Tony Ballantyne - Twisted Metal

She came closer. ‘What’s this?’ she asked, taking from his hand the tiny ball he had pressed from the page.

‘It’s nothing,’ he said, but Gearheart wasn’t listening.

‘Keep him busy, Spoole,’ she advised. ‘Better that Kavan is constantly searching out new enemies on our borders than sitting around here in the Centre City with too much time on his hands.’

She rubbed the ball bearing between her own hands, making it rounder, smoother, more symmetrical. She held out the tiny sphere in her left palm, striking a pose; her right leg stretching back, her right arm turned out at her side.

‘Do you not like this?’ she asked. ‘Am I not in perfect balance?’

‘You look beautiful,’ said Spoole, and he meant it. That was the thing about women, they became more beautiful as they grew older. More practised in the art of bending metal into themselves.

‘What if I were to weave you a child, Spoole? Would you like that? Sometimes I feel so in harmony with the world that I feel that I must express it in some way. Should I weave a child?’

‘Stop teasing me,’ snapped Spoole. ‘I could have you taken apart.’

‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you? But you know they could never put me back together as well as this.’ She struck another pose, ran her hands down her body. ‘Look at you, Spoole, the most powerful robot on the continent. What couldn’t we do together? I’m tempted. I really am.’

‘But you never would, Gearheart. You’re too selfish.’

‘Oh, I am. I am.’

Spoole had had enough. He changed the subject. ‘He wants to attack Turing City now.’

‘Kavan? Well, let him. No, don’t just let him. Order him to! Make him attack sooner than he wishes, and with fewer troops than he requests! You are the leader, Spoole, so keep the initiative! There are plans long laid for this eventuality. Well, put them into action! Let this attack be seen to be your decision, not his! And why not? If he succeeds, it will be to the benefit of Artemis: if he fails, you will have one less problem to deal with. Either way, you will be seen to be decisive.’

‘I know, I know. I just can’t help thinking, if he fails, what would the benefit of that be to Artemis?’

Gearheart shifted her pose, stretching her arms up and back, arching her body.

‘The benefit of what?’

‘Oh, never mind.’

Spoole came up behind her. He placed his hands gently on her hips and increased the positive charge there, sent it flowing into her body. Gearheart stepped lightly forward.

‘Keep your hands off me, Spoole,’ she said, turning to give him a brilliant smile. ‘We both know that you don’t really need that sort of thing. Power is what really interests you.’

Spoole said nothing.

‘And now,’ she continued, ‘I think I will go and look at the stars.’

At that she turned and glided from the room, the motion of her body almost silent. A wonderful piece of engineering, and a man liked to look at a beautiful piece of machinery.

Spoole sighed and moved back to the window.

His eye was drawn back to the railway tracks. Silver in the night, they spread out across the plain, branching towards the conquered countries, to Bethe, Segre, Stark and now Wien.

One of them even led to the heart of Turing City. He could almost feel the line out there, running through the darkness across the plain to the unseen lights of that distant state. It was almost as if there was a current flowing from him, running down that same line and earthing itself in some sink at the other end. A bizarre sensation, as if someone were waiting for him there.

He wondered who it was. He darkly suspected it might be Kavan.

Susan hadn’t gone straight back home. It just seemed too hard to do, like she was walking just below the rim of a funnel, and her feet found themselves drawn downwards, and she couldn’t summon the energy to walk upwards but just felt herself spiralling down to the hole at the bottom where she would fall out.

The hole at the bottom? She was circling the railway station, she just couldn’t admit it to herself. Her path had taken her from the iron and glass of the shops and galleries in the middle town, out from the concrete and metal walkways, and onto the dusty piles of gangue heaped amongst and under the foundries and mills of the old town. Out to where the air was warm with the air rising from the forges and smelters, and the red glow of the streets reminded her of childhood. She walked on, clutching her case of paints. Passing through the narrow streets, hemmed in by corrugated iron fences and old dressed-stone walls, she felt a pull of nostalgia as she stepped onto the stone paths that led from the city.

An outcrop rose to the west, the remnants of the rocky mass that had been the source of the iron ore on which the city was founded. The iron was long gone, ripped from the orogenic belt to leave a honeycombed slab of tilted rock that listed in the earth, like a mile-long ship slowly sinking beneath the soil.

At its highest, the outcrop rose just above the graceful buildings of Turing City. The City Guard had built a watchtower up there, half of its silver side visible in the glow of Zuse, the night moon. The City Guard watched the stars as well as the landscape from that tower. They drew maps of the night sky, showing the paths of Zuse and of Neel, the day moon, and the course taken by the planets: Siecle, the hot world, and Bohm, with its one ring. They drew star charts, and they labelled the constellations: the Forge and the Fire and the Spear, and the rest.

Susan’s feet hesitated at the fork in the gravel path, and she wondered about walking upwards and staring up along the watchtower’s smooth wall at the stars, but her feet took the right-hand fork seemingly of their own accord, and she began to walk the length of the outcrop.

The City Guard had their fort down there, built of dressed stone. A garrison for the watchtower. Rumour had it that the hollow spaces in the outcrop, where the iron had once rested, were now filled with secret weapons. Powerful weapons, to be used against the troops of Artemis, if and when they attacked.

Susan walked down the path, the grey stone fort of the City Guard to her left, the City Centre to her right, the glass panels in the iron galleries glowing white and yellow.

There was someone waiting for her up ahead.

‘Hello Susan,’ he said.

Susan felt something lurch inside her.

‘Who are you?’ she asked. ‘How do you know my name?’

The robot who stood on the path was one of the City Guard, no doubt about that. His body was made entirely of machined parts. There wouldn’t be a single nut or bolt on him that he had made himself. It showed. There wasn’t a visible seam on him: arms, legs, fingers, waist, all fitted together so smoothly that it looked as if he were formed from a single blob of mercury. He was tall, much taller than Susan, with narrow hips and broad shoulders. And he was so, so good-looking. Susan felt such a pang of lust and felt guilty for it. She tried to think of Karel and Axel back at the family forge, but she was so creative at the moment, so ready to twist a mind… And this man seemed to plug himself into her needs at every level.

‘Who are you?’ she demanded.

‘Maoco O.’

‘What do you want with me?’

Maoco O reached out.

‘May I?’ he said, taking the aluminium case from Susan’s hand. He removed a thin tube of cadmium red paint. ‘I want to ask you a question, Susan.’

‘Why? Who are you, Maoco O?’

‘I’m a friend, Susan. You have so many friends that you don’t seem to know about.’ Maoco O squeezed paint from the tube onto the palm of his hand.

‘What are you talking about?’