Twisted Metal (46 page)

He heard a sudden noise nearby, just around the other side of the pile of gangue from which he himself had emerged. Cautiously, he edged his way around the heap of dirty white stone. The noise came again, the clink-clank of stone slipping down upon itself.

He dodged in and out of the bays and coves of the immense pile of gangue, working his way around to the north till his new ears gradually became aware of another sound. The sound of industry: of diesel engines roaring, of heavy machinery moving, the rumble and roar of rock being dug.

And then he rounded another corner, and the noise was forgotten.

A round, crab-like machine, not much bigger than his head, was squatting at the base of the gangue pile and feeding fragments of rock into its jaws, grinding it all down. Powdered stone spilt from its crude mouth, covering the ground and staining the metal shell of the machine itself. Such an ugly machine, it was roughly constructed of iron, the top of its shell an uneven mix of leftover metals. This was a cheaply made construct.

They were reclaiming even the gangue itself, Maoco O realized. Turing City had been so rich it had left the mined-out slag lying in piles around the city, but Artemis wasted nothing. Maoco O suddenly felt a terrible admiration for their efficiency. He watched the crab machine as it moved forward slightly, selecting a choice piece of rock with its claws to feed into its mouth. There would be some metal there, enough for it to process and add to its own body. It would be a long and tedious job. The machine could process gangue all its life and would still only find a few ounces of metal. And then a terrible suspicion took hold of him, and he crossed to the crab, examined its body, flipped open the top, and looked in horror at what lay inside.

The blue twisted wire of a brain: a Turing Citizen.

He heard scuttling behind him. Another two crabs rounded the corner.

‘Hey, what are you doing?’

The infantryrobot was standing on the gangue hill above him, its rifle at its side.

‘Just looking for my section,’ said Maoco O, easily. He flipped the top of the crab back in place and straightened up. The infantryrobot lifted its rifle to aim directly at Maoco O’s head.

‘What section? What are you talking about?’ He raised his voice. ‘Hey, Camber, there’s something over here . . .’

The infantryrobot slipped his way down the pile. He leaped forward, landing in front of Maoco O, his gun still covering him.

‘You’re a Turing Citizen, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘Where have you been hiding all this time?’

Maoco O heard more footsteps crunching on the mined stone. That must be Camber, coming to the aid of his colleague. He had to move quickly.

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he said, moving towards the infantry robot. ‘I’m new here and I was just wondering . . .’

‘Stay back,’ snapped the infantryrobot.

‘Goscin!’ The second infanftryrobot came into view. In the merest fraction of a second it took Goscin to glance at his friend, Maoco O leaped forward. This new body was too slow, too weak, but the training, the reflexes were still there. He gripped the enemy’s rifle, twisted it free of the other robot’s hands, rolled forward, stood and turned and fired at Goscin’s head.

Nothing happened.

The safety catch was on, he realized. He flicked it off just as Camber fired, the bullet tearing through his left shoulder, piercing the electromuscle there. Goscin was already charging at him so he turned and shot at him one-handed. His body was badly tuned, he fired too low, the bullet passing through Goscin’s throat. The other robot fell however: Maoco O’s bullet had clipped its coil, disabled its legs, crippling it. Maoco O kicked down at Goscin’s neck, and broke the connection there with his foot.

Another rifle shot, a second bullet hit him, again in the left shoulder. Camber was clearly panicking, either that or his rifle sights were not set correctly. Calmly, one-handed, Maoco O took aim at him and fired.

The bullet caught him dead centre in the skull. Blue wire exploded.

There were more shouts, more footsteps. Maoco O needed cover urgently.

But first he dropped the rifle, looked down at the gangue crab, bent over and flipped open the top. Carefully, with one hand, he eased the mind out of the machine. Fix his arm now, and he could come back for more.

Then Maoco O ran.

Susan

Susan knelt, twisting wire at the feet of another infantry-robot, her mind lost in the contemplation of Nyro’s pattern.

‘He’s alive,’ said the man, his blue-green wire spilling into her hands.

‘Who’s alive?’ asked Susan.

‘Karel,’ said the robot. The man made the sign, small circle, large circle. ‘One of my brothers saw him in Northern Shull. He was walking with Kavan and another robot.’

Susan looked down at the concrete floor, at the metal scraps curling amongst the dust. Karel? She tried to remember the light of his eyes, the shape of the body he had been wearing. It all seemed so far away now.

‘Aren’t you pleased?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Susan, hands busy twisting. She glanced around the room. There was no Scout on duty tonight: there hardly ever was, any more. Even so – ‘I’ve learned not to draw attention to myself.’

There was a sense of purpose filling the making room that had gradually grown with time. It sang in the metal walls. The other women who knelt on the concrete floor felt it, too. No longer Turing Citizens, they were now Artemisians. They twisted metal quickly and efficiently, all according to Nyro’s plan. The work was hypnotic and seductive, it drew you in with the feeling that you were becoming part of something much bigger than yourself, part of a mighty machine that spread out across an entire continent. Susan held wire in her hands, and she felt as if she was connected to all the metal of Artemis. Some days lately she had to fight to remember who she was, and what had been taken from her. But now it seemed the outside world had come to remind her.

‘Who are you?’ she asked.

‘Banjo Macrodocious.’

‘No, you’re not. I met him already. You’re not the same robot. I can tell by this wire.’

‘We are all called Banjo Macrodocious.’

‘Why do I keep getting these messages?’

The robot made the sign of the two circles.

‘I know that already,’ said Susan, ‘but it’s not an answer. Do you know what? I’ve been thinking, all this time kneeling here on my own. Thinking about what has happened to me. My child was killed by an Artemisian, but he was only acting that way because his mother twisted his mind to act like an Artemisian. And his mother only did that because her mind was twisted that way, too. And I only had a child because I married Karel, and I only did that because my mother twisted my mind so that I would. And we all act the way we do because our parents made our minds that way, and they only act that way because their parents did the same to them . . .’

She paused in her twisting for a moment, gazed up at the robot. Some of the others in the room were now looking in her direction. All of a sudden, she didn’t care.

‘Do you know what? I don’t really care about the Book of Robots. I don’t care if there is a right way for robots to be. All that has happened to us has happened, and even if we wove the perfect robot tomorrow, it wouldn’t change who I am and what has happened in my life.’

She raised her voice. ‘You know what I think? I think that we shouldn’t be wasting our time thinking about regaining perfection in the future. Instead, we should be thinking about how to make the best of what we are right now.’

The other women stared at her. So did the men at whose feet they knelt.

‘Hey,’ Susan said to them. ‘Get back to work.’

Slowly, much to Susan’s surprise, they all did so.

Banjo Macrodocious leaned forward. ‘Do you know, Susan, that there are many who would agree with you. Some people say that the Book of Robots is written all around us at the moment, in the twisted metal of the million robot minds that inhabit this planet.’

Susan resumed weaving too.

‘Well, I like that interpretation better,’ she said.

She was a quarter of the way into the pattern now, two and a half thousand twists gone, nearly eight thousand left.

‘And some people,’ continued Banjo Macrodocious, ‘say that the first robots were rather crude, and over the years they have improved themselves, and that we have yet to see the perfect robot.’

‘That may be,’ replied Susan equably.

‘Karel may find the answer,’ said Banjo Macrodocious. ‘He travels north – north to where the answers lie.’

‘Do you think I will ever see him again?’ asked Susan, gripped by a sudden longing. It hurt, because it cut so deep. All the walls that she had built up within herself, the layers of insulation she had placed over her emotions, were suddenly sliced cleanly through, and the silver edge of her feelings shone through.

‘I don’t know,’ said Banjo Macrodocious.

Already Susan was sealing herself off again, soldering over the breaks. She was kneeling on a concrete floor in a metal room again, deep underground in the heart of Artemis City. There was nothing else now but Artemis.

‘I don’t suppose I will,’ she said. ‘Turing City has gone. It will not rise again.’

Maoco O

‘What’s your name?’ asked Maoco O.

The newly built robot moved its arms experimentally, then looked down to see that it had no legs as yet. Maoco O had left it to build its own; things would be more efficient that way.

The robot looked up at him, green eyes shining. ‘I’m Gabriel,’ it said. ‘Thank you for rescuing me.’

‘Don’t worry. You’ll have the chance to repay me. We’re going to build more bodies, and we’re going to rescue more minds.’

Gabriel hadn’t fully registered the words; he was still lost in the horror of his recent experience. ‘It was awful on the gangue,’ he said. ‘Those crab bodies . . . they had no senses, only the feel for metal.’ He was beginning to babble. ‘There was nothing but emptiness, the crushing of rock. A lifetime trapped there . . .’

‘Not any more,’ said Maoco O. ‘You’re free now.’

Gabriel couldn’t let go of the memories. ‘My wife, my children. They pushed us all into those crab bodies . . .’

‘I told you, we shall rescue them all. Step by step.’

Gabriel waved his arms around, seemingly without control.

‘To see, to hear, to move . . . You wouldn’t believe the feeling . . .’

‘I know,’ said Maoco O. ‘I know. Just take your time, Gabriel.’

This was going to be harder than he had expected, but Maoco O could do it. He knew it. First his own body, then Gabriel’s, then the others. He had a collection of minds already, laid out on shelves next door.

Some of them were crippled, having had their coils crushed. The robots in those minds were irretrievably separated from the world. Doomed to thirty or forty years in silence and darkness, and then death as the life-force leaked away.

But some of the minds he had collected were whole. There was enough metal left outside for bodies to be built for them. There were even City Guard minds among them. Maoco O would patiently show them how to build their own bodies, how to reconnect with the world once more.

There were even places to hide while they rebuilt themselves. Turing City wasn’t quite dead. Not yet.

‘What’s your name?’ asked Gabriel.

‘My name? Maoco O.’

‘A City Guard! What happened to your body?’

Maoco thought of his former body. So fast, so powerful. When Turing City had seemed strong, it had seemed so important. Now that the city had proven to be as brittle as poorly cast iron . . .

‘My body? This is my body, Gabriel. It changes from day to day. Now, come on, let’s get those legs built. And then I will teach you how to fight.’

Spoole

Artemis City was growing. Metal girders seemed to spring from the ground, climbing up towards the moons, a few remaining snowflakes blowing through their skeleton frames. Metal plate crept across the ground. Metal hammers rang, and black smoke billowed from chimneys. Molten metal spilled red and golden from blast furnaces, splashing out into blackened moulds.

Spoole stood at the top of the city and looked out at a landscape turning to metal.

‘He’s coming, Spoole,’ said Gearheart. ‘Your son is coming home. How does that make you feel?’

‘My son?’ said Spoole.

‘Oh, Spoole, we both know who Kavan is. Don’t you feel proud? That your wire is strong? Does that satisfy your virility? Does it make you feel like a man? Or don’t you like it, the fact that you are no longer the greatest?’

‘Be quiet, Gearheart.’

Gearheart slammed down her spoon-shaped arm. Her battered, misshapen body was so ugly now. Spoole noted the lightest speckling of rust beading on her chest panelling, and he felt disgusted.

‘Don’t tell me to be quiet,’ snapped Gearheart. ‘You call yourself an Artemisian? Look at you skulking here in this Basilica while better robots than you are off changing the world. All that metal flowing into this state, and what are you building? More troops? More weapons? More railway lines? No! You are expanding Artemis City to your greater glory. Spoole, you have forgotten Nyro.’