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here.’
    Nicolas felt uneasy. He knew the Raman lived in the mountains. He knew they were expert at this sort of fighting. Nicolas thought about this, Nicolas dredged his memory.
    ‘Anyone here got a nose?’ he asked.
    ‘I have,’ said a woman nearby, still gazing at the ceiling along the length of her rifle.
    ‘What can you smell?’
    The woman paused, sniffing.
    ‘Organics. A lot of them. Petrol.’
    ‘ Zuse! ’ swore Nicolas.
    ‘Hey, they’re retreating!’
    ‘Of course they are. It’s a . . .’
    The world exploded. The petroleum vapour with which the Raman had been flooding the cavern ignited and sucked up all the oxygen. Nicolas was left standing in a near-vacuum.
    His electromuscles were weak and shrivelled.
    His brain hurt.
    He was deaf; the delicate connections in his ears had burned away.
    His casing was so hot that it glowed blue-white.
    The Raman were charging now. Only a dozen of them, but more than enough to defeat his weakened, crippled squad.
    The Raman had long bodies plated in chrome. They carried short, sharp awls in their fists, held low, ready to punch up beneath a robot’s chin, right up into the brain.
    ‘Stand firm,’ said Nicolas.
    Fourteen robots formed up in line. They dropped their rifles, barrels breached after the ammunition had exploded in the blast, they drew out their knives, held them in hands over which plastic had melted and dripped away. Held them weakly in their glowing hands. Still the Raman came, metal feet pounding on the stone floor. But now the Raman paused and put away their awls. They turned, looked back, fear crossing their faces.
    ‘What is it?’ asked someone.
    ‘I don’t know,’ said Nicolas. And then they, too, felt it and heard it. A trickle of water. A stream. A torrent of water released from somewhere, bearing down upon them. Flashing white foam on dark water, set free in the petroleum explosion, released from some other cave by the cracking of the walls.
    It engulfed the Raman, swept them before it. And then it engulfed Nicolas and his squad, still glowing blue-white hot from the burning petrol.
    The pain was like a shaft of lightning.
    The pain was almost beyond endurance.
    Hot metal steamed and then cooled too quickly. It snapped tight around robot bodies, it crystallized, hard and brittle. The world was full of the crash of water, and Nicolas’s squad was sent tumbling down through the earth, pushed deeper and deeper down caves and passageways, all spinning and crashing as they went. They bashed against rocks, and metal that had been heated and cooled too quickly shattered. Brain casing splintered and twisted wire unravelled and sent minds spilling and then untangling into nothing more than so much metal.
    Bashing and crashing, tumbling and swirling. Dizzy and hurting. Gradually the motion slowed down, and the percussion of the unheard noise died away, and Nicolas was left beached on cold stone, his body dented and aching.
    Other men and women lay around him, along with broken and shattered parts from dead robots. Water dripped from metal onto stone.
    People began to stir. Nicolas looked around in anguish. There were no other Artemisians there present, only Raman.
    Nicolas rose unsteadily to his feet. His balance felt off. He needed to strip apart his body and get a close look at the gyroscopes, but he didn’t have time. The Raman soldiers had noticed him. They were already pointing in his direction.
    ‘Hey,’ said Nicolas. ‘I surrender.’
    They were looking at him oddly. Pointing to the dented casing around his body. Nicolas looked down and saw why.
    He had changed. In the light from his own eyes, his body shone with a dull grey lustre.
    Nicolas began to twist this way and that, examining himself.
    The few Raman who had managed to hold onto them drew out their awls, short and wickedly cruel. They began to advance on Nicolas. Poor, weakened Nicolas, his electromuscles shrivelled by the heat.
    Three, no, four Raman soldiers, all badly dented by