Blood and Iron (20 page)

‘Zuse flared last night,’ said Kavan. ‘I’ve never seen that before. Is it a feature of these mountains?’

‘No.’

Kavan said nothing.

‘Do you know the whales are dying?’ said Goeppert, suddenly.

Kavan was little unsettled by this change in the conversation. ‘The whales?’ he said. ‘What do you know about whales, living up here in the mountains?’

‘We listen to their songs. They are in constant communication with each other. Didn’t you know this?’

Kavan didn’t care.

‘Goeppert, I travel with an Uncertain Army. It will follow me forwards, it will not go backwards, and if it stands still for too long it will simply evaporate to nothing. I cannot afford to stand here all day, so tell me, will you fight me, or let me pass?’

Goeppert didn’t say a word, but somewhere behind him, somewhere out in the land of Born, robots were detaching themselves from the mountainside, coming into view, forming themselves into lines on the road beyond the bridge.

‘Both,’ said Goeppert. ‘For the moment we will let you pass. We will even give you troops to accompany you. They will learn how to fight, and maybe return here with more metal from the plains.’

‘Good,’ said Kavan.

‘The robots who return here will be stronger for having travelled. They will bring us new knowledge that we will put to use.’

Kavan understood. ‘You seek to temper yourself further.’ He looked back to the far side of the bridge where his troops waited. ‘I feel no such need.’

Spoole

Spoole gazed at the map of the city.

‘Is this the best they could do?’ he asked.

‘They did well, given the time they had available,’ said General Sandale reprovingly.

Spoole doubted it. Someone had taken a sheet of polished steel and engraved a map upon it. The Basilica was a rectangle in the centre, the forges clustered around it. Beyond it was Half-fused City, the railway stations, the goods yards, the chemical tanks, the construction yards, the making rooms, the barracks, the gasometers and cable walks . . . All the signs of a busy city. Beyond all that, there was a planned outline of the defences.

He looked at the lines of the trenches, represented on the map. They were well laid out, offering clear, overlapping lines of fire. The railway lines picked their way through them, offering an effective way of keeping the front lines stocked with ammunition.

‘We thought of running lines out beyond the defences,’ said Sandale. ‘Fill a load of wagons with guns and send them out to fire a broadside into Kavan’s troops.’

‘It would only work once, but it could be effective. Still,’ he said grudgingly, ‘the overall plan looks workable.’

But will it be enough?
he wondered. He had seen the way the troops had retreated back in the mountains. Kavan hadn’t even had a proper army then. If he reached Artemis City, and he would, then he would do so with troops hardened by the march, and tempered by the fighting they would have been forced into on the way.

Still, Spoole was fighting from his home territory. The land beyond the city was mined, the trenches could be flooded with petrol, trains could be loaded with explosives and sent running on railway lines buried beneath the sand and soil of the plain towards the attacking troops.

That thought gave Spoole pause. Once Artemis City had been connected to the continent by railway lines. Now those joins were severed, the city cut off from the rest of Shull. What were they doing, he wondered. Surely this wasn’t Nyro’s will?

He wasn’t a superstitious robot, none of the Artemisians were; it wasn’t woven into their minds. Nonetheless, he remembered the lights in the sky from the night before, the way that Zuse had lit up. The whole city had stopped work, robots had thronged the streets looking to the skies whilst fires burned unattended in forges and robots remained half assembled.

He pushed the thought from his mind and turned his attention back to the job in hand.

‘We need to do something about the aerial masts,’ said Spoole, pointing to the map. ‘Kavan could take them out easily, and thus cut off our communications.’

He scanned the map.

‘Here,’ he pointed. ‘The northern quarters. Demolish this sector and move the aerials there. They’ll be safe behind the forges and the garrisons.’

He looked up, saw Sandale and the other Generals exchanging looks.

‘Well?’ he said. ‘What’s the matter with you?’

‘Spoole, that’s where
we
are quartered. Don’t you think our capacity to lead will be severely reduced if we cannot guarantee our bodies are in working order?’

‘Surely we will be quartered here, in the Basilica?’ said Spoole. ‘A little privation during the course of the conflict is normal, surely?’

General Sandale took a long rod of iron and pointed.

‘I suggest we relocate the aerials here, just a little closer to the city than their current position. We leave the area where they stood empty. It should give a good line of fire on any robot that tries to attack across the ground there.’

Spoole inspected the map.

‘It’s not that bad an idea,’ he admitted, ‘but what’s to stop Kavan simply moving his troops onto the land and occupying it?’

The Generals exchanged looks once more.

‘Nonetheless,’ said Sandale, ‘we think this is a better idea.’

‘Since when was this a democracy?’

‘Since your decisions began to lose their effectiveness.’

Long ago, Spoole had seen the mugger snakes of Stark, watched them as they slipped out of their bore holes to capture a passing insect. They didn’t move that quickly, but they moved with an ease and assurance that meant they could often capture their prey before it was aware of the movement. Spoole moved in the same manner now, he had his hand behind General Sandale’s neck before the soldier knew what was happening.

‘You’ve lost your edge, General,’ said Spoole. He dragged a finger down Sandale’s chest panelling, scratching it.

‘And you are losing yours, Spoole,’ said Sandale. ‘Enough of this charade. Let me go.’

He had pushed a magnetic bomb against Spoole’s chest.

‘It’s not armed,’ he said, ‘but if it were, it would freeze your body before you could harm my coil.’ He smiled to the other robots. ‘There’s a time for action, and a time for thought.’

‘Want to try it?’ asked Spoole. ‘Put it to the test?’

‘There’s no need,’ said General Sandale. ‘Your moment has passed Spoole. Other arrangements have already been made.’

‘What arrangements?’ asked Spoole.

‘Troop deployments,’ said General Sandale. ‘We have a plan.’

Again the Generals looked at each other.

‘I think its time we told you,’ said General Sandale. ‘Come with me, Spoole.’

Wondering, Spoole followed General Sandale from the room.

He was heading for the topmost level of the Basilica. For the staterooms. Spoole’s own quarters were located up here, along with the radio centre. Spoole wondered if this was when the coup would finally happen. Still, he walked on.

He was Artemisian to the core. Whether by Kavan, or by San-dale and his cronies, if he was overthrown by other Artemisians, then that would be the will of Artemis.

Susan

The women filed into the lecture room.

‘Where’s Nettie?’ asked Susan.

‘I don’t know,’ said the woman next to her, forgetting her old hatred for Susan. She too was unsettled by the stranger standing in Nettie’s place, preparing to give the morning lecture. Susan and her neighbour held each other’s gaze for a moment. Life had become almost comfortable in Artemis City. What did this change signify?

The new woman at the front smiled brightly. ‘Good Afternoon, ladies! My name is Gretel, and I’m here to show you a new pattern.’

Susan raised her hand. ‘Where’s Nettie?’ she asked.

‘Reassigned. Now, I am here to talk about a pattern of mind that has recently been resurrected by the women of Artemis. We call it the half fuse.’

‘The half fuse? Like Half-fused City?’

Half-fused City was the old quarter, it lay not that far from the making rooms. The women tended to avoid it. It was against the rules to talk, but the women were regarded as mothers of Artemis now, and that gave them some leeway. There was a buzz as they discussed the half fuse: what did it mean? Was it moral? All of them but Susan, who was gazing at the metal floor, wondering about Nettie, wondering about her friend.

‘The half fuse,’ said Gretel. ‘Maximum power and longevity backed up with
just sufficient
intelligence. Imagine the robot that would power! Strong, capable of following orders to the glory of Artemis . . .’

This was the mind that Nettie had begun to show them,
realized Susan
. But why would anyone want to make such a mind? What sort of society would this be? Strong, but nearly unthinking? What would be the point in it?

She couldn’t hold the thought, because another truth was forcing its way into her mind. First Axel and Karel, and now Nettie. Everyone she had loved had been taken from her. And she just sat here, in this room, accepting it.

She remembered a robot she had met, what seemed like a lifetime ago, back in Turing City. Maoco O, the City Guard. He had known of the Book of Robots, and had thought that Susan did too. He had asked Susan a question:

When the time came, would you be strong enough to twist a mind in the way you knew to be right?

He had been talking about the coming war, talking about Turing City’s defeat. It had been easy to be defiant when City Guards such as Maoco O still patrolled in their sleek, over-engineered bodies. But now she was here, alone, in the middle of the enemy city, she was confronted with the real answer.

No. When the time had come, she had sacrificed her principles in order to stay alive.

And so what? Was that anything to be ashamed of? Wouldn’t any other robot do the same in her position? A remnant of her old life as a statistician came to her aid. Yes, most other robots would. At least, all the ones who had lived to make new robots. So why did she feel so guilty, if that was the way that robots were made?

At the front of the room Gretel was talking about the half fuse, and Susan realized what she was doing. She was hiding from the new reality. Circumstances had changed. She was no longer the frightened, dented woman who had been led into this room those months back.

She was a mother of Artemis, she had something like respect in this city. She was free to come and go as she pleased, within reason. So what was keeping her here now?

Nothing. Nothing but fear and momentum.

Nettie was gone, reassigned. Reassigned where? To what purpose? Nettie wasn’t allowed to make children, was this the final reassignment?

And that wasn’t all.

Karel was out there somewhere. Her husband was alive, somewhere in Northern Shull. So she had been told, anyway. What would she tell him, if he ever found her? That she just sat here and waited for him? That the one friend she had here had vanished, and she had just let her go?

That decided her.

She was going to get out of here. If it was too big a step to leave the city for the moment, then at the very least she would find Nettie.

And then, if he hadn’t come to her by then, they would go look for Karel.

Karel

South of Blaize, the valleys were full of dead towns. Hollow shells of stone buildings, long stripped of any metal, shedding their flat slates across the grass-grown road.

‘What are they doing here?’ wondered Karel.

‘Perhaps they mined the surrounding hills to make robots, and the robots just walked away down the road, leaving these buildings behind them to rot.’

‘Could be,’ said Karel, looking down yet another narrow valley crowded with dead buildings. Grey slate held together with green moss, all crowded higgledy piggledy together.

‘They remind me of something . . .’ began Melt.

‘What?’ asked Karel.

‘ . . . nothing.’

‘Were you remembering something about your past?’