Blood and Iron p-2

by Tony Ballantyne

  She edged into the darkness beyond and pushed the door close, shutting out the city beyond.

  As she did so she heard the movement in the room behind her.

  She turned around.

  Yellow eyes illuminated the darkness.

  Wa-Ka-Mo-Do

  Wa-Ka-Mo-Do summoned two dressing women and made his way to the Copper Master’s forge. There he stripped away his panelling and allowed the women to clean him, to adjust his electro-muscle, to work smooth the roughened bearings, to gently oil him. Red coal light filled the room, white flame flared, pumped by the leather bellows. There was the gentle knock and clank of metal on metal.

  The armourer was summoned; she opened a black metal case before him. Inside was a display of pistols arranged in order of colour, alloys running from grey to black.

  ‘May I recommend this one, Honoured Commander?’ she said, lifting a black snub-nosed specimen from the case. The grip was smooth, it would be moulded to the shape of Wa-Ka-Mo-Do’s hand should he choose it. ‘I supervised its construction myself. It is made of steel, obviously, but there is a version in red brass, should you prefer.’

  ‘No, thank you, Ging-Lan-Keralla. Do you have a shotgun?’

  The armourer could not quite conceal her look of hurt surprise.

  ‘My apologies, Ging-Lan-Keralla. I did not mean any insult to your craft. But I think a shotgun would be the most suitable weapon within this city. Less lethal, for one thing. And easier to aim at close quarters.’

  ‘The commander is perhaps not used to firearms?’

  Wa-Ka-Mo-Do gazed up at the armourer. There was no insult intended, he was sure.

  ‘I am competent, Ging-Lan-Keralla, however I prefer the blade. I would be most pleased if you would sharpen my sword, and the blades of my body.’

  At that he extended the blades at his wrists and fingers. He caught the change in the electrical hum of the dressing woman nearest to him and noted how she immediately looked away from his naked form, blades extended. Ging-Lan-Keralla, however, gazed down at him with a look of approval that was entirely down to her craft.

  ‘It will be my pleasure, Honoured Commander. And I shall arrange for a shotgun to be delivered immediately.’

  Wa-Ka-Mo-Do was a self-made robot, and his form caused a little confusion to the dressing women, but they worked efficiently enough. Despite the pressure he was under, Wa-Ka-Mo-Do allowed himself to relax: this was one of the arts of a warrior.

  Eventually, he was cleaned and fixed and tuned. A dressing woman brought him the first of his panelling, freshly polished.

  ‘My mistake,’ he said, taking it from her. ‘I should have told you that I was dressing for the field, not the ballroom,’ and he showed her how to hold the gleaming scarlet-painted metal in the flame of the fire, blackening it. As he did so Ging-Lan-Keralla returned with a short, black shotgun.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, admiring it. ‘But why the wooden stock? Surely that will make it harder to repair?’

  ‘It will. But the Commander of Sangrel is known as a poet as well as a warrior, and that is both a weapon and a thing of beauty.’

  ‘It is indeed,’ he replied, turning it in the light.

  ‘Excuse me, Honoured Commander,’ said the armourer, taking the gun. She fastened a long leather strap to it, and then slung the gun over his shoulder.

  ‘There. It suits you.’

  Wa-Ka-Mo-Do looked at himself in a sheet of polished copper. It did.

  ‘Thank you, Ging-Lan-Keralla. You are a master of your craft.’

  Her eyes glowed briefly.

  His body oiled and humming sweetly beneath blackened panelling, Wa-Ka-Mo-Do stepped out into the midmorning daylight.

  His company was waiting for him in the Street of Becoming, just beyond the Ice Gate.

  Eighty robots, in red-brass bodies, their swords sheathed in wood at their left side, their rifles slung over their right shoulders. They were lined up in compact formation, each robot pressed against the robot in front, a mass of metal pushed together so that virtually no inch of space was anything but robot. Only their eyes moved, following him as he walked to meet them.

  Ka-Lo-Re-Harballah was waiting, too.

  ‘Honoured Commander, I wish to be allowed to accompany you on this mission.’

  ‘No, Ka-Lo-Re-Harballah, I want you to remain here. I need you to watch La-Ver-Di-Arussah.’

  Ka-Lo-Re-Harballah was visibly shocked.

  ‘But Honoured Commander, she is my superior!’

  Wa-Ka-Mo-Do chose a different tack.

  ‘Forgive me, Ka-Lo-Re-Harballah. You understand I am a robot of the High Spires. I do not always express myself as well as robots such as yourself. What I meant to say was that La-Ver-Di-Arussah will find her attention drawn to many events. I wish you to maintain the peace whilst she is otherwise engaged, not to raise the tension.’

  ‘Surely you would be better placed to do so, Honoured Commander. Let me lead the troops instead.’

  He was right, realized Wa-Ka-Mo-Do. But the Vestal Virgins had been most insistent that he leave. More than that, Wa-Ka-Mo-Do wanted to see what was happening outside the city.

  ‘No, Ka-Lo-Re-Harballah. A good commander should walk the extent of his command. Now, return to the Copper Master’s house. I will lead these robots.’

  Ka-Lo-Re-Harballah saluted, obviously torn between what he believed to be right and what he believed to be his duty, then turned and made his way back up into the city.

  ‘Captain,’ called Wa-Ka-Mo-Do, and a captain detached himself from the crush of robots. He wore bronze flashes on his shoulders. ‘Get the robots ready to march.’

  ‘Commander.’

  Wa-Ka-Mo-Do watched as the ranks of robots opened up like a bellows. Arms unfolding and legs shuffling free. The company expanded before him, filling the street. He took his place at the head, told the captain to give the order, and the company began to march.

  Outside the Ice Gate, Lake Ochoa shone with the healthy blue of copper salts. Wa-Ka-Mo-Do turned his gaze away from the Mound of Eternity, imagining the eyes of the Vestal Virgins upon him. It was a fine day, lit by a yellow sun that warmed the metal of the robots moving busily back and forth around him. He heard the singing of the nearby rails: a train was approaching the station.

  ‘Wa-Ka-Mo-Do! Wa-Ka-Mo-Do!’

  The voice came from over towards the lake. A human was running towards him. Rachael. She was wrapping a piece of cloth around herself as she came, concealing the pink-white skin of her body.

  ‘Wa-Ka-Mo-Do! Wait!’

  Couldn’t she see that he was marching at the head of eighty armed robots? Didn’t she realize that he wasn’t going to bring the troops to a halt, just for her? It dawned on Wa-Ka-Mo-Do that she really didn’t. Humans didn’t seem to consider the Empire’s work as being important. It wasn’t even a considered insult; it was just a simple lack of awareness.

  ‘Wa-Ka-Mo-Do! I know you can hear me!’

  He remembered her father’s attitude the night before. He didn’t want to be seen to insult Rachael again, even unknowingly. Maybe in human terms it was just as wrong to ignore a young woman as it was to give her something to drink. Frustrated, he ordered the captain to call a halt. Beyond him he felt the discharge of electricity, heard the clank of metal as the soldiers stopped.

  He turned and waited for Rachael as she ran past the red-brass robots, their bodies warming in the yellow sun.

  ‘Wa-Ka-Mo-Do! You stopped! Thank you!

  Rachael was in front of him, wrapping that strange piece of cloth over her body. It was almost transparent. Through it he could see the two dark strips of cloth she wore around her chest and the top of her thighs. She realized that he was looking at her, and she clutched the cloth tighter. Then she looked straight at him with those copper-blue eyes.

  ‘Wa-Ka-Mo-Do, I wanted to apologize.’

  ‘For what, Rachael?’

  ‘Wa-Ka-Mo-Do, what I did last night was wrong. Tricking you into giving me drinks. I was taking advanta
ge and I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry.’

  ‘I accept your apology,’ said Wa-Ka-Mo-Do. He was uncomfortably aware of the captain standing by his side, gazing straight ahead.

  ‘I hope I haven’t got you into too much trouble?’

  ‘Trouble?’ said Wa-Ka-Mo-Do in surprise. ‘I’m the Commander of Sangrel.’

  ‘I know that,’ said Rachael. ‘Listen, I explained everything to my father. It should be okay.’

  Again, Wa-Ka-Mo-Do was struck by the humans’ attitude to the robots. They certainly did not act like guests of the Emperor. He dismissed the subject.

  ‘All is harmony, Rachael. Now, if you will excuse me…’

  She finally seemed to notice the soldiers, lined patiently in the sun behind him. The contrast between her soft pink body, barely wrapped in thin cloth, and their hard, steel bodies was marked.

  ‘Oh! I’m sorry! You’re busy. I’ll get back to the beach. The sun is the best thing about this place. Shame you poisoned the lake.’

  ‘Poisoned? That’s copper!’

  But she was already gone. He watched her running back towards the lake, the strange cloth flapping behind her.

  Susan

  ‘What are you doing in here?’

  Yellow eyes gazed at her out of the darkness. Susan turned up her own eyes to get a better look at the stranger. She made out the grey shape of an infantryrobot.

  ‘I’m looking for my friend. She’s called Nettie. Have you seen her?’

  Susan stepped forward, the other robot moved away, keeping the big stone bowl at the centre of the room between herself and Susan.

  ‘No! She’s not here. Now go away. Leave me alone.’

  Susan gazed thoughtfully at the other robot.

  ‘You’re hiding in here too, aren’t you? Have you run away from the battle as well?’

  ‘That’s none of your business! Get out of here!’

  ‘I should keep your voice down if I were you. There’s a Storm Trooper out there, hunting me.’

  The other robot looked at her, trying to decide if she was telling the truth or not.

  ‘I’m Susan. I was from Turing City, I’m now a mother of Artemis. Who are you?’

  The other robot’s eyes glowed brighter for a moment, and then they dimmed just a fraction.

  ‘Vignette,’ she said. ‘I’m from Lankum in the central mountains. I was conscripted into the Artemisian army along with rest of my kingdom when Spoole fled south. We were brought to help in the construction of the trenches they’re digging around the city. We were to have been stationed between Kavan’s army and the walls of the city, showered by the cannons and the guns of both sides. I wasn’t going to have that happen to me, so I slipped away as we marched through the city.’

  Vignette’s voice echoed oddly in the building. Susan raised a hand.

  ‘Too loud!’ she said, ‘He’s out there, looking for me.’

  ‘Then why did you lead him here to me, you selfish Tok? I was safe until you turned up!’ Her eyes flashed, more in fear than anger. Susan was patient. She knew what it was like to be frightened.

  ‘There is no safety here in Artemis City. You can only hide for so long. In the end they’ll find you, and then…’

  ‘You must have been safe,’ said Vignette, the envy thick in her voice. ‘The mothers of Artemis work beneath the ground, away from danger.’

  ‘Raped twice a night.’ Susan laughed bitterly. ‘I’d rather take my chances in the trenches.’

  Vignette gazed at her, eyes glowing in the darkness.

  ‘I’d rather shelter in the making rooms.’

  ‘That’s immaterial. What is done is done.’

  Susan spoke with bitter finality.

  ‘No it’s not,’ said Vignette. ‘Change places with me. Swap your body for mine.’

  The idea brought Susan up short. Swap their bodies? It had its attractions. Surely an infantryrobot would fare better in the city at the moment? She would certainly be less noticeable in that grey body. Would that aid in her search for her friend?

  ‘But how?’ she said, slowly. ‘We’d need a third robot to unplug our coils.’

  ‘The robot at the top of this tower would do it. We could ask him.’

  Susan felt as if she had wandered into a children’s story.

  ‘What robot at the top of the tower? Where are we? What is this place?’

  ‘You don’t know? Have you never seen a shot tower? We used to have one in Lankum like this, only ours was taller. We carved a groove in the side of the mountain, and then built a tower on the top of it. There was a copper sieve at the top through which molten lead fell in drops. It formed into spheres as it fell and then landed in a basin of water at the bottom.’

  Susan looked up, the light of her gaze lost in the darkness. The tower was a spiral of stone. A robot could walk up the interior wall to the top, she realized.

  ‘Who is he, the robot up there?’

  ‘He’s the robot who built this tower. His wife built the one opposite.’

  ‘How do you know this?’

  ‘He told me.’

  ‘Why is he still here?’

  ‘He’s waiting for lead. Sometimes Artemis needs more spherical shot than it can produce elsewhere.’

  Susan looked down at the stone bowl. She saw the water inside, as still as the night outside.

  ‘You know that if you leave this tower in my body, the Storm Trooper out there will rape you?’

  ‘Better than dying in the trenches,’ said Vignette.

  Susan looked up again, up to the top of the tower.

  ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Let’s exchange bodies.’

  They climbed the tower’s interior and emerged into the night. Susan found herself standing on an island of darkness in the middle of the illuminated city. Up here the night sky billowed with stars. In the distance, around the edge of the dark sea of this strange, forgotten collection of buildings, light bloomed. It blossomed in yellow flames from chimneys, it glowed deep red from forges, it reflected in gold and silver from metal towers and aerials. Beyond it there was the darkness of the Artemisian plain. Susan gazed out, wondering if she could see the lights of Kavan’s army out there, moving to surround the city. Was Karel somewhere out there too, separated from her by two armies? Was Nettie trapped in here with her?

  ‘Bouvan?’ called Vignette. ‘Are you there?’

  Susan gazed into the darkness at the centre of the tower. She was standing on a circle of stone that surrounded the three hundred foot drop. Something was moving, something was rising from the centre of the tower.

  ‘Bouvan?’ said Vignette again. ‘This is Susan.’

  Bouvan had the longest arms and legs of any robot Susan had ever seen. She realized he must live wedged in the space at the top of the tower.

  ‘What do you want?’ Bouvan spoke in the flat tones of an unfused robot.

  ‘We want you to swap over our minds,’ said Vignette.

  ‘Very well,’ said Bouvan. Susan recoiled as a hand reached towards her on the end of an impossibly long arm, felt a surge of current as she realized how close she had come to stepping back over the edge.

  ‘Hold on a moment!’ she shouted, suddenly uncomfortably aware of what she was agreeing to. Allowing another robot to unplug her coil, leaving her perfectly helpless. ‘How can I trust you both?’ she said. ‘How do I know that you will reattach my mind?’

  ‘I’ll go first,’ said Vignette.

  ‘Hey, you!’

  The voice came from behind her. Susan turned and looked out over the darkness to the other shot tower. Down on the street they had seemed so far apart. Up here, in the stillness beneath the twinkling stars, she almost felt as if she could jump from one to the other. Ridiculous, of course. They must be sixty feet apart.

  ‘Yes, you!’ Sound travelled easily in the clear air, that voice could have come from a robot standing just by her. She looked and saw another robot standing at the top of the other tower. She looked just like Bouvan, and Susan
realized that this must be the wife Vignette had talked about.

  ‘Listen, lady! You don’t want to trust him! He’ll fumble and break your coil! Come over here, I’ll change your minds!’

  Bouvan’s eyes flashed in the darkness and he spoke with an emotion that completely contradicted Susan’s first assessment of him as being unfused.

  ‘Shut up, Appovan!’ he shouted across the night. ‘Why do you always have to interfere? This is my tower, they came to me.’ He turned back to Vignette. ‘Come here, I’ll be gentle.’

  He was too. Susan saw the way that he felt around the infantry-robot’s neck and gently opened up the head and pulled the mind clear, unplugging the coil as he did so. He laid the body carefully down on the top of the tower.

  ‘There,’ he said, holding the twisted metal of a mind towards Susan with his incredibly long arm. She looked to see the coil intact. A sense of vertigo overcame her.

  Be careful not to drop it! The words never made it to her voicebox.

  Bouvan could see the look of satisfaction on the robot’s face at his successful removal of Vignette’s mind. ‘Your turn,’ he said. She hesitated.

  ‘He’ll drop you!’ called Appovan from her tower. ‘He’s always been the same. Clumsy! It took him for ever to build that tower, he was always dropping stones. He hit a soldier once! Flattened her! It’s a wonder they didn’t melt him down for scrap…’

  ‘Shut up, woman!’ shouted Bouvan, eyes flaring.

  This was all so unreal, thought Susan, standing here above the world, listening to the two of them argue.

  ‘You built the tower?’ she said.

  ‘Oh yes. It took me nearly thirty years. Don’t listen to her talking about me being clumsy. It took her longer. Couldn’t find the right sort of stone, always trying to make patterns, like that was going to make the shot any better.’

  ‘But that can’t be right,’ interrupted Susan, ‘this tower looks so old. How old are you?’

  ‘One hundred and fifty years old,’ said Bouvan.

  ‘Don’t listen to him!’ called Appovan. ‘I’m not a day over twenty!’