Faraday lowered his mechanical arms, stepped forward and said, “You are mistaken, I am not Cribbot, I am Faraday. You are Tamrus Turanion?”

“Yes,” Tamrus said, his narrow yellow eyes staring curiously at Faraday.

Sensing Tamrus wasn’t a threat, Zach lowered his arms and the others copied. The other Boulder men now stood to attention, their staffs held firmly by their sides.

“Who are these others?” Tamrus asked Faraday.

“They are my friends,” he said.

Then looking back at Faraday, Tamrus said with a wry smile, “So if you’re not my friend Der Cribbot, who are you?”

“A question I have recently been asking myself,” Faraday replied, again showing no emotion.

“You look half ACT-Droid and half…” Tamrus mused peering through the semi darkness at Faraday. Then, making a rasping noise in the back of his throat, he said, “You did it, you really did it!”

“Did what?” Faraday asked him, his dead, black eyes fixed on Tamrus.

“You created a mechanical man, Der Cribbot,” Tamrus gasped, the gills on either side of his head opening and closing.

“My name is Faraday,” he said again.

“Your name is Der Cribbot, you fool!” Tamrus croaked as if laughing.

“My name is Faraday,” he said flatly.

“You did it – you actually did it,” Tamrus said, his voice sounding dry and cracked. “I heard rumours – but you know what the Outer-Rim is like. Not for one minute did I think you would be foolish enough to…Well I never!” he said, reaching out and poking Faraday’s skin with one bony finger. “You did it.”

“What did he do?” Zach asked, stepping forward and feeling confused by what Tamrus was suggesting.

“Der Cribbot turned himself into a mechanical man,” Tamrus said. “That’s what he did, dear boy.”

“But his name is Faraday,” Zach breathed looking at the mechanical man standing beside him.

Tamrus looked at both of them, then at his soldiers. After some thought, he raised his staff above his head, then brought it hammering down into the ground. The light set in it glared brightly and lit up the whole cavern.

“All aboard the Scorpion Steam!” he roared, making his way back towards the weird-looking train.

“You can’t just leave us,” Zach shouted after him. “You have to explain.”

“I will,” Tamrus said, looking back. “But not here and now, it won’t take long for those dead peacekeepers to figure out what happened to you, and they’ll send reinforcements. We need to get far away from here.”

“Where are you taking us?” William barked, stepping forward.

“A Noxas,” Tamrus said, his cracked face forming something close to a smile. “How wonderful! I’m taking you through the Craggy Canyon, to the furthest reaches of the Outer-Rim.” Then he was gone, disappearing up the steps and into the weird-looking train.

Neanna looked at Zach, and then with a swish of her long, raven hair, she turned and made her way after Tamrus. Zach, with the others close at her heels, followed Neanna up the steps and boarded the train.

The brakes were released in a flurry of smoke. The Scorpion Steam screeched, its tail flicked backwards, tore up the track that lay behind it, and slammed it down in front. The door to the train slammed shut, sealing Zach and his friends inside. The Scorpion Steam scurried along the track and into the darkness of the awaiting tunnel, a plume of thick, black smoke billowing up from it.

Chapter Thirty

The inside of the Scorpion Steam was lavishly furnished, with large, high-backed chairs that appeared to have been crafted from some pale blue hide. Between the rows of seats sat tables, which were covered with intricately weaved cloths. On each table stood an array of beautifully carved candles, which burned red and bathed the carriage in a warm glow.

In the next carriage along, Zach could see into the scorpion’s head, which doubled as the engine room. Two of the Boulder men, who were stripped to the waist, hurriedly threw shovel after shovel load of rocks into a seething furnace, and the Scorpion Steam screamed and picked up speed. Even though the heat inside the engine room must have been intolerable for the two Boulder men, their skin looked dry and arid, whereas another’s would have been dripping with sweat.

The continuous ‘thud-thud’ sound as the machine ripped up the track from behind and slammed it down could still be heard, but from within the train, it lost some of its deafening quality.

Tamrus sat opposite Faraday, while Zach, Neanna, William, and Bom sat around an adjacent table. Zach watched how the candlelight flickered on and off in Faraday’s black eyes.

“So what’s with the train?” Zach asked Tamrus, curious to know how it worked.

“I’m not sure that I understand your question?” Tamrus said.

Tamrus smiled at Zach, his ears flapped open and closed as if drawing the sound of the boy’s words into his head. “It’s designed so our enemies can’t see where we have come from, and more importantly, where we are going!”

Zach thought about this for a moment, and then said, “Whoa, that’s real clever! Who came up with the idea?”

“He did,” Tamrus said, pointing across the table at Faraday with one brittle-looking finger.

“I’m Faraday,” he said.

“Can’t he change his song,” Bom grumbled, and stuck his empty pipe in the corner of his mouth.

William and Neanna glared at him, and Bom turned to look out of the window built into the side of the Scorpion Steam.

“Your real name is Der Cribbot,” Tamrus insisted.

“So you two go back a long way then?” Zach asked.

“I’ve known Cribbot since he was a small child…what would it be now?” he mused. “About one hundred and thirty years, I guess.”

“That long!” Zach gasped, but he knew that people from Endra could live many more years than those from his world. Then looking at Tamrus’s craggy face, he added, “So how old are you then…that’s if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Mmm…let me see,” he said thoughtfully as he raised his red, bony fingers and started to count. “I often forget, but I must be at least five hundred and fifty-ish!”

“That old!” William woofed.

“That’s not old! I’ve at least another good six hundred years left in me yet,” his voice rattled. “I’m not even middle-aged!”

Bom sat and stared out of the window as the red rocky walls of the tunnel continued to zoom past at an alarming speed.

“So what are you?” Tamrus asked Zach, spying the crossbows strapped to each thigh.

“I’m a peacekeeper,” Zach said, just above a whisper. Those words sounded strange to him, as deep inside he still didn’t truly believe that he was.

“Oh!” Tamrus said. “I thought they were all dead.”

“We’ve seen enough dead peacekeepers to know that they are,” Neanna said.

Then realising he hadn’t introduced his friends, Zach said, “This is my friend, Neanna, she’s one of the Slath.” Then gesturing towards William, he quickly added, “This is William-the-wolf-Weaver. And the old guy in the corner is Captain Bom. I’m not sure what he is.”

On hearing this, Bom glanced at Zach and said, “Not so much of the old. And if you must know, my people were the Queen’s Royal Guards. We have been for many years.” He then turned and stared out of the window again. Zach wished he didn’t have to be so grumpy the whole time.

Then looking at Faraday, then Tamrus, Zach said, “This is my friend, Faraday. We discovered him in the desert. Someone had turned him off, but we switched him back on.”

“It was Throat who turned him off,” Tamrus said, looking across the table at Faraday.

“Why?” Faraday asked, not a hint of surprise in his voice.

“You really don’t remember, do you?” Tamrus said, staring at him with his oblong shaped eyes.

“Remember what?”

“About whom you really are. Your true identity,” Tamrus croaked.

“I’m nothing more than a machine – a mechanical man designed and made by the man named Der Cribbot,” Faraday told him.

“He’s telling you the truth,” William woofed. “We’ve seen the early prototypes and everything.”

“They are the models that Der Cribbot – you – couldn’t get to work,” Tamrus said, leaning across the table at Faraday.

“So why am I called Faraday?” he persisted.

“Faraday or Humpty Dumpty,” Tamrus sighed at Faraday. “It’s just a name. You wanted to call your first fully working mechanical man Faraday after some scientist from the other side of the doorways. I think his name was Michael Faraday and you claimed that he was the greatest scientist who ever lived. You said he discovered electromagnetic induction and lots of other things that I don’t claim to understand. But what I didn’t understand was your obsession with him and creating the first synthetic human.”

“He did it though, didn’t he?” Neanna said.

“Human! He doesn’t look human…he doesn’t smell like a human…!” Tamrus cried, his gaping nostrils twitching in the centre of his face. “And the reason he doesn’t look human is because he has been entangled.”

“Entangled?” Zach breathed, remembering that Faraday had mentioned that word before. “He told us how the animals that Cribbot brought back from behind his doorway got entangled with the machines and technology he was smuggling. That’s why there are creatures here in the Outer-Rim which are part living and part machine.”

“That’s right,” Tamrus said, eyeing Faraday from across the table. “But it wasn’t enough. He wanted more than mechanical creatures. He wanted mechanical men.”