Twisted Metal

by Tony Ballantyne

  I should have fought while I had the chance, thought Karel bitterly. That wild, unreasoning anger that had always filled his life was swirling inside his mind, searching for a release. There was none.

  Suddenly, his thoughts were with his mother. For the first time in his life he had empathy with Liza, an understanding of just how powerless she had been on the night of his making.

  It came as a revelation. For the first time in his life he realized something crucial: who could blame her for what she had done? Kneeling before an Artemisian soldier, a gun held to her head, she had done her best to keep the terror from her mind, but the anger that she had felt was woven into Karel’s mind.

  The voice continued speaking. ‘There are three minds. Disobey orders and your coil will be crushed. We’ll just link up one of the other minds. Do you understand?’

  Rust your mind! shouted Karel. All that emerged was a strangled beeping.

  ‘One beep for yes,’ said the voice.

  Karel said nothing.

  ‘Answer me now or I hook up the next mind. I do that, and you may end up riding this train in limbo until you die.’

  To take away his sight as well, to take away what little sensation he had left, the thought filled him with terror. Yes, said Karel, and he heard a single beep.

  ‘I knew you understood. Hey, think yourself lucky that you are the middle mind. It must mean you’ve got a friend somewhere. Okay, you’ll be setting off soon, so watch the signals.’

  And that was it.

  There was darkness for a moment, and then his mind was plugged properly into the locomotive. He saw the view down the tracks before him, and then, with a surge of awakening, he felt the power of the diesel engine.

  What to do? He practised revving the engine. He practised pulling at the brakes with his arm.

  This was what Artemis did to minds, he realized. It treated them like things. Now his mind was nothing more than metal to be employed by Artemis in its never-ending conquest. He had warned Banjo Macrodocious about this, but he had never expected it to happen to himself.

  He was jolted from his reverie by the voice. ‘Hey, can’t you see the light? It’s time to go!’

  He noticed the green signal shining up ahead. He concentrated on walking, felt the surge of diesel power. He saw the sleepers begin to slip beneath him. He was moving.

  ‘Okay, engine, I don’t expect to have to speak to you again. We’re off now. Next stop Artemis City.’ Karel heard a little laughing noise, and then the voice spoke again.

  ‘And take care driving, you’ve got Kavan himself on your train.’

  Karel emerged from the wrecked railway station into Copper Valley. The train picked its way over the bridges and points as he headed north. North to Artemis City.

  Kavan

  The journey northward passed without incident. Even Eleanor was silent. She just sat in the corner of the carriage, cleaning her rifle, sharpening her knives, making herself ready for the coming battle.

  The others were much the same. Wolfgang, his aide, stared at the ceiling, concentrating. Ruth remained standing, swaying with the movement of the train.

  Kavan wondered at how he now felt. Was he doing the right thing, or had his hand been forced? Something didn’t feel right.

  ‘Why is the train stopping?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Eleanor. ‘Pendric, Dylan, find out what’s going on.’

  The train was slowing to a halt. Two grey infantry-robots slid open the carriage door.

  ‘Get up the front to the driver,’ called Eleanor, and the two robots dropped out onto the desolate plain that lay outside.

  Kavan went to the door and looked out. The sun was going down, huge and red, setting the underside of the dark clouds on fire, lighting up the thin gusts of rain that the cold wind sent splashing over his metal skin. He could see another train in the distance, running on a nearly parallel track. It seemed to be setting out from Artemis City, heading towards Stark or Segre.

  ‘We’re almost there,’ said Eleanor, leaning forward from the train beside him. ‘I can see the city. I can see the Basilica. It’s all lit up in red.’

  The robots waited in silence, the metal of their bodies plinking and pattering as the rain drops fell on them.

  There was a shout from ahead.

  ‘Kavan,’ called Pendric. ‘I’ve got some engineers building an observation tower. There’s something that you need to see.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I think you’d be better looking from the tower.’

  ‘What about the attack?’ said Eleanor.

  ‘Patience,’ said Kavan.

  He dropped out into the rain, and made his way to the skeletal tower that was quickly taking shape.

  ‘Safe to go up now,’ said one of the engineers.

  Kavan nodded, and then swarmed up the rods they had left protruding from the sides of the tower, using them as a ladder.

  The city confronted him: a magnificent, smoky mass of metal sprawling over the barren plain.

  And, as he looked back at Artemis City, Kavan did something that many of his followers had never seen him do before.

  He laughed.

  All the choices, all the indecision rolled away.

  He would not be attacking Artemis City today at least. Like it or not, his mind had been made up for him. The twisted metal in Spoole’s mind had followed a path similar to Kavan’s. Similar, but not exactly the same. The other’s metal had danced its course around Kavan’s without the two paths ever actually touching.

  Spoole had outwitted him: elegantly, delightfully, easily.

  It was written before him in the pattern of the rails, slicked with rain and lit up with red fire from the evening sun.

  Where once the railway lines had filled the plain like a rough sea, crisscrossing, rising, falling, plugging Artemis City into the rest of the continent, now the lines were raked smooth to circle the city in a neat concentric pattern of lines. Artemis City rose like an island from this red sea, untouched by the pattern of fire that surrounded it.

  It was an act of challenge, a parry and an insult all in one. It was the actions of Nicolas the Coward written in metal for the world to see.

  Kavan couldn’t enter the city. The railway lines no longer ran that way. Instead, they ran around the city and continued north in an unbroken line.

  The message was obvious. Kavan was being sent north to break his troops against the mountain range that cut the continent in two.

  ‘It’s a challenge,’ said Kavan.

  ‘Sorry, Kavan?’ queried the engineer that waited at the foot of the tower.

  ‘Never mind. Tell the troops. We’re to go north. The south is not enough. We are to conquer the whole of Shull.’

  The cold wind gusted rain across Kavan’s body. Drops beaded on his metal fingers. He gazed down at them, thoughtfully.

  ‘The winter is coming,’ he said. ‘The snow will be blowing from the north, and we will be fighting against it, every step of the way.’

  ‘Can we really do it?’ asked the engineer.

  ‘The mountains are high and there is no route through them that an army could take. We may have to split our forces. They could pick us off easily in the passes . . .’

  ‘But can we do it?’

  ‘Of course we can. We always do.’

  Interlude: La-Challen

  Far away, in distant Yukawa, the radio operator turned a dial.

  ‘What is it, La-Challen?’

  ‘I don’t know. Static, but of an odd signature. It’s coming from Shull, I think. Every fifteen minutes I hear the signal. Perhaps you could enlighten me, Cho-La-Errahi?’

  The superior took the jack from La-Challen and plugged it directly into his body, a serene expression on his face.

  ‘It will come again in less than a minute, my master.’

  ‘Silence, La-Challen. I am listening . . .’

  Olam

  It had been raining for days, raining in cold gusts tha
t seeped between the panels and dampened the electromuscles. The broken rocks of the mountain were shiny wet, and Olam’s feet were sodden from wading through puddles that jumped under the never-ending impact of raindrops. There was nowhere to shelter, no chance to take apart a shorting limb to dry and clean and oil it. There was nothing here but rain and rock and dust. Lots of dust. So much wet grey dust, it worked its way into body and mechanism. Dust that stuck to the hands and the face and body so that everything was constantly gritty and damp.

  Not for the first time, Olam wished he were back in Wien, dressed in his old body, feeling its metal warming in the sun’s heat. Standing in a marble tower and looking out over the bay . . .

  ‘Get ready,’ called Doe Capaldi, jerking him from his reverie. His section crouched in the limited shelter of a sheer rock face, their metal skins glistening with diamond drops of rain. Doe Capaldi didn’t seem to care about the weather. Why does he always look so calm? wondered Olam. Why doesn’t this upset him as much as it affects me? After all, he has lost far more than I ever had.

  People were running towards him. Olam heard the splash of feet, the clink of metal on rock and the squeaking, unhealthy sound of robots that had spent too long being wet. He looked up the valley to see Spuran’s section pelting back down the newly carved valley, running from . . .

  ‘Cover your eyes! Turn off your ears!’ ordered Doe Capaldi. Olam obeyed, just as a hammer struck down on the world.

  His mind seemed to bend for a moment, his thoughts elongating. Electromuscle crackled, sending clouds of colour dancing inside his head. And then there was a white light so bright that it filled the inside of his skull. It illuminated the receptors of his covered eyes, sending a lance of lightning deep into his twisted metal, right back to the very start of the pattern – to the first knot tied by his mother.

  The ground was shaking, rattling him around like a wingnut discarded on a forge floor. A shower of stone was falling, rocks and rubble rumbling and crashing. His whole body vibrated, he could feel screws loosening under the harsh percussion. A howling wind threatened to tear his fingers from the crack in the rock to which he clung so tightly . . .

  And then the white light faded. So did the rain, for the moment at least.

  Doe Capaldi was banging on his head. Immediately, he turned his ears back up, just like he had been drilled.

  ‘Bomb’s still ticking,’ called Doe Capaldi. ‘We’ve got fifteen minutes. That’s twelve minutes to get it into position, and then three to run to safety. Let’s go!’

  The whole section was up now, grabbing hold of the trolley, which ran on big plastic wheels. They were running, up the valley, towards the source of the explosion. Olam ran to the front, kicking aside smaller stones, shoulder-charging larger rocks to push them aside and help clear a path for the trolley and its deadly, ticking load.

  The gusting rain returned in cold cannonballs that raised fountains of moisture on the slippery rock. Still Olam ran on, the trolley bouncing behind him. Be careful with the trolley, he muttered to himself, be careful with the trolley.

  Doe Capaldi was now by his side, urging the other robots onwards, and Olam felt a familiar stab of hatred.

  Further up the newly excavated valley, closer to the source of the previous explosion, and the going was soon becoming harder, the broken rock beneath their feet ever more unstable. There was a rumble to the right, and an avalanche of scree spilled downwards.

  ‘Zuse,’ swore Olam, dancing over the sliding rock, struggling to keep his feet.

  ‘Plenty of time,’ called Doe Capaldi. ‘Clear from the left-hand side, where the rubble is shallowest.’

  Olam bent and shovelled away fragments of stone with his hands, throwing it back across the valley floor. Later, the sappers would use the stone to fill in the gaps and cracks in the ground as they levelled it, or maybe use it as ballast for the railway lines they were laying northwards. Slowly and inevitably, Kavan’s path to the north – and conquest – was taking shape.

  Not that Olam cared at this moment. Behind him, the trolley bounced along, and the bomb was ticking. All he cared about was laying it and getting clear. He had already seen too many dented and half-melted robot bodies along the path, caught too close to the EMP and the subsequent heat of the blast. Above him, the jagged and broken peaks of the valley reached up into low clouds. Olam shovelled rock, making a path for the trolley.

  And now the path was clear. Clear enough, anyway. The trolley bumped forward, and Olam got a proper look at the bomb: an evil-looking black glass cylinder, with a metal plate fastened to one end.

  ‘Go, go, go,’ called Doe Capaldi.

  On they went, running for the new head of the valley, seeking the best location to site their bomb. The new valley snaked through the mountains, following the faults in the rock that the nuclear explosions had found. The robots living in the mountains had been totally confused by the haphazard course of Kavan’s clearance, had been unable to plan an attack on the excavation. No one could have predicted which way the track would travel next, not even Kavan and the Artemisians.

  But it was hard work, reflected Olam, as he and Doe Capaldi tipped an enormous boulder off balance and rolled it clear of the new path they were forming. Behind them was a line of nuclear bombs, their timers set a week previously in Artemis City itself, each one of them ticking down to zero, carefully timed to explode at fifteen-minute intervals.

  Each bomb had its own attendant team, all waiting their turn to rush forward to the head of the growing valley to plant their deadly cargo. After that they would rush back to collect their next bomb and rejoin the lethal carousel. Doe Capaldi’s team had now done this twice; they reckoned they would have to do it twice more before Kavan’s forces finally pierced a way through the central mountain range.

  But what audacity! Even Olam was grudgingly impressed. Everyone had wondered at Kavan’s strategy for advance upon the northern part of the continent. There were so few avenues of approach. Would he take them through Raman and Born? Would they establish base camps in the mountains, gradually taking ground? No one could have guessed at this. Kavan had simply put in a request to Spoole and had waited, safely clear of Artemis City, until the bombs he required had been delivered. Black cylinders, doubly sealed and already ticking. Security: a way to prevent Kavan using them upon Artemis City itself. Not that Olam thought Kavan ever would. Why should he try that, when a whole new land was awaiting conquest, just the other side of the mountains?

  Now the dust started to fall again: powdered grey stone, sucked up by the explosion, it took a while to find its way to earth again. It covered his body, it covered Doe Capaldi, too. It was washed away by raindrops that ran down robot bodies and hung from robot fingers like diamonds. Still they bounced the trolley forward.

  ‘Eight minutes,’ called Doe Capaldi. ‘Olam, Black-more, Lord, come with me. We’ll clear a space in the rocks there and site the bomb at the base of that column.’

  The four of them ran ahead of the trolley, up to where the heavier boulders had fallen. Shattered pillars and daggers of stone big enough to spear a robot as they plunged into the ground. They worked at shifting them, prying a space to drop the bomb into. The trolley came bouncing closer.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Blackmore, pointing up into the shafts of rain. Olam looked up. He couldn’t see anything.

  ‘Paragliders,’ shouted Doe Capaldi. ‘The idiots are attacking again! Don’t they realize that we have a bomb?’

  Olam looked up, caught a glimpse of a silver-foil sail, cutting across the sky.

  ‘No time for that,’ called Doe Capaldi. ‘Get the bomb into place.’

  The trolley crew had formed a line and were already passing the heavy black cylinder up over the uneven rocks towards Olam and the rest. There was a hissing noise and a silver sail passed over them, momentarily cutting off the fall of rain.

  Olam took hold of the bomb, placed one end on the ground and wedged it with his foot as Doe Capaldi and the others levered it up
.

  ‘That’s the angle,’ decided Doe Capaldi, and they slid the heavy black shape into the crack in the rocks.

  ‘Easy, easy. Okay, it’s in! Now let’s get out of here.’

  There was a crack, and Blackmore fell to the ground, a neat hole drilled in his head.

  A robot seized her rifle from where it lay on the trolley, turned and shot at the enemy robot that had landed nearby, the silver foil of its paraglider slowly settling to the ground. The rest of the section grabbed their guns, turning them on the other robots that now fluttered to the ground all around them.

  ‘Leave them!’ ordered Doe Capaldi. ‘Only three minutes. Run!’

  They turned and ran, rain splashing, silver foil folding down around them, the crack of rifle fire behind them, the sound of ticking echoing in their heads.

  A shadow swooped over Olam’s head and he looked up to see one of the paragliders. A robot gazed down at him. Its body was small, it gripped the wires of the paraglider with short arms and legs. Olam watched as it pulled at a cord and sent the craft spinning around and he realized, with a thrill of horror, that it was coming straight for him. The rest of his squad was running on, but he was frozen, transfixed by the sight of the strange robot as it settled on the ground before him. Olam raised his rifle. There was a crack and the robot fell down, dead. Olam hadn’t fired.

  ‘Run!’ yelled Doe Capaldi, lowering his rifle.

  Olam ran. There was a flash and he was falling, his leg crackling and shorting in agony. He twisted as he fell, firing one, two, three shots into the air at random.

  Doe Capaldi bent over him.

  ‘Save yourself,’ snarled Olam.

  Doe Capaldi was scanning the area.

  ‘Get away,’ shouted Olam. ‘You owe me nothing!’