*Way to go yet, brother,' Sunday said.

Before very long they were aboard one of the rovers, gliding away from the embarkation structure. The rover had six huge openwork wheels, the powdery soil sifting through them in constant grey cataracts. As the rover traversed a boulder, the wheels deformed to ensure the transit was as smooth as possible. The driver a and there was a driver, not just a machine a clearly took a gleeful delight in heading directly for the worst of these obstacles. She was sitting up front, hands on joysticks, dreadlocked scalp nodding to private music.

Soon the buildings receded to a clot of coloured lights, and not long after, they fell over the horizon. Now the only illumination came from the moving glow of the rover's canopy and the very occasional vehicle passing in the other direction.

*I thought I'd be picking up full aug signals by now,' Geoffrey said. With the bubble canopy packed to capacity, the three of them were strap-hanging. His aug icon still showed a broken globe.

*You're still in the Zone,' Sunday said. *Think of this as a tongue sticking out, with a little micro-Zone at one end of it. There's no Mech here, just our stripped-down private aug. Even if the Surveilled World could reach us here, we'd put in our own jamming systems.'

In the absence of airglow it came as a surprise to summit a slight rise and suddenly be overlooking an amphitheatre of blazing light: a kilometre-wide crater repurposed as arena, with pressurised galleries sunk back into its inner wall. Spherical, hooded viewing pods resembled so many goggling eyeballs, linked by the fatty optic nerves of umbilical connecting tunnels. The rover passed through an excavated cleft in the crater wall, then drove around the perimeter.

Geoffrey pushed to the window. Huge machines littered the ground, beached by some vast Selenean tide. Worms or maggots or centipedes: segmented, with plates of deftly interlocking body armour and ranks of powerful tractor limbs running down the lengths of their submarine-sized bodies. They had chewing mouths, drilling probosces, fierce grappling and ripping devices. The ghosts of sprayed-on emblems survived here and there, almost worn away by abrasion where the machines had rolled over on their sides or scuffed against each other. Vivid silvery scars, not yet tarnished by the chemical changes caused by cosmic ray strikes, betokened fresh injury.

The machines lying around the perimeter were being worked on, readied for combat. Service gantries and cherry pickers had been rolled up, and suited figures were repairing damage or effecting subtle design embellishments with vacuum welding gear. There must have been at least twenty machines, and that wasn't counting those located further into the arena, lying side by side or bent around each other, mostly in pairs. Geoffrey presumed this was a lull between bouts, since nothing much appeared to be happening.

*I'm guessing these machines weren't originally made for your fun and games,' he said to Jitendra.

*Heavy-duty mining and tunnelling equipment,' Jitendra said. *Too beat-up or slow for the big companies to keep using, so they sell it off to us for little more than scrap value.'

Geoffrey laughed. *And this is the most productive thing you could think of doing with them?'

*It's a damn sight better than staging real wars,' Sunday said.

*This is mine,' Jitendra said as they drove past one of the waiting combatants. *Or rather, I have a quarter stake in it, and I get to drive it when my turn comes around.'

If anything it looked a little more battle-scarred than its neighbours, with chunks nibbled out of its side-plating exposing a vile gristle of hydraulics, control ducting and power cables. Plexus's nerve-node emblem was faint on the machine's side.

*She's taken a few hits,' Jitendra explained, superfluously.

*Do you . . . get inside it?'

*Fuck, no.' Jitendra stared at Geoffrey as if he'd lost his mind. *For a start, these things are dirty a they're running nuclear reactors from the Stone Age. Also, there's no room inside them. Also, it's incredibly dangerous, being inside one robot while another robot's trying to smash yours to pieces.'

*I suppose it would be,' Geoffrey said. *So a when does it all start?'

Jitendra looked at him askance. *I beg your pardon?'

*I mean, when does the fighting begin?'

*It already has, brother,' Sunday said. *They're fighting now. Out there. At this very moment.'

When the rover docked, they took him up into one of the private viewing pods. It contained a bar and a semicircle of normal seats, grouped around eight cockpits: partially enclosed chairs, big and bulky as ejector seats, their pale-green frames plastered with advertising decals and peeling warning stickers. Five people were already strapped in, with transcranial stimulation helmets lowered over their skulls.

*Geoffrey,' Sunday said, *I'd like you to meet June Wing. June a this is my brother, up from Africa.'

*Pleased to meet you, Geoffrey.'

June Wing was a demure Chinese woman in a floor-length black skirt and maroon business jacket over a pearl blouse, with a silver clasp at the neck. Her grey-white hair was neatly combed and pinned, her expression grave. The look, Geoffrey concluded, was too disciplinarian to be unintentional. She wanted to project authoritarian firmness.

They shook hands. Her flesh was cold and rubbery. Another golem, then, although whether it was fixed form or claybot was impossible to determine.

*We sponsor Jitendra's team,' June said. *I can't normally find time to make it to the tournaments, but today's an exception. I see you're here in the flesh a how's your trip been so far?'

*Very enjoyable,' Geoffrey said, which was not entirely a lie.

*Sunday told me you're working on elephant cognition. What are your objectives?'

Geoffrey blinked at the directness of June Wing's interrogation. *Well, there are a number of different avenues.'

*The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, or towards some practical goal?'

*Both, I hope.'

*I've just pulled up your pubs list. Considering you work alone, in what might be considered a less than fashionable area, you have a reasonable impact factor.'

Reasonable. Geoffrey thought it was a lot better than reasonable.

*Perhaps you should come and work for Plexus,' June Wing said.

*Well, I-'

*You have obligations back home.'

*Yes.'

*We're very interested in minds, Geoffrey. Not just in the studying of mental processes, but in the deeper mysteries. What does another mind think? What does it feel? When I think of the colour red, does my perception tally with yours? When we claim to be feeling happy or sad, are we really experiencing the same emotions?'

*The qualia problem.'

*We think it's tractable. Direct mind-to-mind process correlation. A cognitive gate. Wouldn't that be something?'

*It would,' he admitted. June Wing clearly had more than a passing understanding of his work, or had deduced the thrust of it from a cursory review of his publications list. He was inclined to believe the latter, but with that came an unsettling implication.

He must be talking to one of the cleverest people he'd ever met.

How would it feel to be in the same room as her, not just a robot copy?

*Well, you know how to reach me if you ever decide to broaden your horizons. First time at Robot Wars?'

*Yes. Doesn't seem to be much going on, though. Is it always like this?' He felt even more certain of this now. Across the arena, the pairs of machines hadn't moved to any obvious degree since he had seen them from the rover.

*Only one of the operators is actually driving a robot right now,' June Wing said. *The other four are spectating, or helping with the power-up tests on one of the backup machines. The rival operators a our competitors a are in the other viewing pods.'

*But nothing's happening.'

*They're tunnel-boring machines,' Jitendra said. *They're built to gnaw through lunar bedrock, not set land-speed records.'

Even as he spoke, Jitendra was lowering himself into one of the vacant cockpits. He reached up and tugged the transcranial stimulator down, nestling it onto his skull.

*We can't speed up the 'bots,' he went on, *but we can slow ourselves down. Even your best civilian implants don't mess with the brain at a level deep enough to upset the perception of time, so we need some extra assistance. Hence, direct stimulation of the basal cortex. That and some slightly naughty deep-level neurochemical intervention-'

*As always, I'll pretend I didn't hear that,' June Wing said.

Jitendra slipped his wrists into heavy medical cuffs attached to the frame of the chair. *They'd throw a fit in the Surveilled World. But of course, we're not in the Surveilled World now . . . and that doesn't preclude outside sponsorship, or external spectators. There's money to be earned, reputations to be made and lost.'

*I guess the Plexus sponsorship helps,' Geoffrey said.

*It's not just advertising,' June Wing said. *There is some actual R&D going on here. The robots have human drivers but they also have their own onboard battle minds, constantly trying to find a decisive strategy, a goal-winning solution they can offer to the pilot.'

*OK, here it comes,' Jitendra said, closing his eyes. *Slowdown's beginning to take hold. Wish me . . .' He stalled between words. *. . . luck.'

And then he was out, as lifelessly inert as the other drivers. Not unconscious, but decelerated into the awesomely slow sensorium of the robot, out in the arena.

*He's driving her now,' Sunday said, pointing to the robot Jitendra was controlling. *You can just see the movement if you compare the ground shadow against the one from the support gantry.'

*What do you do when you want some real excitement a race slugs against each other?'

*Life moves pretty quickly if you are a slug,' June Wing admonished. *It's just a question of perceptual reference frames.' She gestured to one of the vacant cockpits. *Geoffrey can spectate, if he wishes. I have a reserved slot, but I'll pass for today.'

*I'm carrying some fairly specialised aug hardware,' Geoffrey said, meaning the equipment he needed to link to Matilda.

*Nothing will be damaged, brother, I promise you,' Sunday said.

*And if it is, my own labs will soon put it right,' June Wing said, with breezy indifference to his concerns. *So jump right in.'

Geoffrey was still wary, but another part of him wanted to get as much out of his Lunar experience as possible.

*You need to take a leak?' Sunday asked. *You're going to be in that thing for at least six hours.'

Geoffrey consulted his bladder. *I'll cope. I didn't drink too much coffee this morning.'

Sunday helped him into the vacant cockpit. *The cuffs will be analysing your blood a any signs of stress, above and beyond normal competition levels, and the system will yank you out. Same for the transcranial stim. It's read/write. There's not much that can go wrong.'

*Not much.'

Sunday cocked her head to one side, appearing to think for a moment. *Well, there was that one guy . . .' She lowered the transcranial helmet, adjusting it carefully into position. *You were doing this at competition level, we'd cut back those curls to get the probe closer to your skin, but you'll be fine for spectating.'

Aug status messages flashed into his visual field, informing him that an external agent was affecting his neural function. The implants offered to resist the intrusion. He voked them into acquiescence.

*So what happened to that one guy?'

*Nothing much,' Sunday said breezily. *Just that being in the cockpit permanently reset his internal clock. Even after they withdrew the stim and the drugs, he was stuck on arena time.'

*How's he doing now?'

*Thing is, he hasn't got back to us on that one yet.'

The cuffs dropped their painless fangs into his skin. Two cold touches, neurochemicals sluicing in, and he felt himself sliding, tobogganing down an ever steepening slope. He made to grab onto the sides of the cockpit for support, but his arms, even his fingers, felt sheathed in granite.

Then the rushing sensation ebbed and he felt perfectly still, amniotically calm. Something had failed, he decided.

*All right,' Sunday said. *What you're hearing now is me slowed down into your perceptual frame. You've already been in the cockpit for twenty minutes.'

*I don't believe you,' Geoffrey said.

*Make that twenty-one. June and I are off to the bar now; be back in a second or two. We'll begin piping direct imagery into your head. Enjoy the show.'

He was almost ready not to believe her. But the digits in his tourist visa were whirring at superfast speed.

Geoffrey's perceptions took a savage lurch and he was suddenly out there, disembodied, able to roam at will in the ching space of the arena. Jitendra's robot wasn't crawling now; it was propelling itself in convulsive jerks, tractor claws threshing, body sections pistoning back and forth like some heavy industrial mechanism that had escaped its shackles. Lunar soil, disturbed by the robot's passage, collapsed back into itself as if composed of molten lead, under Jupiter's immense gravity.

Around the arena's perimeter, a frenzy of blurred motion attended the waiting machines. Elsewhere, dual combatants were locked in titanic wrestling matches, writhing and thrashing to the death.

Jitendra's opponent crossed the graded soil like a demented iron maggot. It differed from Jitendra's robot in its details but was of a comparable size, equipped with a broadly similar range of offensive devices. On its flanks, in luminous red, shone the Escher triangle logo of MetaPresence, Plexus's main competitor in ching facilitation and proxy robotics. The nerve-node emblem on Jitendra's machine was now similarly bright and unfaded, painted over the image by the aug. Accompanying these overlays were a host of statistics and technical readouts, speculating at the likely efficacies of armour, weapons and combat tactics.

The two robots halted at the laser-scribed circle of combat. Articulating two-thirds of the way down their bodies a they had been designed to steer during tunnel-boring operations a the robots reared up and bowed to each other. Agonising minutes must have passed in real-time as this martial ritual was observed.

The engagement was as sudden and brutal as a pair of sumo wrestlers charging into each other. At first, Jitendra's machine appeared to have the upper hand. It flexed itself around the enemy, using rows of tractor limbs to gain purchase, sinking their sharpened tips into gaps in armour plating. Articulating its head end, it brought the whirring nightmare of its circular cutting teeth into play. As they contacted its opponent's alloy head, molten metal fountained away on neon-bright parabolas. Reflecting Jitendra's initial success a and the changing spread-patterns of bets a the statistics shifted violently in his favour.

It didn't last. Even as Jitendra's robot was chewing into it, the other robot had retaliatory ambitions. Halfway down its body, armoured panels hinged open like pupal wings, allowing complex cutting machinery to scissor out. Servo-driven vacuum cutters began to burn into the belly of Jitendra's robot, clamped into place with traction claws. A kind of peristaltic wave surged up the body of the assaulted machine, as if it was experiencing actual pain. It relinquished its hold, bending its body away, disengaging the whirling vortex of its cutting teeth. The stats updated. Pink vapour jetted at arterial speed from the wound that had been cut into the side of Jitendra's robot: some kind of nuclear coolant or hydraulic fluid, bleeding into space.

The two machines rolled away from each other. The enemy retracted its cutter, the body armour folding back into place. Jitendra's machine staunched its blood loss. Stalemate ensued for objective seconds, before the resumption of combat. The enemy twisted its head assembly and locked on with clutching mouthparts, horrible girder-thick barbed mechanisms. It was chewing a drilling, tunnelling a into Jitendra's robot, metal and machine bits spraying away from the cutting head. From the rear of the enemy machine, from its iron anus, a grey plume of processed matter emerged. It was chewing, eating, digesting, defecating, all in mere seconds. Jitendra's stats were now dismal and falling.

But he wasn't finished. The enemy bit into something it couldn't process as easily as moon rock: some high-pressure jugular. Bad for Jitendra, even worse for the machine trying to eat him for dinner. The enemy jolted, regurgitating a large quantity of chewed-up machine parts. Mouth-mechanisms spasmed and flopped as a wave of damage ripped through its guts. Jitendra's machine twisted sharply out of reach. It had been bitten into around the neckline, but its whirling drills were still racing. It reared up like a striking cobra and hammered down on the enemy. Machine parts skittered away in all directions, cratering the arena. Now it was time for Jitendra's machine to spring out additional grasping and cutting devices, hull plates popping open like frigate gun doors. Jitendra's stats rallied.

But this wasn't going to be a victory for either machine. The enemy was wounded, perhaps fatally, but so was Jitendra's charge. Its drill parts were not turning as furiously as they had been only a few moments before. And its entire body was sagging, no longer able to support itself off the ground even against the feeble pull of the Moon's gravity. When the end came, it did so with startling suddenness. Jitendra's machine simply dropped dead, as if it had been pulled to the ground by invisible wires. For a moment the enemy machine made a valiant attempt to regain the advantage, but it was in vain. It too had suffered catastrophic systems failures. Like a deflating balloon, it collapsed to the ground and fell into pathetic corpselike stillness.

In a flash, recovery teams arrived. Tractors shot out from silos. Tiny figures a frantic space-suited Lilliputians a swarmed out of the tractors and bound the fallen monsters in drag-harnesses, cobwebbing them from head to tail with comical speed. The figures buzzed around and then vanished into the tractors again, as if they'd been sucked back inside. The tractors lugged the dead machines to the arena's perimeter, gouging runway-sized skid marks in the soil.

That was the end of the bout. Geoffrey knew because he was being pulled back into real-time. He felt the chemicals metabolising out of his bloodstream. The visa digits slowed their tumble. The transcranial stim was over, the helmet rising back away from his head.

*Well?' Sunday asked, standing over his reclining form. *What did you think?'

For a moment his mouth wouldn't work.

*How long was I under?' he managed.

*Four and a half hours. June's gone back to work.'

If she was lying, then so was the visa.

*I guess everyone says the same thing. It didn't feel like it.'

*That was a short bout, as they go. Seven, eight hours isn't unusual,' Sunday answered, pushing a drink into his hand. *Twelve, thirteen, even that wouldn't be out of the ordinary.'

His neck had developed an unpleasant crick. Jitendra, who was being hauled from his cockpit, had the wiped-out, dehydrated look of a racing-car driver. Friends and associates were already mobbing him, patting his back and making sympathetic bad-show faces.

*I'm sorry,' Geoffrey said, teetering over to Jitendra. *I thought it was going your way for a while there. Not that I'm an expert or anything.'