Twisted Metal (2 page)

The world seemed to pause. The wall of lightning held its breath, just hanging in the air in a blaze of white. The rumble of explosions to the east ceased. In that moment of stillness, Kurtz told her, and she nodded, and began the final part of the weave.

‘Almost done,’ she said.

The tearing noise stopped abruptly. The storm died, the wash of light fading, the stones and iron plugs of the plain inhaling their long shadows.

And the world changed.

Kurtz groaned, and Liza looked up, saw the green glow fading from his eyes.

‘Kurtz?’ she said. Slowly his body rocked forward and fell to the ground, just a collection of jointed metal.

‘Kurtz!’ called Liza. ‘Oh
Zuse
, no.’ She stood up, the blue wire trailing from her hands to where it emerged from Kurtz’s body. She looked around, barely comprehending what had happened. Had it been the lightning, she wondered; had it hit her husband? But the sky was now so still and dark.

Then she heard the sound of metal on bare rock. Footsteps?

Someone loomed out of the darkness. A metal body, dented and scarred. Red eyes glowing in infrared, iron hands gripping a projectile weapon. The dull grey paint-work of an Artemisian soldier. He walked easily towards her, rifle pointing loosely in her direction.

‘You killed him,’ said Liza.

‘I killed him.’ The soldier looked down at the warm wire, still being twisted in Liza’s hands.

‘You can let go now,’ he said. ‘There isn’t enough metal left there to complete your child.’

‘How do you know?’ asked Liza. ‘What would any man know about that?’

The soldier ignored her question. ‘I heard you both talking,’ he said. ‘Even through the storm.’ He tapped one of the overlarge directional microphones on the side of his head. Then he pointed at poor Kurtz’s dead body. ‘Do you
really
think he made the right choice?’

‘Of course I do.’ she said quietly. She was looking at the remaining length of wire, calculating.

The Artemisian robot shrugged. ‘You
would
say that, I suppose.’

‘What are you doing here?’ asked Liza. ‘Why are Artemis trespassing into Turing City State?’

‘Haven’t you heard? Bethe has just fallen. Artemis is the largest forge on this plain now.’

‘
Bethe?
’ said Liza. ‘I thought you were attacking Stark!’

‘Stark?’ laughed the robot. ‘Not likely. Not with their Tesla towers to defend them. No, that was just a little misdirection. Bethe first, then Segre. Then we’ll be right on Stark’s doorstep. And then we’ll see.’

Liza wasn’t listening. Kurtz lay dead at her feet, his wire still twisted around her hands, cooling, dying. She felt as if something was dying within herself too, leaving nothing but a cold emptiness inside her metal shell.

‘Kurtz,’ she whispered. ‘Kurtz, what am I to do?’

There was no reply. She was on her own now. A cold determination began to rise up within her. ‘Kurtz made his choice,’ she murmured to herself. ‘Kurtz was right.’

She had forgotten about those overlarge ears on the Artemisian robot. He picked up what she had muttered. He laughed.

‘That’s easy for you to say now,’ he said, ‘not that you will ever know. I saved you the choice. There is not enough wire for the child to be born.’

Again, Liza looked at the wire that trailed from her hands, recalculating.

‘There is just enough,’ she decided.

The dull grey robot’s hands tightened around his rifle. ‘I should dash that wire from your hands now; make you lose your place.’

Liza’s voice trembled. ‘But you haven’t.’ She clutched the wire tighter.

‘Go on,’ said the soldier. ‘Finish the mind. Finish it the way he said.’

Liza did nothing. With a low whirr, the soldier brought his gun to bear on her.

‘Do it, or, so help me, I will shoot you too. I have one charge left.’ He laughed. ‘Hey, you can be just like Nyro. You’ve heard of Nyro, haven’t you?’

The lightning flared again, and, just for a moment, Liza could have sworn that the robot flinched and looked up to the sky.

‘Yes, I’ve heard of Nyro,’ she said.

Liza began to twist wire once more. She rolled her eyes up to meet those of the soldier, her metal face taking on an odd expression.

‘You’re doing it,’ said the soldier, in surprise. ‘Or are you? I find it hard to believe you’re really making that child
his
way. Not after I killed him. Not with me standing here with a gun like this, raping you. You don’t
really
believe that he made the right choice, do you? I can’t believe you would really do what he said.’

Liza continued weaving. She was almost done.

‘Well?’ said the soldier.

‘I’m not telling you,’ said Liza. ‘You’ll never know.’

It was so quiet on the plain now, so quiet and dark. The climax of the battle had passed, and Bethe had fallen. Even now Artemisian soldiers would be penetrating its streets, ripping it apart, remaking it in the image of Artemis itself.

And look what’s happening here, thought Liza, staring at the red eyes of the man opposite, the dark aperture of his rifle’s muzzle fixed upon her head.

She concentrated again on the wire. There was life in that forming mind already. She could feel it begin to pulse. All that remained was to tie it off and bring the mind into existence. She made to start the knot, and hesitated, remembering what her mother had told her:
it wasn’t until this point that you truly understood what life was about
.

Liza had never really understood until now, but here it was, staring her in the face. Should Liza now tie the knot as a seal and wake a simple, mechanical mind that would live indefinitely? Or should she tie it the other way, in the fuse, to create a living, thinking being, and, in doing so, condemn it to death in thirty or forty years’ time?

In the end she did as her mother had done, and her mother before her. She tied the fuse.

Something came to life.

‘Hello Karel,’ she murmured. She looked over at the dead body of her husband. ‘Here he is, Kurtz. We did it. Here’s our little boy.’

Carefully she placed the mind into the tiny body and snicked the skull shut.

‘All finished,’ she said to the soldier.

The soldier looked from her to the child. ‘Did you really do it?’ he asked.

‘I’m not telling you,’ replied Liza.

‘Then I shall say goodbye,
Tokvah
.’

He raised his rifle once more, pointing it at her head. Her gyros were wobbling, but she held herself steady.

‘Then shoot me,’ she said. ‘But you’ll never know.’

The robot stared at her, his red eyes glowing. Liza held his gaze, determined not to flinch, even here at the end. She was ready to die.

And then the robot lowered his gun.

‘There is a way to find out . . .’ he said.

Karel

Karel’s body wasn’t designed for this sea wind. It got under the thin metal panels that plated his torso, it whistled through the cylindrical sheaths that encased his thighs and shins. The people who worked out here on the coast wore flexible plastic gaiters on their arm and leg joints to keep out the salt water, their body work was thick with weatherproof paint. Now, as he left the marble promenade that ran along the cliff top and strode down the stone steps cut into the cliff face, Karel’s stylish city body felt weak and ineffectual against the elements. The lace-lined waves that crashed and drained from the grey rocks below seemed so much more vital than the pastel paisley pattern his wife had used to decorate his chest plate.

The Immigration Station was a rusted box built on metal stilts that raised it just above the surge of the waves. A retractable metal walkway led from some steps at the base of the cliffs out across the swirling water to the office itself. As Karel looked down through the gaps in the walkway grille towards the blue waves swirling below, he felt his gyros shudder. Living as he did in the city, he had never seen the need to fully waterproof his interior circuitry. Fall down there and he would probably short himself out.

But then Karel felt as if he had lived his whole life in fear of falling: falling from the state of grace in which he now found himself in the city, with a wife and a child and a good job: pulled down by the suspicion of his fellow citizens who never quite trusted what was woven into his mind.

But this was not something to think on today. Buffeted by the wind, he staggered on across the walkway and pulled open the heavy sea door leading to the Immigration Station.

Gates sat in reception, one of his legs on the desk as he made minor repairs to himself.

‘Close the door!’ he called, without looking up. Karel dutifully pushed the heavy metal door into its plastic seal, shutting out the wind. Still the rolling of the waves could be heard, crashing against the metal stilts below, echoing hollowly through the metal building.

‘It’s getting rough out there,’ said Karel.

‘Rough!’ laughed Gates, still fiddling with his leg. ‘This is just an autumn swell. You want to come here in winter when the storms really get up. The waves go right over the building!’

Karel knew he wasn’t exaggerating. Immigration was a different job here on the south coast, and Gates and his team were scornful of Karel and the team operating in Turing City, perceiving them to have an easy life.

They were wrong, of course.

Karel studied Gates, noting his battered body and chipped paintwork. When a robot started to neglect his appearance, especially in a place like this, it was not a good sign.

‘Well, I’m here now,’ said Karel, coolly, ‘and I would appreciate a little courtesy on my arrival. Is this how you greet all your visitors?’ He stared hard at Gates, who paused in the act of adjusting the tension in the calf ligaments of his left leg. Gates held his stare for a moment and then pushed the leg back into place. It locked into position with a click. He stood up and flexed it.

‘All sorted,
sir
,’ he said, shifting his weight from foot to foot as he felt for his new balance. ‘Would you like to come straight through and see the case in question,
sir
?’

‘Don’t get sarcastic with me, Gates,’ warned Karel.

‘I wasn’t being sarcastic.’

Karel tried a different tack.

‘Listen, Gates, let’s not do this. I’ve got enough going on back in the city without having to come down here. I’m sure you’re gritted up with work too. So just tell me, why am I here?’

Gates held Karel’s gaze for a moment longer, and then he too relaxed.

‘Yeah, you’re right. Sorry, Karel. Come on through, it would be better if I showed you. We have a client held in isolation that I want you to see. I asked for you specifically because this one is . . . odd. Like nothing I’ve ever seen before.’

Gates picked up a heavy iron key and placed it in the lock of the door that led through to the holding area. He banged twice on its metal surface and called out: ‘Hey, Cabeza! I’m coming through with Karel.’

There was a bang in return and the sound of Cabeza’s muffled reply. Two keys were turned at the same time, and the heavy door swung open.

‘After you,’ said Gates, and Karel stepped through into the holding area.

The isolation area lay at the far side of the station, past the rows of iron-barred holding cells where the immigrants and refugees waited to be processed. Gates led Karel down the central walkway.

The cells in the main area were nearly full, but that was no surprise to Karel. All throughout Turing City State, the holding cells were filling up fast. Stir the political waters and all sorts of things come to the surface, and the political waters of Shull had been stirred plenty of late by the expansion of Artemis. Turing City State was a kitten compared to the lion of the Artemisian Empire, but it was a kitten with adamantium claws, with Stark electromuscle, and with a mind twisted by Oneill herself. Turing City could defend itself, and every displaced robot on the continent of Shull seemed to be making his or her way here in search of shelter.

Karel might have expected this many clients, but he was still a little surprised at the startling variety of the station’s occupants. Gates’s team’s normal clientele tended to be the Spontaneous, those robots who had been formed somewhere out in the southern ocean and then walked here along the sea bed. Indeed, Karel could see plenty of examples of these now, sitting or standing or lying about in the various cells. They tended to have heavy iron bodies, simple facial features, their eyes usually recessed behind thick glass. A few of them were humanoid in appearance; most of them were crab-like. They were kept in specially constructed cells, the floors of which were lowered to allow pools filled with salt water. One that Karel spotted was little more than a dark shape in the water: gunmetal grey, biological life clinging to its body – barnacles and limpets – and with green algae staining its underside. Raising its eyes, set below the rim of its shell, it glanced for a moment at Karel and then returned to contemplating the dark patterns below it in the rippling water. Unfused, unsentient, this was just the sort of thing that Karel expected to find here on the south coast.