“What’s the time?” whispered Isaac. Lemuel and Derkhan looked at their watches.

“Nearly eleven,” said Lemuel.

They looked up again, and still nothing moved.

Overhead, a gibbous moon meandered through the clouds. Its was the only light in the dump, a wan, flattening luminescence that bled the depth from the world.

Isaac looked down and was about to speak, when a sound issued from one of the innumerable trenches that sliced through the towering reef of rubbish. It was an industrial sound, a clanking, siphoning wheeze like some enormous insect. The four waiting figures watched the end of the tunnel, a confused sense of foreboding building in them.

A large construct stamped out into the empty space. It was a model designed for labour, heavy jobs. It stomped past them on swinging tripedal legs, kicking stray stones and gobbets of metal out of its way. Lemuel, who was nearly in its path, moved back warily, but the construct paid him no heed at all. It continued walking until it was near the edge of the oval of empty space, then stopped and stared at the northern wall.

It was still.

As Lemuel turned to Isaac and Derkhan, there was another noise. He swivelled quickly, to see another, much smaller construct, this one a cleaning model driven by khepri-designed metaclockwork. It cruised on its little caterpillar treads, stationing itself a little way from its much bigger sibling.

Now, the sounds of constructs were coming from all around the canyons of garbage.

“Look,” hissed Derkhan, and pointed to the east. From one of the smaller caverns in the muck, two humans were emerging. At first Isaac thought he must be mistaken, and that they must be lithe constructs, but there could be no doubt that they were flesh and bone. They scrambled over the crushed detritus that littered the earth.

They paid the waiting renegades no heed at all.

Isaac frowned.

“Hey,” he said, just loud enough to be heard. One of the two men who had entered the clearing shot him a wrathful glance and shook his head, then looked away. Chastened and astonished, Isaac was silent.

More and more constructs were arriving in the open space. Massive military models, tiny medical assistants, automatic road-drills and household assistants, chrome and steel, iron and brass and copper and glass and wood, steam-powered and elyctrical and clockwork, thaumaturgy-driven and oil-burning engined.

Here and there among them darted more humans—even, Isaac thought, a vodyanoi, quickly lost in the darkness and moving shadows. The humans congregated in a tight knot by the side of what was almost an amphitheatre.

Isaac, Derkhan, Lemuel and Yagharek were completely ignored. They moved together instinctively, unsettled by the bizarre silence. Their attempts to communicate with their fellow organic creatures met either contemptuous silence or irritated shushings.

For ten minutes, constructs and humans dripped steadily into the hollow at the heart of Dump Two. Then the flow stopped, quite suddenly, and there was silence.