Blood and Iron

by Tony Ballantyne

  ‘You know the answer to that,’ called Spoole.

  ‘But . . .’ The robot tripped on another.

  ‘Hey!’

  The train was accelerating now. Spoole watched as the infantry-robot receded.

  ‘Spoole!’ it called.

  ‘It’s going too fast,’ said Susan, slowing to a halt. Spoole did the same. ‘You took a risk there.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Spoole. ‘Look.’ They both watched as an infantryrobot jumped from the train. Two more followed its example.

  ‘Come on!’

  They ran forwards, the end of the train passing them as they did so. More robots were jumping to the tracks ahead of them. Some of them lost arms and legs as they did so. Others helped put them back together.

  Susan and Spoole arrived at the group.

  ‘Spoole, I’m Copland. Do you remember me? Years ago, in Bethe?’

  ‘Spoole, we can’t believe you’re a traitor.’

  ‘I’m not. Treachery would be following the animals.’

  Copland looked at the other robots.

  ‘Listen, Spoole. There are others in the city who think the same as you. Hundreds of them. Thousands. All they need is a leader.’

  Susan gazed balefully at Spoole.

  ‘You’re going to leave me, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘You promised to help me!’

  ‘I didn’t, Susan. You are thinking like a Turing Citizen. An Artemisian follows Nyro. There are no other promises.’

  Susan glared at him, hatred singing within her.

  ‘However,’ said Spoole, ‘I bear you no ill will, and I will help you as best I can. Go to the Marshalling Office. Ask to see the freight records, under my authority.’

  ‘Your authority? It means nothing to me. Nor to anyone else!’

  ‘Apparently this is no longer the case,’ said Spoole. Behind him, the other infantryrobots were finishing the repairs to each other and they were lining up in formation. ‘Anger will get you nowhere, Susan.’

  ‘Anger? After what your state did to mine? I can’t believe I trusted you.’

  ‘That trust is part of the reason why your city failed, Susan. Listen to me though, I’m trying to help you. Once you have access to the freight records, look for Nettie, find out where she was taken. The office staff will help you, they should see nothing unusual in your request. Such things happen all the time. Once you have found where Nettie was taken, note the service number of the train. After that, go to the timetable office and find when that service next runs. Get yourself on that train.’

  Susan felt as if her gyros would break out of her at any moment.

  ‘I hate you. I hate you and your rusting, badly twisted state.’

  ‘That’s the difference between us,’ replied Spoole. ‘I bear you nothing but gratitude, Susan. Which of us has the better mindset?’

  At that he turned and began to march north towards the centre of Artemis City, the infantryrobots following him. Susan couldn’t bear to watch him go. She couldn’t bear to follow his advice.

  She stood in the middle of the tracks for eighty minutes. Immobile, undecided as to which way to go. Trains rumbled by her this way and that.

  In the end she did the only sensible thing. She headed towards the Marshalling Office.

  Karel

  The human craft flew down from the mountains.

  Karel looked out of the window in awe. Though he had travelled up and down this continent he had never seen it from this perspective before. On his previous journeys he had been aware of a constantly expanding border, of Artemis pushing back its boundaries. Up here, though, sitting in the oddly soft human seat, he saw nothing but one land. Snow giving way to brightly coloured rocky cliffs, cliffs sloping down to fields of boulders, boulders shrinking to pebbles before giving way to the gravel plain beyond. More though, he was aware of the change in the colours of the rock, the way the bright profusion of ores faded to the grey of the Artemisian plain.

  The helicopter swooped towards it, and Karel wanted to tell someone about what he was feeling, but he held back. He didn’t want to speak to Melt. At least, not yet. More than ever he was convinced that the other robot was hiding something. The heavy lead man just sat there, gazing at nothing.

  Karel looked at the human who sat in the back of the craft with the pair of them. It was looking at Karel with interest, examining his body, looking at the fingers on his hand.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, holding out his hand as he had seen the other humans do. ‘My name is Karel.’

  The animal smiled and took it, moved it up and down, then pointed apologetically at his head. He wasn’t wearing one of the devices that would let him understand their words. Odd, thought Karel, that there would be different ways of speaking. He thought about what Ruth had said, how robots weren’t very curious, and he wondered, should he be more curious? The Story of Eric and the Mountain . . . That was meant to be important. Melt said he knew that story. Maybe when they landed he would get Melt to tell it to him.

  The craft dropped lower. Karel saw railway lines in the distance; he saw a train shooting along at incredible speed. A human device. He leaned forward, twisting his head around the window, trying to follow its course. What was making it move so fast?

  A voice crackled into life.

  ‘This is the pilot. I’m afraid this is about as far south as I can go. Head a little to the east and you’ll come across a railway line. Follow that to Artemis City.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Karel.

  The hum of the engine increased and the craft touched down in a cloud of dust. The human slid the door open and slapped Karel on the shoulder, sending the metal there ringing. Karel dropped to the ground, then turned and helped Melt do the same in his heavy body. They raised their hands in goodbye as the engine noise deepened, and the craft lifted and flew back north.

  Karel and Melt watched it go.

  ‘Okay,’ said Karel to Melt. ‘You’ve not been honest with me. Tell me now, I want to know the full truth!’

  ‘I will tell you,’ said Melt.

  ‘I want to know everything.’

  ‘Yes. But on the way. We need to speak to the robots of Artemis. We need to tell them what’s going to happen to them!’

  ‘Speak to Artemis? They won’t listen to us.’

  ‘They better had. Or they’ll all be killed. All of them, and all of us. I’ve seen this before. I know what the humans are going to do . . .’

  Wa-Ka-Mo-Do

  Wa-Ka-Mo-Do followed the three women into the remains of the Copper Master’s house. The few robots remaining there averted their eyes as he was led through the corridors to the Copper Room.

  He wanted to turn and run, he wanted to head back into the square and wrest control back from La-Ver-Di-Arussah.

  He couldn’t. His shame cut too deep, and his mind was woven to listen to his sense of honour. He understood this. He had failed everyone, he deserved his fate. He had no choice but to follow the Vestal Virgins, and they knew it.

  The previously concealed door at the rear of the Copper Room had been left open to reveal a rough corridor hewn directly from the rock. A set of steps spiralled down into the darkness, and Wa-Ka-Mo-Do raised the light in his own eyes to see.

  Stepping from the Copper Room into the stone corridor, Wa-Ka-Mo-Do felt as if he was leaving his life behind. His last thoughts, oddly enough, were of Rachael. The pale-faced human, his copper girl. She had tried to warn him. Her words came back to him and he halted.

  ‘Listen!’ he said, urgently. ‘Something’s going to happen in the morning! We need to clear the city.’

  ‘That’s no longer your concern, Wa-Ka-Mo-Do,’ said one of the women, sweetly.

  ‘But what about Ell? What happened in Ell?’

  ‘Resume walking, Wa-Ka-Mo-Do,’ said another, ‘and do so in silence.’

  They didn’t have that power over him, the ability to command him to cease speaking, but Wa-Ka-Mo-Do was silent nonetheless. There was nothing to say.

 
Deeper and deeper they descended beneath the city. Ancient tunnels branched off from the corridor, most of them half collapsed with disuse, and Wa-Ka-Mo-Do remembered the copper mines upon which the prosperity of Sangrel was built.

  They walked for some time through empty rock long stripped of metal, the perfect figures of the three women barely visible before him. They passed out under the lake, the waters dripping down from above.

  Finally, they began to ascend.

  ‘Almost there,’ said one of the women, turning and smiling back at him, and Wa-Ka-Mo-Do felt his current wax and wane despite himself.

  They reached a spiralling set of steps, cut in the stone, and ascended it. Wa-Ka-Mo-Do found himself in a small room, decorated in jade. There was a chair set in the centre, a small forge burning to the side.

  ‘Sit down, Wa-Ka-Mo-Do,’ said one of the women.

  His body did as it was ordered.

  One appeared at his side.

  ‘Your arm is damaged,’ she said, and he felt an electric thrill as she touched him at the shoulder. She did something, and he felt the loss of weight as the arm was removed. He forced himself to remain calm, to ignore the fear clamouring inside him. He was still a warrior.

  ‘This was well made,’ said the woman who examined his arm. ‘Yet I’m sure I can improve upon it.’

  To his confusion, she began to carefully pull out the twisted, melted wire of the electromuscle. He flinched as the other two women knelt by him and began to unship his panelling. They set to work on his body, twisting and tweaking and shaping him. Fixing him and repairing him. He felt a sense of pleasure and well-being building up, all the while being pushed back by the terror that had lodged itself deep inside.

  ‘Is this nice?’ said one of the women.

  ‘Do we not tune and improve you?’

  Their voices were so sweet. He almost began to relax.

  ‘A healthy body will respond so much better to punishment.’

  The current surged through him, sending a crackling charge into the fingers of one of the women who knelt at his feet.

  ‘Naughty,’ she said, smiling patiently. ‘Later. Relax for the moment. Enjoy the servicing! This will be the last time you will feel such pleasure.’

  ‘Ever.’

  The three of them smiled at him so kindly, and Wa-Ka-Mo-Do felt a surge of horrified dread sing throughout his body.

  He sat in the Jade Room, three beautiful women working on his body, on his electromuscles, on his metal skeleton, until it was morning.

  Then, fully repaired, he was led through ornamented rooms and out into the sunlit dawn.

  The air brushed his exposed electromuscle.

  ‘No panelling,’ said one of the women. ‘You won’t need it.’

  The Temple of Eternity was mostly open to the elements. White marble pillars separated the area into different rooms, some of them containing pitchers and vases, some of them containing robot bodies, frozen in positions of agony. Wa-Ka-Mo-Do turned away from them.

  He was taken, electromuscle naked to the world, to a small terrace overlooking Lake Ochoa. Across the dark waters he saw the city of Sangrel, smoke still rising into the morning air. Apart from that, everything seemed so peaceful.

  Then he saw what awaited him.

  A small forge was set in the middle of the terrace, and by it lay a new body, warming in the rays of the rising sun. A thick body made of cast iron and lead.

  ‘Are you frightened, Wa-Ka-Mo-Do?’

  ‘Yes,’ he answered, truthfully.

  The three women laughed.

  ‘Not sufficiently, I suspect,’ said one. ‘Otherwise your fear would have overridden your compulsion to obey. You would be running already.’

  ‘I deserve my punishment,’ said Wa-Ka-Mo-Do.

  ‘You do. You realize, Wa-Ka-Mo-Do, that the Emperor hoped you would disobey his orders? He thought that one of the Eleven would fight back against the humans?’

  ‘No . . .’

  ‘Yes, Wa-Ka-Mo-Do. Don’t you see that that way he could disown your actions, even though he was secretly proud of you?’

  Wa-Ka-Mo-Do could see it.

  ‘Or you could have obeyed his orders fully, and then the Emperor would have lost no face to the animals.’

  ‘But instead you adopted this weak compromise. This half and half action that was suitable to no one. You neither fully rebelled nor fully obeyed. You truly have failed, Wa-Ka-Mo-Do.’

  For the first time, Wa-Ka-Mo-Do saw it was true. He had failed. By the standards of the Empire, but worse, by his own standards.

  One of the Vestal Virgins raised her voice.

  ‘Let it be known that the Emperor personally has judged this to be a suitable punishment for your failure.’

  ‘And the Emperor has a fine judgement in these matters.’

  ‘And your failure was spectacular.’

  ‘Now, stand by the body.’

  He did so. Those three beautiful women moved around him, their delicate fingers picking away at Wa-Ka-Mo-Do’s frame, unhooking the electromuscles they had so recently repaired and made whole, pulling out the rods of his skeleton, laying him back into the new leaden body, fitting the long electromuscles into place in his new housing. He watched in fascinated horror as first his legs, and then his hips, and then his left arm was hooked into place in that terrifying shell.

  ‘Move your right arm this way a little.’

  He obeyed, and then he felt that too being unhooked.

  ‘It’s a beautiful morning,’ said one.

  ‘They say that, even when facing death, a robot should still take the time to appreciate beauty. Are you doing that, Wa-Ka-Mo-Do?’

  ‘Am I going to die?’ he asked.

  ‘We all die,’ they laughed. ‘But hopefully not for a long time yet. The Emperor wishes you to endure your punishment for many years.’

  They went to work on his neck and head, carefully pulling away the rods and panelling of the skull, peeling away metal until they held his mind and his coil, his eyes, voicebox and ears in their hands. They turned his eyes this way and that, showing him what they had done, and then laid him back so he was facing the blue sky, and the cold, heavy feel of this new body made its way up through his coil.

  Then they tilted his head a little, so he could watch as they took all the metal remaining from his former body, all the metal and panelling that he had carefully formed and bent and knitted over his lifetime and they dropped it onto the little forge to melt before him. Scarlet paint turned black and flaked away.

  Wa-Ka-Mo-Do felt some connection with his past sever, and bitterness overwhelmed him. It was about all he had left.

  ‘The Emperor is a traitor,’ he said. ‘He has sold the Empire to the humans.’

  ‘The Emperor can never be a traitor,’ said one of the women, in the most delightful voice, ‘for the Emperor’s will is the Empire.’

  The words were spoken softly in his ear, and he wondered at how robots could be so fair but so cruel.

  And yet so far he had felt no pain. They worked the metal of his body apart so gently and expertly that he had felt the wire stir within him. But no! That mechanism was gone, it was melting on the hot coal of the forge.

  ‘The Emperor has sold his subjects,’ said Wa-Ka-Mo-Do. ‘He has sold his land and his livestock. And so the Empire is no more.’

  ‘Not so long as the Emperor’s subjects do as the Emperor directs,’ said one of the women, kneeling down beside him. ‘And now, it is time for the punishment.’

  Wa-Ka-Mo-Do watched as she took a pot of solder from the top of the forge and laid it on the ground next to him. She dipped a spatula in the pot and then applied it to something just beyond his vision. His right arm erupted with fire. The electromuscle, the connections that ran through his coil to his mind, all of them were singing to near overload with the heat and the current between the iron of the body and the metal of his electromuscle. The pain was incredible.

  ‘Do you have anything to say, Wa-Ka-Mo-Do?’ asked one.<
br />
  He forced himself to speak. He was one of the Eleven, he would salvage what little dignity he could.

  ‘The Emperor is a traitor . . .’ he repeated.

  ‘You say that now, Wa-Ka-Mo-Do, yet the punishment has only just begun. Come, let us fix the other arm and then we shall see if you still feel the same way.’

  The surge of current and heat erupted in his left arm. It collided with the pain from the right arm at his coil.

  ‘And now how do you feel, Wa-Ka-Mo-Do?’

  ‘Traitor . . .’ he managed.

  ‘Your voicebox is crackling with static after just two arms. We still have the rest of your body to work upon.’

  The women worked on as the sun came up, and the pain rose and rose, passing each supposed climax, until his body was fixed in place. Nearly all of his body. For there was one final act.

  ‘Finally, Wa-Ka-Mo-Do, the coil. You do understand what we are about to do?’

  A beautiful face appeared before Wa-Ka-Mo-Do, blocking the sun’s rays for just a moment. The metal of her face was bent so smoothly. For the first time, Wa-Ka-Mo-Do noticed the fine holes that punctured the mask, tracing the shape of mouth and eyes. So fine. And behind them, the faintest glow of blue twisted metal. He could look directly at her mind. Such a twisted thing. How could a length of metal rejoice in such cruelty? What did cruelty mean? How could metal be cruel?

  A ceramic pot was held before his eyes.

  ‘This is a mixture of platinum and gold and iron. Some copper and silver. Do you recognize the mix? This is the same alloy as your mind is twisted from. We will mix this with your coil, splay it out and flatten it against the metal of this body. The two metals will become one. To try and prise your mind free would be to break your coil. You will be trapped in there forever. Do you understand?’

  Wa-Ka-Mo-Do struggled to speak. His words were fighting against a static of pain.

  ‘Traitor . . .’

  ‘I think you understand.’

  The face and ceramic pot withdrew. Suddenly, his coil, his mind, his body were on fire. The pain was unbelievable: nothing he had ever before endured had been like this.

  And it would never cease, for the rest of his life.

  Then came the final act. The three women had set crucibles of lead to melt. They came forward and stood over him, tilted the heavy bowls, and he watched as the metal, silver-grey and bubbling, spilled over the edge and poured into his body. And this time he couldn’t hold it back any longer. An electronic squeal sounded from his voicebox. The Vestal Virgins looked at each other in satisfaction.