Blood and Iron

by Tony Ballantyne

  ‘They know we’re in the trench!’ called Calor. ‘They’re aiming for us down here!’

  ‘Good!’ called Kavan. ‘Their bombs will shatter the walls and make it easier for us to climb out!’

  ‘And if they hit us?’

  ‘Then we will die. We’re only metal.’

  Kavan and Calor ran, the patterns of explosions reflecting in the rain water that flowed down their mud-spattered shells. Kavan and Calor and the rest of the robots, infantryrobots, Scouts, Storm Troopers, even some engineers, all seeking a way out of the confusion. All the while, those heavy craft droned and hovered somewhere above, sending down golden tongues of fire.

  ‘Here, Kavan, here!’ called Calor. She had found a sloping bank of earth, up which she led Kavan, both of them scrambling up into the night above. They emerged near one of the bridges that led away from the mounds onto the plain beyond.

  Kavan turned for a moment and looked back towards the city. The gunfire there had almost ceased, bright yellow lights had been turned on to illuminate the walls. Before the walls, the dark craft hovered, sending down streaks of light that burst in golden fountains on the blackened ground. Fires leaped into the sky, fires fell from the night, and the battleground was picked out in bars of light.

  ‘What about Goeppert?’ asked Calor.

  ‘He’s on his own now,’ said Kavan. ‘We need to retreat and reassess.’

  ‘Retreat to where?’

  ‘Scatter across the plain,’ said Kavan. ‘It will make it harder for those craft to pick us off.’

  ‘What about Artemis City?’

  ‘It will still be here tomorrow. We need to understand what is happening!’

  The command went out, and the Uncertain Army broke up into hundreds, thousands of little companies that scattered into the night.

  A new sound fell out of the night, a piercing whistle that sang from high above. A second noise joined it.

  ‘What now?’ asked Kavan.

  ‘Two more craft,’ said Calor, gazing up into the night. ‘Small craft, I think. No. Or are they large craft, but further away?’

  ‘Never mind that,’ said Kavan, ‘look!’

  The humming, droning machines were turning their attention away from the trenches and instead moving towards Kavan and the rest. They began to chase the robots across the plain, golden tongues of fire chasing them into the night.

  Susan and Spoole

  Spoole was ashamed. Susan could tell. He may not be part of what had happened, he may not have made the decision, but he was still ashamed.

  ‘Other minds?’ she said. Then she remembered what Nettie had told her, out by the radio masts. The creators had come. The writers of the Book of Robots had returned to Penrose. ‘Is it true?’ she asked. ‘Have our creators come?’

  ‘No!’ said Spoole. ‘No! They never claimed that. At least not at first. But they pick things up so quickly. They know how to manipulate people, how to win robots over. They know when to lie and flatter, and when to threaten and to tell the truth and when to just ignore the question. Oh, they’re clever.’

  Susan gazed at him, a massive potential building inside her.

  ‘Is it true that they are animals?’ she asked.

  ‘Humans, they call themselves. Yes. It’s true.’

  ‘Have you seen them?’

  ‘No. Only heard their voices, and then I wasn’t supposed to. They’ve been speaking to the Generals these past two months using the radio. They kept it a secret from me for so long.’

  ‘I thought you were in charge!’

  ‘It doesn’t work that way, Susan. Not in Artemis. The humans have been speaking to the Generals, making promises, making deals. And the Generals have been listening. The humans have promised to defend the city in return for certain considerations.’

  ‘What considerations?’

  ‘Robots, Susan. The humans are clever, but they can’t work metal like we do. That’s how I know they didn’t write the book. Do you understand that? They don’t know enough about us.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘They want robots to come and work for them. They want us to weave them robots that they can take back to their homes as slaves.’

  ‘And the Generals agreed to this? They are willing to sell your children to animals?’

  ‘Why not, Susan? Children are nothing more than twisted metal. We all are.’

  ‘That’s only what you think!’ Susan shouted with frustration. ‘This state is riddled with rust from top to bottom!’

  Spoole just smiled.

  ‘You’re part of this too, Susan. More than you know. You realize what else the humans want? Minds full of lifeforce that can’t think. The minds that your friend told you to make.’

  ‘Nettie!’ said Susan. ‘Then she knew?’

  ‘I don’t know. The Generals have been so good at concealing their actions. They know that the robots of the city will not see this as Nyro’s way.’

  ‘Well, surely it isn’t!’

  ‘Who knows? The Generals defend the city against attack; perhaps they believe they are defending it for Nyro’s sake.’

  ‘And do you think they are right?’

  Spoole was silent.

  ‘I thought not.’

  To Susan, master craftsrobot, sometimes the metal of a room would sing with the potential inherent within it. Sometimes it would appear as if it had achieved that potential. This room now seemed empty and devoid of purpose. Whatever life had once filled it was long gone. Spoole seemed to feel it too.

  ‘I can’t leave here,’ he said. ‘My mind was woven to lead Artemis. There is nowhere else for me to be.’

  Much to her surprise, Susan understood Spoole. She had been woven to love her husband. Hers was an arranged marriage: it didn’t make it any less real.

  ‘Why are you still here, Susan.’

  ‘I told you. I came looking for my friend. I want to find out where she was taken.’

  ‘Why should I help you?’

  ‘You don’t believe in what the Generals are doing. And maybe Nettie knows something. Maybe she has spoken to the animals. You’re a leader, get to speak to them, maybe you can negotiate a different deal!’

  ‘That won’t work,’ said Spoole. ‘If you were a leader you would understand that. And yet . . .’

  ‘And yet what?’

  ‘Nothing. Your friend has probably been melted down and recycled to stop her telling what she knows.’

  Spoole went back to the window. A high-pitched whistling impinged on the edge of Susan’s hearing.

  ‘Then the records will be in the next building. Help me find them.’

  ‘Why should I?’

  Spoole just went on gazing out of the window. The flickering and percussive thump of the battle was still present, but overlaid on that was the descending noise of the whistling.

  ‘What is that?’ asked Susan.

  ‘I think that will be the humans,’ said Spoole. ‘The Generals said their ships were large. They’re dropping down from space. They’re coming to take their city.’

  Kavan

  Kavan and the rest ran across the plain, kicking up sand and grit, dislodging the glowing coals from the overturned forges, tripping and stumbling on the bodies of the fallen. Behind them the thrumming craft still fired, only now they had changed ammunition: the shells exploded in a low circle, parallel to the ground. They sent out razor shards that sliced off legs just above the ankle, tumbling a robot forward into the secondary blast that ripped bodies and minds apart.

  ‘I think they’ve stopped following us!’ called Calor. She was running backwards, looking back at the city. ‘They seem to be maintaining a perimeter around the city.’

  Kavan’s electromuscles were aching now. He needed to rest, give them a chance to cool a little, let the lifeforce replenish.

  ‘Should we stop?’ asked Calor, loping along at his side.

  ‘Not yet,’ said Kavan. ‘When day comes we’ll be exposed on this plain. Those craft will be
able to pick us off at their leisure. We need to get well clear.’

  ‘Where are we going, Kavan? There is no shelter until we get to Stark! Or should we head north, back to the mountains?’

  ‘No. We need to spread out, make it harder for them to find us.’

  ‘Let’s stop here.’

  Kavan was so tired.

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Five minutes.’

  They stopped. Kavan looked around. Ten of them. Himself and Calor, seven infantryrobots and one other Scout. All of them scratched and pierced by shrapnel.

  ‘We need a forge,’ said Kavan.

  ‘Look,’ said Calor. She pointed up into the sky over the city.

  The piercing noise had been there all the time they had been running. Now they stopped they had time to notice it again. It shrieked through the metal, it set the inside of the head ringing. They watched the two dark shapes that descended through the rain clouds. They looked like rolls of hot lead, long tubes rolled in the hands by a child and then flattened.

  ‘That can’t be right,’ said Kavan. ‘My eyesight needs recalibrating.’

  ‘No,’ said Calor. ‘The larger craft is over nine hundred feet long. The smaller one is six hundred.’

  ‘What’s holding them up?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  What must it be like for the robots in the city, wondered Kavan? To look up and see those vast shapes hanging above. Expecting them to fall at any moment.

  The front of the larger craft began to flicker, and the effect was taken up by the smaller.

  All around the great plain, Kavan sensed the stillness as robots that had been running moments before came to a halt and turned to watch what was happening.

  The two craft seemed to be speaking to each other using yellow, green and white lights. First the front of the larger craft would flicker, then the smaller craft flickered in reply. The conversation went on for a few moments, and then, in a series of shining bands, the lights spread backwards over the surface of the two craft, now joined by red, orange and yellow, the glowing pattern gradually encompassing the whole extent of the two ships.

  The lights increased in intensity, their brightness lighting up the plain, sending dark shadows streaming out behind the watching robots.

  Kavan saw the way that Calor looked at them, her shell reflecting the patterns, and he realized something. The craft were big and they were bright, and though they were much smaller than the city, they seemed to dwarf it. Whoever was flying those craft, it seemed to Kavan, was sending out a message.

  We are here. And we are in control.

  Susan and Spoole

  Susan and Spoole stood by the window, gazing up at the enormous craft that floated overhead. The room was illuminated in red and green, the patterns of light played across the chequered floor.

  ‘It’s bigger than the Basilica,’ said Spoole. ‘What have the Generals done?’

  ‘Made peace with a bigger bully,’ said Susan. ‘You were right, Spoole. It’s too late to fight these people. The other Generals have outmanoeuvred you.’

  ‘You’re giving up so easily?’

  ‘It makes no difference to me,’ said Susan. ‘I don’t care who’s oppressing me.’

  ‘You don’t mean that,’ said Spoole.

  ‘Spoole, I don’t care. Welcome to my forge. Welcome to the world I have lived in since you and your Choarh state destroyed mine.’

  Spoole couldn’t take his eyes from the vast shape hanging overhead. Every surface in the room danced to the movement of its lights.

  ‘Maybe the Generals were right,’ he said, softly. ‘What else could they do?’

  ‘I think they were right,’ said Susan, and a vicious pleasure welled up inside her. ‘What does that say about Nyro, Spoole?’

  Spoole didn’t answer.

  ‘She’s dead, Spoole!’ Susan couldn’t keep the savage joy from her voice. All the suffering she had endured, now was the time she could pay some of it back. ‘Nyro has gone, Spoole. If not now, then in a few days or a few weeks. The Generals have given the city away to a greater power, and from now on you’ll be playing by its rules!’

  She laughed.

  Spoole turned and looked at her, and his eyes were bright.

  ‘What now, Spoole? What will you do now?’

  He didn’t reply, he raised his hands slightly, as if he was going to attack her. She didn’t care. She was having her revenge.

  ‘Well, Spoole? What now that Nyro has gone?’

  He lowered his hands.

  ‘What now?’ he repeated. ‘Susan, you’re right. Nyro has no place in this city any more. This is not the place I was made to lead. I’m free to go.’

  The vicious smile faded from Susan’s face as he spoke.

  ‘Yes,’ said Spoole. ‘Free to go.’

  ‘No,’ said Susan, disappointed to be cheated this easily of her revenge, poor though it was. ‘No you’re not. Stay here, Spoole. Stay here and see how pointless it all is. Everything that you fought for, everything that you did to me and my family. All for nothing.’

  But all the doubt had gone from Spoole. He was his old self again, calm and assured.

  ‘Would that make you happy? Don’t be so silly Susan. No. We need to go now. Both of us.’

  ‘Both of us? But why should I come with you?’

  ‘Because this is wrong. The Generals are wrong. You asked me for help not two minutes ago. Well, I’m offering it. Come on, we’re going to find out what happened to your friend. And then, maybe, we will have some proof of what it is that the Generals have done. We’re going to show Artemis City that this is not Nyro’s way.’

  Wa-Ka-Mo-Do

  The dark surface of Lake Ochoa was flecked red with burning mirrors of the rising sun. Wa-Ka-Mo-Do and the robots ran along its shore, metal feet slipping on the pebbles, kicking them, sending them dancing across the water. To their left a railway train burned: long tanker wagons were torn apart; they belched black diesel smoke into the sky. Wa-Ka-Mo-Do saw the line of bullet holes down the side of them. Those wouldn’t have caused an explosion, he reflected. Those strange craft must have also been firing incendiaries.

  Past the burning train, metal moving to a steady pulse, they turned from the lake shore and headed to the City Gate, clearly visible before them now, wide open and guarded by four humans wearing green panelling. They carried rifles, but not like the ones Wa-Ka-Mo-Do had seen before. These weapons were shorter and constructed mainly of plastic. What little metal there was, was of an odd alloy that felt strangely transparent to Wa-Ka-Mo-Do’s senses. Those guns made him feel uncomfortable. They were different – alien. Just like the humans.

  Their attitude and demeanour had changed since yesterday, he noted.

  The running troop slowed to a halt, Wa-Ka-Mo-Do coming to attention before one of the humans.

  ‘Thank you for your service here today,’ he said. ‘May I respectfully ask, where is the Imperial Guard?’

  The human made an odd motion, and Wa-Ka-Mo-Do realized he wasn’t wearing a translation device.

  ‘Come on,’ he called, and stepped forward. The humans stood to one side, allowing him to pass, and Wa-Ka-Mo-Do headed into the city, his troops marching along behind him. Inside his gyros were spinning. What would he have done if the humans had tried to prevent him from entering Sangrel?

  The Street of Becoming was littered with broken tiles and rubble. Bullet holes stitched the upper parts of the buildings. Dark cracks spread across their walls, and a fine sprinkling of dust fell on the robots.

  There were four more humans guarding the top gates of the Street of Becoming, each of them holding the same strange new weapons as those at the bottom. Behind them, Wa-Ka-Mo-Do noted with some relief, were ten warriors of the Emperor’s Army. La-Ver-Di-Arussah stood at their head.

  ‘Honoured Commander,’ she said. There was a scratch on her brightly polished body.

  ‘La-Ver-Di-Arussah, there are humans guarding the entrance to the Emperor’s city of Sangrel. Did
you not, perhaps, feel this to be an insult to his name?’

  ‘These are the Emperor’s orders, Honoured Commander,’ replied La-Ver-Di-Arussah coolly.

  I don’t believe you! The words died in Wa-Ka-Mo-Do’s voicebox. It seemed that things had gone so wrong here in Sangrel she probably was telling the truth.

  ‘How badly damaged is the city?’ he asked.

  ‘The flying craft fired missiles that hit the Emperor’s Palace. Several humans died. Furthermore, they have destroyed some of the buildings that the humans erected by the lake.’

  ‘What about robots? How many citizens are dead?’

  ‘We haven’t yet had the time to find that out. The Emperor instructs us that the humans must be assisted first.’

  ‘Surely you questioned these orders?’

  ‘One does not question the Emperor, Wa-Ka-Mo-Do. We are to secure a passage way from Smithy Square to the Gate of Becoming to allow the humans to bring in new equipment.’

  ‘No! I don’t believe it! How do you know this is what the Emperor wishes?’

  ‘His orders were relayed here by radio not one hour ago.’

  Did he believe her? He didn’t know.

  Wa-Ka-Mo-Do looked down at his hands. His body was covered in grime, a thin patina of dust from the human crops. He felt dirty and disconnected from this city. Nothing seemed to be making sense.

  ‘La-Ver-Di-Arussah. Think on this: there was already tension in this city before the attack. Imagine the feelings of the citizens now! If we go out and are seen helping to rebuild some of the damage caused by the human craft we may calm things a little.’

  ‘It is not our job to calm things. The Emperor wishes any rebellion to be quashed in the most brutal manner possible, as an example to other cities.’

  She was smiling as she spoke. The gar was actually smiling. ‘After all,’ she added, ‘the Emperor has many more robots. He doesn’t have that many humans.’

  ‘He has no humans! The humans have him!’

  Seldom had the silence of robots been so deep. La-Ver-Di-Arussah’s troops stared forward blankly.

  ‘Surely, if you must speak treason, it would be better away from the troops?’