32

"Agreed," Alexius says. You and he slip through the slumbering village undetected, to the idol, passing controllers. The robots stream, dazed from their spacing-out, back toward the campfire.

There are no guards; Control saw to that. You're able to hop the hedge and peer directly into the idol while Alexius maintains a lookout.

And then a faint green radiance spreads all around you, a light you've seen before. Symbols churn inside the idol, sliding across the walls, but these are not the crooked, broken-looking signs of the False Icon. These symbols are straight and elegant though faint, as if the invisible light that casts them is exhausted.

The symbols turn as one, pinwheeling, and face you and Alexius like ten million eyes.

"Oh," Alexius says, all his usual drollery gone. "That's what makes the idol move and speak. It's an Icon."

Next