Twisted Metal (20 page)

Karel led Susan through the milling crowds to Harman’s, the closest body shop he knew. Susan pulled against him all the way.

‘Aaaaxx***ll,’ she kept phasing, ‘Aaxxellll.’

‘I know,’ said Karel. ‘Susan, listen, I need you to help me.’

Susan didn’t understand what he was saying, but she recognized Harman’s and she realized what he intended. She followed him into the shop without further complaint.

Harman’s was expensive. It used only the very best metals, the finest oils and plastics. The paintwork they produced was on a par with that of Susan’s skill, though invariably more expensive. The staff there were knowledgeable, skilful and, for the moment, absent. They had fled when the panic had gripped Turing City. Only Harman herself remained, a small woman clad in dark iron, a deceptively simple construction.

Karel saw her and began to gabble. ‘My wife, she got caught in the explosion. Her ears, her eyes, her voicebox, they’re all wrecked.’

Harman nodded. ‘Susan always has been a finely built machine,’ she said approvingly. ‘I would have been disappointed if she had not succumbed to a magnetic pulse! Her body is such a delicate creation.’ She seemed to think it a judgement on Karel that he had not himself suffered damage.

‘Come here, Susan,’ she said leading her to the centre of the room. ‘Sit down.’

The shop forge was tiny, but very, very hot. The instruments and tools that Harman used were small and delicate. Karel watched as she took a sliver of steel from a tray and set about opening up one of Susan’s ears, then carefully sliding the mechanism there from his wife’s skull. He saw the delicate blue wire of her brain beyond and turned away in embarrassment. He went to the window of the shop, looking out into the square beyond, his gyros spinning.

The robots out there still milled about without any sense of order. Clearly, no one yet knew what was happening. He scanned the crowd: all he could see were Turing Citizens. No City Guard, no Artemisians. What was happening? Why was there no fighting?

Behind him, he could hear Harman singing softly to herself as she adjusted his wife’s ears.

‘How long will this take?’ he called to her.

‘As long as it takes,’ said Harman. ‘I stay here with you, Karel. I leave when you leave.’

‘Where is the City Guard?’ shouted Karel in frustration.

‘I imagine they are wherever the Artemisians are,’ said Harman calmly. ‘Please don’t shout. Your wife’s ears are very sensitive at the moment. You will hurt her.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Panic and haste will lead us nowhere, Karel. I was in Stark when that city fell. The thing to do is to keep one’s head, to ensure that one has a fully functioning body and a clear sense of purpose.’ She reached for a silver pick. ‘I saw too many robots in Stark who ran half-panelled out into the streets, straight into the guns of the enemy.’

Karel knew she was right, but it was hard to keep calm. Out in the square the crowd seemed to have reached some consensus. They were fleeing south, towards the old town and the foundries.

‘Something is happening out there . . .’ began Karel.

‘Stay calm, Karel,’ warned Harman, her hand on his wife’s chin as she tweaked at something. ‘Let the foolish ones take the bullets for us.’

The crowd of Turing Citizens was thinning, draining away between the arcades and galleries at the south end of the square. Karel found himself straining to look north, waiting to see the grey shapes of Artemisian infantry. Nothing.

‘I don’t need a work of art. Just get her talking again!’

‘That’s what I’m doing,’ said Harman, equably. ‘There, all done. Susan, can you put yourself back together whilst I collect a few things?’

Karel turned to see his wife sliding her mouth back into place.

‘Thank Zuse,’ he called. ‘Let’s get out of here!’

‘One moment longer,’ said Harman. She had opened a cupboard and was pulling out a black plastic shoulder bag. She moved around the shop, dropping things into it.

‘That’s better,’ said Susan, her mouth clicking into place.

‘I’m ready,’ said Harman.

‘Then let’s go!’ called Karel. He swung open the door and found himself face to face with an Artemisian infantryrobot that seemed to have appeared from nowhere. They both froze, shocked by the sight of the other. Karel took in the dull grey paint on the other robot, the fact that it was a little shorter than Karel himself, and nowhere near as well made. He noted the way its eyes shone dully; saw the scratches and dents on the panelwork.

And then they both seemed to come to their senses. The Artemisian swung up its rifle, Karel grabbed it, tried to jerk it free of the other robot’s hands. No use, the soldier held on too tightly. Desperately, Karel pulled the rifle and the robot backwards, and then Susan was next to him, doing the same. Wrestling the robot back into the shop, where Harman stood patiently sorting through her bag, pulling out a sliver of metal. The infantryrobot saw what she was doing and redoubled its struggle, but Susan and Karel held him in place. He seemed surprisingly weak for a soldier. Deftly, Harman popped the infantryrobot’s head open, raised a glass bottle in her other hand and dripped clear liquid into the robot’s mind. ‘Hydrochloric acid,’ she said, as the infantryrobot thrashed harder and harder.

‘You can let it go now,’ said Harman.

The robot seemed to have lost control of itself: it was having an electronic fit. It kicked over a rack of tools, sending them jingling across the shop floor.

‘Come on,’ said Harman. ‘We’d better leave by the back way.’

Karel and Susan followed her through a door at the rear of the shop. Karel paused to look at the dying robot. Body thrashing weakly, it looked back at him with fading eyes, smoke leaking from its opened head.

Out back, they picked their way south through deceptively empty streets. Streets bordered by eyes that suddenly ducked down out of sight behind windows, streets where bodies withdrew into doorways. Streets filled with the staccato sound of receding footsteps, with the distant crack of gunfire.

‘We should have taken the rifle!’ called Susan suddenly.

‘Too late for that,’ said Karel, knowing she was right. ‘Come on, we need to start circling back towards Axel.’

They were leaving the centre of the city, with its expensive galleries and arcades, and heading into the older district, where the shops were smaller, the goods they carried cheaper. The first of the forges and foundries that were concentrated mainly in the old town began to appear, slotted into spaces between the lines of shops constructed of brick and iron. The marble and porphyry pavements gave way to cobbles, and then to the loose gangue upon which most of Turing City was built. Harman’s dainty iron feet, in particular, seemed too small and delicate for the unmetalled surface over which they began to trek. The hills of gangue and rock rose around them, metallic bridges and walkways arched over the street, connecting buildings and making an aerial path through the city.

‘
Look
,’ phased Susan, pointing up to one of the walkways almost directly above them. It was an Artemisian infantryrobot, on the lookout.

‘
Why hasn’t it seen us?
’ she asked.

It was looking elsewhere, Karel realized, just as it raised its rifle and fired at something in the distance. They heard the crack of the shot and a scream. A second shot, and the screaming ceased.

Karel, Susan and Harman froze in place, hoping that the soldier would not now look down. They waited and waited. Eventually they heard the slow clink of metal on metal as the robot walked away, the sound of its feet echoing from the brick walls around them.

‘Where are the City Guard?’ wondered Karel. ‘What are they doing?’

‘I don’t understand this,’ said Susan. ‘We’ve seen only two Artemisian soldiers in half an hour. Surely you would need many more of them to take the city?’

‘You think so too?’ said Karel, delighted that he had taken the time to restore her voice and hearing. Susan was a statistician. She would know how big the city was, what the spread of invading troops should be. ‘I knew it,’ he murmured. ‘Something odd is going on here. Artemis
shouldn’t
be attacking, not now, not so soon after they’ve invaded Wien. There’s not enough of them. And where is the City Guard? They should have made short work of this assault by now. What’s going on?’

‘Listen,’ said Harman. The sound of running feet. Six brightly painted Turing Citizens came hurtling around a corner. They stopped at the sight of Karel and the rest, registered what they were seeing and then . . .

‘Run!’ one of them called. ‘Artemis, just behind us! Eight of them!’ Then they were all off, pounding down the street, running deeper and deeper into the old town. Past a line of acid tanks, their great mushroom rivet heads green with salt.

‘This way,’ called Karel, and the group followed him up a narrow alley between two brick walls, their feet slipping on the loose, uncompacted gangue. They emerged from the alley into a wide, dirty street lined with oil-stained foundries, twists of scrap metal rusting outside their doors. Black pools of stagnant water lay in the middle of the road.

‘Which way?’ called Susan, looking up and down the empty street, her words caught in the rattle of metal feet on stone.

‘Uphill, up towards the fort!’ called Karel. He pointed to the upper level of the fort, rising above the dirty brick and verdigrised roofs of the broken-down foundries that surrounded them.

‘Artemis!’

The call hissed with static. He heard a crackle of shots, the rattle of falling metal. Someone had been hit.

‘Colina!’

A robot tumbled to the ground, her head a mass of blue twisted metal.

‘Leave her,’ ordered Karel. ‘This way!’

Shots spat out around them, puffs of dust sprang up from the ground. They ran, around another corner, into a street where the buildings seemed better maintained, the gangue of the road well stamped down. A wide road, it curved upwards, following a gentle incline towards the fort. From behind, Karel could hear the stamp stamp stamp of Artemis troops, more of them, closing in on them, hemming them in.

Susan was listening carefully as she ran. ‘Still not enough troops,’ she said, ‘still not enough for an invasion.’

‘There’s enough to kill us,’ said Harman. ‘Keep running . . .’

They ran up the hill, around the curve, and then they stopped.

Karel looked on in horror. Up ahead, the road simply came to an end. The last two foundries were built into a great white heap of gangue, piled up against the sheer wall of the fort. They were caught in a dead end. There was no escape.

Susan walked up to the white wall of the fort, looked up at the empty battlements above.

‘Help!’ she called. ‘Down here!’

All the robots looked up, scanning along the white wall, up at the crenellated parapet high above them. There was no reply. No sign of movement. The fort might as well have been deserted.

Karel turned to look down the empty street behind him. There was nowhere now to run. He heard the stamp of feet approaching around the corner.

The Turing Citizens looked at each other in despair. Susan came close to Karel. She took his hand.

‘What about Axel?’ she asked, despairingly.

‘Someone will look after him,’ said Karel, trying to sound confident.

The sound of approaching feet grew louder. Karel and the rest drew into the corner, wedged between the pile of gangue and the sheer white wall of the fort.

The marching grew louder still, and there they were. The first of the Artemis infantry appeared around the corner, their dull grey bodies all in a line.

‘Where is the City Guard?’ complained Karel bitterly.

Olam

It was so easy to kill. The discovery had been a revelation to Olam.

Just point the rifle, pull the trigger, and watch as another robot slumped to the ground in a cloud of blue wire. All the fear, all the uncertainty of the last few days evaporated as Olam raised the rifle and squeezed.

He marched through this strange city, with its iron arches and shattered glass and, where once he would have felt timid and uncertain, he now felt invincible. He was the man causing the fear, not the man feeling it. He was in charge, in control.

‘Don’t be careless,’ warned Doe Capaldi, walking at his side, scanning the upper storeys of the galleries that surrounded them.

‘I’m fine,’ said Olam. ‘Hey, look over there.’

A glint of reflected sunlight, so easy to miss. Fine, powdered glass, trodden into the plastic matting at the entrance to a store. A trail, leading into the building.

‘Someone went in there,’ said Olam, the lust rising within him. ‘Someone sneaked in after we smashed the glass.’

Olam didn’t like the look Doe Capaldi was giving him. ‘I’ll send Janet in,’ he said.

‘No way,’ said Olam. ‘I know the orders: maximum disruption. I spotted it, I get to go in.’

He was off into the store before Doe Capaldi could tell him otherwise. Zig-zagging across the shop floor, keeping low. Dodging for cover between the plastic sheeting that was hung on display all through the shop. Pushing past sheets of plain red, green, yellow and blue. Slipping past black and white checks, turquoise and purple knotwork; through a riot of paisleys and tartans.