Blood and Iron p-2

by Tony Ballantyne

  The earth shook now to the sound of stamping. A group of Storm Troopers took up a chant that was spreading through the metal ranks.

  ‘Spoole! Spoole! Spoole!’

  He raised his hands for silence. Gradually, order returned.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not Spoole. Listen to me Artemisians, I have a confession to make.’

  The crowd was silent, ears were turned up to listen.

  ‘Nyro herself said it,’ said Spoole, ‘that there is no mind, there is just metal. I realized over the past few weeks that maybe my mind wasn’t woven as true as I once believed. Perhaps my mother was too concerned with this metal -’ he tapped his hand against his body, ‘- to the detriment of Artemis itself. Perhaps I wasn’t the only one to think that way.’

  He looked again at the surviving Generals.

  Silence. Nothing but the hiss of the breeze through metal seams.

  ‘Not perhaps,’ Spoole corrected himself. ‘There is no doubt. The leadership of Artemis has been poor lately, there is no denying it.’

  Sandale’s eyes flashed, but he remained quiet. How could he do otherwise, when shouts of agreement came from the crowd? Sandale lowered his head.

  ‘But all this changes today. There can be no longer any doubt who the true leader of Artemis is. Bring him forward now. Bring forward Kavan!’

  The shout went out; heads turned this way and that. And they focussed on the dusty, insignificant infantryrobot who made his way towards Spoole. An electric surge ran through the crowd as they strained to see Kavan, the hero, the feared, the robot who had conquered all of Shull.

  Robots cleared a path as he made his way forward, flanked by a blue engineer and a silver Scout. The three of them came to a halt before Spoole. Spoole looked the infantryrobot up and down.

  ‘Kavan,’ he said. ‘What would you have us do now?’

  The silence lengthened. And then Kavan spoke.

  ‘Seek another leader.’

  A hum of current rippled through the robots.

  ‘But… but why?’

  Kavan was matter of fact.

  ‘Because our time has passed. Look at this place, look at that ship, lying broken over there. Our minds are not woven for these times.’

  ‘Then who?’ demanded Sandale, suddenly bold.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Kavan, fixing the General with a stare. ‘Maybe someone like Ada here, someone who understands machinery.’

  ‘Not me!’ laughed the blue engineer.

  ‘No,’ agreed Kavan. ‘Not you. Maybe you could understand what makes this craft work, but that wouldn’t mean you could understand the minds of those who have built it. We need a new leader. Someone whose mind was not fixed at birth. Someone who will look at this new situation in which we find ourselves and will be able to respond to it in a new way, not in a pattern laid down by his mother, years ago.’

  ‘Does such a person exist?’

  ‘If they do, they will present themselves.’

  Spoole was aware of the movement from the side. He saw two robots pushing their way forward. One wore the body of an infantry-robot, but awkwardly, as if he wasn’t really used to it. The other wore an oversized body of lead and iron, a badly designed thing that was surely hurting the robot inside. The infantryrobot spoke.

  ‘Who are you?’ asked Spoole.

  The robot looked at Spoole. ‘Someone who was listening to what you said. Someone whose mind was not fixed at birth. Someone who has walked this continent from top to bottom and has finished his journey with more questions than when he started. Someone who has heard the story of Eric and the Mountain, and now knows that he must lead.’

  ‘That was the philosophy of Turing City,’ said Kavan. ‘This robot is from Turing City. I think he’s right. The Turing Citizen should be your new leader.’’

  ‘Turing City is no more,’ said Karel. ‘And neither is Artemis. All that is left is metal. It’s up to us how we twist it now.’

  ‘You would suggest a Tokvah tells us how to twist metal?’ said Sandale, the faintest edge of disgust in his voice.

  ‘My mind wasn’t made in Artemis, either,’ said Kavan. ‘And yet you would allow me to lead you. These two robots are responsible for the metal mesh we all carry. If not for them, then there would be no Artemis today. We would all be dead, our minds destroyed by the electric bomb. So yes, Sandale. I say let’s listen to Karel when he tells us how to twist metal.’

  ‘But how do we twist it?’ asked Spoole.

  Karel looked at the heavy lead robot for support.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he began. ‘… yet. But Kavan knows part of the answer, he will know how to make robots that will fight. He will command our troops and direct them against the enemy, when they return. This engineer will know another part, robots that can take the animal’s technology and twist it to our own ends. But there is more than that.’

  ‘What more could there be?’ demanded Sandale.

  ‘I don’t know,’ replied Karel. ‘And that’s it. None of us know what else there is. I don’t think we understand this world, I don’t think we see it as it really is. We caught a hint of that at the top of Shull, didn’t we, Kavan?’

  Kavan’s eyes flared just a little at that, but he said nothing.

  Karel looked at the leaden robot standing at his side.

  ‘Melt and I have travelled the length and breadth of this continent, and we have seen and heard fragments of other truths that are not woven directly into the mind.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean stories that are passed orally from robot to robot, stories that have taken on a life of their own, and avoided the censor of whatever philosophy has been adopted by the state that the mother belongs to. There are other ways for robots to build bodies than this one.’

  He held his arms wide. ‘I’ve even met one such robot.’

  Although they spoke quietly, their words were relayed out through the surrounding crowds. Electronic voices rose and fell as the messages reached the edges of the crowd.

  Karel raised his voice.

  ‘This world isn’t what we’ve made ourselves believe it is,’ he called. ‘If we are to make it our own, we need to understand it. We need to see the truth about ourselves. We take so much for granted. Minds. The night moon. All of these things. If we do not write our own stories, then these animals will write them for us! They may already have done so! I saw the warning written at the top of Shull. So did Kavan. The Story of Eric and the Mountain.’

  ‘The Story of Eric and the Mountain?’ said Kavan.

  ‘Melt here knows it! He told it to me, and I think I understand what it means. Not just the Story itself, but all stories. Maybe even the Book of Robots.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Think of this. Imagine, years ago, there were robots living here on Penrose who saw the truth.’

  ‘What truth?’

  ‘I don’t know! Maybe a truth that was to be hidden from us. Maybe a truth that someone or something was trying to hide from us. Someone or something much, much more powerful than us.’

  ‘Like the humans?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe. But I don’t think so. I think there is a deeper truth at work here. Maybe one that the robots of the past understood a little of, one they wove into the minds of their children. But what of all the other children? How would they let them know?’

  ‘By stories,’ said Ada. ‘I see. That’s so clever, two ways for information to pass on.’ Her eyes shone as she contemplated the thought. ‘Hard wired, and a way of modifying data.’

  ‘The stories are a message to us from our past,’ repeated Karel. ‘We need to understand them!’

  He was interrupted by a commotion in the crowd. A robot was pushing its way forward.

  ‘Karel! Karel!’

  Spoole recognized the voice. So did Karel. They both turned. Yet another infantryrobot was running towards them, and Spoole reflected how the most ordinary body in Artemis had proven to be the most influential. Karel
was obviously not thinking such thoughts. His eyes glowed in wonder at the sight of the approaching woman.

  ‘Susan,’ he said.

  ‘Karel!’

  ‘This is your husband?’ said Spoole, but they weren’t listening to him, and why should they?

  Susan was humming with electricity. The current shone around her, eclipsing even the glow that poured forth from Karel’s body. To robot eyes, it was as if they were surrounded by two haloes. The two robots approached each other and a hum of feedback escaped from both their mouths, so perfectly were they in phase with each other.

  It all came down to this, thought Spoole. All this fighting, just because robots made more robots.

  ‘Oh, Karel,’ said Susan.

  ‘Susan.’

  They placed their heads close together and listened to the signal hum of each others minds.

  For the moment, there was nothing else to be said.

  Calor

  Calor ran through the streets of Artemis City. She could feel the thump of machinery re-awakening, hear the sound of lathes beginning to turn once more, see the robots at work stripping down the damaged buildings, clearing away the wreckage of the fighting.

  She turned left by a ruptured gasometer, and headed up a long road bordered on either side by cable walks, empty now of cable after the last attack. Soon the machines inside would turn again and more cable would be wound to the glory of Artemis. Or was it Turing City now? Both Kavan and Karel said that names didn’t matter any more.

  Either way, Calor was free to run for the moment, and with a surge of pleasure she put on a spurt of speed, running, flashing, down the street with the single joy of a robot meeting the purpose woven into her mind. She saw the puff in the dust ahead, tried to dodge, but she was moving too quickly…

  Her feet were gone, sliced clean off by the razor wire stretched across her path. She raised herself up on her hands, turned around, saw the Storm Troopers who emerged from the doorways on either side, heading towards her.

  She waited until they were close enough and then exploded into movement, slashing out with the blades of one hand, slicing into the panelling of the leader, blue sparks leaping from his chest; but there were too many of them. They pushed her to the ground, twisted her arms back behind her, snapped them off, one, two. They did the same with what remained of her legs, then they dragged her off the street, pulling her into a cable run.

  ‘I recognize you,’ said one. ‘Kavan’s Spartz. You were with him back in the north, back when he was first raising his army. I saw you there. Do you recognize me?’

  ‘Let your wire rust, Tok,’ she giggled, half mad on current and pain.

  ‘You’re the one who will rust. We’ll tear out your mind and leave it covered in salt water for a few weeks. Leave it for Kavan to find. Maybe he’ll get the message then. Artemis isn’t going to be run by some Tokvah from Turing City.’

  ‘Who do you think should run it? The animals?’

  ‘Artemisians, Spartz. How about if I made new arms for you? I could do that. Take you with us when we leave this place, give you arms so you can twist us new minds, help us to build the new Artemisian army. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Just you and us?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Calor. ‘Go on then. Put my arms back on. I’ll weave minds for you.’

  The Storm Troopers laughed.

  ‘I don’t think so. We need to send a message to Kavan, and you’re it. I wonder, does it hurt to feel your mind gradually rusting away?’

  ‘Perhaps you’ll find out someday. You won’t defeat Kavan. You Storm Troopers never could. He was always too clever a leader for you.’

  ‘But he’s not leader any more, is he?’

  The big robot leaned forward and squeezed her head, popping the metal apart there. He picked away at the seams, getting at her mind.

  ‘Will you tell him I was coming back to him?’ she said, worried about this above all else.

  They didn’t answer. A hand reached down to break her coil.

  And that was it.

  Darkness.

  Silence.

  Calor was fifteen years old. She could expect to live for another twenty-five or thirty years in this awful isolation. Unless of, of course, the Storm Troopers followed through on their promise to drop her mind into salt water. It would be a mercy.

  Twenty-five years of silence, twenty-five years without the sound of another robot. Twenty-five years without sunlight, or the feel of ground beneath her feet, without the joy of running, sprinting, slashing at the air with her hands for the sheer pleasure of it. No more polishing metal, straightening wire. Never more to feel oil, slippery between her joints.

  And all the while, the world passing by outside, untouched, unknowing. Where would the animals be? Where would Kavan be?

  Would anything come of Karel’s plans to find out the truth behind the world? Did such a truth exist?

  What did Calor care? She was made to run, and fight. No longer.

  Nothing but the sound of her own thoughts.

  Nothing but the reflection of her memory.

  No sense of passing time.

  Silence. Darkness.

  So many other robots, just like her. Scattered across the battlefields of Shull. She had never given them any thought before.

  Silence.

  So faint, she must have imagined it.

  She heard it again, a voice, in the distance. She realized now that it had always been there, but in the past it had been drowned out by the noise and brightness of the world around her.

  She could hear it now though. It was speaking to her.

  Hello, Calor.

  Susan

  Two robots were making love in the middle of a battlefield.

  ‘Don’t leave me again, Karel,’ said Susan, twisting his wire in her hands.

  ‘I don’t want to have to,’ said Karel. It wasn’t the promise she wanted, and they both knew it.

  ‘I’d stay with you,’ said Susan. He knew that of course. That’s one reason why he had agreed to the making of a child so readily. It would be a way of keeping her in safety if he found himself heading into danger in the coming battle. It was the only thing that would work. It was woven into Susan’s mind to love and protect Karel. Only the motherhood urge would be stronger.

  ‘I’ve reached the point,’ she said. ‘Have you decided?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Karel. ‘A little girl.’

  He would be thinking of Axel, their little boy. She was, too. But life went on.

  ‘A little girl. Have you thought of a name?’

  ‘Emily.’

  Emily, a lovely name for a lovely child, due to be born in these less than lovely times.

  Susan paused, looking at him.

  ‘Her nature comes next,’ she said. ‘Are you sure you want me to weave her that way?’

  ‘Yes!’ he said. ‘Make Emily curious about everything! Make her ask what and how and why. Always why, and never to accept any answer at face value.’

  ‘But that will render the weave so far pointless. If she questions everything we have made her to be-’

  ‘But that’s just the point!’ said Kavan, and he gazed up at the stars. ‘It’s like that human woman said: we robots aren’t very curious. Is that any surprise when we ask our mothers to weave our beliefs directly into our children? Who would want to weave in curiosity if it were-’

  ‘We’re doing this because of what some human woman said?’

  ‘It’s right, Susan. I know it’s right. Do you believe me?’

  It didn’t matter whether she did or not. She would follow him, whatever he did. At least Emily would have a choice in what she did.

  She continued with the weave. There was so much power in the wire, she now knew. Ada had talked about nuclear fusion, about hydrogen adsorption. Kavan had talked about the humans returning. They wanted that power.

  ‘Do you trust Kavan?’ she asked, suddenly. ‘You only lead with his approval, you know. If he ever decides otherwise you will b
e ousted before the day is out.’

  ‘I know that.’ He looked at her moving hands, wanting to think of happier things. ‘What are you weaving now?’

  ‘Her sense of self, of otherness.’

  ‘Will you make her like me? Angry? Angry enough to change things?’

  ‘Of course I will. I love you, Karel. How could I do anything else?’

  ‘We’re so strange, aren’t we?’ said Karel. ‘Us robots. We do exactly as our mothers told us, and yet we are all so different. So simple, and so complex at the same time.’

  ‘It seems normal to me,’ replied Susan, twisting his wire further. The thought of Nyro’s pattern kept rising in her mind, and she had to push it away. All those nights spent in the making rooms. So many times she had wondered if she could have ever done this again. But if she hadn’t, that would have been another victory for Artemis.

  ‘They never found Nettie, did they?’ she said.

  ‘Your friend? No. Perhaps she was on the ship that escaped.’

  ‘I hope so. Do you think they will bring her back?’

  ‘I don’t know. You said they wanted our minds.’

  ‘Something about the power there. The fact that we didn’t need fuel. The humans were very excited by that.’

  Something stirred within her. The faintest edge of curiosity. Maybe Karel was right, that this world was stranger than she thought.

  ‘What was that story, the one that Melt told you?’

  ‘The Story of Eric and the Mountain.’

  ‘He’s a strange robot, Melt. Are you sure he can be trusted?’

  ‘I think so. There is a deep sense of honour within him, I know that.’

  ‘Where does he come from?’

  ‘He won’t say. I think he’s deeply ashamed of his past, that’s one of the things that convinces me he is honourable, funnily enough. He’s met the humans before, though. He knew about the Faraday Cage. He told the Artemisians; he got them to send the message to all their troops.’

  ‘I heard.’

  Karel looked up at the stars, tried to enjoy the pleasurable feeling of Susan pulling at his wire. But all the time his mind wandered back to Melt, the way he had almost pleaded to be allowed to guard Susan, as he had done Karel on his journey south. It seemed to be important to the big robot. A way of redeeming himself.