Twisted Metal (23 page)

‘Well . . .’ said Gustav, and then he took refuge in frankness. ‘Come on, Karel, maybe that’s not surprising. You know what people say about you.’ He held up one webbed hand in apology. ‘Hey, I’m not saying they’re right, far from it . . .’

‘I’m pleased to hear it,’ said Karel, icily calm. ‘So tell me, what
do
they say about me?’

Gustav shook his head. ‘Karel, I’m not getting into this argument now: I’m doing you a favour. Get upstairs and get your family kitted out. We’re making our way down to the coast tonight. We’ll walk out under the water and start heading south. There’s metal down there on the seabed: placers and exposed ores. Enough to get by on.’

‘I don’t believe what I’m hearing! What about fire? How are you going to work metal?’

‘You don’t need fire to work metal, Karel. They didn’t in the old days. Robots used to get by just with the strength in their hands. We don’t need these fancy bodies we’ve got used to. I tell you, it will be good to get back to basics. It will be just like starting again!’

Karel’s voice was filled with contempt. ‘I can’t believe you’re giving up so easily. You should be outside fighting.’

His words rang out in the echoing shaft of the stairwell.

‘Like I said, I don’t see you doing any fighting.’ Gustav was dismissive. ‘Listen, ten o’clock tonight, down in the communal area. We’re setting off then. I’m offering you a lifeline, Karel.’

‘Gustav, listen . . .’

But Gustav turned and resumed his silent progress upstairs. Karel noticed for the first time that Gustav was carrying panels of some kind of alloy. It looked like whale metal, heavy and completely out of place in the white delicacy of the apartment block. Where had he got it from?

Just what was happening here?

She sat in the forge room with Axel on her knee. The living metal of the stove still retained some dying warmth. Karel crouched in front of his wife, speaking quietly.

‘Susan, it’s like they’ve been planning this for weeks – months, even. It’s like Turing City gave up the will to fight before the battle ever began!’

Susan was calming Axel, stroking him, letting him feel the warm current from her hands move through his electromuscle.

‘Susan, did
you
know anything about this?’ Karel looked up at his wife suspiciously.

‘Karel, I told you! I knew nothing about it!’

‘But you worked for Statistics. You were supposed to know everything! Didn’t you notice a build-up of whale metal in the city?’

‘Karel, you’re scaring Axel . . .’

‘And it’s such a stupid plan! They don’t know
anything
about what they will find down there! There could be another robot civilization living there already. Or worse . . .’ He brooded. ‘You know, out at the Immigration Centre, the one on the coast, you hear stories. Robots with arms a mile long. They reach out from deep under the water to pluck people from the land and drag them down to the seabed, where they strip the metal from their bodies. Leave only the twisted wire of the mind to slowly untangle in the dark depths.’

‘Karel,’ said Susan warningly. ‘Not in front of Axel!’

‘Sorry!’ He smiled down at his son. ‘But what if they are real? What if they are waiting down there for Gustav and the rest to walk into their welcoming arms?’

Susan raised her voice. ‘Karel, stop it!’

‘And even if they are safe down there, how long before Artemis comes looking for them? How long before the next wave of expansion sweeps over the seabeds? Gustav and the rest are just delaying the inevitable. I tell you, we should stand and fight here!’

‘I told you, that’s enough!’

Susan had
shouted
at him. Susan who never shouted. And now Karel saw the fear in her eyes, and he realized just how frightened everyone was. And he realized that it was far too late to make a stand.

Turing City had already fallen. All they could do was wait . . .

Spoole

The land around Artemis City was healthy. The air was filled with the soot of a thousand belching chimneys; the acid rain washed the streets and pitted the copper-lined roofs and killed off all the green organic life. From where he stood on the roof of the city, at the edge of a wide platform built at the top of the basilica, Spoole saw nothing but good, healthy stone and metal. Steel arches and copper domes and riveted iron. Gold chasing and the iridescent patterns of electrolysed titanium. Granite slabs and marble flags and slate roofs and walls. All was ordered, and all was good.

The city was a living thing: full of the heat of the fires that burned in the forges and blast furnaces, the city shrugged off the chill of the wind that had sprung up from the north.

The city was healthy, it was strong . . . and yet this morning it shook like a leaf spring with the news that travelled up the railway lines from the south.

Kavan had entered Turing City.

What next?
wondered Spoole. He didn’t blame Kavan. He had been in that position himself, once. It wasn’t that he had been hungry for power, not exactly. It was just that Spoole had been made to lead. In the making rooms, his mother had knelt at the feet of an Artemisian Storm Trooper and twisted the metal into a mind that would be a suitable leader for Artemis City. And so, as he had grown, it had been obvious to Spoole just how badly things had been run in the city. Spoole knew that he could do a better job, because his mind had been woven that way.

No, it wasn’t exactly that he had been hungry for power; rather, he realized that he couldn’t let things stay as they were.

That was the way it was, for Artemis wove its own leaders. Spoole was made to be clever and charismatic. His mother had twisted into his mind the knowledge of how to make himself so very attractive to women. His father had had that knowledge too; he had shown his son how to build a body that was both strong and agile.

Gearheart knew this. She both loved and hated his body.

‘
Your mother was a traitor,
’ she would say. ‘
Attractive men find it too easy to have children twisted. They lose the sense that a mind is a special thing. They cease to take sufficient care in their directions to the mother.
’

‘
I attracted you, didn’t I?
’ Spoole would reply.

‘
I was made to be attracted to you, Spoole. Don’t flatter yourself.
’ And at that Gearheart would stand and pirouette, or stretch, or in some other way show off her perfect body. ‘
But you have found life too easy, Spoole. You would not make a good father. I will never weave you a mind, since you have no understanding of the balance.
’

‘
You flatter yourself, Gearheart. Why should I want a child? It was not woven into my mind.
’

‘
So you say, Spoole, but you are speaking to a woman. No man could understand, but the weave is not so flexible as you might suppose. Some things are immutable. A woman may suppress the reproductive urge in a mind, but she cannot totally remove it.
’

‘
You manage to suppress the urge,
’ Spoole would say, but without heat.

And at that point, the conversation would end. But sometimes Spoole would push it a little further. Just out of reckless curiosity.

‘
But, Gearheart, if we were to have a child, how would you twist him?
’

‘
Him?
’ Gearheart would laugh. ‘
Not as good-looking as you, Spoole. Men like you tilt the balance away from women.
’

Spoole gazed reflectively at the city. He had never seen Kavan, but he had been told that the robot wasn’t attractive. No wonder. Kavan didn’t have the same privileged start to life as Spoole. He wouldn’t have had the education, the access to metal; he wouldn’t
know
how to build a body as well as Spoole could.

They were different in so many ways, but they still held so much in common. The same need to do what was
right
.

Spoole wondered if Kavan realized yet how difficult it would prove to bring about the change he wanted. Had Kavan yet glimpsed the essentially one-way nature of his quest? Did he yet see how, once one goal was achieved, another would immediately appear? Did he not see, that no matter how far he travelled, those people beneath him would be gripped with the same ambition, the same need to do what was right, only to do it better than himself? They would be there already, climbing up the stairs behind him, and if Kavan didn’t want their awls in his back, he would have to climb even faster.

Spoole stood on the roof of the city, on the roof of the world, on the roof of Artemis. He looked out at the chimneys and the forges and the factories and for a moment he saw a pyramid, a mound of robots, with himself at the top kicking down, and everyone else reaching and grabbing and pulling themselves up towards him.

He told himself he was being ridiculous, and he allowed his eyes to follow the floodlit railway lines that fanned out from the marshalling yards. He looked into the darkness to the south.

Kavan was out there somewhere. Kavan and his robots moving into Turing City. The first phase of the attack had been successful. Kavan had requested more troops, and Spoole had sent them. He could hardly do otherwise. But all that metal expended on what had seemed a reckless venture? Reckless? Now Spoole wasn’t so sure. Would Kavan win or lose?

Either way, Spoole would win; he would either gain more territory, or lose a potential rival.

But also, Spoole would lose. What would come riding back up the tracks from the south? News of defeat, or worse, Kavan, now a hero, leading a horde of battle-hardened troops?

Spoole looked down at the marshalling yards, and suddenly he smiled. He had the answer.

He turned and signalled to a slim robot that stood patiently near the stairs.

‘Fetch me the head of the engineers. Get me the railway chief.’

The thin wind carried Spoole’s laughter into the night.

There was always someone who wanted to take your place. Let Kavan handle his own would-be successors. Spoole was more than capable of handling his.

Eleanor

Eleanor was impressed by Kavan’s progress, but she was frustrated at the role he had selected for her in it. Kavan never quite seemed to trust her.

She marched through the cold night into the broken remains of the railway station. It was almost peaceful in here under the cold stars, the dark jigsaw pieces of the remaining station walls screening off the sounds coming from the half-defeated city. She could understand why Kavan had made this his headquarters.

The wreckage of the front of the reaction train had been dragged to one side, the remains of the ripped-open carcase of the railway station had either been made safe or torn down. New rails had been laid, and a steady relay of trains had been set up, bringing in troops and supplies from Artemis, Bethe, even from Wien.

It took her some time to spot Kavan, just another grey infantry-robot standing near the front of the station, reading from a piece of foil. Wolfgang, Kavan’s aide, stood nearby, along with Ruth, who had formerly been General Fallan’s number two. Their silence was a good sign: it meant things were going according to plan.

Eleanor marched up to Kavan. She was badly burned down her left-hand side; soot and scorched paint covered the bare metal of her arm, thigh and torso.

‘One of the foundries,’ she explained, noting Kavan’s glance. ‘The robots in there had jury-rigged some sort of flamethrower.’

‘It’s almost a pleasure to hear of someone here bothering to fight,’ said Kavan, rolling the foil into a ball and dropping it on the ground.

‘I don’t understand it,’ said Eleanor. ‘Where has the spirit gone from this city? For years we feared it, and yet today we find it as empty as a ghost.’

‘It was the same in Wien and Bethe and Segre, and all the other states where the citizens had ceased to take responsibility for all of the state’s functions. The people here are happy to operate a forge, or paint pictures, or make machine parts, but they will no longer scrub the algae from the stones or fight in the army. When you have a state that leaves those jobs to the immigrants and the underclass, you have a state that is already dead.’

The singing of rails announced another train approaching the station. Kavan and Eleanor watched the blue and yellow nose of a diesel approaching along the Bethe line. The midnight-black bodies of Storm Troopers could just be made out, lined up in racks on the trucks behind the engine.

‘Artemis itself has begun to follow that path . . .’ continued Kavan thoughtfully.

Eleanor looked up at the night. The stars shone so brightly, as if the heavens themselves were watching Turing City’s end.

‘You need to get yourself cleaned and repainted,’ said Kavan suddenly, and Eleanor was dragged back down to the world of Penrose.

‘Later,’ she said dismissively. ‘We almost have control of the city now.’

‘No, we haven’t.’ Kavan sounded tired. ‘We have taken a lot of ground, but that’s the easy part. Holding it will be more difficult. Come the morning, the sun will rise, and the robots of Turing City will see what they have lost. When they understand that all the easy options have gone, then the hard fact of fighting will not seem such an unpleasant alternative. We need to break their spirit now, before that truth occurs to them.’