‘I’m sure it was. Although, he seemed cheerful enough when I met him. He actually told me he empathized with the people who hated him. That’s the exact word he used. Empathized. “It’s not their fault,” he said, “it’s natural to attack what you can. I’d do it, too.” So I asked him how long he thought he could go on “empathizing” with people who wanted to kill him, and he said, “As long as I can.” Then he laughed and said, “But that’s the thing, child. I won’t have to do it very long. It’ll all be over soon enough. It’s coming down; this whole rotten City is coming down. Can’t you see it? Scratch the surface and you’ll see. The writing’s on the wall.” He sounded so sure, too. I suppose that was his way of dealing with it,’

‘Quite the reaction.’

‘As you said, quite the guy.’

‘So then what happened?’

‘Marcus happened. Once he showed up, the attacks stopped pretty quickly.’

‘Well, I can understand that.’

‘Which is what I’m trying to say. For whatever he is—and I don’t think I’ll ever like him—he did save Robert’s life, many times, there’s no doubt about it. More than that. He protected Robert, for which I suppose we all need to be grateful.’

He frowned, torn between two questions, and picked one. ‘But why did people hate Robert?’

‘Because they didn’t understand. They didn’t understand, and they blamed him.’

‘For what?’

She shook her head and went on, as if she was talking to herself, not him. ‘I thought it was the height of stupidity. I mean, everything else apart, it was he who was saving them every day, his inventions keeping them alive, keeping them safe.’

He butted in again. ‘What inventions?’

She jerked her head to look at him, as if suddenly realizing he was still there. ‘All kinds,’ she said. ‘He was always inventing things. Every so often, Ollie would turn up with some new toy he’d received from Robert. He came up with dozens of them—things you wouldn’t even dream of, including those stink signals and the jammers we use.’

‘Jammers?’

‘Yes. They’re what we use to evade the lawbots. When you turn one on, it stops them from detecting you—if they’re not too close. Ollie had ours turned on all the way here.’

He frowned. ‘You’re saying Ollie had this gizmo in his pocket and it made us invisible to lawbots?’

‘Well, not invisible, exactly, but yes. I don’t understand exactly how it works, but it has something to do with creating waves that block other waves or something of the sort. Ollie had Robert explain it all to me when we met him, but I didn’t understand any of it, really.’

‘Neither would I, I’m sure.’