Blood and Iron (27 page)

‘Oh! I’m sorry! You’re busy. I’ll get back to the beach. The sun is the best thing about this place. Shame you poisoned the lake.’

‘Poisoned? That’s copper!’

But she was already gone. He watched her running back towards the lake, the strange cloth flapping behind her.

Susan

‘What are you doing in here?’

Yellow eyes gazed at her out of the darkness. Susan turned up her own eyes to get a better look at the stranger. She made out the grey shape of an infantryrobot.

‘I’m looking for my friend. She’s called Nettie. Have you seen her?’

Susan stepped forward, the other robot moved away, keeping the big stone bowl at the centre of the room between herself and Susan.

‘No! She’s not here. Now go away. Leave me alone.’

Susan gazed thoughtfully at the other robot.

‘You’re hiding in here too, aren’t you? Have you run away from the battle as well?’

‘That’s none of your business! Get out of here!’

‘I should keep your voice down if I were you. There’s a Storm Trooper out there, hunting me.’

The other robot looked at her, trying to decide if she was telling the truth or not.

‘I’m Susan. I was from Turing City, I’m now a mother of Artemis. Who are you?’

The other robot’s eyes glowed brighter for a moment, and then they dimmed just a fraction.

‘Vignette,’ she said. ‘I’m from Lankum in the central mountains. I was conscripted into the Artemisian army along with rest of my kingdom when Spoole fled south. We were brought to help in the construction of the trenches they’re digging around the city. We were to have been stationed between Kavan’s army and the walls of the city, showered by the cannons and the guns of both sides. I wasn’t going to have that happen to me, so I slipped away as we marched through the city.’

Vignette’s voice echoed oddly in the building. Susan raised a hand.

‘Too loud!’ she said, ‘He’s out there, looking for me.’

‘Then why did you lead him here to me, you selfish
Tok
? I was safe until you turned up!’ Her eyes flashed, more in fear than anger. Susan was patient. She knew what it was like to be frightened.

‘There is no safety here in Artemis City. You can only hide for so long. In the end they’ll find you, and then . . .’

‘You must have been safe,’ said Vignette, the envy thick in her voice. ‘The mothers of Artemis work beneath the ground, away from danger.’

‘Raped twice a night.’ Susan laughed bitterly. ‘I’d rather take my chances in the trenches.’

Vignette gazed at her, eyes glowing in the darkness.

‘I’d rather shelter in the making rooms.’

‘That’s immaterial. What is done is done.’

Susan spoke with bitter finality.

‘No it’s not,’ said Vignette. ‘Change places with me. Swap your body for mine.’

The idea brought Susan up short. Swap their bodies? It had its attractions. Surely an infantryrobot would fare better in the city at the moment? She would certainly be less noticeable in that grey body. Would that aid in her search for her friend?

‘But how?’ she said, slowly. ‘We’d need a third robot to unplug our coils.’

‘The robot at the top of this tower would do it. We could ask him.’

Susan felt as if she had wandered into a children’s story.

‘What robot at the top of the tower? Where are we? What is this place?’

‘You don’t know? Have you never seen a shot tower? We used to have one in Lankum like this, only ours was taller. We carved a groove in the side of the mountain, and then built a tower on the top of it. There was a copper sieve at the top through which molten lead fell in drops. It formed into spheres as it fell and then landed in a basin of water at the bottom.’

Susan looked up, the light of her gaze lost in the darkness. The tower was a spiral of stone. A robot could walk up the interior wall to the top, she realized.

‘Who is he, the robot up there?’

‘He’s the robot who built this tower. His wife built the one opposite.’

‘How do you know this?’

‘He told me.’

‘Why is he still here?’

‘He’s waiting for lead. Sometimes Artemis needs more spherical shot than it can produce elsewhere.’

Susan looked down at the stone bowl. She saw the water inside, as still as the night outside.

‘You know that if you leave this tower in my body, the Storm Trooper out there will rape you?’

‘Better than dying in the trenches,’ said Vignette.

Susan looked up again, up to the top of the tower.

‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Let’s exchange bodies.’

They climbed the tower’s interior and emerged into the night. Susan found herself standing on an island of darkness in the middle of the illuminated city. Up here the night sky billowed with stars. In the distance, around the edge of the dark sea of this strange, forgotten collection of buildings, light bloomed. It blossomed in yellow flames from chimneys, it glowed deep red from forges, it reflected in gold and silver from metal towers and aerials. Beyond it there was the darkness of the Artemisian plain. Susan gazed out, wondering if she could see the lights of Kavan’s army out there, moving to surround the city. Was Karel somewhere out there too, separated from her by two armies? Was Nettie trapped in here with her?

‘Bouvan?’ called Vignette. ‘Are you there?’

Susan gazed into the darkness at the centre of the tower. She was standing on a circle of stone that surrounded the three hundred foot drop. Something was moving, something was rising from the centre of the tower.

‘Bouvan?’ said Vignette again. ‘This is Susan.’

Bouvan had the longest arms and legs of any robot Susan had ever seen. She realized he must live wedged in the space at the top of the tower.

‘What do you want?’ Bouvan spoke in the flat tones of an unfused robot.

‘We want you to swap over our minds,’ said Vignette.

‘Very well,’ said Bouvan. Susan recoiled as a hand reached towards her on the end of an impossibly long arm, felt a surge of current as she realized how close she had come to stepping back over the edge.

‘Hold on a moment!’ she shouted, suddenly uncomfortably aware of what she was agreeing to. Allowing another robot to unplug her coil, leaving her perfectly helpless. ‘How can I trust you both?’ she said. ‘How do I know that you will reattach my mind?’

‘I’ll go first,’ said Vignette.

‘Hey, you!’

The voice came from behind her. Susan turned and looked out over the darkness to the other shot tower. Down on the street they had seemed so far apart. Up here, in the stillness beneath the twinkling stars, she almost felt as if she could jump from one to the other. Ridiculous, of course. They must be sixty feet apart.

‘Yes, you!’ Sound travelled easily in the clear air, that voice could have come from a robot standing just by her. She looked and saw another robot standing at the top of the other tower. She looked just like Bouvan, and Susan realized that this must be the wife Vignette had talked about.

‘Listen, lady! You don’t want to trust him! He’ll fumble and break your coil! Come over here, I’ll change your minds!’

Bouvan’s eyes flashed in the darkness and he spoke with an emotion that completely contradicted Susan’s first assessment of him as being unfused.

‘Shut up, Appovan!’ he shouted across the night. ‘Why do you always have to interfere? This is my tower, they came to me.’ He turned back to Vignette. ‘Come here, I’ll be gentle.’

He was too. Susan saw the way that he felt around the infantry-robot’s neck and gently opened up the head and pulled the mind clear, unplugging the coil as he did so. He laid the body carefully down on the top of the tower.

‘There,’ he said, holding the twisted metal of a mind towards Susan with his incredibly long arm. She looked to see the coil intact. A sense of vertigo overcame her.

Be careful not to drop it!
The words never made it to her voicebox.

Bouvan could see the look of satisfaction on the robot’s face at his successful removal of Vignette’s mind. ‘Your turn,’ he said. She hesitated.

‘He’ll drop you!’ called Appovan from her tower. ‘He’s always been the same. Clumsy! It took him for ever to build that tower, he was always dropping stones. He hit a soldier once! Flattened her! It’s a wonder they didn’t melt him down for scrap . . .’

‘Shut up, woman!’ shouted Bouvan, eyes flaring.

This was all so unreal, thought Susan, standing here above the world, listening to the two of them argue.

‘You built the tower?’ she said.

‘Oh yes. It took me nearly thirty years. Don’t listen to
her
talking about me being clumsy. It took
her
longer. Couldn’t find the right sort of stone, always trying to make patterns, like that was going to make the shot any better.’

‘But that can’t be right,’ interrupted Susan, ‘this tower looks so old. How old are you?’

‘One hundred and fifty years old,’ said Bouvan.

‘Don’t listen to him!’ called Appovan. ‘I’m not a day over twenty!’

‘No robot lives that long,’ said Susan.

‘They do if they’re half-fused,’ said Bouvan, ‘like me and her. This is Half-fused City you’re in. Didn’t you know that?’

Half-fused. Suddenly it all made sense to Susan. Robots of limited intelligence, but robots that lived longer and were stronger. Robots like the ones Nettie had told her about, the sort of minds that Susan would soon have been twisting, had she stayed in the making rooms.

‘Come on, lady. I’ll swap your head with hers.’

‘He’ll drop it!’ called Appovan. ‘He dropped a block of half-melted lead once. What a waste! They were looking for bits of metal for weeks afterwards! Weeks!’

Susan wanted to run back down the steps of the tower, down to the streets below.

Down to where the Storm Trooper searched for her. That thought brought her up short.

She looked back at Bouvan, the half-fused robot. She had had the plan for a half-fused mind explained to her, and she understood something: such a robot would be too stupid to lie. In that sense, she could trust it.

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Do it. Swap my head with hers.’

She carefully lay face down on the floor. She felt something touch the back of her head, then her sense of the world vanished, leaving her in darkness and silence. She waited for sensation to return.

And waited.

What if it were a trick?

It was a trick! How could she have been so stupid? To give her mind to a complete stranger, a mad robot who lived on a tower high above the city. Maybe he
had
dropped her? How would she know? Would there just be sudden oblivion, her thoughts ceasing to exist? Or would her mind be damaged, twisted out of shape? Would she begin to imagine strange places, strange thoughts? Trapped in a twisted world of her own mind?

Then, just like that, sense returned. She could see darkness again, and a long hand moved and she was gazing at the stars.

‘Careful!’ called out a voice. Her own. That was confusing. She hadn’t spoken, she was sure of it.

She remembered where she was, and she realized who had spoken. That was Vignette, now in her old body. She lay still for a moment, getting the feel of her new body. It was really quite well made, she realized. She moved her hands, felt for the edge of the ledge on which she lay, sat up slowly, and she recognized a fellow craftsrobot’s work This body was made of cheap materials, it was true, but an expert job had been made of the construction.

She looked across the other side of the circular chimney to see Vignette gazing back.

‘You build well,’ said the other robot.

Susan felt a sudden stab of jealousy. Vignette was wearing her old body, now she had the use of all the good metal that had gone into its making. Now Vignette looked well made and attractive, a true mother. And she, Susan, was just another infantryrobot.

But this is what she had wanted.

‘You build well, too,’ she replied. The two robots exchanged a look of mutual respect.

Susan got to her feet.

‘Are you going?’ asked Bouvan.

‘Of course they’re going,’ shouted Appovan from across the way. ‘No one ever stays up here, do they?’

‘I used to know other robots,’ said Bouvan. ‘Back when I lived on the ground, but I had to go higher and higher. It’s always been in me to beat Appovan. So they brought me stones and I started to build. Now I live up here, all alone.’

‘You’ve got me, haven’t you?’ called Appovan.

‘But I don’t like you.’

‘And I don’t like you.’

‘Please don’t leave me alone,’ said Bouvan.

‘Come down with us,’ said Susan.

‘I can’t. I have to stay up here. That’s the way my mind was made.’

Susan hesitated.

‘Listen,’ she said. ‘I have to find my friend. I don’t know where she is, but I need to find her. But when I do, I’ll come back here, if I can.’