They passed classrooms and a vast gymnasium, on their way up to the dormitories—
“Tyros!” shouted Finn, as a crowd of vile teenagers, steaming and dripping wet snow from some exercise on the slopes, burst into the Forum and began to pound their way up towards them. They were all ages and sizes and they piled past them into the dorms, shoving and snarling at each other, beating the warmth back into their flesh, many with swollen and bloodshot eyes. Olga and Carla pushed round their cart and picked up discarded fatigues as the Tyros stripped down, shameless, and struggled into red uniforms that made them look like inmates of some asylum.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Finn said as Carla worked the room.
“We can’t just run, if we get caught we kill Carriers,” she muttered back.
“Maybe the Primo’s bluffing? Maybe he’s on some kind of power kick?” said Finn.
“He’s proud, that’s all,” said Carla. “We have to find another way. We need help.”
“Santiago!” suggested Finn. “Maybe he can find Yo-yo’s collar!”
“Out on the mountain? That would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. And he’d never go without the Primo’s say-so,” said Carla, dodging Tyros as they strode back out of the dorms.
Finn took in the reds of their eyes.
“Then we have to find the infirmary, check out these NRP machines,” said Finn.
When they did finally arrive at the infirmary, they wished they hadn’t.
A dozen Tyros were laid out on gurneys, fanned out in a circle like the petals of a flower around a large console in the centre. Wires led from the console to the heads of each Tyro. And out of each swollen eye, of each Tyro, stuck a probe that had been driven straight through the eye and deep into the brain.
The sight made Carla want to retch.
“NRP …” said Finn.
Two medics attended the stricken Tyros and made adjustments at the console (Finn could see the screen as plain as day – this place had technology, this place had electricity!) and a snake of cables led down from the console directly through an opening in the floor.
As they rolled the empty laundry cart back out, Carla said, “It will never be spring in this place.”
“There were computers back there,” said Finn. “Electricity fed from the Caverns, like the Primo said. We have to get down there. There must be something we can use to sound the alarm.”
“But I’m a Carrier, and Carriers are banned,” said Carla.
“Who said anything about Carriers?”
FEBRUARY 20 15:10 (GMT). Grandma’s house, Buckinghamshire, UK
The two young teenagers convulsed, dancing, as the digital beat drove home the vocal loop for the umpteenth time.
“Love dance. Love dance. Love dance dance dance dance – robot …”
Li Jun’s sharp black hair flicked and flew, her body throwing the weirdest shapes, while Hudson headbanged off the beat, holding onto his glasses.
Grandma sat and knitted and resisted the urge to yell, “Turn the bloody thing down!”
FEBRUARY 20 15:11 (GMT). Hook Hall, Surrey, UK
Via CCTV, Al and the Scarlatti crew and his technical team watched them dance.
“That girl can kick it,” observed Delta.
“Truly,” said Al.
The dance-offs with Hudson seemed to free Li Jun’s mind and send her back to the model-making refreshed. To help, Al had put together a playlist of dad-dance classics, though tragically she preferred what Al called “Hudson crap”.
Love dance robot climaxed and Hudson and Li Jun collapsed, giggling, onto the sofas.
“Time for a cup of tea, I think,” said Grandma through the kitchen hatch.
“Mum, don’t move! Let it happen naturally,” insisted Al over the comms.
“But it’s teatime?”
“Hey! No structure, no timetable.” He was convinced his new, non-rational “intuitive” theory explained Li Jun’s breakthrough. “Instinct over intellect, remember? Let’s just set the parameters and let her play.”
“They shouldn’t be stuck in front of screens all day – it’s unhealthy,” Grandma complained, ignoring him to go and put the kettle on and look for Welsh cakes.
In the living room, Li Jun turned back to her task. One wall was now full of screens linked to Hook Hall. For the last four hours, she had worked away at the Minecraft model, just as she used to sit working away for Kaparis. Hudson’s role was to lie on the sofa pretending to be in an iron lung.
The results, being pored over by Al and the technicians, were fractured 3D chunks of some extraordinary building – staircases, passages, a hall, fireplaces, a battlement – populated by hundreds of stick figures. But what did it all add up to? A prison? A castle? Architectural databases had thrown up thousands of possible matches, occupied and derelict, across the world. Way down on the list at number 2,453 was the Monastery of Mount St Demetrius of Thessaloniki.
“Let’s ask her to work on the surrounding landscape again,” said Commander King, convinced that the floating structures would make more sense in context.
“She just does clouds,” said Stubbs.
“Let her follow her own path,” said Al firmly.
Li Jun began to work again on what they thought of as the “courtyard” structure, adding detail to the walls and the beginning of a door.
“Maybe she’s just playing Minecraft …” grumbled Kelly.
“Come on, Li Jun!” said Delta, as if she could snap her out of it by force of will.
Commander King looked again at the structures and began to wonder.
“What troubles me is it’s too big … Look at how many figures she’s drawn. Imagine having to support all those people. Every one of them is a security risk. Haven’t they got homes to go to, bars to drink in, phone calls to make …?”
Al stared at the figures too, at the stone walls, at the fireplaces and candlesticks … Then he looked around the control gallery, at its lighting and stacks of computers and glittering screens.
“She hasn’t drawn a single screen, a single phone, a single piece of hardware. There are no lights even …” said Al, thinking hard.
“So?” said Kelly.
“So they’re off-grid!” said Al.
“Off-grid?” said Delta.
“I mean, living slow – no communications, no Internet, no conventional power. Goodbye modernity – hello total isolation.”
“Total security,” added Commander King.
“Rank all the possible locations by geographical isolation,” said Al to one of the technicians.
Moments later, on the new list, the Monastery of Mount St Demetrius of Thessaloniki had shot up – to number