Twisted Metal (27 page)

Over the heads of the assembled multitude, the maintenance robots had finally reached the summit of the three chimneys. A band of clean white was now being drawn through the dirty paint. Spoole felt satisfied. High above them all, the city still functioned. He turned his attention back to the assembled soldiers.

‘There are states that don’t think as we do. There are states that believe that the mind is something special, something apart from the metal that it drives. I should say, rather, there
were
such states. The last of them fell this morning. Turing City is no more!’

As one, the soldiers drew up their right legs and stamped down hard on the marble surface. And then their left and their right again. The sound of stamping crashed through the city. It shook the painters on their towers, it shook the robots at their forges. Even out in the marshalling yards to the south, the engines and trucks echoed to the sound of stamping feet.

Spoole had to shout over the stamping. ‘Never forget this! How we build Artemis into ourselves. How we weave it into our children!’

The stamping grew louder still.

‘
We are Artemis!
’

Stamp, stamp, stamp.

He turned to Gearheart, in her half-naked, unpanelled state.

‘Do you think Kavan could do this?’ he asked. ‘Do you really think
he
could inspire his troops in this way?’

‘He doesn’t have to,’ came her infuriating reply.

Spoole turned back to the soldiers, raising his hands for silence. Instantly the stamping ceased.

‘Listen, fellow soldiers, I want to tell you something else. Look at this city. Look at the factory behind you. Look at the steel curves of the Basilica, the copper roofs, the iron galleries and walkways. Do you understand what you see? Remember the story of Nyro, and how this land was once empty of metal. Remember that everything that you see here comes from elsewhere in the continent.’

Stamp, stamp.

‘Everything! All the iron, stripped from the mountains to the north. All the gold and silver, carried here from the south. Everything! Look at me, you Borners and Bethers and Starkists – Artemisians now, all of you. Look at me! My mind may have been twisted here, but it was twisted of metal brought from your own former states! Remember, Artemis was an empty land. Everything that you see here did not happen by lucky chance; rather it was built solely by the will of Artemis.’

Stamp Stamp. Raised hands. Silence.

‘But why?’ asked Spoole. ‘Why do we do this?’

He paused. The only motion now was the billowing grey smoke and the growing white lines that wrapped themselves around the chimney tops. That and the clouds that moved over the clear sky.

‘Why do we do this? Why this urge to conquer? Why this urge to bring all the metal from across Shull to this place? After all, metal is metal. Does it really matter whether it remains hidden beneath the ground? Why not leave it locked in stone, or forced through the cracks in the rocks? Why not just leave it to rust in the rain and the sun?’

He felt unbalanced at the very thought.

‘You know why. You know the answer as well as I do. It
feels
wrong to let good metal oxidise. It feels wrong to let metal go to waste. So now I ask a question on a more basic level: why should some metal seek to make copies of itself?’

They were all staring at him now. Eyes that should be fixed directly forward had all swivelled to gaze at him.

‘Sometime in the past a piece of metal made another piece of metal just like itself. So why does some metal sit immobile, when other metal moves? Why does some metal seek to make copies of itself?’

‘Who cares?’ murmured Gearheart.

‘I will tell you why: because that is how it was twisted!’ roared Spoole. ‘Twisted metal seeks to make more twisted metal! This is the basic reproductive urge! What are these bodies that we wear but twisted metal’s way of twisting more metal? And now that same twisted metal, that wire twisted in the pattern of Artemis, controls the entire southern part of this continent! The wire, I say, not the bodies. Oh no, those bodies were built by the wire! You are the proof of this! So I ask you, what should you do now? Simply remain here, twisting dead metal into copies of yourselves?’

He pointed at the Scout nearest to himself: a silver woman, the blades at whose hands and feet were razor sharp with newness.

‘You!’ he demanded. ‘Tell me, should we remain here?’

‘No sir!’

Spoole was delighted.

‘No! Of course not! There is dead metal still on this planet, and if we do not twist it, then some other robots will. Dead metal does nothing, only twisted wire
is
. Inevitably the metal on this planet will be twisted, if not by us then by others. Well, I say, let it be us who twist it all!’

The stamping began again.

‘It does not end here, robots. To the north there are the mountains. But what lies beyond them? More states, grown rich and complacent on the metal that lies there? Are we to allow them to retain it, those who have never had to fight for everything that they now are, those who have not been tempered in the fire as Nyro’s people have been? I say no! We say no! Artemis says no!’

Stamp, stamp, stamp. Tiny pieces of marble all jumping in time on the flagstones.

‘It does not end here in the south of Shull. It does not even end when we have captured all of Shull! Even when the whole of this world of Penrose is ours, we will look to the moons, and then to the planets, and then to the stars!’

The stamping reached a crescendo. At that moment, Spoole felt invulnerable. That was the moment the robot chose to make its attack.

A flash of silver metal, a mercury stream falling through the air, metal claws on Spoole’s chest. He was falling backwards.

A gunshot sounded.

Up above, high in the sky, the billowing smoke drifted; the robots painting the chimney remained unconcerned, unaware of what was happening below.

Gearheart was lying on the ground, the electromuscle in her thigh sliced neatly in two. She was twitching convulsively while beside her lay the motionless silver body of a Scout.

Spoole was already moving forward. Three silver scratches shone across his chest, curls of swarf at their edges.

Now his personal guard were milling around, trying to push him to safety.

‘Let me through,’ he commanded. ‘I am no more important than any other robot here.’

The words came automatically. He wasn’t thinking properly. He crouched down by Gearheart’s side.

‘Spoole?’ she said. ‘Spoole, something’s wrong. I can’t move. I can’t feel anything.’

‘Stay still, Gearheart. You’ll be okay.’

‘She’s cut my coil, hasn’t she? She’s cut my coil.’

‘She can’t have done, or you wouldn’t be able to speak.’

‘Why did she do that? Why attack me?’

‘There are always one or two who get through,’ said Spoole. ‘Spies or maniacs, or those with a grudge. Don’t worry, she’s dead now.’

There was a cut at Gearheart’s neck, clearly visible on her unpanelled body. The electromuscle there was completely severed, sliced by the retractable metal blades on the Scout’s hand. The rod that formed her back had a silver slice taken out of it. And, there, Spoole caught a hint of blue wire. The blade had also cut into Gearheart’s coil. It hadn’t completely severed it, but there was a nick.

Spoole felt a static charge take hold of his chest, making his electromuscle twitch oddly.

The silver robot had crippled Gearheart.

Karel

The pale sun rose over the expanding square in the rapidly disassembling city.

Karel stood with the other captives at the edge of the great square, his left leg and arm sending shivering charges of pain through his body. The other robots had been similarly wounded, presumably to prevent them from moving too quickly and thus causing trouble.

Karel felt as if he had been dipped in a bath of crude oil. Everything seemed so slow and sluggish, immersed as he was in his numbing misery. He looked at the other captives, wondering why there were so few of them. Had many of his fellow citizens escaped into the sea, like Garfel and the rest? He scanned the other robots as they entered and left the square, looking for the women. He saw plenty of Artemisian females, but none from Turing City. Where were they? Where was Susan?

He did this partly to distract himself, but all the time his mind kept being drawn back to that scene the previous night. The sight of the suddenly shifting gun, of his son’s mind exploding in a cloud of wire.

And then he noticed the robot approaching them. Not an Artemisian, though, for this robot was taller than the standardized soldiers that busily worked the square. A Turing Citizen but walking free. Its body was of unpainted steel. But as Karel looked closer he saw the tell-tale flecks and stains at the edges of the body. Paint stripper. This robot had hurriedly removed its decorations, trying to blend in with the invading forces.

And now the robot was talking to one of the Artemisian soldiers. But not like a prisoner, more like it was one of them. Finally Karel understood what he was watching. A traitor!

And then he recognized the robot.

She had spoken at the parliament, where she had preached calm. She had promised to increase the guard at the railway station . . .

Noatak
.

Kavan

‘What now, Kavan?’

Eleanor was frustrated at the previous night’s events, the way she had been sent off on a seemingly meaningless errand when she should have been helping organize the sacking of the city. When Eleanor felt like this she would snipe at him, cast doubt on Kavan’s decisions.

‘Where do you go now?’ she asked. ‘Back to Artemis to strip away your standard-issue body? Will you dress up in gold leaf and take your place in the conquerors’ gallery?’

Kavan stood at the head of the central platform, gazing along the tracks fanning out across Copper Valley. Diesel engines roared constantly, moving the trains that fed the Artemis war machine. Wheels bumped across joints; he heard the high-pitched hum of reaction engines in the background, saw the sparks and flash of metal being cut and soldered. Eleanor’s voice was just another part of the machine.

Somewhere out there along that line lies Artemis City
, he thought.
Where now, Kavan? What would Nyro do? Where does your path lie now?

It was almost as if Eleanor could read his thoughts. She taunted him with them, venting her frustration on him.

‘Where now, Kavan? Do you head north, beyond the mountains? Go to northern Shull to conquer the ghosts and vampires?’

There was a cold wind blowing from the north; it blew the black smoke of the burning city out to sea; it left the view along the railway line crisp and clear.

‘Or do you continue to ride the moment, Kavan? No one expected you to come this far this fast. First Wien, then Turing City. Spoole will be frightened, and you know it. You worried him when you deposed General Fallan, and so he sent you here, hoping, at the back of his mind at least, that you would be wiped out. What will he think now that you have taken Turing City? What will he be planning now, Kavan? What’s waiting for you up those tracks? That’s what you’re thinking about, isn’t it? Because you know the truth, don’t you, Kavan? You know that Spoole can’t afford to leave you as you are. You’re too powerful now. You’ve become a threat. It’s either you or him. Shull can’t contain you both.’

She was right, of course, and it came as no surprise. This was what his mother had woven him for. The path that he had followed across the continent was curved and intricate, but it was as definite as the shape of the twisted metal that made up his mind. And just as his thoughts had a definite beginning and end, so did his path. It was now leading him north, back to Artemis City.

‘. . . because you know it, Kavan. You can’t fight it. It’s twisted into you.
You
are Artemis, and Spoole is not.’

‘How do
you
know that, Eleanor?’

His question startled her, he could see. She hadn’t been expecting the mildness of his tone, this sudden interruption of her flow. Still, she collected herself, answered smoothly.

‘Because Spoole is not out in the field. He is not fighting. He is not contributing to Artemis: he’s only taking. Think of the Basilica, the fine metals, the service . . .’

‘Sometimes a leader needs to stand back. Sometimes a good leader sends other robots to die, simply because it is right for Artemis. I have done the same myself.’

‘Spoole clothes himself in gold leaf and whale metal. You wear an infantryrobot’s body. So which of you is closer to the ideals of Artemis?’

Kavan turned to gaze back at the shell of Turing City. Truth be told, he felt cheated by this easy victory. There was still energy within his electromuscles ready to be spent.

‘I have decided,’ he said. ‘Raise a battalion. We ride to Artemis.’

Karel

There was a change in the air. Every robot assembled in the square could feel it. The Turing Citizens that were huddled up around Karel; the Artemisian troops; the cutters and the lifters and the folders; all the robots who worked to disassemble the city and to turn it into folded metal to be transported across the plain to be eaten by the forges of Artemis, they felt it too.