Tony Ballantyne - Blood and Iron

‘By stories,’ said Ada. ‘I see. That’s so clever, two ways for information to pass on.’ Her eyes shone as she contemplated the thought. ‘Hard wired, and a way of modifying data.’

‘The stories are a message to us from our past,’ repeated Karel. ‘We need to understand them!’

He was interrupted by a commotion in the crowd. A robot was pushing its way forward.

‘Karel! Karel!’

Spoole recognized the voice. So did Karel. They both turned. Yet another infantryrobot was running towards them, and Spoole reflected how the most ordinary body in Artemis had proven to be the most influential. Karel was obviously not thinking such thoughts. His eyes glowed in wonder at the sight of the approaching woman.

‘Susan,’ he said.

‘Karel!’

‘This is your husband?’ said Spoole, but they weren’t listening to him, and why should they?

Susan was humming with electricity. The current shone around her, eclipsing even the glow that poured forth from Karel’s body. To robot eyes, it was as if they were surrounded by two haloes. The two robots approached each other and a hum of feedback escaped from both their mouths, so perfectly were they in phase with each other.

It all came down to this, thought Spoole. All this fighting, just because robots made more robots.

‘Oh, Karel,’ said Susan.

‘Susan.’

They placed their heads close together and listened to the signal hum of each others minds.

For the moment, there was nothing else to be said.

Calor ran through the streets of Artemis City. She could feel the thump of machinery re-awakening, hear the sound of lathes beginning to turn once more, see the robots at work stripping down the damaged buildings, clearing away the wreckage of the fighting.

She turned left by a ruptured gasometer, and headed up a long road bordered on either side by cable walks, empty now of cable after the last attack. Soon the machines inside would turn again and more cable would be wound to the glory of Artemis. Or was it Turing City now? Both Kavan and Karel said that names didn’t matter any more.

Either way, Calor was free to run for the moment, and with a surge of pleasure she put on a spurt of speed, running, flashing, down the street with the single joy of a robot meeting the purpose woven into her mind. She saw the puff in the dust ahead, tried to dodge, but she was moving too quickly…

Her feet were gone, sliced clean off by the razor wire stretched across her path. She raised herself up on her hands, turned around, saw the Storm Troopers who emerged from the doorways on either side, heading towards her.

She waited until they were close enough and then exploded into movement, slashing out with the blades of one hand, slicing into the panelling of the leader, blue sparks leaping from his chest; but there were too many of them. They pushed her to the ground, twisted her arms back behind her, snapped them off, one, two. They did the same with what remained of her legs, then they dragged her off the street, pulling her into a cable run.

‘I recognize you,’ said one. ‘Kavan’s Spartz. You were with him back in the north, back when he was first raising his army. I saw you there. Do you recognize me?’

‘Let your wire rust, Tok,’ she giggled, half mad on current and pain.

‘You’re the one who will rust. We’ll tear out your mind and leave it covered in salt water for a few weeks. Leave it for Kavan to find. Maybe he’ll get the message then. Artemis isn’t going to be run by some Tokvah from Turing City.’

‘Who do you think should run it? The animals?’

‘Artemisians, Spartz. How about if I made new arms for you? I could do that. Take you with us when we leave this place, give you arms so you can twist us new minds, help us to build the new Artemisian army. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Just you and us?’

‘Yes,’ said Calor. ‘Go on then. Put my arms back on. I’ll weave minds for you.’

The Storm Troopers laughed.

‘I don’t think so. We need to send a message to Kavan, and you’re it. I wonder, does it hurt to feel your mind gradually rusting away?’

‘Perhaps you’ll find out someday. You won’t defeat Kavan. You Storm Troopers never could. He was always too clever a leader for you.’

‘But he’s not leader any more, is he?’

The big robot leaned forward and squeezed her head, popping the metal apart there. He picked away at the seams, getting at her mind.

‘Will you tell him I was coming back to him?’ she said, worried about this above all else.

They didn’t answer. A hand reached down to break her coil.

And that was it.

Darkness.

Silence.

Calor was fifteen years old. She could expect to live for another twenty-five or thirty years in this awful isolation. Unless of, of course, the Storm Troopers followed through on their promise to drop her mind into salt water. It would be a mercy.

Twenty-five years of silence, twenty-five years without the sound of another robot. Twenty-five years without sunlight, or the feel of ground beneath her feet, without the joy of running, sprinting, slashing at the air with her hands for the sheer pleasure of it. No more polishing metal, straightening wire. Never more to feel oil, slippery between her joints.

And all the while, the world passing by outside, untouched, unknowing. Where would the animals be? Where would Kavan be?

Would anything come of Karel’s plans to find out the truth behind the world? Did such a truth exist?

What did Calor care? She was made to run, and fight. No longer.

Nothing but the sound of her own thoughts.

Nothing but the reflection of her memory.

No sense of passing time.

Silence. Darkness.

So many other robots, just like her. Scattered across the battlefields of Shull. She had never given them any thought before.

Silence.

So faint, she must have imagined it.

She heard it again, a voice, in the distance. She realized now that it had always been there, but in the past it had been drowned out by the noise and brightness of the world around her.

She could hear it now though. It was speaking to her.

Hello, Calor.

Two robots were making love in the middle of a battlefield.

‘Don’t leave me again, Karel,’ said Susan, twisting his wire in her hands.

‘I don’t want to have to,’ said Karel. It wasn’t the promise she wanted, and they both knew it.

‘I’d stay with you,’ said Susan. He knew that of course. That’s one reason why he had agreed to the making of a child so readily. It would be a way of keeping her in safety if he found himself heading into danger in the coming battle. It was the only thing that would work. It was woven into Susan’s mind to love and protect Karel. Only the motherhood urge would be stronger.

‘I’ve reached the point,’ she said. ‘Have you decided?’

‘Yes,’ said Karel. ‘A little girl.’

He would be thinking of Axel, their little boy. She was, too. But life went on.

‘A little girl. Have you thought of a name?’

‘Emily.’

Emily, a lovely name for a lovely child, due to be born in these less than lovely times.

Susan paused, looking at him.

‘Her nature comes next,’ she said. ‘Are you sure you want me to weave her that way?’

‘Yes!’ he said. ‘Make Emily curious about everything! Make her ask what and how and why. Always why, and never to accept any answer at face value.’

‘But that will render the weave so far pointless. If she questions everything we have made her to be-’

‘But that’s just the point!’ said Kavan, and he gazed up at the stars. ‘It’s like that human woman said: we robots aren’t very curious. Is that any surprise when we ask our mothers to weave our beliefs directly into our children? Who would want to weave in curiosity if it were-’