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cover altogether. And then hide the licence number? This is none of these. This is proper mystery. Can’s monkey creeps closer, hand by careful hand, prehensile tail coiling and uncoiling, trying to see better without being seen. The mystery bot is scanning the bomb victims inside the police cordon. Its sensory arrays, clusters of fly-eyes lenses, rotate and refocus from survivor to survivor. Click whir click whir. That woman with blood speckled all over her face like freckles. Those shivering children in blue with schoolbags so big they could fold themselves inside. That dazed-looking businessman clutching his briefcase. That man, wandering away from the main group, between the ambulances, not wanting to be seen. Can watches Rat-Face, the guy from the tekke garden, move slowly, mingle subtly, merge with the crowd beyond the Do Not Cross lines. So intently does Can watch, so tightly does he hold his breath in excitement, that he almost misses the ninja robot detach itself from its roost and slowly, subtly, with no sudden movements to catch the attention of the police bots, work its way up the stanchions to the roof of the Commerzbank building. He sees a flash of anonymized yellow vanish over the parapet. Hissing in frustration, Can wills Monkey up on to the roof of the Allianz building. There: the mystery surveiller is working along the building tops, following Necatibey Cadessi. Slowly, stealthily, Can follows. His eyes are wide, his tongue rolled in concentration, his heart loud with excitement. This is mystery. This is adventure. This is what every boy and his robot want.

    ‘Aie!’ Can stifles the involuntary cry of excitement. Too loud too loud; it’s far too easy to be too loud when the world is reduced to a whisper. But it’s a huge huge discovery. Mystery bot is following Necdet, stoner-boy. Up in the balcony Can almost gibbers at the excitement. This isn’t just curiosity, or even a mystery any more. This is a case. He is Can: Boy Detective now. The case is afoot!

    Carefully carefully, with one half of his eyes on the stalker, the other half on the crazed, reeling guy down in the street, Can creeps across the rooftops of Beyoğlu. Release a hand here, take a grip there. It is following him. Necdet, stoner-boy. Of all people to follow. Like the lizard stalking the hunting mantis feels the shadow of the hawk; it’s only Can’s over-compensating secondary senses, that instinctive knowing before knowing that makes his hand stab out and make Monkey roll forward, out of the pincer jaws that would have fried his BitBot circuitry with EMP.

    As he was the follower, he too was followed. He reconfigures his eyes as he gallops away from the attacker. Another anonymous hack-drone. He has stumbled into the surveillance range of another watcher and triggered an alert. It’s big and it’s fast and it’s strong. It can take Can’s BitBots to pieces. It’s behind him and Can’s power management panel is telling him he is down to two-thirds battery power. He has to bring Monkey back, but it will lead the pursuer straight to him.

    Run robot run. Monkey leap, monkey scuttle. Behind him, half a roof away, comes the destroyer. Can gasps in mental exertion and flexes his hand to send his monkey up a wall in two bounds, over a parapet and across a sheltered green-painted garden where morning washing hangs limply in the heat-weary air. The hunter follows. It’s bigger, faster and even closer. Can flicks a glance at the battery meter. Half charge now, and at this rate of exertion Monkey eats power. And leap . Even as Monkey is in mid-air Can reconfigures him into a ball. The BitBot hits and rolls, bounding from the air-conditioning fans and photosynth panels to crash hard against the further parapet. The hunter bounds after him, crossing the roof in a few strides but the BitBot has morphed back into Monkey mode and is hand-overhanding it down the fire escape for the leap to the roof of the adjoining building. Can has stolen a