“Oh, yes,” Mukhtar said.

“I thought robots were peaceful.”

“They were made to do what people needed them to,” Mukhtar said. “But there’s a strong market in combat artefacts. It’s why people still go out into the desert every year to try and hunt down UXOs. Even when it’s dangerous. This thing, though. . . . A golden man. It isn’t even supposed to exist.”

Mariam looked at the heaped pile of metallic golden body parts the robot had left behind.

“I wonder what happened to it,” she said.

8. The Mechanic

Mukhtar, meanwhile, wondered the same thing.

On the outskirts of the city, where the green belt of greenhouses met the unforgiving bitterness of desert, there lay a scattered asteroid belt of temporary homes and habitats, and it was there that he went with his query.

The woman he sought was busy outside, despite the heat. She wore blue overalls and the parts of vintage motorcycles and even diesel cars lay all about her, and Mukhtar was unpleasantly reminded of when the peninsula was known mostly for its oil. The toll the age of petrol had taken on the planet could still be felt in unpredictable storms and those parts of the world that were only now being re-terraformed. Mukhtar himself had a congenital respiratory disorder as a genetic remnant of that age; and he maintained it by regular injection of nano-vapour that pulsed repair machines into his lungs. He never let it stop him, and he didn’t think of it very often. But these custom repair jobs were an unwelcome reminder all the same.

“Salam alaikum, Sharif,” he said.

Sharif turned and saw him. She waved. “Wa alaikum salam, Mukhtar. Be with you in a minute.”

“Take your time.”

Mukhtar perched himself down on a rock and watched the mechanic at work. Sharif worked with the quiet confidence of experience. She picked objects that were incomprehensible to Mukhtar. She weighed them, considered, discarded, picked another, and somehow or another was assembling these relics into a single creation, bit by bit, until a slick and powerful machine stood in the sand.

“What is it?” Mukhtar said.

Sharif shrugged. “A bore-rider, I think,” she said.

“You don’t know?”

“I let the parts decide.”

“Where do you get the parts?”

“From the zabaleen.”

Sharif wiped her hands on a piece of cloth and came over.

“Coffee?”

“Please.”

She went to a table and began preparing the drink. She carried a tray over. Mukhtar accepted the coffee gratefully. They sat and sipped. Mukhtar wiped his forehead. It was very hot outside. Sharif saw but said nothing. Not far in the distance the great turbines turned and the sand filter walls shimmered.

“Speaking of parts,” Mukhtar said. “I wanted to show you something.”

“Of course.”