Blood and Iron (11 page)

‘Of course not! There is a time for fighting, but one should always speak first!’

‘Yes, yes, but of course you would say that, Karel! That is what Turing City robots do! That is the way you were made. But you will be made that way no longer, because all the minds that will be twisted on Shull from now are to be twisted in the fashion of Artemis.’

Karel nodded. He understood what Morphobia Alligator was saying now.

‘So Artemis will fight the animals. Well, that may not be a bad thing.’

‘It may not be. But the animals are very clever. They are very powerful. What if they defeat us all? What if they melt down all the metal life on this planet and place organic life in its place?’

‘Zuse, yes,’ said Karel. His gyros were churning. ‘But what difference does it make now? Artemis is strong. If the animals had come forty years ago.’

‘Yes, yes. If they had come forty years ago. What then, though? How do we know that Stark or Bethe or Turing City or any of the other states would have had the right mindset to deal with the animals?’

‘How am I supposed to know that?’

‘How indeed, Karel? How could a robot with a mind such as yours possibly be expected to understand that? Now, I on the other hand . . .’

Morphobia Alligator let the sentence trail away.

‘Who are you?’ asked Karel.

‘I am a pilgrim. I am a mule. I am only one hundred years old, yet I was one of the first robots to walk on Penrose. I was there when the truth of the Book of Robots was first understood and yet my mind was not yet twisted.’

‘Spare me the riddles, Morphobia Alligator. You know I have a temper.’

‘I know you’re not a fool, either, Karel. You’ve been to the reliquary on the northern coast of Shull. You’ve seen what is in there; you’ve seen the mind patterns engraved around the outside of the building. You should realize that there are more types of robot that walk on Penrose than those like yourself. You have met some of the others. Robots like Banjo Macrodocious, who once fought the pilgrims. Robots like myself. Maybe we are not so plentiful as your own species who have spread their offspring across this planet, but we all have our place on this world.’

Karel looked again across the waters to the town of Blaize. He had spent nearly all of his life in Turing City. He had thought of himself as educated and urbane, he was increasingly aware of how wrong that impression was. He felt as out of touch and provincial in the eyes of this robot as the robots of Artemis had once seemed to himself.

‘So I ask you again, Morphobia Alligator. What do you want with me?’

‘I want nothing with you personally, Karel. But at times like this, pilgrims have always paid special attention to robots such as you. Robots whose minds weren’t made up for them by their parents.’

‘Why? Am I so special?’

‘I don’t know, Karel. Most of you die young, you know. But, just occasionally, one of you has a thought so original it can change the path of life of Penrose. Nicolas the Coward was one such robot.’

‘Are you saying I am a coward?’

‘You know that I’m not. Nicolas the Coward realized that the mind was more important than metal.’

‘That’s not how the story goes.’

‘Stories have a way of changing as they are twisted into new minds. Stories change with each telling, slowly evolving into new stories. Perhaps some day there will be a story about Karel and Kavan?’

Karel gazed at the pilgrim, suspiciously.

‘So you
are
saying that I’m special?’

‘Who knows, Karel? No one ever knows until afterwards. In all probability, the chances are that you are not such a robot. There are around two hundred of you that we know of on Penrose at the moment, and most, if not all of you will die young and unfulfilled.’

‘I had a sister,’ said Karel. ‘She was just like me.’

‘I know. Eleanor.’

‘Kavan killed her.’

‘Robots such as yourself usually die young, Karel. I told you that.’

‘All I want to do is free my wife.’

‘Just maybe, I can help you do that.’

‘Then why are we wasting time here? Let’s go!’

‘No, no. You don’t understand, Karel. I am not going anywhere. I have seen you and spoken to you, and I have played my part. All that remains for me to do is to give you some advice, give you a direction in which to travel. Not south, Karel. At least, not at first. Climb down this hillside to the waters edge, and there find the heaviest rock that you can carry. Pick up that rock and then follow the road beneath the water to Blaize.’

‘Why take a rock?’

‘The currents in the inlet are strong. They can sweep a fully grown robot out to sea.’

Karel looked across the grey water to the distant town.

‘What do I do when I reach Blaize?’

‘There is another robot waiting there. He is a soldier, or at least he was once. He might be able to help you. And you him. He needs to redeem himself.’

‘Redeem himself? From what?’

‘Perhaps he will tell you himself.’

‘And what about you?’

‘I will continue on my way . . .’

At that Morphobia Alligator was silent.

Karel looked once more across the grey choppy waters. The clouds were dispersing a little, allowing sunlight through in red bands. It cast a red glow over the far-away town, giving it an alien air.

‘Will I see you again?’

‘Perhaps.’

There was nothing else to say. Karel had already made up his mind; he wanted to be on his way, off to rescue his wife. He quickly descended the slippery green hillside, skirting the grey ruins of Presper Boole. The town had an eerie, dead aspect, empty of all iron. Childhood stories of northern ghosts arose in Karel’s mind.

Down at the water’s edge he found a wide, paved road that led down beneath the waves, and he wondered once more at the robots that had once inhabited this land, wondered at the journeys they had formerly made between the two towns. He found a large stone by the road, remnants of a collapsed column. He picked it up and made his way into the water, his electromuscles aching with the cold once more.

Just before he vanished beneath the waves, he turned and looked back up at Morphobia Alligator, still standing there on the hillside, arms waving in sine waves.

Karel hoisted the stone and followed the road under the water.

The road to Blaize was old and mostly overgrown with slippery weed, yet the path down the centre was a little clearer, suggesting that a few robots still travelled this way. Karel turned his eyes right up, and strode determinedly on, his field of vision extending only a few feet before being lost in the gloom of the surrounding water. Faint streamers of light rippled in the ceiling somewhere above his head. The currents in the water swirled around him, tugging him this way and that; his feet skidded on the writhing weed.

Still, he walked on, feeling the path descend as he approached the centre of the wide inlet, wondering all the time at Morphobia Alligator. Was he wasting his time coming this way? He didn’t know. Morphobia Alligator was right, if he had been left to his own devices, he would have blindly walked south until he had been killed or captured by the Artemisians. On and on he walked, the ache in his electromuscle increasing all the time.

Eventually the road ceased its descent and began to climb upwards. Karel had passed the halfway point, he guessed. Just as he began his struggle up the far side of the inlet, the road split in two. One fork bent to the right, heading north, and for a moment Karel hesitated. Did that path lead to the Top of the World? For just a moment, he was tempted to follow it but the image of Susan appeared in his mind and he resumed his climb.

He reached the far side as the sun was setting. Across the inlet, Presper Boole was lost in shadow. Behind the hills upon which it stood, the low sun had set the sky seemingly on fire. Karel realized he was still holding onto the rock, and he let it fall into the sea, water splashing up over his knees, water draining once again from his grey infantryrobot’s body. Not for the first time, he noted that though the Artmesian robotics might not be as sophisticated as those of Turing City, they could take a lot more punishment.

Now that he had reached Blaize he had his first inkling of how enormous the place was. The city was comparable in magnitude maybe even to his former home of Turing City. Morphobia Alligator had said he was to meet someone here: a soldier. That could take some doing in a place of this size.

Just as he was thinking this he saw, lit up in scarlet sunlight, the metal shell of another robot. It was sitting near the top of the road, just where it ran up through the remains of a wide arch into the city proper.

Karel raised a hand, and slowly, the other robot returned his gesture. As Karel made his way to towards it, he realized that there was something odd about the other person. His body seemed half melted. The joints and seams of his panelling looked as if they were soldered together. Karel felt the current drain from his electromuscles. The thought of having his mind placed in that body made him feel fuzzy with static. It would be like being trapped in a prison.

The other robot got up with some difficulty. Stiffly, it made its way towards Karel.

‘Hello,’ said Karel. ‘My name is Karel. I have been told that you could help me.’

‘
I
help
you
?’ said the other robot. ‘I don’t think so. I can’t even help myself. Tell me, do you know who I am?’

Kavan

The Uncertain Army charged, and a storm of metal arose upon the face of Shull. Metal pumping and flexing, pistoning and scraping, stretching and bending across the earth, metal tearing into the ground, thudding deep into the soil, metal rising up into the air in a swarm . . . The swipe of blades, the crash of cannon-balls, the spung and ricochet of bullets, the whirling of saw-edged discs, flares of wire, rains of chaff, explosions of shrapnel, swarf springing up all around . . .

Through it all danced the energy of electricity, jumping in blue sparks, crackling down arms and legs, earthing itself on blades, shorting out between electromuscles, singing in the mind . . .

The noise of explosions, crackling orange and yellow flames, burning phosphorus, the clash of metal, the squeal of drills slipping across plate, the scrape of knives, the thud of lead on iron . . . The atmosphere was squeezed and sucked this way and that by explosions, smoke and iron filings pushed through panelling in great gasps that sent the gyros shuddering, eyesight and hearing baffled by the flash and crash and roar . . .

And amongst it all, the Uncertain Army stumbled forward, retreated back, reeled sideways, was pushed and knocked and tumbled over itself, the whole force swaying this way and that, but all the time slowly advancing on the Artemisian army.

Spoole had positioned his troops well; he had given his cannon clear lines of sight at Kavan’s approaching army. They fired round shot and chain shot, canister and shrapnel, shell and carcass and magnetic bolas: pairs of magnetized balls that orbited each other as they flew, whipping and crashing their way through the approaching ranks. File after file of robots were smashed down, bodies crushed, electromuscle torn, blue wire tangling across their comrades, and still the Uncertain Army came on.

Seen from above, the fighting didn’t just occur at the boundary between the forces: it boiled all the way through the troops. The robots of the Uncertain Army fought amongst themselves, they fought to get away from the charge, they fought to be at the front of it, they fought just to keep their feet. Kavan moved in the eye of the hurricane, surrounded by grey-bodied infantryrobots who marched with cold determination, but also with an air of homecoming: they had marched for Kavan before, they were marching for him again. Iron-tipped bullets rained down from above, they rattled off their grey shells. They were fired by the robots that lined the distant mountain peaks, their killing energy spent by the time it reached them.

‘Onwards,’ called Kavan. ‘Onwards! Aim for the centre!’

The Uncertain Army was getting less spread out: they were being funnelled between the low hills that led to the pass Kavan had once blasted through the centre of the mountain range. Now that passage was being choked with railway lines. He guessed that somewhere safely beyond Spoole’s troops would be marshalled the trains that had brought his army north. They would be waiting to carry the broken metal from this battle back south to Artemis City to be remade anew once the war was over.