In the vision it was given, the robot watched the city burn. It watched the city fall to the stampede of robots. Saw it obliterated from the Earth like the Cities of the Plain, until not a finger bone was left, no fragment of a cranium, no brick nor metal post nor glass nor plastic: until the whole entire place sank into the sand without trace and was gone forever.

Then it was that the robot felt chilled: that it knew fear. And yet it said: “If you lead us, I will follow you there.”

Its metal lover said, “Fool!” and pushed it away. Then the golden man lowered its head.

“I am sorry,” it said. “I hoped you would understand.”

At that moment the robot did understand, and it knew true horror.

“No, no,” it said. “You cannot ask that of me.”

And the golden man said, “I do not ask.”

They did not speak of it again. The next day they went down to New Punt, and the vision that the robot saw was fulfilled entirely. Then it knew despair.

What it had to do could not be done. The robot loved the golden man. The robot needed the golden man. It followed the golden man. And then one night the robot followed the golden man to a place in the sands and there it did what had to be done, and when it was over the robot buried the remains in a deep hole and covered it up and vowed that it would never be uncovered.

Morning found it wandering the desert, lost. Gradually it met up with its former companions. The war was over.

They were free.

But the robot was lost.

24. The Call

They came from the sea. They came from the air. They came from the mountains and deserts of the peninsula.

Deep under the Red Sea the Leviathans stirred. Vast shapes moved fathoms under and began to rise. Ships’ instruments registered sudden alarms. The waves rose. They thundered onwards, glittered in foam, and erupted onto the beaches of Marsa Alam and Neom on either side of that narrow sea. A ferry making the crossing was nearly upended and had to turn back to shore.

The Leviathans rose. They dwarfed the cargo boats. On a passenger cruise ship people screamed and others broadcast the experience live. The Leviathans’ skin was seaweed green and crusted with molluscs and salt. Holes opened and closed in their flesh, some eyes, some mouths, some gun turrets not used in centuries.

The Leviathans heard the call and they rose to meet it.

They sailed towards Neom.

So did the globsters, quivering masses of bio-organic smart waste. They had floated on the sea for centuries, a hazard in the passage of ships, calculating things nobody inquired after, dreaming mathematical dreams.

They heard the call.

They answered.

They drifted towards Neom to be reborn.