He was there, following her, seemingly in slow motion.
But it was too late.
Behind him she saw the station, its roof glass glowing orange and white, like the sun was shining on it. But shining from inside, like the sun itself was within the station. A beautiful orange glow, licking outwards from the centre of the Artemis terminal. Things were moving so slowly. The glass was shattering, diamond shards floating outwards, tumbling prettily, end over end. And look, behind them, clouds of orange flame blooming, spreading across the windows of the station walls like drops of oil on water before the glass began to bloom and shatter. And now the metal of the arches and vaulting was twisting upwards and outwards, spreading like open hands . . .
And, with a solid wham, time slammed back into normal speed, and she was picked up and blown across the great square by the force of the explosion. Her ears exploded. Her eyes whited out. The last thing she saw was the incredulous expression on Karel’s face as he was flung towards her.
Kavan
‘She did it,’ said Eleanor, in tones of mild surprise.
Kavan raised himself to his feet, body swaying as the carriage rolled slowly away from the explosion.
‘Dorore actually did it,’ repeated Eleanor. ‘I didn’t think she would.’
‘She was a true Artemisian at the core,’ said Kavan. His ears were crackling, the after-effects of the explosion that had taken place four and half miles away, right at the head of the train. He opened the door of the carriage and saw the ground rolling by, white sleepers and grey gangue. They were going backwards. Ahead, black smoke was rising from the shattered railway station at the head of the valley.
‘Get the troops to move out. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.’
Eleanor gave the signal. All the way back along the stripped-bare carriage, soldiers got to their feet, opened the jerry-built doors they had hacked out of the carriage walls and bailed out onto the ground.
‘I wish we had more Storm Troopers,’ said Eleanor. ‘There’s barely two thousand of us. There are over thirty thousand robots in Turing City. We don’t stand a chance against them.’
‘Spoole thought it enough,’ said Kavan.
‘Spoole is forcing you to commit suicide, Kavan. He wants you dead.’
‘Artemis doesn’t want. Artemis just is.’
‘Cut the rust, Kavan. We’re not talking about Artemis, we’re talking about Spoole.’
‘That should be the same thing.’
Eleanor was staring at him like he was being stupid.
‘We’re up against the City Guard,’ she warned.
‘That’s what I’m counting on, Eleanor. Don’t you see, Turing Citizens aren’t like Artemisians? They’re not like us; they’re not even like Dorore: she was true to Nyro right at the end. Turing Citizens don’t think that way. They get others to do their fighting for them.’
Karel
Karel pushed his face close to Susan. She couldn’t hear him, she could barely see him. The golden light in her eyes was blurred.
‘Susan, come on, we’ve got to get away from here.’
The square was in chaos. Black smoke leaked across it like thick oil, orange fire jumped into the air. Even the electrical currents felt wrong, screwed up by the atomic explosion. Robots were running around in confusion: heading to the station, running from the station, trying to help friends to their feet, or simply emitting electronic wails of fear.
‘We need to get back to Axel!’ he shouted, shaking his wife by the shoulders.
The same idea had obviously occurred to Susan. She pulled away from him and began pushing her way through the confused crowd towards the valley wall, heading for home. Karel ran to catch her up, but it was difficult to keep sight of her in the thick black smoke and the mêlée of frightened people.
And then the confusion increased. There were shouts and electronic screams, and the tide turned against him. The robots began pushing them back towards the centre of the square.
‘Run!’
‘Get out of my way!’
‘Move, you fool!’
He caught sight of Susan, someone had sent her spinning and crashing to the ground, the enamel on one side of her body scraping a pastel blue streak across the white marble of the square.
The man that had accidentally pushed her over went on running, straight into Karel’s arms. Anger singing through the wire of his mind, he tripped the man, pushed him to the ground, fell on his shoulders and took hold of his head and slammed it against the marble paving.
‘K*r**l NNNnnnoo!’
Again he smashed the man’s head on the marble, scraped it forward.
‘K***r**l!’
That was Susan shouting. She had taken him by the arm, she was pulling him away from the man, her voicebox squawking and crackling. Now she was pointing back towards the valley walls, trying to tell him something. There were bodies falling there, brightly painted Turing Citizens slumping and falling, their heads expanding in clouds of blue wire, and Karel’s mind finally caught up.
Gunfire! Artemis was attacking.
‘AAAax***l,’ phased Susan, ‘Aaxxellll!’
Karel felt the sheer rage inside him recede. He looked around, taking in the situation.
‘Artemis! Where are the Guards?’ He saw the answer almost straight away, saw the dead and damaged bodies that littered the space close to the station. All caught in the blast. Karel came to a decision. ‘This way,’ he shouted. ‘We’ll loop down through the galleries and back up around the parliament.’
She couldn’t hear him, of course. He pointed. Reluctantly she followed. He was taking her away from their son.
They began to run again, this time heading south towards the shops and galleries.
‘The rest of the City Guard will be coming,’ he told himself.
Olam
‘Run!’ yelled Doe Capaldi. ‘Run! Get into the city, or the City Guard will pick us off out here on the plain!’
All down the line came the sound of leaders calling their troops to action. Olam ran, his electromuscles throbbing with pain, his stride matched perfectly to the distance between the concrete sleepers. That cold, sharp wind that had started in the night was blowing him up the valley, over white sleepers, between the pair of silver rails that he was following. Black smoke ahead of him and grey infantry around him, their feet pounding on concrete as they rushed on and on and on, towards Turing City. He could hear gunfire already; he gripped his rifle tighter, eager to be part of the attack. That was the order: rape and kill. Rape and kill.
Olam couldn’t believe how good that sounded. Something had awoken inside him back in the arena. Something that had long lain dormant. Now it sharpened its blades and charged its muscles, ready for the fight.
Suddenly the ground beneath the sleepers vanished, and he saw bright green water down there, between the gaps. He stumbled and fell, almost lost his rifle. There was a river down there, water dancing along, and in the middle of the water a long copper worm turned its head up to look at him and then slipped quietly below the water’s surface, leaving Olam wondering if he had imagined the sight. And then someone took hold of him and pulled him upright. Doe Capaldi.
‘Come on, Olam. Run!’
And Olam did just that. Doe Capaldi was helping him? No way. He fixed his gaze on that robot’s back and continued to run, heading towards the wreckage of the station, the broken green body of the train plunged into its very heart, its tail cast out across the valley.
Karel
Karel and Susan fled through the milling crowds into the shops and the galleries of central Turing City. Everywhere was confusion. People looked round for the Artemisians, looked for the City Guard without success. Where were they? Rumours were rife.
‘The City Guard have cut them all down on the plain!’ ‘The City Guard were all killed in the railway station!’ ‘They are preparing a counter-offensive up by the fort!’ ‘The Artemisians have taken the fort!’ ‘The residential areas are burning!’ Karel
was grateful that Susan’s ears were damaged. If she heard that, she would have lost control completely. As it was, it took all his effort to keep her running in the opposite direction from where Axel lay sleeping.
The situation was like a childhood dream. Everywhere still looked so normal: the tall, arching iron galleries with their plate glass windows, the neatly tiled streets that ran through them.
Karel pulled Susan to a rest for a moment by a display of molybdenum ingots in the window of Gros-smith’s, trying to get an understanding of what was going on. Suddenly their situation seemed ridiculous. They were standing on rose porphyry, amidst rose porphyry pillars, looking through leaded glass at some of the most expensive metals on the planet. He was standing in the middle of one of the richest and most powerful states on Shull. Why was everyone panicking? Surely they had nothing to fear, not with the City Guard to protect them?
So where were they? And where were the Artemisians? If there were no City Guard to stop them, they should have made it up to the galleries by now.
Something wasn’t right here, realized Karel. Something wasn’t right, and he couldn’t figure what that was by himself. He looked at his wife as she fiddled with the mechanism of her left ear and he came to a decision. Susan would understand. He needed Susan in working order, right now.
Karel led Susan through the milling crowds to Harman’s, the closest body shop he knew. Susan pulled against him all the way.
‘Aaaaxx***ll,’ she kept phasing, ‘Aaxxellll.’
‘I know,’ said Karel. ‘Susan, listen, I need you to help me.’
Susan didn’t understand what he was saying, but she recognized Harman’s and she realized what he intended. She followed him into the shop without further complaint.
Harman’s was expensive. It used only the very best metals, the finest oils and plastics. The paintwork they produced was on a par with that of Susan’s skill, though invariably more expensive. The staff there were knowledgeable, skilful and, for the moment, absent. They had fled when the panic had gripped Turing City. Only Harman herself remained, a small woman clad in dark iron, a deceptively simple construction.
Karel saw her and began to gabble. ‘My wife, she got caught in the explosion. Her ears, her eyes, her voicebox, they’re all wrecked.’
Harman nodded. ‘Susan always has been a finely built machine,’ she said approvingly. ‘I would have been disappointed if she had not succumbed to a magnetic pulse! Her body is such a delicate creation.’ She seemed to think it a judgement on Karel that he had not himself suffered damage.
‘Come here, Susan,’ she said leading her to the centre of the room. ‘Sit down.’
The shop forge was tiny, but very, very hot. The instruments and tools that Harman used were small and delicate. Karel watched as she took a sliver of steel from a tray and set about opening up one of Susan’s ears, then carefully sliding the mechanism there from his wife’s skull. He saw the delicate blue wire of her brain beyond and turned away in embarrassment. He went to the window of the shop, looking out into the square beyond, his gyros spinning.
The robots out there still milled about without any sense of order. Clearly, no one yet knew what was happening. He scanned the crowd: all he could see were Turing Citizens. No City Guard, no Artemisians. What was happening? Why was there no fighting?
Behind him, he could hear Harman singing softly to herself as she adjusted his wife’s ears.
‘How long will this take?’ he called to her.
‘As long as it takes,’ said Harman. ‘I stay here with you, Karel. I leave when you leave.’
‘Where is the City Guard?’ shouted Karel in frustration.
‘I imagine they are wherever the Artemisians are,’ said Harman calmly. ‘Please don’t shout. Your wife’s ears are very sensitive at the moment. You will hurt her.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Panic and haste will lead us nowhere, Karel. I was in Stark when that city fell. The thing to do is to keep one’s head, to ensure that one has a fully functioning body and a clear sense of purpose.’ She reached for a silver pick. ‘I saw too many robots in Stark who ran half-panelled out into the streets, straight into the guns of the enemy.’
Karel knew she was right, but it was hard to keep calm. Out in the square the crowd seemed to have reached some consensus. They were fleeing south, towards the old town and the foundries.
‘Something is happening out there . . .’ began Karel.
‘Stay calm, Karel,’ warned Harman, her hand on his wife’s chin as she tweaked at something. ‘Let the foolish ones take the bullets for us.’
The crowd of Turing Citizens was thinning, draining away between the arcades and galleries at the south end of the square. Karel found himself straining to look north, waiting to see the grey shapes of Artemisian infantry. Nothing.
‘I don’t need a work of art. Just get her talking again!’
‘That’s what I’m doing,’ said Harman, equably. ‘There, all done. Susan, can you put yourself back together whilst I collect a few things?’
Karel turned to see his wife sliding her mouth back into place.
‘Thank Zuse,’ he called. ‘Let’s get out of here!’
‘One moment longer,’ said Harman. She had opened a cupboard and was pulling out a black plastic shoulder bag. She moved around the shop, dropping things into it.
‘That’s better,’ said Susan, her mouth clicking into place.
‘I’m ready,’ said Harman.
‘Then let’s go!’ called Karel. He swung open the door and found himself face to face with an Artemisian infantryrobot that seemed to have appeared from nowhere. They both froze, shocked by the sight of the other. Karel took in the dull grey paint on the other robot, the fact that it was a little shorter than Karel himself, and nowhere near as well made. He noted the way its eyes shone dully; saw the scratches and dents on the panelwork.
And then they both seemed to come to their senses. The Artemisian swung up its rifle, Karel grabbed it, tried to jerk it free of the other robot’s hands. No use, the soldier held on too tightly. Desperately, Karel pulled the rifle and the robot backwards, and then Susan was next to him, doing the same. Wrestling the robot back into the shop, where Harman stood patiently sorting through her bag, pulling out a sliver of metal. The infantryrobot saw what she was doing and redoubled its struggle, but Susan and Karel held him in place. He seemed surprisingly weak for a soldier. Deftly, Harman popped the infantryrobot’s head open, raised a glass bottle in her other hand and dripped clear liquid into the robot’s mind. ‘Hydrochloric acid,’ she said, as the infantryrobot thrashed harder and harder.
‘You can let it go now,’ said Harman.
The robot seemed to have lost control of itself: it was having an electronic fit. It kicked over a rack of tools, sending them jingling across the shop floor.
‘Come on,’ said Harman. ‘We’d better leave by the back way.’
Karel and Susan followed her through a door at the rear of the shop. Karel paused to look at the dying robot. Body thrashing weakly, it looked back at him with fading eyes, smoke leaking from its opened head.
Out back, they picked their way south through deceptively empty streets. Streets bordered by eyes that suddenly ducked down out of sight behind windows, streets where bodies withdrew into doorways. Streets filled with the staccato sound of receding footsteps, with the distant crack of gunfire.
‘We should have taken the rifle!’ called Susan suddenly.
‘Too late for that,’ said Karel, knowing she was right. ‘Come on, we need to start circling back towards Axel.’
They were leaving the centre of the city, with its expensive galleries and arcades, and heading into the older district, where the shops were smaller, the goods they carried cheaper. The first of the forges and foundries that were concentrated mainly in the old town began to appear, slotted into spaces between the lines of shops constructed of brick and iron. The marble and porphyry pavements gave way to cobbles, and then to the loose gangue
upon which most of Turing City was built. Harman’s dainty iron feet, in particular, seemed too small and delicate for the unmetalled surface over which they began to trek. The hills of gangue and rock rose around them, metallic bridges and walkways arched over the street, connecting buildings and making an aerial path through the city.
‘Look,’ phased Susan, pointing up to one of the walkways almost directly above them. It was an Artemisian infantryrobot, on the lookout.
‘Why hasn’t it seen us?’ she asked.
It was looking elsewhere, Karel realized, just as it raised its rifle and fired at something in the distance. They heard the crack of the shot and a scream. A second shot, and the screaming ceased.
Karel, Susan and Harman froze in place, hoping that the soldier would not now look down. They waited and waited. Eventually they heard the slow clink of metal on metal as the robot walked away, the sound of its feet echoing from the brick walls around them.
‘Where are the City Guard?’ wondered Karel. ‘What are they doing?’
‘I don’t understand this,’ said Susan. ‘We’ve seen only two Artemisian soldiers in half an hour. Surely you would need many more of them to take the city?’
‘You think so too?’ said Karel, delighted that he had taken the time to restore her voice and hearing. Susan was a statistician. She would know how big the city was, what the spread of invading troops should be. ‘I knew it,’ he murmured. ‘Something odd is going on here. Artemis shouldn’t be attacking, not now, not so soon after they’ve invaded Wien. There’s not enough of them. And where is the City Guard? They should have made short work of this assault by now. What’s going on?’
‘Listen,’ said Harman. The sound of running feet. Six brightly painted Turing Citizens came hurtling around a corner. They stopped at the sight of Karel and the rest, registered what they were seeing and then . . .
‘Run!’ one of them called. ‘Artemis, just behind us! Eight of them!’ Then they were all off, pounding down the street, running deeper and deeper into the old town. Past a line of acid tanks, their great mushroom rivet heads green with salt.
Twisted Metal Page 14
