Twisted Metal

by Tony Ballantyne

  There was a click as Gates locked him in. Now Karel was alone. There were three cells in here, each sealed with a heavy metal door, a tiny porthole placed in its centre. There was a sudden bang, and a rapid staccato hammering started to his right, like a blunt drill skidding across steel. Something was trying to get out, trying to attack. Karel ignored it.

  Cell number two was right in front of him. Karel peered through the porthole.

  The man inside there was big: a body built for ore mining, with wide shoulders and great shovel-shaped hands. This was a robot that could have formed spontaneously beneath the earth and then dug his way free. His body was red iron, rusty and scarred, but with great long streaks of shiny metal showing where the corrosion had been scraped from his body in his climb to the surface. His eyes were tiny and recessed below a circular brim that ran around the top of the head. His legs were short and squat, ideal for pushing and scrambling through tunnels.

  Everything about the man suggested strength and power, and Karel now needed to step inside that cell in his delicate city body. No wonder Gates had told him so little about this client. This was his way of getting his own back, the tough south coast folk teaching the city slicker a thing or two. Gates and Cabeza and the rest would be laughing at the thought of Karel stepping in to meet this giant.

  Well, let them, thought Karel. He grasped the handle and pulled open the cell door. The handle only appeared on the outside of the door, and the isolation room was rigged so that only one cell could open at a time.

  The man inside remained standing in the middle of his cell as the door opened. Only his eyes moved.

  ‘Would you like to come out here for a moment?’ asked Karel. ‘Stretch your legs?’

  Silence. At first Karel wondered if the man in there couldn’t speak, but then:

  ‘I am happy to remain here while we talk.’

  ‘Fine, fine.’ Karel moved forward into the cell. The stranger looked even bigger inside it. His shoulders were almost as wide as the cell itself, so that he would have to take care when turning around. ‘Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Karel, son of Kurtz and Liza. I am a Disputant for the Turing City Immigration Office. Do you understand what that means?’

  Again silence. Karel wondered if maybe being so big meant that it took longer for words to reach his mind.

  ‘They said that you were coming,’ said the other robot, eventually. ‘But I still don’t understand your role.’

  Karel had been expecting this. He clasped his hands together, then let go as he felt the deformity in his right hand from where he had hit the Artemisian. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘my job is to speak to robots such as yourself and determine whether or not you are intelligent.’

  ‘Surely that is a job for a woman? Couldn’t you just get a woman to look at a mind and see if it was fused or not?’

  Karel smiled. ‘Usually, yes. But sometimes, even though minds are woven and fused, they just don’t work properly. I’m here to decide if you are a potential Turing Citizen.’

  ‘Well I can save you the trouble. I’m not.’

  Karel smiled again.

  ‘I wouldn’t be so hasty in claiming that. This is Turing City, you know. There’s no need for lies here.’

  ‘I’m not lying. Why would I wish to do that?’

  ‘Some people do. They don’t understand that Turing City is a cooperating city. Any robot able to think is welcome here. Don’t you realize that if you had emerged in Artemis we wouldn’t even be having this conversation? You would already be owned by the state! Every item there, every rock, every scrap of metal, every robot is considered nothing but property.’

  ‘That would seem proper.’

  ‘Proper? Really? Take a look at my body. Do you like the paint-work there?’

  The stranger’s little eyes peered down at Karel’s chest. He took in the curves of the metal there, the pastel traceries of the paint-work.

  ‘It is an elegant example of metalwork,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Karel. ‘I bought the original panels from a shop in Turing City and bent them into shape myself. They are of an alloy originally devised by the robots of Stark, but improved upon by the artisans of Turing City. The paintwork was done by my wife. It took her many nights of work.’ He flicked his chest with a finger and it made a ringing sound. ‘Beautiful! But a lot of effort just to make this body. It begs the question: what is so special about me that all this effort, all this material can be applied to what is really nothing more than an affectation?’

  ‘I don’t know the answer to that.’

  ‘But I do!’ said Karel. ‘It’s because I think! That is the difference between owners and property! Here in Turing City State we recognize sentience. All it takes to join our state is that you prove your intelligence!’

  ‘But I am not intelligent.’

  Karel felt a twinge of anger at the robot’s stubbornness. He repressed it. ‘Don’t you realize what will happen to you if you maintain this ridiculous pretence? You’ll be taken from here and shipped inland and put to work down a mine. Working at the top of a magma chamber, or set wandering through a pegmatite forest. You’ll be treated as nothing more than a shovel or a pick.’

  ‘Mining is what I do.’

  ‘Yes, but mining as a free robot! It’s your purpose, it’s your life, it’s what makes you happy. But as a possession they will just keep you digging and digging and digging. You’ll never come to the surface! If your body breaks down they will patch it up with whatever comes to hand and then just set you off digging again, and they’ll keep doing that until you’re completely past repair. Nothing more than a selection of patches and spares. And after they’ve stripped what they can use from you, they’ll just push you into an unused tunnel and leave you there. Is that what you want?’

  ‘I don’t care. Why should I?’

  Karel was momentarily lost for words. Gates had said that this client was different, and he hadn’t been exaggerating. Karel had never encountered anything like this before. He tried another tack.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s be honest with each other. I don’t understand what game you’re playing, I don’t know what you hope to achieve. Tell me something about yourself. How did you get here?’

  At this the big man became animated for the first time. A low grinding noise sounded, deep in his body, and then his arms swung out. The big shovel hands knocked against the wall of the cell, scraped it so that white paint now marked the edges of the blades. The squat legs began to march in time to some unheard beat. Karel found himself backing out from the cell.

  ‘I was born in darkness,’ said the stranger, ‘held in the earth. I saw nothing, heard nothing. I felt gravity, and I knew I had to dig my way in the opposite direction. I knew my name.’

  ‘You have a name?’ said Karel in surprise. He had assumed the stranger was nameless. ‘What is it?’

  ‘My name is Banjo Macrodocious. I was told: Banjo Macrodocious, dig your way upwards until you break free through the surface.’

  Karel didn’t ask Banjo who had told him to dig. Banjo wouldn’t answer because he wouldn’t even understand the question. This was part of birth, the weaving of the mind. This was the way with the spontaneously formed. If Karel was to trace back his own lineage, through his parents and grandparents and great-grandparents for however many generations, this would be the story of his origins too.

  ‘I began to dig,’ continued Banjo. ‘I swam through the earth, I drilled and I chipped my way through the batholith. I pressed myself into cracks and fractures. I tugged aside small rocks and pushed them down with my feet, I made my way around larger obstacles. I learned the feel of my body in the darkness, the stretch of my arms, the strength in my shoulders. I felt the stones scraping down my sides; I heard the slow sounds of the underworld. And all the time I rose higher and higher. I wondered more and more what it would be like to finally break free of the rock and to walk on the roof of the world. I continued to dig. And as I did so I felt the
earth changing. Higher and higher. Until that day . . .’

  ‘Did you emerge in the sea?’ asked Karel.

  ‘Yes, in the sea. The debris on the seabed, the softness of it, how easy it was to dig through. The water all around me. The cold. And then I began to walk. Following the direction in my head.’

  ‘Who found you?’

  ‘I don’t know their names. They found me trying to scale the cliffs. They brought me here.’

  Karel was unconsciously unscrewing his right hand. He wanted to begin work on straightening it. He forced himself to stop.

  ‘Okay, Banjo, I have heard your story.’

  Karel stood formally to attention.

  ‘As Disputant for Turing City State, I am prepared to announce my decision on your status, Banjo Macrodocious. You have a name, you take part in reasoned conversation. I believe that you are intelligent. I believe that you could be an asset to Turing City State. I would therefore like to invite you to join us. Would you like that?’

  ‘I don’t think I would like or dislike it. I have no feelings.’

  ‘I don’t believe that is true, Banjo Macrodocious. This is my job; I know what I am doing. You are intelligent. I am inviting you to join our state. All you have to do is declare your willingness.’

  ‘I have no preference as to whether I join your state or not.’

  ‘How can you say that? Don’t you realize that most of the people waiting out there in the cages beyond this door are desperate for me to invite them to join Turing City? They live in fear of being sent back to their broken countries, of being enslaved by Artemis. Don’t you see what you’re giving up? Do you really just want to be adopted as a tool, to be worked till you drop and are eventually abandoned in a mine underground?’

  ‘I have no preference.’

  Karel’s anger was such that he wanted to smash the big robot in the face, just as he had done the Artemisian soldier. Wisely, he restrained himself.

  ‘I don’t think you mean that. You know what I think you are? I think you’re a coward. I’ve met people like you before: robots who don’t have the courage to accept the faculties they have been given. You have a mind and a well-designed body and you refuse to take responsibility for them. You know what they call robots like you? They call them Nicolas the Coward. Call them Nicolas the Shirker. That’s what they’ll call you.’

  Banjo Macrodocious looked puzzled. ‘Why should I care?’

  ‘You pretend not to understand, Nicolas the Coward.’

  ‘Call me what you will.’

  ‘Nicolas the Shirker.’

  ‘I don’t even know who you are talking about.’

  ‘Don’t know Nicolas the Coward? Nicolas who was blessed by water and refused all that he was offered? Nicolas who ran away from his gifts rather than accept responsibility?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then I shall tell you the story. Sit down, Banjo Macrodocious.’

  ‘I can’t sit down. This body is not built that way.’

  ‘Well stand there and listen . . .’

  The Story of Nicolas the Coward

  Nicolas was an Artemisian soldier.

  Long ago, before Nyro’s philosophy had completely enfolded their minds, when Artemis’s eye was still drawn down into the earth in search of ore, rather than out across the continent of Shull desirous of power, the rulers came to wonder at their origins.

  The Raman mountains were long known as a source of the Spontaneous, and it was decided to send an expedition there to search for the origins of these robots, and thus the source of robot-kind.

  Nicolas was part of that expedition. His body was made of steel, of hammered beaten steel. His electromuscles were tuned and harmonized to his body, every last screw was tightened, every last joint was greased. His troop moved through the caves that they had found deep in the Raman range with practised grace and maximum efficiency. Twenty-four robots, their bodies engineered and modified to be identical, interchangeable.

  They moved swiftly through the caves like sunlight that flickers from a falling blade.

  They moved silently through the caves like shadows in the darkness.

  Down through tunnels, passing the silent machines that still made their slow climb from the depths and up to the sun, their minds as yet unwoken. The passageways through which Nicolas moved became softer and more polished by the tread of ancient feet.

  There was the sound of water, the playing of a stream mixing with the rolling crash of a waterfall. Nicolas and his troop sensed a deep pool somewhere near. They heard the echoes of a huge space; they felt the ionization in the air increasing.

  In those days the Raman state counted the caves as their own. They sent men and women out from their mountain-top cities to patrol the twisting passes and slate-covered slopes that led to the caves. Though Nicolas and his squad had moved so carefully, they had been observed and followed down into the earth by Raman soldiers.

  The Raman feared those caves and the passageways that led back through time all the way to Oneill, yet their anger at the intrusion by Artemis was even greater.

  The Raman carried steel discs, magnetic chaff and awls.

  The Artemisians carried blades and guns, for the Artemisians were not used to fighting in the Raman mountains.

  The Raman came close in the darkness, moving silently on plastic-soled feet, crawling silently on plastic-bound hands. They attacked.

  A steel disc spun through the darkness, its polished surface reflecting nothing but the night, its razor edge silent as it cut the air.

  Nicolas and his squad had paused near the stream. They were adjusting joints and calibrating senses, rubbing in grease and cleaning away grit. Nicolas was watching Kathy as she rubbed the casing of her thighs with emery cloth, as she used a fingertip to tease out swarf from the seams. Nicolas saw her head smashed to one side, saw her fall to the ground, arms and legs twitching, the top of her head half sliced open by the black disc that had lodged there.

  Nicolas stifled the cry that arose in his throat, and rose to fighting stance, his troop smoothly echoing his action. Twenty-three robots turning to cover all directions, the gentle hum of electromuscles charging with energy, ready to move with explosive force. Eye shields slid into place, rifles were cocked, ears were turned up to detect any sound, and then turned straight back down again as the noise of the waterfall and the splashing stream overwhelmed them. This was a good spot for an ambush.

  And then the air was full of the harsh percussive beat of steel discs, ricocheting from the stone walls. Two more robots were decapitated.

  ‘Up there!’ called someone, and twenty-one rifles swung and fired simultaneously. Three bodies fell, splashing into the pool.

  ‘Raman,’ said someone. ‘Look at the build on those bodies.’

  But now it was getting harder to see and to move. Nicolas’s ears were cutting out, silences punctuating the noise of the battle all around. His vision flashed with white noise and he felt his electromuscles twitching.

  ‘Chaff!’ he called, wiping the back of one hand over his eyes. It came away covered with charged black iron filings. Somewhere off to his side there was a loud buzzing as someone began setting up a magnetic perimeter, drawing the chaff away from his troop. The air was becoming clearer already.

  Now Nicolas had time to think. He counted seventeen robots still standing.

  ‘Report!’ he called. ‘Where are they?’

  Calmly, the robots relayed the information back to him. There was a group up in the roof, a second blocking the passageway by which they had entered this cave.

  ‘Take out the ones above first,’ called Nicolas. ‘Then we can mount an assault on the ones behind us.’

  Seventeen rifles swung back upwards. They began to fire infrequently, but with thoughtful precision.

  ‘Not so well trained,’ said the man to Nicolas’s right. ‘Soon be out of here.’

  Nicolas felt uneasy. He knew the Raman lived in the mountains. He knew they were expert at this sort of fig
hting. Nicolas thought about this, Nicolas dredged his memory.

  ‘Anyone here got a nose?’ he asked.

  ‘I have,’ said a woman nearby, still gazing at the ceiling along the length of her rifle.

  ‘What can you smell?’

  The woman paused, sniffing.

  ‘Organics. A lot of them. Petrol.’

  ‘Zuse!’ swore Nicolas.

  ‘Hey, they’re retreating!’

  ‘Of course they are. It’s a . . .’

  The world exploded. The petroleum vapour with which the Raman had been flooding the cavern ignited and sucked up all the oxygen. Nicolas was left standing in a near-vacuum.

  His electromuscles were weak and shrivelled.

  His brain hurt.

  He was deaf; the delicate connections in his ears had burned away.

  His casing was so hot that it glowed blue-white.

  The Raman were charging now. Only a dozen of them, but more than enough to defeat his weakened, crippled squad.

  The Raman had long bodies plated in chrome. They carried short, sharp awls in their fists, held low, ready to punch up beneath a robot’s chin, right up into the brain.

  ‘Stand firm,’ said Nicolas.

  Fourteen robots formed up in line. They dropped their rifles, barrels breached after the ammunition had exploded in the blast, they drew out their knives, held them in hands over which plastic had melted and dripped away. Held them weakly in their glowing hands. Still the Raman came, metal feet pounding on the stone floor. But now the Raman paused and put away their awls. They turned, looked back, fear crossing their faces.

  ‘What is it?’ asked someone.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Nicolas. And then they, too, felt it and heard it. A trickle of water. A stream. A torrent of water released from somewhere, bearing down upon them. Flashing white foam on dark water, set free in the petroleum explosion, released from some other cave by the cracking of the walls.