In desperation, I used a tight-beam targeting laser to sweep the surface of the Object below, tracing the whorls of the canyon network that had given the sculpture its name. According to my measurements, the wider canyons were just about broad enough to accommodate me, but I immediately discounted the idea of using them for cover. Assuming I could reach them without being shot from the sky, what then? I’d be stuck at the bottom of a hole with nowhere to go, vulnerable to bombardment from above. My hull was simply too lengthy to safely negotiate the intricate twists and turns of the canyon network. I wouldn’t want to get wedged in a corner, so I would be trapped like a fish in a barrel. If we’d been in orbit above one of the other Objects, such as the Inverted City or the Broken Clock, their confusing irregularities would have offered multiple hiding places. The canyons of the Brain, however, were next to useless.

Still, with nothing better to do, I swung the laser back and forth across the surface, mapping and cataloguing every niche and fissure. I scanned the wreck of the Geest van Amsterdam, in case there was some way I could hide in its debris field. I even investigated the crater from Fenrir’s destruction of my shuttle, but could find nowhere large enough to conceal my bulk.

For the first time in my life, I almost envied the humans. Their bodies may have been vulnerable and easily damaged, but they were also small and flexible and able to wriggle into the smallest of cracks. And, despite all my speed and power, I envied them that.

I was about to abandon my survey when I picked up a signal compressed into a beam no wider than a human hair, centred precisely on my primary communications array, and apparently originating within the Object below. As I was looking down, something else was looking up at me.

I checked my two companions, but they were still locked in dispute and neither showed any awareness of the signal.

Wary from my encounter with the Fenrir, I created a quarantine file and downloaded the transmission there, where it couldn’t access any of my systems. Then, tentatively, I scanned it.

It was a text file, and it consisted of four words:

We need to talk.

Sixty-Six: Ashton Childe

SIXTY-SIX

ASHTON CHILDE

Clay sat up.

“Holy shit!” She clasped a hand to the bud in her ear. “I’ve got a signal, but it’s very weak.” She gestured at her pack, holding out her other hand. “Quickly, get the communicator in the top pocket.”

I bent over and did as I was told. After I straightened up, I tried to hand it to her but she waved me away. “You do it.”