Blood and Iron

by Tony Ballantyne

  All she had to do was find the correct sheet.

  Another robot came hurrying towards her, his shell painted the green of a computer.

  ‘Hey,’ she called. ‘I’m looking for Spoole. Where is he?’

  ‘In the Basilica, I should think. You should try the Main Index, two blocks over,’ said the robot. ‘Though you won’t find anyone to help you there. They’re on a stripped-down staff what with Kavan and everything.’

  ‘That’s okay, I’ve got my orders.’

  ‘Really?’ said the other robot, suddenly suspicious. ‘And what are they? Shouldn’t you be on the walls with the other infantry?’

  ‘No,’ said Susan. ‘And my orders are none of your business. I’ve been sent here on an important job.’

  Susan had killed another robot not half an hour ago. At the moment she felt as if she could do anything. Facing down a computer was the least of her worries. She held his gaze.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘fine. We’ve all got our jobs to do.’ And he hurried off down the road.

  Susan set off in the direction he had indicated. The streets seemed hollow, empty of life and movement. Nothing but steel doors set in red-brick walls. One of them opened and another computer appeared. Her courage had not yet deserted her; she decided to bluff it out.

  ‘I’m looking for Spoole,’ she said.

  ‘Only one of you?’

  ‘How many did Spoole expect?’

  ‘It’s not for me to say,’ replied the computer. ‘But I suppose a robot in his position will be happy with what support he can find. You’d better come this way!’

  Vignette had been right, she realized. The Generals really were in disarray. The city was not being properly led at the moment, and that left scope for robots such as herself to move between the spaces.

  She followed the computer through the door, down a corridor, into huge room, past lines of desks. A few green-painted robots still sat working at them. Steel styli scratched shapes into the metal foil.

  Up one flight of stairs, and then another. She passed more rooms where robots still worked.

  ‘The sheets pass up the building,’ said the computer, conversationally. Susan had the impression that, to him, the coming war was nothing more than a reason for more foil to be written on. His true world existed in here, all else was just pale shadows. ‘The figures are analysed and reduced on each floor. As they approach the upper levels all that data is changed to information.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Susan.

  The computer touched her elbow, the current in his hand weak.

  ‘I thought you might like to know,’ he said, smiling all the time, ‘while you’re here and all. People look at Artemis City and all they see is train tracks and infantryrobots, but there is more to this state than that!’ He squeezed the grey metal of her elbow harder. ‘No offence intended, of course.’

  ‘None taken,’ said Susan as they climbed yet another flight of steps. The robots on this floor seemed slightly better built than the ones below. The foil they worked on was of higher quality, judging by the colour of the metal.

  ‘These offices are what makes Artemis possible!’ said the robot proudly. ‘Those robots are producing the information that will enable Spoole and General Sandale and the rest to make decisions. But decisions are only part of the story. Okay, there are tactics involved in attacking a city, but that’s not all. You wouldn’t believe what it takes to move guns and troops and supplies and ammunition to the right place! Logistics is the key to Artemisian success!’ His eyes glowed as he spoke, but that glow suddenly faded. ‘Saving the contribution you and the other infantry make of course,’ he added.

  They had left the building now. They were walking out across a glass and metal bridge that stretched over the street far below, connecting the computer office with the building opposite. Susan’s gyros lurched when she realized where they were going.

  ‘Is this the Basilica?’ asked Susan, in wonder.

  ‘Oh yes!’ said the computer, proudly. ‘This bridge is part of the information superhighway that connects all of the Centre City! Hundreds of sheets of foil a day travel this way!’

  They entered the Basilica, and Susan looked around at the decoration that had appeared. Maybe it wasn’t as ostentatious as that of Turing City, but it was there. Gold, silver, platinum, titanium, tungsten, all wrapped around each other, moulded into the walls. Always discretely, austerely, but there nonetheless.

  She had been right. The Centre City was a statement after all, and the thought filled her with sadness. She doubted she would ever be able to tell this to Karel.

  But these thoughts were pushed from her head as the robot opened a door and led her into a sparsely furnished room. A steel-clad robot stood inside, gazing out of the window. So simple was his appearance that Susan did not realize who it was until the computer spoke.

  ‘There’s an infantryrobot here to see you, Spoole.’

  Kavan

  They’d built trenches and walls, thought Kavan. They’d lost already. What would be in those trenches, he wondered. Petrol? Hot oil? What would he put in them?

  Kavan knew the answer to that: he wouldn’t have built them in the first place.

  ‘The trenches can be bridged,’ said Ada.

  Kavan looked at the engineer, her blue body streaked with oil. She was loving this, he knew. He could hear it in the rich hum of current that rose from her body.

  ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘We’d be cut down by the troops in the middle if we funnelled ourselves in that way.’

  ‘Well, when you’re ready, just say the word.’ Ada didn’t seem to mind. She was gazing eagerly at the iron wall. ‘Just get me close enough to that. Let me get to work on it.’

  ‘I will.’ Kavan felt a curious sense of satisfaction. This was what he was made for. He was back in his element again. Something caught his attention.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Ada, unscrewing the end of a metal cylinder, checking the explosives inside.

  ‘That Scout.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You don’t see many male Scouts, do you?’

  ‘Something to do with the pattern of the mind,’ said Ada, glancing at the silver robot nearby. ‘It works better when it’s female.’ The robot’s body was as graceful and feminine as any other Scout’s, but there was something about the way that he went through his warm up movements that was unmistakeably male.

  ‘Why do you ask?’ said Ada. ‘It’s a funny thing to wonder about, just before a battle.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Kavan. ‘We take things for granted, don’t we? Did you ever have children Ada?’

  ‘No. That’s a job for the mothers of Artemis.’ She gazed at him. ‘Did you ever have children, Kavan?’

  ‘No. We are all woven with our own purpose.’

  And this is mine, he reflected.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘It’s time to begin.’

  Susan and Spoole

  ‘Come in,’ said Spoole.

  Susan walked into the room, her gyros spinning.

  ‘Turn down the power,’ said Spoole, ‘I can feel the current in your electromuscles from here.’

  With an effort, Susan forced herself to relax.

  ‘What’s your name, soldier?’

  ‘Susan.’

  ‘Susan. And how many robots to you represent, Susan? How many infantryrobots do you bring to follow me?’

  ‘How many?’ said Susan. ‘There’s just me.’

  ‘Just you?’

  If Spoole was disappointed, he didn’t show it. He looked more closely at her.

  ‘Who are you? You don’t wear that body like an Artemisian. Are you a conscript?’

  ‘My name is Susan. I’m a Turing Citizen.’

  ‘There is no such place any more.’

  Susan looked at Spoole. ‘I thought that you would be at the front line, leading your troops.’

  ‘Artemis is no longer led in that manner,’ he said. ‘Besides, there are other plans in place . . .
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br />   His voice trailed away.

  Susan stared at the robot standing by the window, his body reflecting the yellow glow of the lights beyond. This was Spoole, the leader of Artemis. She was standing not five feet from the man who was ultimately responsible for the death of her child, the loss of her husband and the destruction of her home.

  Spoole had turned and was looking out of the window again, gazing at nothing. His body seemed simply constructed, but Susan recognized excellent metal work when she saw it. She could feel best-quality steel, her fingertips almost tingled at its presence. Spoole was an expert at bending metal, his handiwork had a cold sort of humour about it: his body was austere at first glance, but elegantly made when you took a closer look. It was the same joke that the Centre City had played on the rest of the continent, as they had taken it apart.

  One of the perpetrators of that joke was standing right in front of her. If she brought down her hand hard enough, she could break his coil. So what was stopping her?

  And she knew the answer. Vignette had been right. Until you live the reality, you can never be sure the way your mind is woven. This wasn’t the way she was made.

  ‘You can’t see Kavan’s troops from here,’ said Spoole, conversationally. ‘The wall obstructs their view.’

  ‘Really, Sir?’ said Susan.

  ‘You are from Turing City, aren’t you? We don’t say ‘Sir’ in Artemis, Susan.’

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘You didn’t build walls around Turing City either, did you, Susan?’

  ‘No, Spoole.’

  ‘Nor did we in the past. But things have changed. I remain here whilst others lead.’ He turned suddenly to face Susan. ‘They leave someone to guard me, and I don’t know whether it is an insult or a subtle threat. What do you think, Susan?’

  He was testing her. Or was he teasing her?

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

  ‘And what would you do if they attacked me now, Susan. Would you defend me?’

  ‘If who attacked you?’

  ‘Though they forget I used to be a soldier too,’ continued Spoole, not appearing to notice her question. ‘If they do come in here, they’ll have the two of us to fight.’

  ‘Who will attack us, Spoole? You mean Kavan, right?’

  ‘Kavan?’ laughed Spoole. ‘Kavan is the least of my problems.’

  Kavan

  The attack was the culmination of Artemis’s hundred-year climb to supremacy on Shull. It was the greatest so far of Kavan’s career. And yet its beginning was strangely low-key.

  The orders radiated out from Kavan’s position, they circled the iron walls, passed on from robot to robot. When the metal circuit was complete, the attack began.

  Kavan formed two groups of infantry, two hundred yards apart, and set them firing on the robots between the first two moats. Copper and lead and cupronickel formed an almost solid wall in the air, it thumped into the earth of the mound, riddling the soil with metal.

  The robots on the mound were trapped between the two groups of infantry that Karel had formed, and those groups now started to move towards each other, cutting down the robots opposite, riddling them with holes, piercing electromuscle, shattering plate, cutting through the wire of the mind.

  ‘Then you simply repeat the process all around the mound,’ said Goeppert, delighted. ‘Whoever commands that army has trapped their soldiers there with no means of support.’

  ‘I know,’ said Kavan. ‘And that worries me. Spoole is not a fool.’

  Goeppert looked at the wall of robots who stood behind the two firing groups.

  ‘What are they for?’

  ‘To capture the metal that is fired back at us. It will lodge in their bodies, ready to be used again.’

  The glow of portable forges could be seen, way back from the lines. Robots would be waiting there to melt down the metal reclaimed and recast it as minié balls and spitzer rounds that would be passed back, still warm, to the troops on the front line. Ada was back there too, directing the robots who were now at work on the wide platforms they would use to bridge the moats.

  Kavan gazed at the two groups of infantry, shuffling towards each other as they fired. The night was lit with the flash of powder from the older guns, the spark of electromuscle suddenly punctured, the blue glow of a mind suddenly pierced, expending its life force in one flash.

  ‘It seems to me,’ he began, ‘that Spoole is trying to slow us down, not stop us completely. Why else would he build his fortifications in this manner?’

  The defenders on the iron wall finally understood what was happening. They brought their cannon and mortars to bear on Kavan’s infantryrobots. A staccato tattoo travelled down the walls, and heavy canister rained down upon Kavan’s lines.

  Clouds of dark chaff exploded amongst the troops, glittering silver as the scraps of foil caught the light of the battle. Kavan’s vision began to blink with interference.

  ‘The chaff is electrified,’ said Calor. ‘They’ll follow it up with iron filings next.’

  More canisters rained down, and Kavan saw, through flickering vision, black lines drawn by the magnetized iron on the bodies of his and the other soldiers.

  Engineers moved in, laying a magnetic perimeter to draw off the chaff, but the defenders switched to shrapnel bombs. Corkscrews of metal spun through the air, burrowing their way into bodies and limbs. A nearby robot froze, and the light in its eyes faded. It fell forward, to reveal the shaft of iron that pierced the back of its head.

  ‘Gather the metal!’ called Kavan. ‘Pull it back to the forges!’

  No one heard him in the crackling confusion caused by the chaff, but his command was unnecessary. Already Scouts, frustrated by their lack of input to this kind of battle, were dashing back and forth, carrying what metal they could find. Even the long black tails of iron filings that followed them like whizz lines would be reclaimed.

  The magnetic perimeter was in place. Already the air was getting clearer, as it pulled chaff and iron filings towards itself. A pattering, ringing noise started, and Kavan realized it had begun to rain.

  ‘Good,’ he called. ‘This will clear the air further!’

  Now he could see the two firing groups once more. They had almost met up. Beyond them, on the section of the mound, nothing moved.

  ‘Some of them flung themselves into the far trench rather than be shot,’ said Calor, peering through the distorted air with her enhanced vision.

  ‘We’ll capture their metal later on,’ said Kavan. ‘Set up two groups again, this time four hundred feet apart. We’re clearing a path straight through here, right now.’

  ‘Very well, Kavan.’ She looked beyond the trenches. ‘Then there will only be the wall to pass.’

  Was she being sarcastic? Kavan said nothing. Behind him he could hear Goeppert and the rest of the Borners checking over their bodies, ready for the ascent of the wall.

  Susan and Spoole

  Somewhere in the distance, the sky began to flicker.

  ‘The battle has begun,’ said Spoole. ‘Kavan has returned at last.’

  ‘Are you worried?’ asked Susan.

  Spoole turned and gazed at her. He didn’t seem concerned. He turned back to the window.

  ‘We take conscripts too easily,’ he said. ‘These past years we have placed too high a value on expansion at all costs. We have forgotten Nyro’s way.’

  He stared at the flickering in the night sky.

  ‘No, Susan, I’m not worried, at least not in the way you think. If Kavan were to lead this city, it would at least be according to Nyro’s way.’

  The window was vast, squares of glass set in a metal frame. It curved at the edges, the top and bottom. Again Susan was struck by how Artemis could make such an austere statement of power and beauty, so totally different to those formerly made in Turing City.

  Drops of rain began to streak the window. Other than their pattering on the glass, there was no sound.

  The silence unnerved Susan.

/>   ‘Well,’ she said, ‘do you think Kavan will win through?’

  ‘No. Kavan will not win this time.’ He spoke the words with some sadness.

  ‘You’re not an infantryrobot, are you Susan?’ said Spoole suddenly. ‘I wonder what you are. I sent out messages asking for support days ago. I though I would have heard from the Storm Troopers at least. But nothing. Maybe Sandale and the rest have got to them. And then you turn up . . .’

  He leaned closer, looking into her eyes.

  ‘What are you? Just another robot jumping on the best opportunity for safety? Well, you’re wasting your time coming to me! Go and see Sandale and the rest, if you want to be accepted as an Artemisian!’

  ‘I never claimed to be an Artemisian,’ said Susan angrily. ‘I was a Turing Citizen. Your state kidnapped me and had me brought here. Forced me to work in your making rooms.’

  Her current surged. She could feel it filling her electromuscles, drawing them in. This body was getting ready to fight. She fumbled for the rifle she carried slung over her shoulder, pointed it towards Spoole. He didn’t seem to care.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, eyes glowing, ‘Now I understand! You are a mother of Artemis. That explains it. You don’t walk like a soldier. You’re too precise; you have a different sort of thoughtfulness. I was a soldier, I know these things. Who did you swap bodies with?’

  ‘Like you would know! You took my husband from me! You killed my son! Do you know that?’

  ‘I killed your son? I don’t think so.’

  ‘Maybe not directly, but your rusting state attacked mine.’

  ‘Yes. That’s what we do. And your state crumbled and ran away, rather than fighting. Just like you’re doing now.’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Susan with angry dignity. ‘I came here by choice. I’m looking for someone.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘My friend.’

  ‘What about your husband? I thought you said I took him from you. I would have thought you wanted him back?’

  ‘He’s out there somewhere, on the other side of that wall. Tell me a way through and I’ll take it.’

  ‘What was your friend’s name?’