Twisted Metal

by Tony Ballantyne

  ‘But you never would, Gearheart. You’re too selfish.’

  ‘Oh, I am. I am.’

  Spoole had had enough. He changed the subject. ‘He wants to attack Turing City now.’

  ‘Kavan? Well, let him. No, don’t just let him. Order him to! Make him attack sooner than he wishes, and with fewer troops than he requests! You are the leader, Spoole, so keep the initiative! There are plans long laid for this eventuality. Well, put them into action! Let this attack be seen to be your decision, not his! And why not? If he succeeds, it will be to the benefit of Artemis: if he fails, you will have one less problem to deal with. Either way, you will be seen to be decisive.’

  ‘I know, I know. I just can’t help thinking, if he fails, what would the benefit of that be to Artemis?’

  Gearheart shifted her pose, stretching her arms up and back, arching her body.

  ‘The benefit of what?’

  ‘Oh, never mind.’

  Spoole came up behind her. He placed his hands gently on her hips and increased the positive charge there, sent it flowing into her body. Gearheart stepped lightly forward.

  ‘Keep your hands off me, Spoole,’ she said, turning to give him a brilliant smile. ‘We both know that you don’t really need that sort of thing. Power is what really interests you.’

  Spoole said nothing.

  ‘And now,’ she continued, ‘I think I will go and look at the stars.’

  At that she turned and glided from the room, the motion of her body almost silent. A wonderful piece of engineering, and a man liked to look at a beautiful piece of machinery.

  Spoole sighed and moved back to the window.

  His eye was drawn back to the railway tracks. Silver in the night, they spread out across the plain, branching towards the conquered countries, to Bethe, Segre, Stark and now Wien.

  One of them even led to the heart of Turing City. He could almost feel the line out there, running through the darkness across the plain to the unseen lights of that distant state. It was almost as if there was a current flowing from him, running down that same line and earthing itself in some sink at the other end. A bizarre sensation, as if someone were waiting for him there.

  He wondered who it was. He darkly suspected it might be Kavan.

  Susan

  Susan hadn’t gone straight back home. It just seemed too hard to do, like she was walking just below the rim of a funnel, and her feet found themselves drawn downwards, and she couldn’t summon the energy to walk upwards but just felt herself spiralling down to the hole at the bottom where she would fall out.

  The hole at the bottom? She was circling the railway station, she just couldn’t admit it to herself. Her path had taken her from the iron and glass of the shops and galleries in the middle town, out from the concrete and metal walkways, and onto the dusty piles of gangue heaped amongst and under the foundries and mills of the old town. Out to where the air was warm with the air rising from the forges and smelters, and the red glow of the streets reminded her of childhood. She walked on, clutching her case of paints. Passing through the narrow streets, hemmed in by corrugated iron fences and old dressed-stone walls, she felt a pull of nostalgia as she stepped onto the stone paths that led from the city.

  An outcrop rose to the west, the remnants of the rocky mass that had been the source of the iron ore on which the city was founded. The iron was long gone, ripped from the orogenic belt to leave a honeycombed slab of tilted rock that listed in the earth, like a mile-long ship slowly sinking beneath the soil.

  At its highest, the outcrop rose just above the graceful buildings of Turing City. The City Guard had built a watchtower up there, half of its silver side visible in the glow of Zuse, the night moon. The City Guard watched the stars as well as the landscape from that tower. They drew maps of the night sky, showing the paths of Zuse and of Néel, the day moon, and the course taken by the planets: Siecle, the hot world, and Bohm, with its one ring. They drew star charts, and they labelled the constellations: the Forge and the Fire and the Spear, and the rest.

  Susan’s feet hesitated at the fork in the gravel path, and she wondered about walking upwards and staring up along the watchtower’s smooth wall at the stars, but her feet took the right-hand fork seemingly of their own accord, and she began to walk the length of the outcrop.

  The City Guard had their fort down there, built of dressed stone. A garrison for the watchtower. Rumour had it that the hollow spaces in the outcrop, where the iron had once rested, were now filled with secret weapons. Powerful weapons, to be used against the troops of Artemis, if and when they attacked.

  Susan walked down the path, the grey stone fort of the City Guard to her left, the City Centre to her right, the glass panels in the iron galleries glowing white and yellow.

  There was someone waiting for her up ahead.

  ‘Hello Susan,’ he said.

  Susan felt something lurch inside her.

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked. ‘How do you know my name?’

  The robot who stood on the path was one of the City Guard, no doubt about that. His body was made entirely of machined parts. There wouldn’t be a single nut or bolt on him that he had made himself. It showed. There wasn’t a visible seam on him: arms, legs, fingers, waist, all fitted together so smoothly that it looked as if he were formed from a single blob of mercury. He was tall, much taller than Susan, with narrow hips and broad shoulders. And he was so, so good-looking. Susan felt such a pang of lust and felt guilty for it. She tried to think of Karel and Axel back at the family forge, but she was so creative at the moment, so ready to twist a mind . . . And this man seemed to plug himself into her needs at every level.

  ‘Who are you?’ she demanded.

  ‘Maoco O.’

  ‘What do you want with me?’

  Maoco O reached out.

  ‘May I?’ he said, taking the aluminium case from Susan’s hand. He removed a thin tube of cadmium red paint. ‘I want to ask you a question, Susan.’

  ‘Why? Who are you, Maoco O?’

  ‘I’m a friend, Susan. You have so many friends that you don’t seem to know about.’ Maoco O squeezed paint from the tube onto the palm of his hand.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  Maoco O held up his palm by way of reply. He had painted a shape there. A circle with a dot marked on the top of its circumference.

  ‘That’s what Masur drew!’ she whispered.

  ‘No names,’ warned Maoco O. ‘Susan, you’ve heard that Wien has fallen?’

  ‘Yes . . .’

  ‘You know that they will attack Turing City next?’

  ‘I hope that will be a long time in coming.’

  ‘No, it will be soon. Very soon. I look forward to it.’

  The robot was so silent that in the still of the night Susan was suddenly painfully aware of the humming and whirring that emerged from her own body. The sound of joints creaking as she moved. She felt terribly gauche in front of this engineered marvel, and she scolded herself for being so. She was a married woman. What did it matter what this robot thought of her? How could she possibly hope to compete with it anyway? There was something unnatural about a robot that didn’t build itself.

  ‘What’s it like?’ she asked.

  ‘What’s what like?’

  ‘Having all your parts made for you? Doesn’t it feel strange, like your body is not really yours?’

  ‘I’ve been like this since I was a made. The Mothers of the Fort twisted me this way.’

  ‘Oh? Can I touch you?’

  ‘If you like.’

  In the light of the night moon and the city, Susan reached out and touched the smooth moonlight of Maoco O’s skin.

  ‘It feels so strange.’

  ‘Susan, you are thinking of weaving a new child.’

  ‘Not with you!’ said Susan, too quickly.

  Maoco O laughed. ‘I know that! I’ve embarrassed you now, haven’t I? Listen, Susan, things will change here soon. When Turing City is under attack, it wi
ll be harder to retain the philosophy that has made us strong.’

  Susan just stared at him. ‘It’s hard enough at the moment, Maoco O.’

  Susan turned away from him and looked out over the extent of Turing City: the warm glow from the old town, the yellow lights from the galleries. And beyond them, lying in shadow, the regular geometries of the residential area, the neat lines of steel apartments. Her house lay there. Karel and Axel waited there for her. It all looked so peaceful in the still night. It was impossible to believe that all this could be wiped away by Artemis. Or was it?

  ‘Maybe that notice in the railway station was right,’ she murmured.

  ‘What notice?’

  ‘It was a message to all expectant mothers, telling us that Artemis’s was the dominant philosophy; that we would do well to weave our children in that manner. They were right.’

  Maoco O moved so quickly that Susan’s electromuscles jerked. One moment he was standing apart, the next he was right there, face pushed close to hers.

  ‘Of course they weren’t right!’ he scolded. ‘Even if Artemis does reach our defences, even if the City Guard falls, even if all the city is melted down and shipped as ingots to Artemis to feed their forges, that will not be the end! Robots will still be born and their minds will still be shaped by their mothers. How will they be made? That will be your choice, Susan.’

  ‘Oh.’ Susan suddenly felt very small and foolish.

  ‘Think about Karel, Susan. Think about how he was made. Liza knelt at the feet of an Artemisian robot, a gun to her head, and she twisted metal. Answer me this, when Artemis stand at the city gates, will you be brave enough to twist the metal the true way?’

  Was Liza? wondered Susan, quickly dismissing that treacherous thought.

  ‘Susan, this planet’s history hasn’t been shaped by bodies, or by machinery or by cities. It is shaped by minds. The battles that are fought aren’t about metal, they are about how the next generation of robots will think.’

  ‘I see,’ said Susan.

  ‘You don’t,’ said Maoco O. ‘None of us does. We all think exactly the way we were shaped to think by our parents. We never question it. But how do we know what is right? How do we know? Is it normal to be a robot?’

  ‘What?’ Susan was thrown by this sudden change in the direction of the conversation. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked.

  ‘Is it normal to be a robot?’ repeated Maoco O. ‘You’re a robot and I’m a robot. We’re all robots. Is that normal? Is robot life any more normal than the biological life that creeps across this planet? We are obviously superior to biological life, but why? Why are we?’

  The question had never occurred to Susan before.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Shadows passed across Maoco O’s body, clouds blocking the moonlight that he reflected.

  ‘We take things for granted, Susan. Artemis assume they rule by right, and you assume that all minds are special. Who is right? How do we know? Where is the answer written?’

  ‘Perhaps it’s not written anywhere!’ said Susan in frustration.

  ‘Perhaps! Or perhaps it is written all around us, in letters so big that we can’t see them! Imagine that, we could be walking on a world where the answer is all around us, and we can’t even see it!’

  Susan suddenly felt very tired. She wanted to go home.

  ‘Listen, Maoco O, I don’t know who you are, or why you are telling me all this, but I have to go.’

  ‘So do I, Susan. I will be missed if I remain out here too long. Listen, I have three things to tell you.’

  ‘Then say them.’

  ‘Susan, listen carefully. First, you have friends, don’t forget that. No matter what happens, they will find you. Some day you will see why.’

  ‘Okay . . .’ said Susan, feeling very strange.

  ‘Secondly, remember this, it is not how strong we are. Strength alone does not win the battle. When it comes down to it, will you be strong enough to twist a mind in the way that you know is right?’

  For a treacherous moment, that poster in the railway station popped into her mind. She forced it away.

  ‘I hope so,’ she murmured.

  ‘And lastly, Susan, when you read the Book of Robots, understand this: it speaks the truth.’

  ‘The Book of Robots? What’s that?’

  ‘Look, Susan.’ Maoco O pointed.

  She turned.

  ‘What? What am I looking at?’

  Maoco O

  Maoco O pointed and, as Susan turned to look, he vanished silently away into the night, slipping unnoticed into one of the Fort’s many concealed entrances. As he did so, his whole demeanour changed. Gone was the friendly competence, in its place was Maoco O: detached killing machine. It was part of his make-up: emotion is just another state of mind, to be adopted according to the situation at hand.

  The whole of Fort Accardo was filled with the hum of quiet efficiency. Walking down the metal spiral staircase, descending the rough bore of the rocky shaft, he felt as if he was rejoining the mechanism of a finely balanced machine. But still there was that nagging feeling at work inside him.

  Emotion is just another weapon in my armoury, and yet still I work to resist this idea. For it is nowhere written in the Book of Robots that there should be robots such as myself.

  He stepped from the entry shaft into the wide open space of the practice range. Once this cavern would have echoed to the chatter of machine-gun discharge, to the crack of directed explosions. Now the weapons racks were full, rows of gleaming weapons lining the entire space to seeming infinity. But the dark grey shapes shone with the polish of newness, not the healthy glow that a weapon acquired by being handled and discharged, by being stripped and cleaned and oiled and reassembled.

  It was like this all throughout the fort. We’ve lost touch with our purpose, reflected Maoco O, but without any sense of bitterness. Emotional detachment seemed to fill his every action: did it resemble the emptiness that filled his beautifully engineered body?

  That was the trouble with the new paradigm. The bodies the Fort Mothers built were so sleek, so powerful, but in donning them the Guards seemed to experience the world at a distance. It wasn’t their world any more; they had built themselves no part in it.

  He stepped from the practice range into the magazine. Three robots crouched around a shape on the floor. A child: crudely built. It was obviously dead.

  ‘Whose was it?’ asked Maoco O.

  ‘We don’t know. Not yet.’ Maoco L glanced up at him as she spoke. She looked identical to Maoco O in every way, same mercury skin, same V-shaped torso. She returned to examining the pathetic body.

  ‘This is the third one this year,’ said Maoco O. ‘Where are they coming from?’

  ‘From here, Maoco O. City Guards are making them.’

  The concept would have filled a robot less emotionally secure than Maoco O with revulsion. As it was, he remained calm.

  ‘Why? The reproductive urge is not twisted into the metal of our minds. The Fort Mothers would not build us to think of such things.’

  ‘Not intentionally perhaps, but the pattern of a mind is a complex thing. For centuries mothers have made minds focused around the reproductive urge. The offspring of those mothers that did not do so never reproduced: they are not with us today. The reproductive urge is so much a pattern of the mind that it is impossible for the Fort Mothers not to incorporate it in some way.’

  Maoco O looked down at the pathetic metal shell on the ground.

  ‘So there are still some women in this fort who will seize on any man and try to make a child with him.’ His words were matter-of-fact.

  ‘And they lack the full knowledge to properly twist a child,’ answered Maoco L.

  ‘Interesting. It is a problem that should be addressed.’

  ‘Agreed. Perhaps after the oncoming difficulty with Artemis is resolved.’

  Maoco L picked up the tiny shell. ‘I will pass the mind inside here to the Fort Mothers. Perha
ps they can decide who the mother is by looking at the weave of the mind.’

  ‘A good idea,’ answered Maoco O.

  But inside a little voice was speaking. Why can’t I be as positive inside this fort as I am when I walk outside? Why don’t I feel the same sense of optimism for the future?

  The answer filled the dark stone spaces of the fort. The answer was the darkness, and it was given shape by the geometry of the polished stone walls.

  Because there is no future. Because there is nothing to be optimistic about, and no reason to wish for such optimism. All there is, is the day that follows this, and the relentless upgrading of smoothly milled bodies as they approach perfection. What else should one require?

  Silently, perfectly, seamlessly, Maoco O passed through rooms of identical robots, heading towards his duty station.

  The evening dance was due to begin.

  Karel

  Axel was still young enough to sleep. Karel squatted down before him and gazed into his eyes, wondering where his son had gone to. Karel knew that he had once slept too; he knew that he had once had dreams, back when the metal in his mind was still unfolding and gaining in lifeforce. But that had been long ago and, like every other adult, he had forgotten what it was like. Axel looked so peaceful, following the twists of his own mind, growing new wire, forging new connections and fixing the mind. Karel tried to recall the path he had taken as a child, how he would turn his mind in on itself and descend into sleep. But without success, for the way there was gone.

  He heard the front door to the apartment slide open and shut. Susan had returned home at last.

  ‘Where have you been?’ he asked.

  ‘Out. Walking. I bought some paint.’ She held up the thin metal case.

  ‘Let me take that.’ Karel remembered how Susan had been last time they had been getting ready to make a child. So receptive. So creative. She had taken to walking day and night, gazing at the sky, at the sea, at the land. At everything, whether a building, the slope of a pile of gangue, an oddly shaped stone. She was drinking in images and thoughts and concepts, storing up information to be used in the making of a new mind. Too much information, perhaps. She would come home and it would all spill out of her, painted onto the foil leaves of books, scrawled across the walls, twisted into iron and silver. What must it be like to be a woman? he wondered, as he took the metal case and laid it on a table. He took her hand and led her to a chair. There was a shallow foot bath pushed underneath it, already filled with light oil.