Twisted Metal (19 page)

And then there was the railway station itself. Seen from above, it resembled an iron-and-glass sphere, cut into segments and then pressed flat on the ground. Arched glass canopies ran in all directions: they covered platforms serving railway lines that ran to all the former countries of southern Shull. Over to one side there were platforms for Bethe and Segre and Stark, the three of them crowded together, made of good steel and pale green glass. And over there was the wide arch of the Wien terminal, the long thin platform that jointly served Raman and Born, twisting like a snake in a north-westerly direction. And last, but by no means least, there was the Artemis terminal. Plain and functional in clear glass and dull iron it may have been, but it was by far the most impressive. Its utilitarian shape dominated the head of the valley, a visible proof of the power of the two states that it joined. Robots streamed into it, and a constant array of goods rolled in and out. Plain, functional machinery from Artemis exchanged for the delicate and quirky metalwork of Turing City.

‘Look,’ said Karel. ‘Look at all the City Guards down there! I’ve never seen so many of them!’

‘It’s what Noatak promised at parliament, remember? That the station would be guarded.’

Susan and Karel descended by the maze of metal walkways that led over the roofs of the buildings on the lower terraces, heading down to the wide marble square that lay before the station itself. Behind them, the shops and galleries of the retail district rose in riotous colour. Before them, the iron and glass of the station stood in measured solemnity.

‘What’s the matter, Susan?’

‘I don’t know . . .’ Susan wanted to ask him what was the noise that she could hear, but she felt too disoriented, like her gyros were spinning too quickly. She could hear the rumble of trains on the rails – that was normal, here outside the station – but there was something else too. A high-pitched whining noise that seemed to resonate with the wire of her mind.

‘Is it that noise?’ asked Karel, tilting his head. Susan nodded.

‘It is a little odd, isn’t it?’ He listened some more. ‘Don’t worry, it’s just a train approaching. A reaction engine, I think.’

Susan pulled at his hand.

‘Karel, let’s go.’

‘But we only just got here!’

The noise of the reaction engine filled her mind; it seemed to resonate with the wire of her brain, shrilling terror straight through her body to her electromuscles.

‘Karel, let’s get out of here. Please.’

‘Susan, you’re being silly. Look – look at all the guards. We shall be safe here.’ He pointed to a nearby guard, looming tall and silver in the sunlight.

Susan jerked at his arm. ‘Run, Karel. Please, let’s run . . .’

She pulled Karel along a few steps. The other robots in the marble square were looking at them curiously, but Susan didn’t care.

‘It’s all going to go wrong,’ she said with utter finality.

Karel started to walk with her back towards the steps that led up the residential district.

‘No, not up there,’ insisted Susan. ‘No, it’s the wrong way. We need to run. Back into the city, to the shops.’ It struck her then with a feeling like a cold awl plunged into her mind. ‘Oh, Zuse, what about Axel?’

Karel was staring at her, humouring her.

‘Why don’t we go back and see him?’ he asked carefully. ‘We could check he’s all right.’

‘No! We have to run!’

A Guard had seen them and came walking in their direction.

‘Is everything okay?’ she asked.

‘I think so . . .’ said Karel.

The high-pitched whine was louder now, accompanied by a rumble that was filling her body. Susan wrenched herself free of Karel, began to run. The rumble was filling her entire world. She ran. Stopped. Turned to see where Karel was.

He was there, following her, seemingly in slow motion.

But it was too late.

Behind him she saw the station, its roof glass glowing orange and white, like the sun was shining on it. But shining from inside, like the sun itself was within the station. A beautiful orange glow, licking outwards from the centre of the Artemis terminal. Things were moving so slowly. The glass was shattering, diamond shards floating outwards, tumbling prettily, end over end. And look, behind them, clouds of orange flame blooming, spreading across the windows of the station walls like drops of oil on water before the glass began to bloom and shatter. And now the metal of the arches and vaulting was twisting upwards and outwards, spreading like open hands . . .

And, with a solid
wham
, time slammed back into normal speed, and she was picked up and blown across the great square by the force of the explosion. Her ears exploded. Her eyes whited out. The last thing she saw was the incredulous expression on Karel’s face as he was flung towards her.

Kavan

‘She did it,’ said Eleanor, in tones of mild surprise.

Kavan raised himself to his feet, body swaying as the carriage rolled slowly away from the explosion.

‘Dorore actually did it,’ repeated Eleanor. ‘I didn’t think she would.’

‘She was a true Artemisian at the core,’ said Kavan. His ears were crackling, the after-effects of the explosion that had taken place four and half miles away, right at the head of the train. He opened the door of the carriage and saw the ground rolling by, white sleepers and grey gangue. They were going backwards. Ahead, black smoke was rising from the shattered railway station at the head of the valley.

‘Get the troops to move out. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.’

Eleanor gave the signal. All the way back along the stripped-bare carriage, soldiers got to their feet, opened the jerry-built doors they had hacked out of the carriage walls and bailed out onto the ground.

‘I wish we had more Storm Troopers,’ said Eleanor. ‘There’s barely two thousand of us. There are over thirty thousand robots in Turing City. We don’t stand a chance against them.’

‘Spoole thought it enough,’ said Kavan.

‘Spoole is forcing you to commit suicide, Kavan. He wants you dead.’

‘Artemis doesn’t want. Artemis just
is
.’

‘Cut the rust, Kavan. We’re not talking about Artemis, we’re talking about Spoole.’

‘That should be the same thing.’

Eleanor was staring at him like he was being stupid.

‘We’re up against the City Guard,’ she warned.

‘That’s what I’m counting on, Eleanor. Don’t you see, Turing Citizens aren’t like Artemisians? They’re not like us; they’re not even like Dorore: she was true to Nyro right at the end. Turing Citizens don’t think that way. They get others to do their fighting for them.’

Karel

Karel pushed his face close to Susan. She couldn’t hear him, she could barely see him. The golden light in her eyes was blurred.

‘Susan, come on, we’ve got to get away from here.’

The square was in chaos. Black smoke leaked across it like thick oil, orange fire jumped into the air. Even the electrical currents felt wrong, screwed up by the atomic explosion. Robots were running around in confusion: heading to the station, running from the station, trying to help friends to their feet, or simply emitting electronic wails of fear.

‘We need to get back to Axel!’ he shouted, shaking his wife by the shoulders.

The same idea had obviously occurred to Susan. She pulled away from him and began pushing her way through the confused crowd towards the valley wall, heading for home. Karel ran to catch her up, but it was difficult to keep sight of her in the thick black smoke and the mêlée of frightened people.

And then the confusion increased. There were shouts and electronic screams, and the tide turned against him. The robots began pushing them back towards the centre of the square.

‘Run!’

‘Get out of my way!’

‘Move, you fool!’

He caught sight of Susan, someone had sent her spinning and crashing to the ground, the enamel on one side of her body scraping a pastel blue streak across the white marble of the square.

The man that had accidentally pushed her over went on running, straight into Karel’s arms. Anger singing through the wire of his mind, he tripped the man, pushed him to the ground, fell on his shoulders and took hold of his head and slammed it against the marble paving.

‘K*r**l NNNnnnoo!’

Again he smashed the man’s head on the marble, scraped it forward.

‘K***r**l!’

That was Susan shouting. She had taken him by the arm, she was pulling him away from the man, her voicebox squawking and crackling. Now she was pointing back towards the valley walls, trying to tell him something. There were bodies falling there, brightly painted Turing Citizens slumping and falling, their heads expanding in clouds of blue wire, and Karel’s mind finally caught up.

Gunfire! Artemis was attacking.

‘AAAax***l,’ phased Susan, ‘Aaxxellll!’

Karel felt the sheer rage inside him recede. He looked around, taking in the situation.

‘Artemis! Where are the Guards?’ He saw the answer almost straight away, saw the dead and damaged bodies that littered the space close to the station. All caught in the blast. Karel came to a decision. ‘This way,’ he shouted. ‘We’ll loop down through the galleries and back up around the parliament.’

She couldn’t hear him, of course. He pointed. Reluctantly she followed. He was taking her away from their son.

They began to run again, this time heading south towards the shops and galleries.

‘The rest of the City Guard will be coming,’ he told himself.

Olam

‘Run!’ yelled Doe Capaldi. ‘Run! Get into the city, or the City Guard will pick us off out here on the plain!’

All down the line came the sound of leaders calling their troops to action. Olam ran, his electromuscles throbbing with pain, his stride matched perfectly to the distance between the concrete sleepers. That cold, sharp wind that had started in the night was blowing him up the valley, over white sleepers, between the pair of silver rails that he was following. Black smoke ahead of him and grey infantry around him, their feet pounding on concrete as they rushed on and on and on, towards Turing City. He could hear gunfire already; he gripped his rifle tighter, eager to be part of the attack. That was the order: rape and kill. Rape and kill.

Olam couldn’t believe how good that sounded. Something had awoken inside him back in the arena. Something that had long lain dormant. Now it sharpened its blades and charged its muscles, ready for the fight.

Suddenly the ground beneath the sleepers vanished, and he saw bright green water down there, between the gaps. He stumbled and fell, almost lost his rifle. There was a river down there, water dancing along, and in the middle of the water a long copper worm turned its head up to look at him and then slipped quietly below the water’s surface, leaving Olam wondering if he had imagined the sight. And then someone took hold of him and pulled him upright. Doe Capaldi.

‘Come on, Olam. Run!’

And Olam did just that. Doe Capaldi was helping him? No way. He fixed his gaze on that robot’s back and continued to run, heading towards the wreckage of the station, the broken green body of the train plunged into its very heart, its tail cast out across the valley.

Karel

Karel and Susan fled through the milling crowds into the shops and the galleries of central Turing City. Everywhere was confusion. People looked round for the Artemisians, looked for the City Guard without success. Where were they? Rumours were rife.

‘The City Guard have cut them all down on the plain!’ ‘The City Guard were all killed in the railway station!’ ‘They are preparing a counter-offensive up by the fort!’ ‘The Artemisians have taken the fort!’ ‘The residential areas are burning!’ Karel was grateful that Susan’s ears were damaged. If she heard that, she would have lost control completely. As it was, it took all his effort to keep her running in the opposite direction from where Axel lay sleeping.

The situation was like a childhood dream. Everywhere still looked so normal: the tall, arching iron galleries with their plate glass windows, the neatly tiled streets that ran through them.

Karel pulled Susan to a rest for a moment by a display of molybdenum ingots in the window of Gros-smith’s, trying to get an understanding of what was going on. Suddenly their situation seemed ridiculous. They were standing on rose porphyry, amidst rose porphyry pillars, looking through leaded glass at some of the most expensive metals on the planet. He was standing in the middle of one of the richest and most powerful states on Shull. Why was everyone panicking? Surely they had nothing to fear, not with the City Guard to protect them?

So where were they? And where were the Artemisians? If there were no City Guard to stop them, they should have made it up to the galleries by now.

Something wasn’t right here, realized Karel. Something wasn’t right, and he couldn’t figure what that was by himself. He looked at his wife as she fiddled with the mechanism of her left ear and he came to a decision. Susan would understand. He needed Susan in working order, right now.