One of the bulldozer-sized construction robots Carter had passed on the way in rolled into view from behind one of the main buildings. Another one came after it, and then several more. Six of them altogether, moved single-file, like floats in a Christmas parade. When the last of them was clear, the formation broke apart and reshuffled until the machines were lined up side-by-side, like a cavalry charge, sweeping toward them.
FOURTEEN
Carter grabbed the end of the memory metal fragment and tore it from Fallon’s grasp. It felt strange in her hand, cool to the touch, with a texture like a handful of little springs. Fearing that it might ooze out of her grip, she shoved it into her pocket and darted for the right side of the car. She slid behind the steering wheel, clutched, and turned the key. As the engine roared to life, Fallon stuck his head in through the passenger side door.
“What are you doing?”
“Leaving,” she said, putting the car in gear.
Fallon’s jaw worked but she cut him off before he could articulate his protest. “Get in. If you want to fix this, we have to go now.”
“Ishiro, let’s go,” Fallon said without looking away, and then as an afterthought, he muttered, “Shotgun.”
As they climbed in, Carter checked on the advancing robot wave’s progress. They were still about a hundred yards away, and while not built for speed, they were moving faster than a human could run. Two of them blocked the road, while pairs on either side rolled across the landscaped greenspace, crushing topiary shrubs and throwing up huge clods of dirt with their metal treads. Getting around them was going to require more than fancy footwork and a plastic table.
As soon as the two men were inside, Carter let out the clutch. The car shot forward, and she hauled the steering wheel around, requiring almost a full-body effort since the car didn’t have power steering. She carved a tight U-turn that brought them back around onto the road, facing the construction-bots. “Is there another way out of here?”
“That’s the only road.”
Carter surveyed the off-road possibilities. The pavement was bordered by hedges, which the second and fifth robots were obliterating with complete indifference. Beyond the hedgerow, there was a grassy expanse about twenty yards wide. It ended at Lake Geneva’s shore on one side and a stand of trees on the other. But most of the open space was dominated by the robots at the ends of the formation. “Do those things have any weaknesses?”
Fallon blinked as if he found the question insulting, but then shrugged. “They’re built for heavy labor…construction. They aren’t war machines.”
“Could have fooled me.” She considered the statement a moment longer. “What does that mean exactly?”
“It means they don’t see us as an enemy. You can’t just splice in a line of code and turn a construction machine into the Terminator.”
“So you’re saying they’re here to… fix us?” Try as she might, Carter couldn’t see how the distinction mattered.
“I’m saying they don’t think strategically.” Then he added, “And they can’t turn worth a damn.”
“Why didn’t you say that in the first place?” Carter accelerated again. She pushed the gas pedal, let out the clutch, and the car shot forward like a robot-seeking missile.
“What the hell are you doing?” Fallon cried out, flailing his arms as if trying to stop himself from falling.
When the wall of robots was just fifty feet away, she slammed on the brakes and cranked the steering wheel, sliding into another U-turn, now only a few feet ahead of the advancing machines. In the rear-view mirror, she could see hydraulic manipulator arms unfolding above the tracked chassis like the legs of some gigantic praying mantis reaching out to crush them in its pincers.
Carter floored the gas pedal again, and the car shot forward as one manipulator arm, tipped with an over-sized circular saw, came down. There was a shower of sparks as the blade struck the pavement, mere inches from the rear bumper. She cut the steering wheel to the right and the robot made another grab for her, but as it did, it veered into the path of the neighboring machine just as it also tried to attack.
The air behind them was filled with an ear-splitting shriek and the crunch of metal being torn apart, as the two machines tried to occupy the same space. Chunks of debris began raining down all around, pelting the back of the sports car, even as Carter cut back the other direction.
The two robots were hopelessly entangled, and after only a few seconds of struggling, they gave up the fight. As the advancing line moved past the wreckage, the others closed ranks, making sure that the road was blocked. And they kept coming.
Carter made a wide sweeping turn, leaving the road surface, crashing through the hedges on the roadside, and carving twin furrows in the lawn like a teenager on a joyride. The tires slipped on the soft ground, spraying out loose dirt as they dug down, looking for something solid to grab onto. The car fishtailed and slid sideways as she fought to maintain control.
When the arc of the turn brought them back around, she straightened the steering wheel and gave the car a little more gas, headed toward the machine moving along on the right side of the pavement. Another human, or an artificial-intelligence capable of strategic thinking, might have realized what she was planning to do and taken steps to head her off, shifting the entire formation to block her. But the construction robots stayed on course, as if daring her to a game of chicken.
When she was still a good fifty feet away, she steered to the side, angling for the wide open gap between the machines and the trees. The robot responded, but its slow, jerky turn gave Carter all the time she needed to zip past.
She then angled the car back toward the pavement. Behind them, the machines were reversing course, but couldn’t keep up with the sleek sports car once she got the tires back on the asphalt.
As they shot down the road, heading back toward the complex of buildings and away from both the array and the wayward construction robots, Carter kept accelerating, winding out each of the gears in the five-speed transmission. As she shifted into fourth, the speedometer was already tipping sixty — miles per hour, not kilometers. Evidently, this ride predated Europe’s embrace of the metric system.
“You know how to drive a stick,” Fallon said. “That’s rare nowadays.”
She shot him an annoyed look. “Are you hitting on me?”
She almost added, My boyfriend won’t like that, but just thinking it reminded her that Erik and the others were all still missing.
“Of course not,” Fallon replied, though the mischievous gleam in his eyes suggested otherwise. “Just noticing.”
Her ability to drive a manual transmission had more to do with necessity than any particular love of driving. She had spent a good part of the last few years in remote parts of Africa, where older vehicles were more common and more reliable — or at least easier to maintain — than the newer, more technologically advanced models. Driving wasn’t a luxury activity for her, it was a necessary thing, and often a matter of survival. Sometimes her own, or sometimes survival for a village full of people a hundred miles out in the bush, desperate for a cure to some tropical disease. That had meant being able to drive whatever was available in any conditions.
Still, Fallon’s car was a pretty sweet ride. She felt kind of bad about what she was going to have to do next.
The turn-off to the garage flashed by. Ahead in the distance, she could just make out the entrance to the compound. “I don’t suppose there’s any way the gate is going to open for us.”
“Probably not,” Fallon admitted.