Blood and Iron

by Tony Ballantyne

  They had left the uncharted lands of the far north and were back amongst the signs of Artemisian expansion. Railway lines threaded north, trains could be seen in the distance carrying metal and plate and wire and coal.

  Still they marched, and around them new forges were springing up, new buildings and barracks and warehouses, dropped amongst the stone castles and buildings that had been constructed by the former rulers of this land. The robots who worked in the new buildings came out to watch the passing band. Some of them waving and cheering, some merely standing in silence, eyes glowing as the procession marched by.

  Kavan found himself marching in the centre of growing space. No one seemed to want to come too close to him. No one but Forban and Calor.

  ‘No one knows which way this will go,’ said Forban. ‘They want to be on the winning side.’

  ‘What about you, Forban?’ asked Kavan. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I want what’s best for Artemis,’ said the Black Storm Trooper, miserably.

  Calor joined them.

  ‘The land seems to be drained of soldiers,’ she said. ‘All the troops that should be out here have vanished.’

  ‘Spoole will have ordered them to withdraw,’ said Kavan. ‘He will have them grouped safely around himself.’

  He looked up at the mountains ahead. They seemed to fill the sky.

  ‘Not long now,’ he said.

  And so the Army of Uncertain Allegiance left the hills of the north and approached the mountains of the central range, where they saw arrayed against them the armies of Spoole and Artemis City.

  Row upon row of black Storm Troopers, thousands upon thousands of grey infantry robots. The high peaks shone with the glimmering array of Scouts. All new and unscratched, freshly minted by the Artemisian forges, and untouched by the glamour of Kavan. These soldiers had not marched with him. They had not fought alongside him, and they bore him no loyalty.

  The troops of the Uncertain Army gradually halted, stopping in ones and twos, looking to their companions for a lead. Only Kavan and Calor and Forban continued forward.

  ‘It’s over, Kavan,’ said Forban.

  Kavan continued to walk. Calor and Forban followed hesitantly.

  Spoole had chosen a good place to meet the Uncertain Army. They stood on a rocky plain between the hills and the mountains. The only way south was between the arms of the mountains, into the valley that Kavan himself had blasted all those months ago.

  ‘Enough of this!’

  The voice came from behind. General Mickael, who had kept well clear of Kavan since they had met, was coming forward.

  ‘Why are we hesitating?’ he called, blue eyes flashing. ‘Move out, now.’

  Forban and Calor looked at Kavan. All eyes were on Kavan.

  ‘I said move out!’

  Kavan ignored him. He waited a moment, thinking, and then turned to face Spoole’s troops.

  ‘Soldiers of Artemis,’ he called. He waited, waited for their attention. Then he raised his hand, pointed forward.

  ‘There is your enemy,’ he said. ‘There, arrayed before you in polished metal.’

  He waited for his words to sink in.

  ‘And so it is time. Take up your weapons, and charge.’

  He barely raised his voice, but the words rippled outwards from where he stood. Infantryrobots lifted their rifles. Storm Troopers turned in warning, told them to lower their arms. But not all of them. Scouts began to dance at the perimeter. A wave was set up. Robots pushing this way and that, but with no overall direction.

  ‘Put down those weapons!’ called General Mickael. ‘Put them down at once.’

  Nobody listened. More and more soldiers were raising their arms, pulling out awls, moving this way and that. Storm Troopers voices could be heard, ordering infantryrobots to stand down.

  Somewhere there was an electronic cry, and then silence. It took a moment for the ranks to figure out what had happened. An infantryrobot had been cut down by a Storm Trooper. All eyes turned to see the black robot, blue wire twisted around its hand. An electronic growl sounded. A shot rang out. Then another.

  ‘Put down your weapons! Forban, order them to stop!’ General Mickael was growing angry.

  Kavan held out a hand to Forban.

  ‘Your awl,’ he said.

  And just like that, the motion in the Uncertain Army ceased. Kavan could feel them all, looking in his direction. ‘Your awl,’ he repeated.

  Forban looked from Kavan to the General.

  ‘No, Kavan . . . I can’t . . .’

  ‘What’s going on?’ demanded the General. ‘Forban. What are you doing?’

  ‘For the last time, Forban, give me your awl.’

  No one spoke. In the distance, Spoole’s troops were motionless.

  ‘Kavan, this is not the way. You can’t—’

  ‘Who would you rather serve, Forban? Him,’ Kavan pointed at General Mickael, slowly backing off, eyes glowing, ‘or Artemis?’ A group of infantryrobots moved forwards to surround him. Storm Troopers looked on, uncertain what to do.

  ‘Forban, I order you . . .’

  Forban looked from Kavan to the General. Finally, he decided. Quickly, he passed the awl across to Kavan. Kavan looked at the awl for a moment, and even the wind stilled. Then suddenly, so quickly, Kavan dived forward. The General jerked back, held up a hand, but he was no fighter. Kavan feinted, dodged around behind him, got hold of him around the neck and pulled him backwards, off balance. He reached around with the awl and stabbed up beneath the General’s chin, up into the brain. Again and again.

  ‘Take this, Kavan.’ An infantryrobot was suddenly at his side, handing him a blade with a nick in the end. The General was struggling now. Kavan took the blade and stabbed upwards, catching the twisted metal of the General’s mind in the nick of the blade. He pulled it out, unwinding the blue wire that held the General’s thoughts. The General struggled harder and harder, and then, all of a sudden, he went limp.

  Kavan let the body slip to the ground. It fell in a clatter of metal. So much expensive plating was now nothing more than spare parts.

  Forban looked on in horror.

  ‘Okay,’ said Kavan. ‘Now, Forban, sound the attack.’

  The standing wave that wobbled up and down the Uncertain Army was resolving itself.

  ‘The attack,’ said Kavan.

  Forban turned towards the troops arranged before them. He raised a hand, pointed forward.

  ‘Artemisians,’ he said. He collected himself. ‘Artemisians! Attack!’

  First one or two soldiers, then a handful, then a trickle, and then a great wave of metal began to pour south, towards Spoole’s waiting troops.

  Metal pounded forward, clanking thundering metal.

  Kavan’s army charged!

  Susan

  ‘The city seems so empty at the moment,’ said Susan. ‘Listen. When was the last time you heard the wind?’

  The two women tilted their heads, listening to the breeze as it hissed through the gratings. It blew notes on the drainpipes as it sent thin streamers of ash dancing through the gutters of the street.

  ‘Isn’t it lovely? To think that this is always here, only drowned out by the hammering and the pounding of feet. To think, there is beauty even here in Artemis City . . . ’

  ‘The Generals have all gone north with Spoole,’ said Nettie. ‘They’ve taken their troops with them.’

  ‘I suppose they all want to be there at the capture of Kavan.’

  ‘Not at all. Spoole ordered them to go. He didn’t want them left here in the city, plotting against him.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘Oh, help me with this, Susan. It’s stuck again.’ There were railings in this part of the city, screwed to the red brick walls that lined the tarmac road, intended to help steady newly made robots, unused to their bodies. Nettie held onto a rail with one hand and bent down to fiddle with her foot. The segmented plates were new and badly fitted, they kept catching on each other. Susan knelt
down, and, taking hold of the foot in one hand, she pried at the plate with the other.

  ‘It’s no use, it’s stuck. Do you have an awl or something?’

  ‘Why would I have an awl?’ asked Nettie.

  Susan cast about for something to use. The trouble with Artemis City was it was just too clean and well kept. Every bit of metal was accounted for, neatly assigned to make walls or electrical wire, girders or fingers, railway lines or minds. Not a twist of swarf, not a lost link of chain was left lying on the floor or brushed up as scrap. In the end she pulled the grey plate from the back of her hand and used it to tap at Nettie’s foot.

  ‘Will that work?’ said Nettie.

  ‘It does sometimes,’ said Susan. And with a click, the foot could suddenly move again.

  ‘Thank you Susan,’ said Nettie, and she looked so sad. ‘I’m really no good at this am I? I’m no good at making things.’

  ‘You do fine,’ lied Susan, sliding the plate back onto her hand. ‘I was lucky. I was raised where there was plenty of fine metal.’

  The answer seemed to cheer her friend up a little.

  ‘Now come on, where should we go?’

  ‘Let’s go to the radio masts,’ said Nettie. ‘I like to feel the patterns they make.’

  The radio masts lay to the south-west of the city, and the two women cut through the half empty streets of the Centre City. They were both dressed in similar grey bodies, but there was a workmanship to Susan’s that drew admiring looks from the few men that passed down the neat streets. Many approving looks, but no comments, for it was obvious what Susan and Nettie were. They were mothers of Artemis, they were women who worked in the making rooms of Artemis.

  Once, Susan had been a free citizen of Turing City, but then Kavan and his troops had marched south in conquest. Now her son was dead, killed by an infantryrobot’s bullet. And her husband was gone, captured on the night of the invasion.

  As for Susan, she had been brought here and indoctrinated in Artemisian philosophy. Now, every night, she knelt at the feet of yet another Artemisian soldier and drew forth his wire, twisting it into a mind that embodied Artemisian principles. Another mind bent to see metal as nothing more than metal, nothing more than something bent to the continued expansion of the Artemisian State.

  And the Artemisian State kept expanding. The Centre City grew from metal stripped from across the continent. Where the rest of Artemis City was built of brick and prefabricated steel, the Centre City was where the copper ended up. It was where the chromium and nickel was plated on the arches and columns. Not that it remained there for long. It was constantly stripped back and put to more prosaic uses elsewhere. There was no sentiment in Artemis City.

  Unlike Turing City. But Turing City was no more. So what did that make Susan? An Artemisian? Certainly she was now held in some respect by the members of that state. She was a mother, a woman who twisted the minds of the future generations. After weeks of imprisonment in the making rooms beneath the city, she had proven her loyalty by her actions every night. Now she was allowed out by day to walk the streets of Artemis City. This she did, and she was welcomed and acknowledged wherever she went.

  She felt a traitor to herself. The memory of a conversation she had had back in Turing City was constantly at the edge of her memory. She repressed it.

  ‘I wonder what the radio masts are saying?’ she asked.

  They had come to the far side of the Centre City, and Nettie was looking down a long straight road, lined with the prefabricated steel buildings of the cable walks. One of the masts stood clearly framed at the end of the road, a lattice tower six hundred feet high, guyed by steel cables. Susan could only see the ripples of the electromagnetic spectrum that ran up and down the structure. Nettie, however, could read them. Sometimes.

  ‘They’re talking about Kavan,’ she said. ‘Kavan, Kavan, Kavan. They’ve found him. And yet, that can’t be right, they also say that he is attacking.’

  ‘I don’t want to hear about him.’

  Nettie was immediately chastened and Susan felt ashamed of her words. She reached out and took hold of her friend’s hand, the only friend she had here in Artemis City.

  Possibly the only friend she had in the world. After all, the other mothers of Artemis distrusted her. They had been Turing Citizens too. They remembered Karel, her husband. Many robots back in Turing City had thought him a traitor. Karel had been an immigration officer, he believed in new ideas, welcoming in those whose minds were woven in a different fashion. Many robots were convinced that this had hastened Turing City’s downfall, that their philosophy had been diluted by these strangers.

  Karel had been taken from her on the night of the invasion. She had thought he was dead, but just a few weeks earlier, the robot she had been kneeling before in the making rooms had assured her he still lived. The robot would not reveal how he knew, nor why he was telling her. Still, she hoped it was true. Karel and Nettie were all she had left. Nettie, who had never woven a mind in her life, but who was responsible for directing the other women in patterns they should weave. The other women scorned Nettie: in their eyes Susan’s friendship with her was proof that she was a traitor.

  And, truth be told, she was. They all were. What had she been asked, when she had first learned of the Book of Robots? When it came down to it, would she be strong enough to twist a mind in the way she knew was right?

  The answer, it had turned out, was no. When it had come down to it, when Turing City had been destroyed and she had been brought here, she had bowed down before her captors and subdued her will to theirs. The minds Susan twisted each night were Artemisian minds.

  She was a traitor; there was nothing else to say.

  The radio masts were set in an expanse of flat ground to the west of the city. Three tall lattice towers cradled by iron cable. A fourth, smaller tower stood some distance from them. Susan and Nettie stood at the perimeter of the radio ground and watched the rippling patterns as they climbed the masts.

  ‘You know they’re thinking of stepping up production,’ said Nettie, suddenly.

  Susan felt her gyros spin a little faster. ‘How?’ she asked.

  ‘A mind every day as well as every night.’

  The news didn’t fill Susan with the horror that she would have imagined. Rather, she felt annoyed at the stupidity of it all.

  ‘It can’t be done,’ she said simply. ‘We need a rest. A woman needs time to get her thoughts in order after making a mind. If not then she runs the risk of weaving the second mind imperfectly.’

  Nettie looked away from her, ashamed.

  ‘I know that,’ she said. Of course, she didn’t. Nettie had never woven a mind in her life, nor would Artemis ever allow her to. She was too clumsy a craftsrobot.

  ‘Artemis doesn’t care about imperfect minds,’ Nettie retorted. ‘They have worked out that if two minds are woven every day, around one point six of them will be usable on average. That’s a net gain on the current rate.’

  ‘So what about the minds that don’t work?’ asked Susan. Nettie didn’t answer. She just stared at the ground. Susan figured it out straight away.

  ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘No. They’ll just recycle the metal, won’t they? Start all over again . . .’

  Radio waves rippled against the empty grey sky. Susan felt as if the little comfort she had gained was radiating away too.

  ‘Oh Nettie, I hate this place,’ she said. ‘It becomes so comfortable, you almost convince yourself you’re part of it, and then something like this happens and reminds you just how awful it really is.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you here, Nettie. You’re the only friend I have left.’

  For a moment, just a moment, a picture of Karel, her husband, appeared in her mind. She suppressed it, it was just too painful.

  ‘How long?’ she asked. ‘How long can this go on for?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Nettie. Shyly, she reached out a hand and sent a soothing
wave of current into Susan’s own.

  ‘Why are they doing it? They’ve conquered the entire continent. What else could they want?’

  Nettie looked around. They were two tiny figures dwarfed by the sky and the city behind them, the silver shapes of trains moving across the horizon. Even so, Nettie lowered her voice.

  ‘Susan, there are rumours. Rumours about the Book of Robots. Have you heard them?’

  Susan looked at Nettie.

  ‘Nettie, I’ve heard nothing. The other women don’t speak to me, the only friend I have in here is you.’

  Nettie looked around again.

  ‘I speak to the other supervisors. There is another who knows of the book. She speaks to me sometimes.’

  Nettie leaned closer.

  ‘They have come, Susan. The writers of the book! The creators of the first robots!’

  Susan didn’t know what to feel. She didn’t have belief of the book woven into her mind like some other robots did. Her mother had believed, she had woven Susan to be nothing more than a companion for Karel, her husband. Karel was important in some way, she understood that. His mind was different. Beyond that, she really did not care about the book. If only the others who had spoken to her about it understood that. Nettie was gazing at her, excited.

  ‘Well?’ she said. ‘Don’t you see what that means? They have come to free us! Surely they won’t allow Artemis to continue as it is?’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Susan. ‘Maybe Artemis is what they want. How do we know what the creators want?’ If they really exist, she added to herself.

  Nettie looked troubled for a moment. Susan pressed home her point.

  ‘And how do we know they are the creators, Nettie? What are they like?’

  At that Nettie looked even more troubled.

  ‘Oh Susan. I don’t know. There are so many rumours. Messages become garbled and twisted—’

  ‘What have you heard, Nettie?’