Twisted Metal

by Tony Ballantyne

  Olam almost let out a whine of fear, but then he realized that these were not ghosts but the living citizens of Turing City. He could see the light in their eyes, dim and green and almost dissolved by the light of Zuse.

  Why do they look so odd? he wondered. Their bodies were grey and misshapen, they marched two abreast in silence through the streets, seemingly oblivious to their surroundings.

  ‘Where are they going?’ The words were spoken so softly that Olam momentarily imagined they floated from the hollow lands, borne to him on the cold breeze as if the ghosts of the north were speaking to him. But no, it was only Doe Capaldi, leaning close to him in the shadow.

  ‘I don’t know . . .’

  The misshapen robots marched silently past, their strangely wide feet planting themselves solidly on the smooth concrete of the road, pressing firmly down into shadow. Adults, children, young and old, all making their way through the night, two by two. And now the tail end of the procession had passed. Doe Capaldi gave the signal, and his squad began to move through the shadows of the moonlit city, silently following the grey ghosts.

  Susan

  ‘Karel!’ gasped Susan. ‘What’s happened to you?’

  Karel dragged his way into the room. She took in his injuries with a terrified stare. He couldn’t move one leg properly, a hand was badly mangled.

  ‘Speak to me, Karel!’

  His voice was nothing more than an electronic whine.

  ‘Oh Karel! Was it Artemis? Are they downstairs?’

  ‘No . . .’

  The forge had gone cold now. Still, there was tin, there was a little gold. She could do something with those. She felt the electronic pulse throbbing from his leg, turned him over and saw the way the electromuscle there was caught on the external metal.

  Gently, she set about easing the panelling away.

  ‘Easy,’ she said. ‘It will be all right.’

  She looked over to where Axel lay sleeping, dark despair filling her like oil.

  Olam

  Olam fixed his gaze on the two robots that brought up the rear of the grey procession ahead.

  ‘Why don’t we attack?’ he asked. ‘All that metal should belong to Artemis. You’re letting it get away!’

  ‘Let’s see where they’re going first,’ replied Doe Capaldi, giving him a questioning look. ‘They’re not going to move very fast. There are children with them.’

  ‘We should shoot the children first. Let the parents see them die. That will break their spirit.’

  Silence.

  ‘It’s true,’ said Olam.

  ‘We follow them for the moment.’

  ‘But they’re heading out into the darkness!’

  Olam looked down his rifle sights, turned the gun to bear on a grey child, took aim at the oddly shaped head that swayed back and forth as it walked. Doe Capaldi pushed the rifle to one side.

  ‘I wasn’t going to shoot.’

  ‘Weren’t you?’ Doe Capaldi gave him another questioning look. ‘You know, the upper classes of Wien used to debate about behaviour like yours.’

  ‘Wien is no more,’ said Olam, with bitter satisfaction.

  ‘That may be,’ said Doe Capaldi, unperturbed. ‘But the debate remains. You see, some argued that we are all just metal, that in the end we are all equal.’

  ‘But we aren’t, are we?’

  ‘You’re missing the point,’ replied Doe Capaldi smoothly. ‘That was one side of the debate, but there was another. There were those who said that the upper classes were needed. They said that we were the necessary check on society, that which kept things functioning within reasonable bounds.’

  ‘Wien is no more.’

  The land outside Turing City was pitted with opencast mines; it was scored with the lines of abandoned ditches and valleys that had followed the veins of ore to their end. The heavy black exhaust gases of the city forges settled out here, the sea wind rippling the oily surface of the stagnant pools and agitating the sluggish rivers of smoke.

  The Turing City robots marched out of the city, and Olam watched as they waded into a stream of black smoke, waded deeper and deeper until they were lost beneath its surface.

  ‘They’re getting away!’ said Olam in frustration.

  ‘Just for the moment,’ said Doe Capaldi. ‘Look over there.’

  Olam looked in the direction that Doe Capaldi had pointed, still getting used to his more powerful Artemisian eyes. And then he saw it, a line of smoke parting as if an invisible ship sailed through it, a silver shape ploughing a furrow beneath the wave.

  ‘It’s a train,’ he said slowly.

  ‘Built along the valley floor,’ observed Doe Capaldi, ‘hidden by the smoke. Jenny, what do you think?’

  Olam wondered what it was exactly that Doe Capaldi saw in Jenny. They all wore exactly the same bodies. Why did he constantly defer to her?

  ‘More Turing Citizens escaping?’ wondered Jenny. ‘I get the impression they were expecting us.’

  ‘But how?’ said Olam angrily. ‘We didn’t know ourselves we were attacking until a couple of days ago.’

  ‘Peace, Olam,’ said Doe Capaldi. ‘Jenny, can we take out that train?’

  Jenny gazed at the roiling line of smoke, judging distances.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then let us kill the robots on foot,’ said Olam. ‘Now, before we lose them amongst the smoke.’

  He stared in frustration at the line of citizens as they slipped down into the valley.

  Doe Capaldi spoke. ‘I think we should return to the city now. These robots pose no danger to us. There may still be fighting in the city itself.’

  ‘But they will get away!’ said Olam in amazement.

  ‘They can’t go so far. Their metal will be ours eventually.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘Olam, there is no mind. There is only metal. Does it matter when Artemis claims their metal? Come, we return to the city.’

  At that, Doe Capaldi’s section turned and began to move back towards the burning city.

  Olam paused for a moment, watching the last of the grey shapes disappearing into the pall of smoke.

  He wanted to kill.

  Karel

  Four o’clock in the morning, and the silence was broken. They heard a hard clanging, the sound of a metal hand beating on a metal door. They heard voices and an electronic scream, suddenly silenced.

  ‘The end of the hall,’ said Susan. ‘Draycott, Foxcote and Cookham.’ She didn’t stop working on Karel’s poor damaged hand. It was dark, they had no heat from the forge, but she was still working away skilfully, straightening joints, reattaching ligaments.

  Someone was shouting now. It sounded like a question, the same question being asked over and over again.

  ‘What’s going on?’ murmured Susan.

  There was a gunshot, and then another scream. It went on and on.

  ‘Axel, turn off your ears.’

  The child had been woken by the noise. He gazed around the room with bright yellow eyes.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Just do it!’

  There was more banging.

  ‘They’re moving up the hall,’ said Susan. ‘That’s Dunley and Hinton.’

  Karel said nothing. They should have run. Maybe it wasn’t too late to do so. If only they had magnetic hands and feet, they could climb down the outside of the building. Karel looked towards the cold forge and cursed himself. They couldn’t do anything without the fire.

  They could hear more shouting. The same question being asked as before. Karel listened closely. It sounded like they were saying ‘Choose’.

  Susan had heard and she understood.

  ‘Choose Axel, Karel,’ she said. ‘Choose Axel.’

  ‘It won’t come to that,’ said Karel. ‘We’ll just cooperate with them.’

  For a moment Susan lost control of her voice. Strange squeaks and squawks and crackles cut the air.

  ‘Don’t let them take my baby, Karel,’ she managed at
last. ‘You’re stronger than me. You’ll be better able to look after him. Choose him, Karel.’

  There was another gunshot, another scream.

  ‘Susan, I’m not going to let anyone . . .’

  And then the pounding started again, this time on their own door.

  Karel looked at Susan. They’ve missed out Madeley and Tungaka, he thought, they’re here already.

  He got to his feet.

  ‘Karel, I love you. No regrets.’

  ‘I love you too, Susan.’

  Karel paused, his gyros spinning, and then he opened the door.

  There were two Artemisian soldiers standing outside. Only two of them. Grey-bodied infantryrobots, smaller than he was. Weaker too. He could fight them, he realized. He and Susan were stronger. He could lure them into the apartment and then take them.

  And then get his whole family killed by the other soldiers who had invaded the rest of the rooms along the hall.

  The two infantryrobots pushed him back into his apartment, into the forge room. Susan was crouching on the floor, her arms around Axel.

  ‘My name is Eleanor,’ said one of the robots. ‘I am a leader of the Artemisian army. Welcome to Artemis, fellow Artemisians.’

  Susan attempted to say something, her voice whistling and squeaking. She tried again, and this time her voice was clear.

  ‘I am a citizen of Turing City,’ she said.

  ‘That state no longer exists,’ said Eleanor. ‘The population of this city is to be reduced by a third. Which of you will die?’

  ‘No!’ said Karel.

  Susan gazed at him hopelessly. She had known, he knew. She had known.

  Eleanor held her rifle aimed at the floor. ‘The woman or the boy? Which one of them dies?’

  Susan gazed up at him. ‘I love you, Karel.’ Her voicebox whistled as she spoke.

  ‘CHOOSE!’ The second infantry robot was younger, and he stabbed his rifle barrel at Karel’s head, knocking his gaze aside so that he could not focus on Susan properly. ‘CHOOSE, CHOOSE, CHOOSE!’

  ‘Save my boy,’ said Karel, his own voicebox now crackling and shrieking. He looked at Susan in despair.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  Eleanor turned her gun towards Susan’s head. Her finger tightened on the trigger. Susan gazed up at Karel. At the last moment, Eleanor jerked the rifle towards Axel and fired.

  Axel’s head exploded in a cloud of blue wire.

  Axel was dead.

  The two infantryrobots left the room. Karel barely noticed their departure. Axel was dead.

  Susan looked at his little body, her own covered in tangles of blue wire from his shattered head.

  Her mind hadn’t yet caught up with events. All the blue wire, twisting and tangling in the night. All that blue wire of Karel’s that Susan had twisted that night, four years ago. All for this, to be blown apart by a single bullet.

  Axel was dead.

  Axel’s body slumped forward and fell to the floor with a clatter. Susan just knelt there, gazing at it.

  Karel stared down at the body of his dead son. It still didn’t make any sense.

  Axel was dead.

  Karel

  Karel’s son’s body lay on the floor in a slippery pool of blue wire. He saw the expression on Susan’s face, he read the fracturing of all her hopes, the death of the biggest part of her. He saw the gun of the infantryman swing in his own direction, and Karel tensed, waiting for the shot, but all the time he was thinking about his son. Had Axel suffered? Could a mind feel pain as it was expanding in an unravelling cloud of wire? Karel was himself going to die now, but he didn’t care.

  ‘No, these are both for collection.’ The female Artemisian had pushed the other infantryrobot’s rifle away.

  ‘With respect, Eleanor, it’s easier to kill the early ones and to keep the later ones. Prisoners only get in the way when you’re halfway through a clearance.’

  Karel gazed at the young infantryman. How old was he? Eleven, twelve?

  ‘Thank you for your advice, Keogh. Nevertheless, I want you to take this man away now. See that his mind comes to no harm.’

  ‘I’ll do my best, but –’

  ‘I said only that his mind comes to no harm. Those are Kavan’s orders.’

  Kavan? thought Karel. What does he know about me?

  ‘I’ll deal with the woman,’ continued Eleanor.

  ‘As you wish.’

  The infantryrobot swung and fired into Karel’s left thigh. The surge of pain from the electromuscle was indescribable. The infantry man shifted his aim and fired again, and now Karel’s left bicep muscle crackled in agony.

  ‘Karel!’ Susan was screaming. He tried to look at her, he wanted to tell her he was okay, but the pain in his arm and leg was too great. It overwhelmed his coil, blocked the signals he tried to send to his mouth. He fumbled at the panelling on his left leg, trying to release it, to get at the electromuscle so he could unhook it.

  ‘Get back, Tokvah!’ Eleanor kicked Susan away from Karel. Susan fell over backwards, into the slippery pool of blue wire. She screamed.

  ‘Ignore her. Now stand up.’ The infantryrobot held an awl under Karel’s chin and slowly pulled it up, forcing Karel to stand, his left leg and arm exploding in pain as he did so.

  ‘Susan,’ said Karel. It was all there was to say.

  Susan sat up, sobbing, as she peeled Axel’s blue wire from her body.

  The infantryrobot began pushing him out of the room, and he took a last look at the painted walls, the scattering of tools on the floor, the distress of his wife and that tiny, broken scrap of metal on the floor that had been his son. And then he was gone, pushed out of his life in Turing City.

  After that there were only fragments: disjointed pictures in his memory.

  The hallway, metal doors to apartments broken and crumpled.

  The stairwell, the broken body of another child, in a tangled metal heap at the foot of the steps.

  Two Artemisian robots, stripping the decorative copper foil from the pillars outside the apartment block, rolling it up into bales ready for transportation back to Artemis City.

  The dark streets, the bright stars above, the sounds of gunfire, the spark of cutting tools, the rolling of wheels. Dark shapes of Artemisians moving through the night, tearing the city apart.

  And there, in the middle of the street, a terrible sight. It was enough to make even the young infantryrobot who pushed Karel along pause for a moment.

  A City Guard lay dead on the hard-packed gangue of the road. His body was crushed and dented, exposing deep golden electromuscle of an impossibly fine weave. One of his legs was cut off below the knee, his head almost flattened. Yet he lay with his rifle in his hands, still aiming at some target down the road. A deep feeling of respectful awe crept over Karel. This robot, at least, had fought to the very end.

  From somewhere to the west he heard a rending, tearing noise. The sky there lit up in brilliant whiteness, so bright it threatened to overload Karel’s eyes. A low vibration shook the metal of his body; it rumbled up through his feet, it throbbed in his electromuscles.

  ‘What is it?’ asked the young guard.

  By way of answer the brilliant white light shorted out, leaving the night suddenly so dark by comparison. And then there was an explosion that shook the very earth, and red flames leaped up into the night.

  Karel looked over to the west. He knew what it was. He knew what lay in that direction.

  The fort of the City Guard had been breached. Turing City had fallen.

  Maoco O

  The ending had come so quickly. One minute he had been there in the darkness before the fort, the brilliant white bolts from the Tesla towers arcing down over him to strike the Artemisian forces that were massed just out of rifle range. He had been moving to the dance of battle, weaving through the night, forming patterns with Maoco L and Maoco P and Maoco S. Seeking out the few black-painted Storm Troopers that crept forward through the night, their bodies loaded wit
h explosive, despatching them with a shot to the metal of their minds.

  And then, the next moment, the Tesla towers seemed to be feeding back on themselves, the great white electrical bolts arcing down towards the earth and then jumping back to the towers. The current was building in intensity, the flow making the very ground vibrate.

  Maoco L was suddenly there at his side. ‘They’ve laid a grid on the ground,’ she was saying. ‘They’ve crisscrossed the land with iron and they’re reflecting the current back to us. We have to disable it!’

  But it was too late. There was a shriek and the current shorted out, the light died.

  A horrible low grinding noise, the creaking and shifting of stone that had lain undisturbed for years. The fort itself was collapsing. Artemis was attacking.

  Maoco O was calm. He felt a quiet sense of pleasure. This was what he had been built for.

  Grey robots and black robots and silver robots came rushing towards him. He fought with his rifle, with shuriken and knife and awl and hands and feet.

  The outer wall of the fort had fallen. Artemisian troops rushed for the breach and Maoco O went to slow them, but there were too many robots around him now. He fought on, kicking and slicing and chopping, all the time trying to move towards the fort.

  The Artemisians had almost made the wall now, but they were . . . they were falling! Cut down by a hail of bullets and thrown stars. Maoco O was confused. There weren’t that many robots left in the fort, surely? And then he understood.

  Emerging from the breach in the wall were tall golden robots. Their hands and arms were long and flexible, their legs smooth and unarmoured. Yet they carried guns and rifles and they wielded them with deadly accuracy.

  The Mothers of the Fort, the robots that had woven the minds of the City Guard, now fought their last stand.

  Karel

  Another Turing City robot and its guard joined them, and then another, and Karel found himself part of a growing procession of the defeated, winding through the city towards the wreck of the railway station. The yellow light of the false dawn bloomed above it.