Blood and Iron (33 page)

‘Goeppert works well,’ said Kavan. ‘That, or more Artemisians are returning to our side.’

‘Kavan, what’s that?’

Calor tilted her head, listening. Now Kavan heard it too. A low drone, and under it a thumping noise.

‘It’s coming from behind us,’ said Kavan.

The other robots turned to see. There was nothing there. Somewhere beyond the noise and the gunfire they could just make out the glow of the forges and nothing else. The droning noise grew louder, the thumping became more insistent.

‘There’s something up there,’ said Calor, ‘shapes in the sky.’

‘Shapes?’ said Kavan. ‘What shapes?’

As he said it, golden flares ignited amongst the raindrops, they drew straight lines towards Kavan and his troops.

‘What are they?’ asked Calor.

‘Into the trenches!’ called Kavan

The golden lines streaked towards them and struck the ground between the first and second trench. Fountains of earth sprang from the resulting explosion.

Kavan and Calor tumbled down into the inside moat, landing on the gravelled bottom with a jolt that shook their metal frames. Something snapped in Kavan’s right arm, and he lost partial control over his hand.

‘Look!’ shouted Calor. She had landed on her feet, like any true Scout, and was pointing upwards. The top of the trench was a line in the sky, beyond it, something dark moved. A huge shape, lights blinking on its underside.

‘What is it?’ called Calor.

‘I don’t know!’ called Kavan. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it before!’

A second shape moved over the top of the trench. There were machines up there, huge flying machines that groaned and thumped the air. Where had they come from? Where they of Spoole’s invention? Surely not.

Golden flares streaked from one of the craft. One fell into the moat, a few hundred yards from where Kavan and Calor sheltered. It exploded in a wash of soil and sand that rattled on their damaged shells.

‘Go towards it!’ yelled Kavan, ‘See if it’s blown down the walls enough for us to get out of here.’

Calor ran awkwardly along the trench bottom. She had lost her usual light gait, her body was failing due to the damage it had taken.

Another craft flew by overhead, and more robots tumbled into the trench. An infantryrobot landed near Kavan. He heard the splintering crack that disabled her legs.

Calor was coming back.

‘Kavan!’ she called. ‘The last bomb blew out the walls clear to the next moat. We can make it through there.’

He followed her awkwardly down the trench. It was hard to move his right arm properly; his whole body was off balance.

The humming drone of the strange craft had increased. No, realized Kavan, it was rather that the noise of gunfire and shelling from the walls had lessened. The robots of the city wouldn’t want to open fire on their own craft.

He stumbled down the trench, cut through the gap in the walls to the next moat along. There were robots there already, clambering up the walls. Another huge explosion shook the ground behind Kavan, shaking the climbing robots free of their handholds.

‘They know we’re in the trench!’ called Calor. ‘They’re aiming for us down here!’

‘Good!’ called Kavan. ‘Their bombs will shatter the walls and make it easier for us to climb out!’

‘And if they hit us?’

‘Then we will die. We’re only metal.’

Kavan and Calor ran, the patterns of explosions reflecting in the rain water that flowed down their mud-spattered shells. Kavan and Calor and the rest of the robots, infantryrobots, Scouts, Storm Troopers, even some engineers, all seeking a way out of the confusion. All the while, those heavy craft droned and hovered somewhere above, sending down golden tongues of fire.

‘Here, Kavan, here!’ called Calor. She had found a sloping bank of earth, up which she led Kavan, both of them scrambling up into the night above. They emerged near one of the bridges that led away from the mounds onto the plain beyond.

Kavan turned for a moment and looked back towards the city. The gunfire there had almost ceased, bright yellow lights had been turned on to illuminate the walls. Before the walls, the dark craft hovered, sending down streaks of light that burst in golden fountains on the blackened ground. Fires leaped into the sky, fires fell from the night, and the battleground was picked out in bars of light.

‘What about Goeppert?’ asked Calor.

‘He’s on his own now,’ said Kavan. ‘We need to retreat and reassess.’

‘Retreat to where?’

‘Scatter across the plain,’ said Kavan. ‘It will make it harder for those craft to pick us off.’

‘What about Artemis City?’

‘It will still be here tomorrow. We need to understand what is happening!’

The command went out, and the Uncertain Army broke up into hundreds, thousands of little companies that scattered into the night.

A new sound fell out of the night, a piercing whistle that sang from high above. A second noise joined it.

‘What now?’ asked Kavan.

‘Two more craft,’ said Calor, gazing up into the night. ‘Small craft, I think. No. Or are they large craft, but further away?’

‘Never mind that,’ said Kavan, ‘look!’

The humming, droning machines were turning their attention away from the trenches and instead moving towards Kavan and the rest. They began to chase the robots across the plain, golden tongues of fire chasing them into the night.

Susan and Spoole

Spoole was ashamed. Susan could tell. He may not be part of what had happened, he may not have made the decision, but he was still ashamed.

‘Other minds?’ she said. Then she remembered what Nettie had told her, out by the radio masts. The creators had come. The writers of the Book of Robots had returned to Penrose. ‘Is it true?’ she asked. ‘Have our creators come?’

‘No!’ said Spoole. ‘No! They never claimed that. At least not at first. But they pick things up so quickly. They know how to manipulate people, how to win robots over. They know when to lie and flatter, and when to threaten and to tell the truth and when to just ignore the question. Oh, they’re clever.’

Susan gazed at him, a massive potential building inside her.

‘Is it true that they are animals?’ she asked.

‘Humans, they call themselves. Yes. It’s true.’

‘Have you seen them?’

‘No. Only heard their voices, and then I wasn’t supposed to. They’ve been speaking to the Generals these past two months using the radio. They kept it a secret from me for so long.’

‘I thought you were in charge!’

‘It doesn’t work that way, Susan. Not in Artemis. The humans have been speaking to the Generals, making promises, making deals. And the Generals have been listening. The humans have promised to defend the city in return for certain considerations.’

‘What considerations?’

‘Robots, Susan. The humans are clever, but they can’t work metal like we do. That’s how I know they didn’t write the book. Do you understand that? They don’t know enough about us.’

‘I understand.’

‘They want robots to come and work for them. They want us to weave them robots that they can take back to their homes as slaves.’

‘And the Generals agreed to this? They are willing to sell your children to animals?’

‘Why not, Susan? Children are nothing more than twisted metal. We all are.’

‘That’s only what you think!’ Susan shouted with frustration. ‘This state is riddled with rust from top to bottom!’

Spoole just smiled.

‘You’re part of this too, Susan. More than you know. You realize what else the humans want? Minds full of lifeforce that can’t think. The minds that your friend told you to make.’

‘Nettie!’ said Susan. ‘Then she knew?’

‘I don’t know. The Generals have been so good at concealing their actions. They know that the robots of the city will not see this as Nyro’s way.’

‘Well, surely it isn’t!’

‘Who knows? The Generals defend the city against attack; perhaps they believe they are defending it for Nyro’s sake.’

‘And do you think they are right?’

Spoole was silent.

‘I thought not.’

To Susan, master craftsrobot, sometimes the metal of a room would sing with the potential inherent within it. Sometimes it would appear as if it had achieved that potential. This room now seemed empty and devoid of purpose. Whatever life had once filled it was long gone. Spoole seemed to feel it too.

‘I can’t leave here,’ he said. ‘My mind was woven to lead Artemis. There is nowhere else for me to be.’

Much to her surprise, Susan understood Spoole. She had been woven to love her husband. Hers was an arranged marriage: it didn’t make it any less real.

‘Why are you still here, Susan.’

‘I told you. I came looking for my friend. I want to find out where she was taken.’

‘Why should I help you?’

‘You don’t believe in what the Generals are doing. And maybe Nettie knows something. Maybe she has spoken to the animals. You’re a leader, get to speak to them, maybe you can negotiate a different deal!’

‘That won’t work,’ said Spoole. ‘If you were a leader you would understand that. And yet . . .’

‘And yet what?’

‘Nothing. Your friend has probably been melted down and recycled to stop her telling what she knows.’

Spoole went back to the window. A high-pitched whistling impinged on the edge of Susan’s hearing.

‘Then the records will be in the next building. Help me find them.’

‘Why should I?’

Spoole just went on gazing out of the window. The flickering and percussive thump of the battle was still present, but overlaid on that was the descending noise of the whistling.

‘What is that?’ asked Susan.

‘I think that will be the humans,’ said Spoole. ‘The Generals said their ships were large. They’re dropping down from space. They’re coming to take their city.’

Kavan

Kavan and the rest ran across the plain, kicking up sand and grit, dislodging the glowing coals from the overturned forges, tripping and stumbling on the bodies of the fallen. Behind them the thrumming craft still fired, only now they had changed ammunition: the shells exploded in a low circle, parallel to the ground. They sent out razor shards that sliced off legs just above the ankle, tumbling a robot forward into the secondary blast that ripped bodies and minds apart.

‘I think they’ve stopped following us!’ called Calor. She was running backwards, looking back at the city. ‘They seem to be maintaining a perimeter around the city.’

Kavan’s electromuscles were aching now. He needed to rest, give them a chance to cool a little, let the lifeforce replenish.

‘Should we stop?’ asked Calor, loping along at his side.

‘Not yet,’ said Kavan. ‘When day comes we’ll be exposed on this plain. Those craft will be able to pick us off at their leisure. We need to get well clear.’

‘Where are we going, Kavan? There is no shelter until we get to Stark! Or should we head north, back to the mountains?’

‘No. We need to spread out, make it harder for them to find us.’

‘Let’s stop here.’

Kavan was so tired.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Five minutes.’

They stopped. Kavan looked around. Ten of them. Himself and Calor, seven infantryrobots and one other Scout. All of them scratched and pierced by shrapnel.

‘We need a forge,’ said Kavan.

‘Look,’ said Calor. She pointed up into the sky over the city.

The piercing noise had been there all the time they had been running. Now they stopped they had time to notice it again. It shrieked through the metal, it set the inside of the head ringing. They watched the two dark shapes that descended through the rain clouds. They looked like rolls of hot lead, long tubes rolled in the hands by a child and then flattened.

‘That can’t be right,’ said Kavan. ‘My eyesight needs recalibrating.’

‘No,’ said Calor. ‘The larger craft is over nine hundred feet long. The smaller one is six hundred.’

‘What’s holding them up?’

‘I don’t know.’

What must it be like for the robots in the city, wondered Kavan? To look up and see those vast shapes hanging above. Expecting them to fall at any moment.

The front of the larger craft began to flicker, and the effect was taken up by the smaller.

All around the great plain, Kavan sensed the stillness as robots that had been running moments before came to a halt and turned to watch what was happening.

The two craft seemed to be speaking to each other using yellow, green and white lights. First the front of the larger craft would flicker, then the smaller craft flickered in reply. The conversation went on for a few moments, and then, in a series of shining bands, the lights spread backwards over the surface of the two craft, now joined by red, orange and yellow, the glowing pattern gradually encompassing the whole extent of the two ships.