“It’s not going to get any better. Can you get us somewhere safe? I need to make a call.”

“Safe? Safe?” she said in a rising voice. She listened to the staccato gunfire that was only a few streets away. “There is nowhere safe.”

“We’re going to have to improvise, then. Down here.”

They lost sight of the prophet and his disciples, and dragged themselves down the faded white line in the middle of the road.

“Where are we?”

“Heading south. Which is good.” He spotted an overgrown garden behind a tumbledown wall. “In there.”

She lifted him over the first line of bricks and then forged ahead through the whip-like branches of the dense scrubby shrubs. There was a drop into a basement skylight; there were bars over the window, but the pit itself was accessible.

She jumped down and caught him as he tried to sit on the edge but pitched himself forward instead. She lowered him to the damp, mossy interior, and squatted beside him.

“Right. First things first.” He reached into his pocket, wincing as the ends of his clavicle ground together. “You dial.”

“The mobile network is down, Sam.”

“The Jihad will work its magic. Last number redial.”

She pressed a button and held the phone to her ear. “It’s ringing,” she said, eyes wide with wonder.

Petrovitch tried to take the device in his bandaged hand, but none of his fingers were free to grasp it. Neither could he raise his other hand high enough. She kept hold of the phone, while he leaned into it.

He could almost hear in the silence a vast machine making billions of calculations a second.

“It’s Petrovitch,” he said.

“Save Sonja,” it said, “save her.”

“Yeah, there’s been developments, not necessarily for the better. Right now, it’s saving you I’m more worried about.”

“I am the New Machine Jihad,” it said. “Prepare for the New Machine Jihad.”

“I always thought that when I finally got to talk to an AI, it’d understand what the Turing Test was and play along. But, no: not you. You have to spout gibberish and make me guess what it is you mean.”

“Save…”

“I’m running low on watts, Okay? So shut up and listen. There is a room in the Oshicora Tower, below the temple in the rooftop garden. Sonja has access to it, and Harry Chain has Sonja. He wants to turn you off, wipe your mind, take you apart bit by bit so all you can do is recite ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb.’ You got that? Can he do that from there?”

“I am the New Machine Jihad.”

Petrovitch growled with frustration. “Can Chain hurt you using the interface in that room? Yes or no.”

“No. He cannot.”

“But someone else can? Sonja?”

“Yes.”