phone, Commander King cut across them both.

“Gentlemen –” he looked grave – “we have a problem.”

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*250000: NANO-BOTMASS = DISTRIBUTION MASS

Production continued while the datum was transmitted to Song Island.

A response code was received.

Immediately the PRIME XE.CUTE gave the order.

SEE VECTOR DESPATCH.

Bot group by bot group, the tiny army, packed so tightly into the three Casio QT6600 cash registers that they were in danger of overheating, began to come to life.

Miniature turbines turned in earnest.

Over the next few hours the bots left their electronic hives. They proceeded to the maximum altitude allowed by the food hall ceiling then drifted down to land on the heads of the workers, crawling down through their hair to hide.

The unwitting workers then carried them back to factories across the Forbidden City. There the bots crawled out of the hair, cut their way through protective hairnets, and flew off in search of fresh electronic circuitry. Having located one another through a simple signal and colour-coding system they formed fifty-two new bot production suites. And began again.

SEE VECTOR MULTIPLY

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Part Two Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One Chapter Twenty-Two Part Three Chapter Twenty-Three Chapter Twenty-Four Chapter Twenty-Five Chapter Twenty-Six Chapter Twenty-Seven Chapter Twenty-Eight Chapter Twenty-Nine Chapter Thirty Chapter Thirty-One Chapter Thirty-Two Chapter Thirty-Three Part Four Chapter Thirty-Four Chapter Thirty-Five Chapter Thirty-Six Chapter Thirty-Seven Chapter Thirty-Eight Chapter Thirty-Nine Chapter Forty Chapter Forty-One Chapter Forty-Two Chapter Forty-Three Chapter Forty-Four Chapter Forty-Five Chapter Forty-Six Footnotes Books by John McNally About the Publisher

Finn was sweating and running – he was lost in a supermarket, he was little, he was calling out, but no one could hear him, and—

A scream woke him. An everlasting dull scream.

Panic shot him to life – darkness, suffocating heat, his weight piled on his shoulders, thick cloth walls pressing in on him – a sack? He gasped in panic and kicked himself around, as he did so the cloth gave way and he got a lungful of fresher air – not a sack. He was in the folds of something …

He breathed some more. Let his panic drain. Still he heard the scream. An engine. A jet engine.

His eyes adjusted to a dim light and detected LED pulses of red and green. He pulled himself up the wall of woollen cloth, Grandma cloth … He could smell home. He had been caught in the hem of her ‘smart-but-not-evening’ skirt.

He reached her knee. She was laid out and strapped into some kind of white crate. Tubes and wires came off her chest and connected to a small life support unit, its LEDs blinking.

Finn ran up her prone body and scrambled over the hissing, humming medical apparatus clustered over her head until he reached her ear.

“GRANDMA!”

Nothing. He yanked on some of the downy hair on her lobe, scaled her soft splendid face and tried to haul open her eyes. She was out cold. Drugged.

Kaparis. The kidnappers had been Tyros, no question. But what did Kaparis want with Grandma? Finn knew the answer; it was in his heart. We love her. Blackmail … The thought of her being hostage to such a man made him sick.

Finn could feel pressure growing in his ears. They popped. The jet was descending. He had to do something.

Down the side of the white crate he could just make out something – a ziplock polythene bag.

Finn headed for it, unclasping Grandma’s RHS visitor badge on the way. He used the pin to puncture the bag, then put both hands in the hole and forced it to split.

Inside were the crazed contents of Grandma’s handbag – notes, nuts, make-up, coins, elastic bands, stamps, dog treats, a small china bell, a Cambridge University snow globe, a cheap string of pearls, an emergency sewing kit, a single cufflink and also everything they needed for their nano-day out – six nRation packs fn1, his nPhone backpack (battery dead) and, crucially, Hudson’s inhaler .

Finn kicked open the cover on the inhaler’s mouthpiece.

There was the concealed Bug, its pockmark thrusters showing through the cotton wool wadding.

Finn pulled away the wadding and climbed on to the Bug. He snapped on the ignition switches and, with a sudden suck, the turbines turned over and the Bug lit up – rising to suspend itself, headlights alive.

He eased it out of the mouthpiece and loaded up the nRations and the nPhone. Instinct told him to haul a pin from the sewing kit too, just in case.

He climbed back aboard and was pulling on the harness when he felt a sudden jolt as the aircraft they were in touched down. There was a fierce braking and rumbling of wheels, loud enough to wake—

“Aaaaaaaargh!”

“Grandma!”

The giant old woman woke in a panic, trying to lash out but constrained by the straps. The whole crate shook.

Finn turned the lights up and shoved the controls forward. The Bug forced its way through the split in the polythene bag, then, thrusters hissing as automatic systems fought to keep it stable, it rose over Grandma’s struggling legs, each the size of a blue whale, and flew up towards her head.