Chapter 152: Batnac laughs
For a moment, the only sound in the room was the soft hum of the machines.
"Is that why you began your search in the west, master?"
"It is why I began here. In the west, a search takes an afternoon. In the south, it would take weeks, and all I would find is the same nothing the Association has already found." He shook his head.
"They have sent their own people through Ranxdale twice, and they came back with a pile of forms. That tells me exactly how seriously I should take their opinion."
"And if he is not in the west, master?"
"Then I widen the circle." Batnac’s smile returned, thinner than before. "After this continent, I take the next one. I will ship drones across the sea in crates and build relay towers on the coasts. I will seed their cities one at a time, and I will complain about every single one of them."
"Master, the calculations for global coverage have finished," the service unit said. "A full deployment would take eleven months and require four hundred thousand additional drones."
"Then I will build four hundred thousand additional drones."
"The cost would be considerable, master."
"I do not care what it costs." He said it plainly, without any of the showmanship he had worn all morning.
"I told you that I would find him no matter the price, and I meant every word. If the west gives me nothing, I will take the next continent, and if that gives me nothing, I will take the one after it."
"He can run until he reaches the end of the world, and I will still be right behind him."
"That would be extremely stressful, master."
"Terribly stressful," Batnac agreed cheerfully. "I will skip my meals, my tea will go cold, and I will be rude to everyone I meet. But I will do it."
"Master, the Association has offered one million gold for his death. You have never once mentioned the money."
"The money is the Association’s reason." He glanced at the shelf where the small gray envelope sat between the spare robot arms. "It was never mine."
He walked back to his chair, sat down, and raised both hands in front of him like a conductor returning to his orchestra.
"Enough talking. The grey cities have waited long enough." He pointed at the nine dull spots on the map. "Merge the drone feeds into the scan, and begin with those."
"Merging, master. Estimated time is forty seconds."
Along the walls, the lenses of every robot brightened, and the hum in the room deepened until it rattled the metal plates beneath the floor. On the map, a thin red haze began to creep toward the nine grey cities.
Batnac watched it crawl across the screen, and the smile on his face turned sharp.
"Let us see how well he hides when the sky’s, which is my great self of course, haha, is the one looking for him."
The forty seconds passed slowly, because Batnac had never learned how to wait quietly.
He drummed his fingers on the armrest, then on the steel table, then on the chest plate of the nearest robot, which stood perfectly still and bore it with the patience of a machine that had no choice.
When he grew tired of drumming, he started humming a marching tune that he had written himself.
He stopped halfway through when he noticed that the service unit had begun keeping time with its wheels.
"Master," the service unit said, "a question has occurred to me."
"Only one?" Batnac lowered his hand. "I am disappointed. Go on."
"Which of the nine grey cities do you expect to light up first?"
"Ah." He rubbed his palms together. "Now we are having fun. Put the nine on the screen."
The map zoomed in until the nine grey points hung in the middle of the wall, with the red haze creeping toward them from every direction like a slow tide. Batnac walked up to the screen and tapped three of the points with one metal finger.
"These are mining towns," he said.
"That is where criminals go when they want to be left alone, because nobody in a mining town asks questions as long as you can lift a pickaxe."
"These two are port cities, where a man can lose himself in the crowd and board a ship whenever he likes."
"Of the last four, two are sleepy towns that nobody has ever had a reason to visit, one is a village called Ratdale that I have never heard of, and the last is Aldreth, which is a capital city crawling with guild offices and Association clerks. Nobody hides in a place like that."
"Where would you hide, master?"
"I would never need to hide, but if I were a stupid bastard who had just killed his father, I would pick the mines." He sniffed. "A boy like that crawls into the darkest hole he can find."
"But from what I heard... he’s not weak master."
"Hmph, whatever, he is a fool and I will catch him there instead." Batnac grinned over his shoulder. "Either way, I win. That is the beauty of being me."
"Logged as overconfident, master."
"Log it as accurate."
"Both entries have been saved."
On the map, the red haze reached the first of the grey points and swallowed it. A line of text appeared beside the town’s name.
[Mining town. No match.]
Batnac clicked his tongue. "Naturally. He would not be so obvious."
The haze rolled over the second mining town a few seconds later, and then the third.
[No match.]
[No match.]
"You see?" Batnac said. "They are digging holes in the ground, and he is nowhere near them. My guess was a good one, and the world simply refused to cooperate."
The haze crept across the two port cities in turn, and neither of them had anything to say for itself.
Batnac’s smile held steady, though his finger had begun tapping against his arm again. One of the sleepy towns came back clean, and then the other.
"Seven cities resolved, master," the service unit said. "No matches in any of them."
"Good." Batnac sounded cheerful. "That means he is farther out, and the real work begins. We widen the circle, and I will ask Unit Twenty-One to—"
A sharp, high tone rang out through the room.
It was not a gentle chime like the ones the machines used when they finished a scan. This tone was loud and shrill, and it bounced off the metal walls and rattled the cups on the shelf.
Every robot along the walls twitched at the same moment. Two of the cleaning units dropped what they were carrying and spun in a circle.
Batnac stopped in the middle of his sentence.
On the map, two points of light that had been grey a moment ago were burning red.
The first was a small point near the edge of the haze, and the second was a much larger one that pulsed so brightly that it seemed to leave a trail across the screen. Text blazed beside both of them.
[Match detected: Leon Allistar.]
[Match detected: Leon Allistar.]
For a long moment, Batnac did not move at all.
His grin was still on his face, but it had stopped being a smile and had turned into something stiff, like a mask that someone had forgotten to take off. The arm that had been tapping a moment earlier hung in the air, and one of his eyes twitched.
"Say that again," he said.
"A match has been detected, master," the service unit said. "Subject: Leon Allistar. Two locations."
"Where?"
"The first is a small town called Ratdale. The second is the city of Aldreth."
"Aldreth," Batnac repeated slowly.
He walked toward the wall as if he were afraid the map would run away if he moved too quickly. He stopped in front of the great red point and stared up at it, and the glow from the screen washed over his pale face.
"That is the capital of Berx," he said. "That is not even two hundred kilometers from where I am standing."
"One hundred and sixty-one, master."
"That is the capital of Berx!" His voice rose. "I sit in this house every day, and it is only a short flight away!"
"Master, would you like Unit Twenty-One to verify the result?"
"Verify it. Verify it twice. I do not want to hear a word from anyone until it is verified."
Unit Twenty-One unfolded from the charging rack and stalked across the floor on its long legs, with the glass dome on its head already glowing.
A dozen thin arms spread out from its chest, and a ring of blue light swept across the map in a slow circle.
The robots along the walls waited in complete silence, and for the first time that morning, Batnac did not try to fill it.
"Verification complete, master," the analysis unit said at last.
"The signature in Ratdale is five days old and weak, which is consistent with a person passing through."
"The signature in Aldreth is much stronger and is spread across the city. The freshest sample was collected by a drone above the old district less than an hour ago."
"Less than an hour."
"Yes, master. Confidence level is ninety-six percent."
"Ninety-six." Batnac let the number roll around in his mouth. "And the other four percent?"
"The other four percent is the possibility that he has a twin, master."
"He does have a twin," Batnac said. "It is Yeon Allistar, and he is in the south. Unit Twenty-One, you have just made a joke."
"I did not intend to, master."
"I will pretend that you did."
Then a laugh began somewhere deep inside his chest. It was small at first, and he tried to swallow it, but it grew until it forced its way out of his mouth, and a moment later he was laughing so hard that he had to lean one metal hand against the wall to stay upright.