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– to become fully human again.”
    The robot emitted a noise like fading static. It took Oleg a moment to realise he was being laughed at.
    “Go home, meat boy. Be on your merry way.”
    “I realise that my offer’s likely to be rejected. But my masters won’t be satisfied until I have the answer from Rhawn herself. She’s here, isn’t she? I won’t take more than a few minutes of her time.”
    “Your timing,” the robot said, “is either very fortuitious or very poor.”
    “My timing is sheer luck,” Oleg said. “Until just now I didn’t even know that Rhawn had joined the Totalists.”
    “She hasn’t.”
    “I was told …”
    “Rhawn has commenced her second crossing. But until it is complete, she will not be one of us. It will happen soon, though. We are confident in the force of her conviction. It is certainly much too late for reversal.”
    “Can I at least talk to her?”
    Again Oleg had the sense that matters were being discussed. Lights flickered and strobed in the cagelike enclosure of the robot’s head. Oleg risked a glance back, satisfying himself that the vehicle and its driver were still there.
    “Rhawn is … receptive,” the robot said. “You will have your audience. But it will be brief. Rhawn has readied herself for the final phase of the crossing. She will not be detained.”
    “I only need an answer.”
    The robot brought him into the encampment. Up close, he saw that it was not as similar to the caravan as he had first assumed. There were hardly any enclosed spaces – just a few sealed modules which may or may not have been airtight. The remainder of the structures – most of them wheeled or skid-mounted, even as they were now parked around the Bone Cathedral – were for the most part skeletal frames. Their roofs were parasols and solar-collectors, their walls either absent or no more than concertina-hinged magnetic screens which could be drawn across when required. Gathered around and inside these treehouse-like forms were many similar-looking robots, lounging or reclining like overfed monkeys. They were plugged into bits of architecture via their abdomens - recharging from stored power, Oleg supposed, or perhaps pushing energy back into the community. There seemed little in the way of artistic creation going on. But perhaps the robots had been furiously preoccupied before his arrival.
    “Is Rhawn one of these?”
    “They are what Rhawn will become. It will not be long now.”
    “You all look the same.”
    “You all look like tinned meat.”
    Through the thicket of skeletal structures Oleg was at last brought to an upright green block the size of a small house. It was a round-ended cylinder that might once have been a fuel tank or reactor chamber, before being anchored to a moving platform and gristled over with access ladders, catwalks and power conduits. In contrast to its surroundings this dumpy, windowless flask seemed entirely enclosed. Oleg’s robot host spidered up a ladder and looked down as Oleg completed his clumsy ascent. The robot opened a door in the side of the chamber, then stood aside to allow Oleg to pass through first.
    It was not an airlock, for the interior of the green flask was still depressurised. Oleg had emerged onto a platform running around the circumference of the interior, with a circular gap in the middle. Supported in the chamber’s middle, with a large part of it beneath the level of the platform, was a hefty piece of biomedical machinery. Many cables and pipes ran into the upright, wasp-shaped assemblage. Three robots, much like his host, were stationed around the machinery at what Oleg took to be control pedestals. They were not moving, but the robots had plugged in to the pedestals via their abdomens. Oleg presumed that they were directing whatever complicated procedure was going on inside the machine.
    The wasp-shaped machine culminated in a glass dome. Inside the glass was a beaked and goggled head much like that of Gris, except that