Blood and Iron p-2

by Tony Ballantyne

  ‘New minds. Minds full of power, minds that barely thought.’

  ‘Ah, then I think I understand.’

  He turned back to face the window.

  ‘Understand? Understand what?’

  ‘Susan, have you ever heard of the Book of Robots?’

  Susan laughed bitterly.

  ‘Oh yes. It doesn’t exist. But the idea of it causes people to do things and weave minds that only bring misery.’ Of course Susan knew that. Her own mind had been woven that way.

  ‘I never believed it existed either, Susan, but lately I wonder. The Book of Robots is supposed to contain the plan of the original robots. It is supposed to have the template of the way that minds should be woven.’

  ‘I know that,’ said Susan. ‘I don’t see the need for the book. Any answers there are can be found by looking at the world around us.’

  ‘I think you’re right, Susan,’ said Spoole, delighted. ‘We live in this world and we take its form for granted. We don’t see what is right in front of us.’

  His words were like a shock to her body. Spoole wasn’t the first person to tell her this. She remembered Maoco O, the Turing City Guard, how he had stood on the mound by the city fort beneath the light of the night moon and spoken almost exactly the same words to her.

  It was just coincidence, she told herself.

  ‘I’ve heard that before,’ said Susan. ‘The trouble is, no one can ever tell me what the answers are. They don’t tell me what we are taking for granted.’

  ‘Oh, but I know,’ said Spoole. ‘I can tell you.’

  Kavan

  Kavan’s troops had completely encircled the city. Now they moved to join the bulges that were growing at five positions around the encircling moats, getting ready to cross at the points cleared of enemy troops.

  ‘They can’t get out of there,’ said Kavan. ‘They’ve trapped themselves behind metal and earth.’

  The first of the platforms constructed by Ada and her engineers had been dragged forward and used to bridge the first moat. Storm Troopers charged across and fanned out, left and right, pushing back the enemy troops marooned there by Spoole and the Generals.

  They were followed by infantryrobots who went to the edge of the first mound to repeat the tactics Kavan had used earlier, firing into the enemy who were stranded between the next set of trenches.

  More chaff and iron filings rained down, shrapnel and high-explosive canisters fell amongst the tightly packed troops, killing Artemis’ friends and foe alike. The air was filled with smoke and metal and rain, so full of motion that there was barely any untouched space there amongst the darkness. Silver Scouts cut through the confusion, pulling metal back to the growing number of forges glowing red on the Artemisian plain behind them.

  Calor appeared, silver panelling badly scarred.

  ‘The troops marooned between the moats have pulled away, Kavan. They’re caught between our fire and that coming from the walls.’

  ‘Conscripts, the lot of them,’ said Kavan, and he looked around at his own, Uncertain Army. ‘How many of these are loyal, do you suppose?’

  ‘All of them, when things are going well,’ said Calor, and she gave a brittle laugh. ‘At the moment, about half of them.’

  As she spoke, there was a huge explosion in the centre of the first bridge, splitting it in two. Twisted metal, shrapnel and robots tumbled into the moat. Already a second bridge was being pulled into position.

  ‘There are enough troops,’ said Kavan. ‘We will make it into the city. That is, if we need to. They know we are here. There will be robots in there who will be on our side.’

  Susan and Spoole

  ‘What’s the difference between an animal and a robot, Susan?’ ‘A robot is made of metal, an animal is organic.’ ‘But what about the robot animals? We don’t think of them as being like us, do we? Think about beetles. They forage for scraps of metal with which to build their young. Think about snakes, wrapping themselves around small robots and killing them with a shock of current. Think about smaller robotic life forms. We lump them in with the organic animals, don’t we?’ ‘I suppose so. What point are you making?’ Spoole’s eyes flashed.

  ‘What’s the difference between us and a porphyry worm?’ ‘We’re intelligent, we have arms and legs…’ ‘And what else? Come on, you’re a mother of Artemis.’ Susan already knew the answer.

  ‘Only robots twist the minds of their young. Animals don’t, whether they are metal or organic.’

  ‘Haven’t you ever wondered why this should be?’ ‘No. It’s twisting minds that makes us intelligent.’

  Spoole laughed. ‘That’s what I thought, at least until a few days ago. Tell me, what other differences are there, between us and animals? Organic animals, I mean.’

  ‘I don’t know. There wasn’t much organic life in Turing City. We kept the place clean.’

  ‘What do organic animals do that robots don’t?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m not that interested in organics. It wasn’t twisted into my mind, I forget what I hear about them.’

  ‘They eat,’ said Spoole. ‘They eat each other.’

  ‘Well, we take metal from each other to build new robots.’

  ‘Yes, but organic animals need to eat each other to stay alive. They consume plants and animals for fuel. Didn’t you know that?’

  ‘I knew that. Is it important?’

  ‘It’s a clue, Susan. If the Book of Robots exists, then this should be written in there. Robots don’t eat, they don’t breathe. They’re not like animals, they’re not even like the machines that we make. Locomotives need fuel to propel themselves, fires need air to breathe or they fail to burn. Robots don’t. A mother weaves a mind, and there is sufficient power there to power a body for thirty or forty years!’

  ‘That’s the way that things work. Is there something wrong with that?’

  ‘Well, yes, apparently there is.’

  Kavan

  The area before Kavan was filled with carnage, it was covered with smoke, it was watered by rain, it was lit by the flare of the guns on the wall that poured high explosive down on the advancing wall of robots, it was lit by the incandescence of minds discharging their life force into the night in one flash, it was rocked by explosions, it was distorted by chaff, it was pounded and twisted and thumped.

  Beyond the line of attack, the night was strangely still. The glow of the forges on the plain, the area of quiet expectancy along the rest of the wall lent the scene before Kavan an air of the surreal.

  Goeppert appeared at his side.

  ‘Not long now,’ said Kavan. ‘We’re almost at the wall. You realize you’ll be climbing under heavy fire all the way?’

  ‘We know that,’ said Goeppert. ‘We were twisted in the mountains, we’re used to fighting on vertical planes.’

  ‘You have sufficient weapons?’ asked Kavan, looking at the rifle and knives that Goeppert carried. ‘Would you like some grenades?’

  ‘No use on a wall,’ said Goeppert. ‘Don’t throw them far enough and they fall back towards you.’

  A new noise rose above all the rest.

  ‘Machine guns,’ said Kavan. ‘Titanium-tipped bullets, I would guess. We must be almost there-’

  And then there was a huge explosion, bigger than any they had heard so far. It didn’t come from the ground though…

  ‘Look,’ said Goeppert, pointing, ‘its magazine must have blown up.’

  One of the guard towers built into the wall had erupted in flame. The long barrel of a gun appeared over the edge and began to slide slowly, slowly, downwards, slipping into the second moat. A tremendous cheer went up from the attackers, and for the first time that night, the Uncertain Army began to stamp on the ground.

  Stamp, stamp, stamp; stamp, stamp, stamp.

  A wide tear spread down from the top of the guard tower, the metal of the iron wall split apart by the force of the explosion.

  ‘It’s begun,’ said Kavan. ‘The soldiers in there know we a
re here. They know who I am, they’ll know what I represent. They’ll come back to Nyro.’

  The gunfire from the top of the walls increased, only it was no longer all turned outwards. Now the city was fighting amongst itself. Just a tiny flame at the moment, but it would spread as it burned, Nyro’s fervour gradually overcoming the whole city.

  Calor reappeared, her scratched panelling covered in drops of melted lead.

  ‘We’re there, Kavan,’ she said. ‘We’re at the walls. The defending troops are in dissarray. They are fired upon by their own side. They leap into the moat for safety.’

  Goeppert stepped forward.

  ‘Then we are ready to attack. Kavan?’

  ‘Go,’ said Kavan.

  He watched with Calor as Goeppert and his troops ran forward, their elongated bodies picking their way amongst the twisted wreckage of the battlefield.

  ‘And now we follow,’ said Kavan, and he followed the Borners as they made their way to the wall. Bullets rained down around him, they ricocheted from the bodies of the fallen. So many bodies, so many of them still alive. Kavan saw the glow of their eyes, heard the pleading of robots trapped in shorting bodies, waiting to be dragged away from the battlefield and to be rehoused in new machines. There would be time for that later.

  Kavan’s feet rang on metal bodies. The smoke formed a roof above him through which the rain fell, the spark and crackle of the injured illuminated the enclosed scene.

  Through a gap in the smoke, Kavan saw that Goeppert and his troops had reached the wall. The rest of the Uncertain Army watched as the Borners ran up to the base, placed their feet on the sheer surface, and then began to run upwards.

  A cheer went up from the assembled troops; the Borners ran up the wall, they unslung their rifles, they began to fire on the few defenders who realized what was going on. Racing closer and closer to the top.

  ‘They’re almost in,’ said Kavan. ‘We’ve returned to Artemis.’

  Susan and Spoole

  ‘We never even noticed, Susan! It wasn’t right in front of our eyes, it was right behind them! Our minds, Susan. The wire that a male produces has such power in it. Where does it come from?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m not a male. I don’t understand what you do, any more than a male understands how a female twists metal!’

  ‘That’s not what I mean! You want to power a locomotive, you need to burn oil or diesel. You want to heat a forge, you burn coal. But to power a robot, all you have to do is twist a piece of metal. There is power there, it lasts for thirty or forty years, and then it is exhausted. Why is that?’

  ‘I told you, I don’t know. I’m not male!’

  ‘You can’t just twist the same piece of metal. Even males know that, don’t we? We’ve seen dead minds. The metal is brittle and lacking in something. You have to mix it with new metal to make a new mind.’

  ‘Which metals?’

  ‘That depends upon the mind, but iron and copper are the most important. And palladium and platinum, always a little palladium and platinum.’

  The flashing lights beyond the window were building to a climax. Just on the edge of her hearing, Susan could hear the thump and shake of distant explosions.

  ‘So a mind does need to be refuelled. That would seem to make sense. After all, that’s what an animal does.’

  ‘Yes, but there is nothing like a robot mind, the efficiency with which it creates power! And we never even noticed! We built atomic bombs and nuclear trains, and we thought we were clever. We never realized that there is an engine like that running in our minds, a source of power produced purely by twisting metal. Imagine if we were to turn minds purely to the production of power? Imagine the energy that would create.’

  Susan didn’t have to imagine it, she had already done it.

  ‘Is that was what was going on in the making rooms? Is that was why we were making those minds? But that’s…’ she struggled for the word, ‘… it’s obscene. It’s treating robots like, like animals, not like metal!’ A thought struck her. ‘Does this have something to do with Nettie? Is this why she vanished?’

  ‘I don’t know, it could be.’ said Spoole. ‘You still don’t understand, Susan. What might have happened to Nettie – that’s just the start!’

  Susan walked away from the window, mind reeling. To see a mind as nothing more than a source of power. It was obvious when Spoole mentioned it. He was right, the answer had been behind their eyes all this time. Was that why no one had ever seen it before? Why had they seen it now?

  The floor of the room was covered in a pattern of metal tiles, half of them polished to a shine, half roughened for traction. It was all steel, and yet some of the tiles reflected the light, and some of them were dull. She gazed at the pattern, thinking.

  ‘Maybe what you say is true,’ she said, eventually. ‘Maybe the Book of Robots does exist after all. Maybe this is written in it.’ She looked up suddenly. ‘It does, doesn’t it? You found the book! Artemis has found the book, and you, Spoole, have read it. That’s how you know, isn’t it?’

  Spoole lowered his head.

  ‘No,’ he said, sadly. ‘I wish that were true. I wish that was the way that I found out.’

  ‘Then how?’ shouted Susan. ‘How did you figure this out? Which robot finally saw the truth?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Spoole. ‘If only a robot had done. You see, Susan, there are other minds at large on Penrose…’

  Kavan

  Goeppert and his robots were in. The bullets and shells directed at the bridgehead of troops who crowded at the base of the iron wall were already reducing in number as the Borners went to work inside the city.

  Calor suddenly began to laugh. Kavan was used to this, he almost expected it: Scouts pumped current around their bodies at a high frequency, they usually died young and half mad.

  ‘What is it, Calor?’ asked Kavan.

  ‘It’s Goeppert. I’ve just realized why he followed you here! The Borners have just taken your city!’

  ‘Not yet they haven’t,’ said Kavan.

  ‘But they’re in there, and you’re out here! What if they take it over and don’t let us in? That would be so funny!’

  ‘Go on Calor. Go and fetch Ada. I want her supervising the work here.’

  ‘It will take time, Kavan. She could be anywhere back there on the plain.’

  ‘Then fetch someone who knows what to do! She’ll find her way here, I’m sure.’

  Engineers were bundled to the base of the wall. Standing on the bodies of the fallen, they began to supervise the stripping away of the iron, forcing a path through into the city. A huge explosion sounded to their left, and the second of the guard towers was blown apart.

  ‘Goeppert works well,’ said Kavan. ‘That, or more Artemisians are returning to our side.’

  ‘Kavan, what’s that?’

  Calor tilted her head, listening. Now Kavan heard it too. A low drone, and under it a thumping noise.

  ‘It’s coming from behind us,’ said Kavan.

  The other robots turned to see. There was nothing there. Somewhere beyond the noise and the gunfire they could just make out the glow of the forges and nothing else. The droning noise grew louder, the thumping became more insistent.

  ‘There’s something up there,’ said Calor, ‘shapes in the sky.’

  ‘Shapes?’ said Kavan. ‘What shapes?’

  As he said it, golden flares ignited amongst the raindrops, they drew straight lines towards Kavan and his troops.

  ‘What are they?’ asked Calor.

  ‘Into the trenches!’ called Kavan

  The golden lines streaked towards them and struck the ground between the first and second trench. Fountains of earth sprang from the resulting explosion.

  Kavan and Calor tumbled down into the inside moat, landing on the gravelled bottom with a jolt that shook their metal frames. Something snapped in Kavan’s right arm, and he lost partial control over his hand.

  ‘Look!’ shouted Calor. She had landed
on her feet, like any true Scout, and was pointing upwards. The top of the trench was a line in the sky, beyond it, something dark moved. A huge shape, lights blinking on its underside.

  ‘What is it?’ called Calor.

  ‘I don’t know!’ called Kavan. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it before!’

  A second shape moved over the top of the trench. There were machines up there, huge flying machines that groaned and thumped the air. Where had they come from? Where they of Spoole’s invention? Surely not.

  Golden flares streaked from one of the craft. One fell into the moat, a few hundred yards from where Kavan and Calor sheltered. It exploded in a wash of soil and sand that rattled on their damaged shells.

  ‘Go towards it!’ yelled Kavan, ‘See if it’s blown down the walls enough for us to get out of here.’

  Calor ran awkwardly along the trench bottom. She had lost her usual light gait, her body was failing due to the damage it had taken.

  Another craft flew by overhead, and more robots tumbled into the trench. An infantryrobot landed near Kavan. He heard the splintering crack that disabled her legs.

  Calor was coming back.

  ‘Kavan!’ she called. ‘The last bomb blew out the walls clear to the next moat. We can make it through there.’

  He followed her awkwardly down the trench. It was hard to move his right arm properly; his whole body was off balance.

  The humming drone of the strange craft had increased. No, realized Kavan, it was rather that the noise of gunfire and shelling from the walls had lessened. The robots of the city wouldn’t want to open fire on their own craft.

  He stumbled down the trench, cut through the gap in the walls to the next moat along. There were robots there already, clambering up the walls. Another huge explosion shook the ground behind Kavan, shaking the climbing robots free of their handholds.

  ‘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!’