Twisted Metal (29 page)

‘Three minds,’ said someone, and Karel was shown two minds nestled into a metal frame. There was space for a third between them. His own, he presumed. Questions began clamouring for his attention. How was he seeing? Where were his eyes? Where was his body?

‘You control this locomotive,’ said the voice. And his vision moved, giving him a view along the dull grey length of the freshly built machine. He saw the roughly cut metal, the unfiled coils of swarf curling from the ends of panels. The view swept further along the train’s length, showing a line of bare metal carriages, infantryrobots climbing on board. The view shifted again, and for a moment it lingered on the platform. He saw his old body stripped of its panelling, arms and legs removed, head empty. And then his vision moved again and it was gone.

‘Your coil has been hooked up as follows,’ said the voice. ‘Your legs are linked to the motor. It’s diesel, so give it time to warm up. It should have a good midrange pull, this model usually does. Left arm linked to the brakes, right arm to the gears. You’ll soon get the hang of it. You’ve got ears so that you can be told what to do. You’ve got a mouth, but unless we want to hear from you we won’t be using it. Mostly we’ll just have you linked to a buzzer. One beep for yes, two for no. Long beep if you see something important.’

I should have fought while I had the chance
, thought Karel bitterly. That wild, unreasoning anger that had always filled his life was swirling inside his mind, searching for a release. There was none.

Suddenly, his thoughts were with his mother. For the first time in his life he had empathy with Liza, an understanding of just how powerless she had been on the night of his making.

It came as a revelation. For the first time in his life he realized something crucial: who could blame her for what she had done? Kneeling before an Artemisian soldier, a gun held to her head, she had done her best to keep the terror from her mind, but the anger that she had felt was woven into Karel’s mind.

The voice continued speaking. ‘There are three minds. Disobey orders and your coil will be crushed. We’ll just link up one of the other minds. Do you understand?’

Rust your mind!
shouted Karel. All that emerged was a strangled beeping.

‘One beep for yes,’ said the voice.

Karel said nothing.

‘Answer me now or I hook up the next mind. I do that, and you may end up riding this train in limbo until you die.’

To take away his sight as well, to take away what little sensation he had left, the thought filled him with terror.
Yes
, said Karel, and he heard a single beep.

‘I knew you understood. Hey, think yourself lucky that you are the middle mind. It must mean you’ve got a friend somewhere. Okay, you’ll be setting off soon, so watch the signals.’

And that was it.

There was darkness for a moment, and then his mind was plugged properly into the locomotive. He saw the view down the tracks before him, and then, with a surge of awakening, he felt the power of the diesel engine.

What to do? He practised revving the engine. He practised pulling at the brakes with his arm.

This was what Artemis did to minds, he realized. It treated them like things. Now his mind was nothing more than metal to be employed by Artemis in its never-ending conquest. He had warned Banjo Macrodocious about this, but he had never expected it to happen to himself.

He was jolted from his reverie by the voice. ‘Hey, can’t you see the light? It’s time to go!’

He noticed the green signal shining up ahead. He concentrated on walking, felt the surge of diesel power. He saw the sleepers begin to slip beneath him. He was moving.

‘Okay, engine, I don’t expect to have to speak to you again. We’re off now. Next stop Artemis City.’ Karel heard a little laughing noise, and then the voice spoke again.

‘And take care driving, you’ve got Kavan himself on your train.’

Karel emerged from the wrecked railway station into Copper Valley. The train picked its way over the bridges and points as he headed north. North to Artemis City.

Kavan

The journey northward passed without incident. Even Eleanor was silent. She just sat in the corner of the carriage, cleaning her rifle, sharpening her knives, making herself ready for the coming battle.

The others were much the same. Wolfgang, his aide, stared at the ceiling, concentrating. Ruth remained standing, swaying with the movement of the train.

Kavan wondered at how he now felt. Was he doing the right thing, or had his hand been forced? Something didn’t feel right.

‘Why is the train stopping?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know,’ said Eleanor. ‘Pendric, Dylan, find out what’s going on.’

The train was slowing to a halt. Two grey infantry-robots slid open the carriage door.

‘Get up the front to the driver,’ called Eleanor, and the two robots dropped out onto the desolate plain that lay outside.

Kavan went to the door and looked out. The sun was going down, huge and red, setting the underside of the dark clouds on fire, lighting up the thin gusts of rain that the cold wind sent splashing over his metal skin. He could see another train in the distance, running on a nearly parallel track. It seemed to be setting out from Artemis City, heading towards Stark or Segre.

‘We’re almost there,’ said Eleanor, leaning forward from the train beside him. ‘I can see the city. I can see the Basilica. It’s all lit up in red.’

The robots waited in silence, the metal of their bodies plinking and pattering as the rain drops fell on them.

There was a shout from ahead.

‘Kavan,’ called Pendric. ‘I’ve got some engineers building an observation tower. There’s something that you need to see.’

‘What is it?’

‘I think you’d be better looking from the tower.’

‘What about the attack?’ said Eleanor.

‘Patience,’ said Kavan.

He dropped out into the rain, and made his way to the skeletal tower that was quickly taking shape.

‘Safe to go up now,’ said one of the engineers.

Kavan nodded, and then swarmed up the rods they had left protruding from the sides of the tower, using them as a ladder.

The city confronted him: a magnificent, smoky mass of metal sprawling over the barren plain.

And, as he looked back at Artemis City, Kavan did something that many of his followers had never seen him do before.

He laughed.

All the choices, all the indecision rolled away.

He would not be attacking Artemis City today at least. Like it or not, his mind had been made up for him. The twisted metal in Spoole’s mind had followed a path similar to Kavan’s. Similar, but not exactly the same. The other’s metal had danced its course around Kavan’s without the two paths ever actually touching.

Spoole had outwitted him: elegantly, delightfully, easily.

It was written before him in the pattern of the rails, slicked with rain and lit up with red fire from the evening sun.

Where once the railway lines had filled the plain like a rough sea, crisscrossing, rising, falling, plugging Artemis City into the rest of the continent, now the lines were raked smooth to circle the city in a neat concentric pattern of lines. Artemis City rose like an island from this red sea, untouched by the pattern of fire that surrounded it.

It was an act of challenge, a parry and an insult all in one. It was the actions of Nicolas the Coward written in metal for the world to see.

Kavan couldn’t enter the city. The railway lines no longer ran that way. Instead, they ran around the city and continued north in an unbroken line.

The message was obvious. Kavan was being sent north to break his troops against the mountain range that cut the continent in two.

‘It’s a challenge,’ said Kavan.

‘Sorry, Kavan?’ queried the engineer that waited at the foot of the tower.

‘Never mind. Tell the troops. We’re to go north. The south is not enough. We are to conquer the whole of Shull.’

The cold wind gusted rain across Kavan’s body. Drops beaded on his metal fingers. He gazed down at them, thoughtfully.

‘The winter is coming,’ he said. ‘The snow will be blowing from the north, and we will be fighting against it, every step of the way.’

‘Can we really do it?’ asked the engineer.

‘The mountains are high and there is no route through them that an army could take. We may have to split our forces. They could pick us off easily in the passes . . .’

‘But can we do it?’

‘Of course we can. We always do.’

Interlude: La-Challen

Far away, in distant Yukawa, the radio operator turned a dial
.

‘
What is it, La-Challen?
’

‘
I don’t know. Static, but of an odd signature. It’s coming from Shull, I think. Every fifteen minutes I hear the signal. Perhaps you could enlighten me, Cho-La-Errahi?
’

The superior took the jack from La-Challen and plugged it directly into his body, a serene expression on his face
.

‘
It will come again in less than a minute, my master.
’

‘
Silence, La-Challen. I am listening
. . .’

Olam

It had been raining for days, raining in cold gusts that seeped between the panels and dampened the electromuscles. The broken rocks of the mountain were shiny wet, and Olam’s feet were sodden from wading through puddles that jumped under the never-ending impact of raindrops. There was nowhere to shelter, no chance to take apart a shorting limb to dry and clean and oil it. There was nothing here but rain and rock and dust. Lots of dust. So much wet grey dust, it worked its way into body and mechanism. Dust that stuck to the hands and the face and body so that everything was constantly gritty and damp.

Not for the first time, Olam wished he were back in Wien, dressed in his old body, feeling its metal warming in the sun’s heat. Standing in a marble tower and looking out over the bay . . .

‘Get ready,’ called Doe Capaldi, jerking him from his reverie. His section crouched in the limited shelter of a sheer rock face, their metal skins glistening with diamond drops of rain. Doe Capaldi didn’t seem to care about the weather.
Why does he always look so calm?
wondered Olam.
Why doesn’t this upset him as much as it affects me? After all, he has lost far more than I ever had
.

People were running towards him. Olam heard the splash of feet, the clink of metal on rock and the squeaking, unhealthy sound of robots that had spent too long being wet. He looked up the valley to see Spuran’s section pelting back down the newly carved valley, running from . . .

‘Cover your eyes! Turn off your ears!’ ordered Doe Capaldi. Olam obeyed, just as a hammer struck down on the world.

His mind seemed to bend for a moment, his thoughts elongating. Electromuscle crackled, sending clouds of colour dancing inside his head. And then there was a white light so bright that it filled the inside of his skull. It illuminated the receptors of his covered eyes, sending a lance of lightning deep into his twisted metal, right back to the very start of the pattern – to the first knot tied by his mother.

The ground was shaking, rattling him around like a wingnut discarded on a forge floor. A shower of stone was falling, rocks and rubble rumbling and crashing. His whole body vibrated, he could feel screws loosening under the harsh percussion. A howling wind threatened to tear his fingers from the crack in the rock to which he clung so tightly . . .

And then the white light faded. So did the rain, for the moment at least.

Doe Capaldi was banging on his head. Immediately, he turned his ears back up, just like he had been drilled.

‘Bomb’s still ticking,’ called Doe Capaldi. ‘We’ve got fifteen minutes. That’s twelve minutes to get it into position, and then three to run to safety. Let’s go!’

The whole section was up now, grabbing hold of the trolley, which ran on big plastic wheels. They were running, up the valley, towards the source of the explosion. Olam ran to the front, kicking aside smaller stones, shoulder-charging larger rocks to push them aside and help clear a path for the trolley and its deadly, ticking load.