Twisted Metal

by Tony Ballantyne

  The woman began to sob.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ said the tall robot, dismissively. ‘You’re being selfish. Die like a true Wiener.’

  He meant it, realized Olam and, out of nowhere, a mad laughter bubbled up inside him.

  ‘But we aren’t Wieners any more,’ he cried. ‘We’re all Artemisians now!’

  And at that, he gripped the awl in his fist, point down, and leaped at the tall robot. The sun was at his back: he saw their shadows stretching out on the ground before them. He saw himself gripping the tall robot around the neck, bringing the point of the awl down again and again on the aristocrat’s skull.

  ‘You can’t hurt me,’ said the tall robot patiently. ‘I’m made of whale metal.’

  He was right. They all three struggled in vain, Olam blunting the point of the awl on the beautiful grey metal of the aristocrat’s skull, the woman desperately fighting to be free.

  ‘I’m growing impatient, prole. Only one minute left. Kill her!’

  Olam gave up on the man’s skull. He brought the awl around and stabbed at an eye. The man raised an arm to defend himself, and the woman finally broke free of his grip.

  ‘Hold him!’ called Olam.

  The woman grabbed an arm and held onto it. Olam stabbed at the aristocrat’s eye once more, grazing it.

  ‘You see!’ The tall robot was almost laughing. ‘You have got the motivation. You can kill . . .’

  With a gyroscopic lurch, Olam realized that the tall robot was right. So this is what those robots on the killing floor felt. It felt good! The feeling rushed through his electromuscle, and he stabbed at the aristocrat again. The eye flared and died. A sharp current ran through the awl into Olam’s hand.

  The woman screamed. The tall robot had reached through the damaged plating at her thigh and grabbed the electromuscle there. Now Olam stabbed at the tall robot’s hand.

  All around them, he was vaguely aware of more and more robots lying dead on the track.

  ‘Stop wasting time,’ snapped the tall robot. ‘Kill her!’

  The aristocrat honestly believed he could still order him about! Fury overtook Olam. His arms functioned of their own accord. He stabbed for the tall robot’s other eye and was batted away, flung to the ground. He rose and charged forward, just as a volley of shots rang out.

  A series of sharp cracks. The spang and whiz of ricochets. Olam looked at the woman, at the tall robot. They looked back at him, at each other, both waiting. There was another volley, and another. Still they waited.

  Silence. And then the light faded in the woman’s eyes. She slumped to the ground.

  The tall robot gazed at Olam with disgust.

  ‘They shot her,’ he said. ‘So apart from me losing my eye, what have you achieved?’

  Olam felt the lurching inside him come to a halt. It was replaced with a smooth calmness and a cold certainty.

  What have I achieved? he wondered. The answer came in a hot charge of current. The knowledge that I can kill, if I need to.

  Eleanor

  Eleanor didn’t pay much attention to what was going on on the stadium floor. The weak and the unlucky would die, and in that way the overall quality of the new recruits would be raised. It wasn’t as if they were Artemisians yet. At the moment they were nothing more than talking metal.

  She resented Kavan sending her here. Her talents were not best serving Artemis by being stuck in this stadium: she would be better with Kavan, discussing their next move. Could they seriously attack Turing City now, this soon after their near-defeat in Wien? Why had he sent her away? Did he fear her? Zuse knew that Eleanor craved power too, but Kavan was the better leader. She knew it. Surely Kavan knew it as well?

  But it was time to speak again. She returned to the balcony and reached for the microphone. The Wieners had used a speaker jack which they plugged directly into their bodies, thus connecting them to the speaker system. Eleanor had found the idea vaguely distasteful, so she had built a microphone onto the end of the jack with parts taken from the head of a dead Wiener.

  ‘Well done, survivors,’ she said. ‘Your numbers are now two-thirds what they were. I estimate that half of you will be suitable for conscription. Now, before we continue with the process, I think it is important that you understand exactly what Artemis is. You will have heard stories, you will have heard lies, and you will have heard the truth and misunderstood it.’

  The sun beat down on the arena. Oil slicked the magnetic track, overworked and heated metal could be heard plinking along with the whirring and sparking of broken machinery.

  ‘Artemis begins with Nyro, of course. But who was Nyro? Where did she come from? There are stories, that she came from Born, that she killed her own child. Yes, we’ve all heard the ballad. We’ve heard that she murdered her own husband, tangling him in the wire of his own mind. Are these stories true? No. Nyro was none of these things. She was just a woman who lived in a barren land. She had nothing. Nothing but her mind.’

  The True Story of Nyro

  Artemis in those days was nothing but a barren plain. It held no metal; there was nothing there but organic life and empty rock.

  But there was metal in the mountains: iron and phosphorus.

  But there was metal on the coast: nickel, gold, silver and copper.

  But the robots who lived there kept their metal to themselves, so that the robots who lived in the centre were left to forge bodies out of wind and dust.

  What metal did they have? Only the metal the robots who lived there had brought with them. Only the rusty skeletons of dead machinery. Only such as they could salvage from the bodies of the meagre robot life that dwelt there, the rodents and insects that fed on one another.

  And sometimes there was the metal that could be harvested from the dead bodies of the occasional robot that foolishly strayed into their land from the richer cities. For the robots that dwelt in Artemis were poor in spirit as well as poor in metal and would even prey upon their own kind.

  On the central plains the surrounding world becomes distant, and a robot can see nothing but the sky. A robot’s world reaches up into nothing instead of stretching out to other worlds. Nyro was a robot woman like any other that dwelt in that land, except in this one respect: Nyro had been to those other lands.

  Whether she had been born there, or she had developed the wanderlust, or she had gone there to beg for metal to make a child, Nyro had seen the other robot communities that dwelt on the continent of Shull. But they had turned her away, and so now Nyro envied and hated them. Nyro wanted Artemis to be like them, and yet at the same time she wanted those other communities to be punished.

  But Nyro knew she couldn’t compete with the cities to the east and the cities to the west, not with their forges and their metal.

  There was not enough metal in Artemis to build cities like those she had visited in the south, with their soaring towers, their arches and their roads. There was not enough metal so that minds could merely sit in contemplation as they did in Stark, devising new forms of machinery. There was not the metal to arm soldiers so that they could fight the guards that prevented them entering the mountains to the north, and thus gaining access to vast lodes of iron that lay there beneath the rock. No, here in the centre of Shull, minds were turned, every hour of every day, to the search for what scant metal there was.

  But Nyro did not retreat into bitterness or resentment. Rather, she planned how best she could use what she did possess.

  Nyro had long been ready for the night of the making of a mind. She had spent half her life, it seemed, ready to twist a child. But she had held back, wondering how to make a child that could compete in this world of scarce resources.

  Until, finally, Nyro had her vision of the future that would shape the continent of Shull.

  This was what she realized.

  When a woman twisted metal, she would make the child in her hands to care for itself, for it needed to value its own existence, or else it would not survive. Then she would make the
child in her hands care for its father and mother, and then its brothers and sisters, for this is the way that the family grew strong and how the mother herself would be cared for in her old age.

  But Nyro realized that this land did not have enough metal for the old ways to continue. So instead she wove an idea.

  The idea was called Artemis.

  Artemis was to be the mother and father, the brother and sister of the child. The new child would care for Artemis above all else. It would protect its own life for the good of Artemis. It would protect others for the same reason. This way all those lengths of wire in robots’ heads would become as one wire.

  The idea was a good one, and Nyro’s children prospered. They wove other children in turn who also served Artemis. And Nyro watched as those children became strong enough to take metal, just a few scraps at first, from those proud communities to the east and west that had once turned her away. She watched as those children twisted more children, all with minds bent towards Artemis.

  Nyro died forgotten by her own children. Nyro died alone, and yet proud to see what she had wrought.

  Artemis had taken on life. Artemis was no longer just a place, just a feeble city that stood on the continent of Shull: Artemis was alive.

  Any robot, whatever its origin, could pledge allegiance to Artemis. Any robot could be said to be serving Artemis, so long as this idea was served.

  That my life, my body, my wire, all is subservient to Artemis.

  Artemis.

  Olam

  Olam glanced around the assembled robots as Eleanor completed her story. How did they feel? Looking at their faces, he saw his own emotions reflected back. Horror, confusion, fear. And, also, on one or two robots, this horrible aching eagerness. This feeling of safety and order that Olam recognized deep in his gyros and that he tried to push away. This sense that all of life’s fears and confusions could be ticked off and lined up and assigned to the reassuring answer that was Artemis. The thought that, if he became part of this, he would never feel fear again.

  His attention was distracted by a scraping, scratching noise coming from the stadium steps. The guards were dragging metal crates into place.

  ‘Would-be Artemisians, you have already shown strength, but now is the time to demonstrate cunning and agility . . .’

  Olam only half heard Eleanor’s words. Like every other robot in the place, he was dreadfully fascinated by those crates and their contents. The grey guards were now lifting the lids, shaking something loose. His gyros gave a sickening lurch as he saw what they held. Snakes. Boa inductors. They were small, less than a foot long.

  ‘Freshly imported from Raman,’ continued Eleanor. ‘They won’t kill, but they carry a current that will paralyse a robot for about thirty minutes.’

  All around the stadium, tangles of silver snakes were slipping, sliding, dropping to the ground. They whipped their way across the floor, seeking out the shadows and safety, silver bodies reflecting bars of blue sky and darkness. Eleanor pointed to the ends of the stadium, to the metal markers indicating north and south. Olam’s electromuscles trembled. Some of the more extreme sports in the arena relied upon direction . . .

  ‘You are in pairs already,’ said Eleanor. ‘It’s either you or your partner. Disable the robot standing beside you. Bring your robot to the north of the stadium if you wish to show it mercy. Bring it to the south if you wish it destroyed.’

  Olam dived forward, under the reaching grasp of the tall robot. He saw the flash of a silver boa before him, but it was already gone, snatched up by a nearby man dressed in copper. Something seized his legs, trapping him. The tall robot.

  ‘What’s your name, boy?’ his assailant asked, hands prying at the panelling on his legs. He was going to repeat the trick he had tried on the damaged woman, squeezing Olam’s electromuscles to send the current back up into his brain to short his mind.

  ‘Olam,’ gasped Olam. There was another flash of silver over to his side. He rolled for it, but the snake saw him coming and retreated in panic. Olam could see clearly the smooth silver of its upper side, the rough segmented iron of its lower surface. The aristocrat jerked at his legs, pulling him around and sprawling him onto his back. Olam stared up at him; saw the dead eye that he had stabbed with the awl.

  The tall robot realized what he was looking at. ‘There was no need to make things personal,’ he said.

  Olam wriggled in panic. He could see the huge silver marker at the south end of the stadium. That way lay death . . .

  ‘You could always make a new eye,’ he babbled.

  ‘You’re making things personal again.’

  The tall robot was too strong. The Wiener aristocracy had access to the best metal, to the best technology. Olam couldn’t hope to fight him.

  Without hurry, he was dragged across the track towards the shadows at the perimeter where the snakes sheltered. Up above, the sun was now like a yellow hole in the blue sky; it reflected off every piece of polished metal in the arena.

  ‘What’s your name?’ he asked the aristocrat, who ignored him. ‘What’s your name?’ he screeched.

  The tall robot bent down and grabbed a snake in one easy movement.

  ‘Doe Capaldi,’ he said. With one hand, Doe Capaldi held onto Olam’s legs; with the other he held the snake by the tail, swinging it back and forth slowly to stop it curling around his own arm. Olam kicked out hard, twice, but the tall robot’s grip was too strong. Now he was turning the snake so that the iron bottom faced towards Olam. He could see the segments, grey and scratched. He could feel the magnetic pull they made. The snake would try to wrap around his neck, where it could fire off a magnetic pulse strong enough to disrupt his coil, effectively paralysing him. And then Doe Capaldi would drag him, helpless, to his end. All around he could see other robots in the stadium already being dragged to the south side of the stadium. Dragged to their death.

  Doe Capaldi flicked the snake forward . . . Olam snatched it from the air. His right arm went numb as the snake fired off its inductor units. The tall robot flipped Olam onto his front, jumped forward and knelt on his back. Olam saw a whale-metal arm scrabbling for another snake just out of reach.

  ‘You’ll never make it in Artemis,’ shouted Olam. ‘You’ll never be able to make yourself subservient.’

  ‘I’ll do whatever it takes.’ Doe Capaldi snatched again at the snake. Olam struggled harder, to no avail. His opponent was just too strong. All he could do now was taunt him.

  ‘They’ll strip that whale metal from your body . . .’

  ‘I’ll still have my mind.’

  ‘They already have you fighting on the arena floor, just like a slave. What will they have you doing next?’

  ‘Whatever it takes. Here we go . . .’

  Olam braced himself, waiting for the flash and the subsequent numb sensation as the snake fired. And he waited. And then the tension in his arms and back ebbed away. He forced himself up, sending Doe Capaldi tumbling to the ground next to him, a silver loop wrapped around the tall robot’s neck.

  A man dressed in a copper skin shook his fist in the air. ‘I got that aristocratic Garo for you. Now finish him!’ He gave Doe Capaldi a kick for good measure.

  Olam staggered to his feet, the magnetic track feeling good beneath him.

  ‘Tha . . . Thank you!’ he called.

  He turned and looked down at Doe Capaldi, the sudden release of fear turning to hate.

  ‘Choarh!’ he yelled, kicking at the robot’s side. The whale metal gave a dull thud.

  He bent down and began to drag the tall robot south, to the killing zone.

  I can kill, he thought to himself with pleasure, the current in his electromuscles singing. I can kill. All those times watching the fighting in this arena, he had often wondered if he could do it himself, when it came down to it. Now he knew for certain. His mind seemed alive with sparks, like when a hammer was brought down on hot metal.

  With macabre humour, he sat the tall robot in the middle of the south sect
ion of the stadium, sat him up to face the balcony. He could see other robots around about him, each with a silver band around its neck. He leaned close to his captive’s ear.

  ‘It’s nothing personal,’ he said. He looked deep into Doe Capaldi’s good eye, and then turned back to watch the balcony.

  Here came Eleanor now. What was it about her that Olam found so disturbing? She was so plain, so grey, so nondescript. So Artemisian. This was what he was signing up for, he realized. Eleanor was the embodiment of Artemis. Interchangeable. Not so much a robot as the realization of an idea. Did they all really believe, he wondered, or were many of them driven there by circumstance, like Doe Capaldi the aristocrat? Like himself, Olam?

  Eleanor spoke.

  ‘Future Artemisians, you have made your choice and recognized that in Artemis there is a time for mercy and a time to kill.’

  She paused to survey the crowd. Olam felt strangely calm. The sun was up and the sky was blue.

  Eleanor resumed her speech. ‘But sometimes the merciful should kill, and sometimes the killers should learn mercy. And sometimes Artemis changes its mind, because Artemis has no ego, no pride. Artemis is Artemis.’

  Olam felt a lurching in his gyros.

  ‘Those to the south will be spared. Kill everyone to the north.’

  Nobody moved at first.

  ‘All of them,’ said Eleanor, without heat.

  And then Olam saw the grey soldiers returning to the floor of the stadium. He heard the sound of bullets, the ringing of skulls being shattered.

  He looked down at Doe Capaldi. Hesitantly, he reached down, took hold of the silver snake and slowly pulled it away from the man’s neck.