Blood and Iron (50 page)

A ceramic pot was held before his eyes.

‘
This is a mixture of platinum and gold and iron. Some copper and silver. Do you recognize the mix? This is the same alloy as your mind is twisted from. We will mix this with your coil, splay it out and flatten it against the metal of this body. The two metals will become one. To try and prise your mind free would be to break your coil. You will be trapped in there forever. Do you understand
?’

Wa-Ka-Mo-Do struggled to speak. His words were fighting against a static of pain.

‘Traitor . . .’

‘
I think you understand
.’

The face and ceramic pot withdrew. Suddenly, his coil, his mind, his body were on fire. The pain was unbelievable: nothing he had ever before endured had been like this.

And it would never cease, for the rest of his life.

Then came the final act. The three women had set crucibles of lead to melt. They came forward and stood over him, tilted the heavy bowls, and he watched as the metal, silver-grey and bubbling, spilled over the edge and poured into his body. And this time he couldn’t hold it back any longer. An electronic squeal sounded from his voicebox. The Vestal Virgins looked at each other in satisfaction.

They left him. He gazed unseeing at the sun as it rose towards noon. The lead in his body was cooling, but the pain remained trapped there with him.

He saw movement. The Vestal Virgins returned.

‘
Wa-Ka-Mo-Do
,’ said the women in unison. ‘
Stand up
.’

‘I can’t,’ he said, his voicebox buzzing.

They laughed.

‘
What, Wa-Ka-Mo-Do the great warrior of Ekrano, defeated by this body
?’ taunted one.

‘
I have seen women with much less lifeforce stand up in much heavier suits. I have put them there myself
,’ said another.

‘
But we know that women can withstand more pain than men
.’ said the third.

Wa-Ka-Mo-Do moved his arms. So heavy, each movement was agony.

‘
Come on Wa-Ka-Mo-Do, great warrior of Ko. Try harder
!’

He flexed his arms again. So heavy!

‘
Is that all he can do? The robots of the Silent City fare much better. But they have strength in their minds . . .
’

The pain threatened to short out his mind, still he forced himself onwards. Flexed his legs. Pushed himself onto his side, with great, heavy scraping movements. He held his balance for a moment, then he rolled forward heavily onto his front. The movement jarred, sent more pain surging through him. He felt the cooling lead shifting around him, thundering agony through his body, lances of fire and surging current. Slowly, inch by agonizing inch, he forced himself to his feet.

‘I can . . . I can . . . do it . . .’

He saw the look in their eyes, just for a moment. They concealed it immediately.

‘You . . . didn’t, didn’t . . . think . . . I could!’ A surge of triumph, so weak against the pain.

‘
Not at all. We’re just surprised it took you so long
.’

‘Liars!’

‘
And now, Wa-Ka-Mo-Do, it is time for you to . . .
’

Her voice trailed away. She was gazing up into the sky. All three of them were. Gazing at something behind him, something out towards Sangrel. Wa-Ka-Mo-Do remembered Rachael’s words . . .

Tomorrow morning. When we are far enough away . . .

Painfully, agonizingly, Wa-Ka-Mo-Do turned to follow the gaze of the Vestal Virgins. A small star was falling, it crackled with lightning.

‘
What it is it
?’ said one of the women.

‘It’s a . . . human device,’ replied Wa-Ka-Mo-Do. ‘The Emperor has . . . betrayed you, too.’

The electric star fell, and as it did so a thin line of lightning flickered down to the city. It felt its way this way and that around the broken-roofed ruins of the Emperor’s Palace, there at the top of the city. Then another strand of lightning flickered forth, and another. And then the air was filled with dancing lines, an electric rain storm of brilliant threads. They felt their way from the city, out across the lake, heading to the mound.

Wa-Ka-Mo-Do and the women watched as the threads of light climbed up the Mound of Eternity, seeking them out, touching the terrace, looking for something.

‘
Look how it seeks my hand
,’ said one of the Vestal Virgins, and she waved her arm this way and that, the strand of lightning following her movement.

‘
And me
,’ said another. ‘
Look it touches my foot
.’

She tilted back her head and let off such a lovely sound that it took Wa-Ka-Mo-Do a moment to realize that she was screaming.

‘
What is it
?’ called her sisters, and the threads touched them and they too screamed.

More lightning was dancing in now; it surrounded them like bars. The Vestal Virgins tried to run, tried to dodge. To no avail. The threads touched their hands, their feet. The air was filled with their cries of pain.

The electric threads found Wa-Ka-Mo-Do and he felt a muted ache, almost lost against the background of agony that already filled his shell.

‘But it’s not so bad . . .’ he said.

The Vestal Virgins didn’t seem to notice. One came to Wa-Ka-Mo-Do, her hands held out in supplication. He took them in his own and watched as the electric threads found their way into her mind.

He looked into her eyes as they glowed stronger and stronger, there was a buzzing thump and her mind exploded. The air was filled with white light. Two more thumps as her sisters died in the same way.

Now the threads felt their way to Wa-Ka-Mo-Do’s head and . . .

Spoole

This is how Kavan had done it, thought Spoole. He hadn’t so much commanded events as ridden them. The revelation had been a long time coming, but now he understood.

Spoole wasn’t like Kavan: he had been woven to lead. He saw Artemis as something to be shaped and guided, something to be directed towards specific goals. Kavan hadn’t been made that way. It had long been rumoured that he was made in Segre, that his mother had followed Nyro’s pattern when she had made his mind. Finally, Spoole understood what that meant. Unlike Spoole, who sought to lead, Kavan saw Nyro’s way, and he followed that path. It was a subtle distinction, but an important one. And now Spoole had learned to apply it.

As Spoole walked along the railway lines, following Nyro’s way, heading towards the Centre City, the word spread. Robots who had wondered at the human’s arrival here in Artemis. Robots who distrusted the motives of the Generals, robots who believed that all metal should be directed in Nyro’s way. Robots looking for a leader to express their feelings.

Spoole and his growing army left the area of the marshalling yards. They began to walk the long mile by the cable walks, down the corridor of steel cable left piled by the sides of the road.

There was a rhythm developing to their tread. Faint for the moment, but growing.

Stamp,
stamp
, stamp.

Yellow-painted workers emerged from the buildings to join him.

Together, they marched on.

Wa-Ka-Mo-Do

Ka seemed fixed to the horizon. No matter how far Wa-Ka-Mo-Do walked, it remained dark and ugly in the distance. The sea wind blew thick ribbons of smoke inland. At night, their undersides were lit red with the burning fires.

All the while he felt the bitterness of defeat, the burning shame that was so great he almost welcomed the perpetual agony the Vestal Virgins had woven into his body.

Almost
welcomed. The pain was too great. Every footstep sent a bolt of pain up through his legs to jar his body, a variation in the static agony that filled his shell, a counterpoint to the anguish that filled his mind.

He had failed completely. Failed the Emperor, failed himself, failed the robots of Sangrel.

Nearly every one of them was dead.

He had struggled through the streets and lanes of the city, painfully dragging his new body along, heaving his leaden prison past robots whose minds had been blown, but whose bodies remained untouched. Robots lay on the ground or sat on ledges. They collapsed forward, supporting each other in pyramids, they leaned back against walls. There was no movement, but there was a sense of motion about the scene, of activity interrupted. Wa-Ka-Mo-Do almost expected them to come to life at any moment, to resume their angry insurrection, to pick up the knives and clubs that had fallen from their lifeless hands and resume their attack on the upper city.

It wouldn’t happen. The life had gone from their eyes. Sangrel, poor, twisted, abused Sangrel, was at last at peace, lit by the yellow summer sun.

The only sound came from above, the plaintive bleating of animals in the copper market. What strange device had the humans used, to kill robots and leave organic life untouched?

Just how powerful were they? Powerful enough to have written the Book of Robots? Undoubtedly.

For a moment, just a moment, he had an understanding of the Emperor’s position. What else could the Emperor have done in the face of such force? What else could he have done but negotiated and bought a few months’ grace whilst he saved face and frantically sought some way of fighting this powerful foe?

But then Wa-Ka-Mo-Do moved that heavy body and the searing agony of current shorted across his back, and he was lost in pain once more.

It took him all morning to drag himself up to the Copper Market, pushing aside fallen bodies, crunching on the glass and broken tiles that littered the streets. He found the organic animals, and, not knowing what else to do, he unlocked their cages. He watched as the great beasts walked out amongst the fallen bodies, blowing hard from their noses, nudging at the metal remains of their keepers.

Wa-Ka-Mo-Do released all the creatures he could find, a heavy fatigue building within him; then he stopped, exhausted. It took so long to build up the lifeforce to move this leaden body, and then it was expended in so little time. He looked around the broken market place as he rested; saw the stalls that had collapsed when their owners had fallen onto them. Their wares were strewn on the floor, slicked in oil and grease. Animals clattered over scattered metal plates, they knocked over displays, skittering away at the sound of ringing bells dying on the ground behind them.

He heard a noise and slowly turned around. Something metal ran from the market place.

‘Wait,’ he called, his voice heavy and badly tuned, but it was too late. Whoever it was had gone.

So he wasn’t the only survivor.

He saw the remains of a soldier, over by the wall. The mob must have cornered it, torn it apart. The blue wire of its mind was pulled out and draped across the cobbled stones. Beside it, a child, a young boy, barely four years old judging by the size of the body he had built himself. His head was crushed, the wire exposed and deformed.

What had happened here, before the human bomb had fallen? Had there been a riot, the child crushed, the mob extracting vengeance upon the soldier?

Whatever it was, the two deaths weren’t the responsibility of the humans. They weren’t the responsibility of the Emperor. He, Wa-Ka-Mo-Do, had been in charge of the city. It was he who had failed utterly not only in his duty, but also in his mutiny. Despite his actions, his troops had still died, the people of Sangrel had still died.

Why couldn’t the humans’ weapon have killed him too? What was it that had protected him? Had the excess of metal in this body shielded his mind?

He contemplated walking to the very top of the city and flinging himself from the highest place. If that didn’t shatter his mind, then he would walk back to the top and try again, and again and again until his body was broken.

That was when he remembered. There was still one to whom he was beholden, one who still sought his help. He remembered the message from Jai-Lyn, hidden from him all that time in the radio room.

Wa-Ka-Mo-Do still had one last chance to redeem himself. He had failed everyone else. Maybe it was not too late to save Jai-Lyn.

He had set out immediately for Ka, passing from Sangrel and into the lands beyond, walking for mile after agonizing mile in that heavy body that sunk to the ankles in anything less than the firmest ground. He heard a low, static-filled hum and he realized it was his own voice; the agony he felt was leaking out through his speaker. With an heroic effort he stilled it and went on walking, pulling his feet, covered in clods of mud, from the soft earth, passing through the fields the animals had planted.

After a while he had the sense that he was being watched, and he turned this way and that, too slow in that leaden body, seeking other signs of life. How many other robots had survived the attack?

Eventually he found himself on a white stone path, kicking up dust as he made his way to the coast. He saw smoke coming from a nearby forge, saw robots emerging from the doorway. They beckoned to him, but he kept on walking: outcast, pariah, unfit for the company of others. His shame and sense of failure glowed within him all the stronger for meeting company.