The Scout was behind her. She could feel the current from its electromuscle, so strongly. A blade hooked around her neck.
‘Shall I remove your coil too?’
A pause. Then Nettie was there. Susan didn’t turn around; conscious of the metal blade touching the wire of her coil, straining to hear the words Nettie urgently spoke to the Scout. There was a pause, and then Susan felt the blade withdraw. She heard footsteps as the Scout walked away.
Relief washed over her. She had been spared. But why?
The woman kneeling next to her was staring in her direction. Why was she looking like that? Susan had almost been killed. Why was she gazing at her with such hatred? The woman spoke, so softly that Susan barely heard the word.
‘Traitor.’
Traitor? Why had she said that? Because Susan had been spared execution? Nettie was speaking again. She raised her voice slightly. The scraping noise as the body of the woman who had dissented was being dragged from the room underscored her words.
‘Now, ladies, let’s have no more unpleasantness, shall we? Let us begin.’
Susan had never felt so alone. The woman on her left gave her a look of contempt.
The robot that Susan knelt before was gazing down at her with such a superior look as Susan reached up for his wire.
And then she realized that she couldn’t do it. Her hands dropped to her sides and she felt such a feeling of release. All her decisions had now been made, all fear had left her. She understood now: she’d rather die under the Scout’s blade. She heard a little voice behind her.
‘Please, do it. You must do it.’
Nettie. A copper hand reached forwards; a finger drew out a shape on the rubber floor. A circle. The finger reached out and placed an invisible dot at the top.
Susan stared in amazement. The same shape that Maoco O had drawn. The shape that Masur had drawn on her hand in the paint shop. Even here in Artemis City? What did it mean?
‘Please, Susan.’
Susan felt her resolve fade. Maybe it was the pleading in Nettie’s voice.
Slowly, so slowly, the male robot gazing contemptuously down at her, she reached up and began to twist metal.
Olam
Olam opened his eyes and realized that Doe Capaldi was speaking to him. Olam remembered to turn his ears back up.
‘. . . covered by the rock. Clear way out. Bit hard. Legs aren’t working.’
Doe Capaldi’s head was dented, his left shoulder wrenched out of alignment.
‘Need do it quickly,’ he continued. ‘Another blast twelve minutes. Farther away, but still might shake rocks further down. Got to move.’
Doe Capaldi turned and started to push at the tumbled stone behind him. Olam could see daylight through the cracks. He realized that they weren’t buried that deeply.
‘You saved me,’ he said.
‘One of my section.’
There was something wrong with Doe Capaldi’s voice. Had the wire in his head been bent out of true by that dent?
‘But I tried to kill you!’
‘All follow Nyro now.’
‘You can’t really believe that!’
‘What else believe?’
Doe Capaldi heaved at a plate of rock. Something shifted. A rush of gravel slid down into their rocky prison. Olam tried to jump up to help him. Then he remembered he no longer had a body. Doe Capaldi had cut it loose, only carrying Olam’s head as they ran from the bomb.
‘Nearly there!’
Bands of shadow and light. Olam still couldn’t believe what Doe Capaldi had done. How could one of the aristocracy give up so much, so easily?
‘No Wien any more,’ said Doe Capaldi, answering his unspoken question. ‘Better live two years good Artemisian than die in stadium.’
‘Yes, but . . .’
There was a final grinding of stones followed by a creaking scrape as they settled into a new position.
‘Got it. Come on.’
Doe Capaldi took Olam’s head and pushed it through the space between the rocks. Olam found himself facing Doe Capaldi as he wriggled and scraped his way to freedom.
‘Not far,’ said Doe Capaldi. ‘Can see light.’
Olam saw clearly now the dent in Doe Capaldi’s head, the silver glint of electromuscle where his shoulder had been cracked open. Then something occurred to him.
‘Live two years,’ he said. ‘You said “better to live two years as good Artemisian . . .”.’
‘Bomb. Radiation on wire in mind. Cut lifespan.’
‘What? How do you know this?’
‘All troop leaders told.’ Doe Capaldi laughed, then concentrated, and came close to forming a proper sentence. ‘Why do you think that conscripts put to work on clearing mountains?’
Doe Capaldi pushed Olam’s head forward once more, then painfully, metal scraping on rock, he pulled himself onwards. Somewhere behind them the rock creaked.
‘You knew this?’ said Olam. ‘You knew this all the time?’ Realization struck. ‘So this is your revenge. You save my life, but only for a little while. Two years?’
‘More like six months now,’ said Doe Capaldi. ‘We both too close to blast.’
And at that he gave Olam’s head a last shove and sent him bouncing out into the rain.
Olam was free.
Free to live for another six months.
He heard a noise nearby.
‘Over here!’ he called.
A clattering of feet, then he saw the grey shape of an infantryrobot leaning over him.
‘What happened to you?’ a voice asked.
Susan
Susan felt disgusted with herself. It was as if she had let her hands rust, allowed her electromuscle to unravel. As if she had let someone else build her own body for her. To kneel at the feet of another man and to twist his metal . . . ?
She had ideas in her mind, pictures and emotions she had been saving up for this day, but they waited untouched in the darkened rooms of her mind as her hands twisted the young man’s wire in the pattern that Nettie had just taught them.
Twenty-three women knelt in that room, all working in silence.
Yellow eyes stared down at her in contempt, and Susan felt such hatred in her heart. All that had happened to her at the hands of Artemis, she now focused that hatred on the man seated before her. Oh, to stand up and to take hold of his coil, to see the expression in his eyes as she crushed it slowly.
But she didn’t dare. Instead, she just twisted blue metal. It was too thin, she thought; the lifeforce that flowed through it seemed so much weaker than that of Karel’s wire. Everything about this man was a pale shadow of her husband.
What would Karel think if he could see her now, kneeling like this?
She thrust the thought from her mind, just went on twisting wire.
Nettie walked around the room, watching them, checking on what they were doing, offering advice. Everyone seemed to be doing okay, but no one dared otherwise for, there in the background, they could feel the presence of the Scout, eyeing them, half mad with the shrieking current that poured through her mind, waiting for an excuse to pounce.
Susan’s hands twisted away, following the instructions that Nettie had given, winding the deep brain around the base knot . . . and a growing sense of unease began to emerge from the disgust. She was reaching the end of Nettie’s preliminary map of a Nyro mind. What was she supposed to do then? Follow the plan that she had been working out for Karel and her child? What type of bastard child would emerge from such a synthesis?
The other women felt that unease too. They stole glances at each other. Susan could see them. None of them looked directly at her, though.
Nettie clapped her hands together in a rattle of copper.
‘Okay, ladies, and now we stop!’
Susan and the rest paused, their fingers holding their place in the weave.
‘Put down the minds.’
No one moved.
‘Put down the minds, ladies.’
There
was a murmur of concern.
Someone spoke up. ‘But they will unravel!’
The Scout pounced, a bladed hand was held to one kneeling woman’s neck.
‘So let it unravel, Tokvah.’ The Scout’s voice sounded like a drill piercing hard metal.
A cry took hold of the voicebox of every woman kneeling in the room.
‘But ladies!’ shrilled Nettie. ‘Ladies! You hold nothing but wire. Nothing but metal! Weren’t you listening to all I said? Nyro says there is no difference between metal that walks and metal that lies in the ground! Whether we are spontaneous or twisted by our mothers, we are all nothing but metal. This city, the railway lines, the wire that you hold, all is nothing but metal. However Nyro’s philosophy chooses to shape it, there is nothing but metal. You hold wire in your hands, ladies. Let it go. Let it spill and tangle on the ground, to be later made into guns or blades or walls or other minds. What does it matter? It is nothing but metal.’
‘No . . .’ sobbed a woman. The Scout was suddenly there, knocking the wire from her hands, her hand on her neck, squeezing, breaking her coil.
The women on either side shook the wire from their hands, sobbing electronic squeaks and wails.
‘Well done, ladies,’ called Nettie. ‘You see? It is nothing but metal! Remember, this truth is written in the very stars and moons themselves!’
The woman who had just had her coil broken slumped to the floor.
Crying, sobbing, Susan shook the wire from her hands and saw her second child die.
Maoco O
Noises echoed throughout the fort. The muffled sounds of distant explosions, the shriek of metal being torn apart, the dull pounding thump thump thump of engines working away deep underground. Artemis was here, stripping the home of the City Guards apart.
And now it was time for Maoco O to face them once more.
It felt so strange, leaving his hiding place dressed like this. He felt so weak and vulnerable, with his badly knitted electromuscle and his imperfectly forged bones. Maoco O had had no practice at building bodies, he felt ridiculously proud of his first attempt. For the first time in his life, he felt connected with the world. The pressure of his feet on the floor, the tension in his electromuscles as he padded through metal corridors. The sound of his footsteps, the sound of the pounding as the Artemisians plundered the fort; it was as if those noises were passing directly into his mind. He had built those ears himself!
A noise just around the corner made him dodge backwards into a convenient room.
The terror that arose within him was strange. If he was found, he would have to fight – but fight with this weak body? He could be killed! Nicolas the Coward, whispered a voice. But no, he thought, this is not cowardice. For the first time in my life I will be properly fighting. Almost as an equal. What does it matter when this risk makes me seem so alive!
The room in which he found himself was small. An armoury, filled with racks of knives: everything from large pangas to tiny awls. Shiny prying knives and carbon-blacked throwing knives. A rack of carbon-steel kukris sat just next to him, their blades covered in a film of oil.
He took one from the rack and weighed it in his hand. It was a lot heavier than he expected, the balance all wrong for his new body with its thinner electromuscles. At the moment, everything felt strange.
There were footsteps outside.
Maoco O adopted a ready position. How would he fight, dressed as he was?
The door slid open.
The robot outside wore a blue-painted shell. Its arms were long, its fingers thin and prying. It saw Maoco O and recoiled in horror.
‘Turing Citizen!’ it called out.
Maoco O’s reactions were faster than the body he had built. His mind set him leaping forward, his newly built legs stumbled, his arms flailed, and he dragged the kukri in a deep scratching cut down the front of the other robot. The robot looked at the mess the weapon made of his shell and panicked.
‘Help!’ it shrieked.
More footsteps pounding towards him. Infantry-robots. Maoco O’s reflexes told him they were easy prey, but his mind overruled them. As the other robot curled up in a protective huddle on the floor, he scrambled over it and ran out into the corridor.
‘Down here! One of the engineers!’
The voice came from further down the corridor. Maoco O turned and ran, enemy feet pounding along behind him. He was just waiting for the gunshot that would blow his mind apart. It didn’t come, and he felt disgust at the amateurism of these troops. Who had trained them? They were chasing him, rather than just shooting at him.
Round a corner, he dropped through a trap in the floor, hit the lock button and then doubled back along the corridor below. He paused a moment to listen for sounds of pursuit.
Nothing.
Maoco O had escaped.
His body was unsteady, there was a rattle somewhere in his left knee, his gyroscopes were spinning, his electromuscles spasming . . .
He had never felt so alive!
Susan
It went on and on: Nettie lecturing them, drilling them on how to twist a mind the Artemisian way.
The sessions in the making room, kneeling before those young infantrymen. Being made to shake the wire of a half-made mind from your hands over and over again until you became hardened to it. Eventually coming to see what you were doing as nothing more than twisting metal: she realized she was being hammered in the forge of Artemis, her mind folded over and hammered again until it became nothing more than a shining, hardened piece of metal, and she began to see metal as nothing more than metal.
The world outside of this nursery building was fading in her mind, her life with Karel and Axel now seeming like the empty shell of a ghost. She could picture the exterior appearance, but she could remember no life beneath the façade.
There was no chance to speak, and no one to speak to. The women were marched back and forth from the lecture room to the making-room: there was nowhere else they went. One hundred and forty-four steps to the making room over the iron and plastic floors, through corridors lit by single bulbs. Kneeling on the making-room floor before a succession of young men who spilled their wire into her hands, and later looked down with pale eyes as half-completed minds were brushed in tangled clumps from the floor. Didn’t they care what happened to their own wire?
Sometimes there was time for a brief exchange of words in the corridor, a chance for a quick snatch of conversation. She heard the other women exchanging names, words of support. But not to Susan. Word had spread, and the only word she heard from the others was traitor. Why? Because she had been spared death at the hands of the Scout?
Or something else? The rumours had followed her here from Turing City. She was the woman who had married Karel. They were convinced that Karel was a traitor, and now she was, too. Hadn’t she received special treatment?
And there was Nettie. Nettie remained friendly towards her. The other women had seen it. She was the favourite. No wonder they considered her a traitor.
But why? What had she done? Nettie and Masur and Maoco O. Each of them had drawn that same symbol; the circle with the dot at the top. Like it was a sign that she should recognize.
Back and forth along the iron corridor. How many days had she now been here? How many weeks?
It took two hours to make a mind. Over ten thousand twists, and Susan and the other women had been drilled on each and every one of them. Over and over again, so many minds half-made and then abandoned. She felt hollow inside.
Finally, though, the time came.
Nettie, her body as dull and unimpressive as ever, paused before the sheet of polished metal upon which she had sketched out her instructions, then laid down her stylus and turned to face the twenty-two remaining women.
‘And that, ladies,’ she said, ‘is the end of the training. So now we test you.’
There was nothing else, no congratulations. The women were stood up and marched down to the making room.
There Susan too
k her place, kneeling at the feet of a grey infantryrobot. She reached up and began to twist wire.
And then something happened. Something that had never happened before. The robot leaned down and spoke in her ear.
‘Hello, Susan.’
Susan paused. She glanced around the room. No one else had heard. They were all busy working away, twisting wire. She looked for the silver shape of the Scout. It wasn’t there.
‘Aren’t you going to speak to me, Susan?’
Hands still twisting, she looked up into the yellow eyes of the infantryrobot.
‘Who are you?’
‘My name is Banjo Macrodocious.’
‘Who?’ The name sounded familiar. Where had she heard it before? Had Karel mentioned it?
‘What do you want?’
‘I don’t want anything. That’s why I’m so special. I was made that way.’
‘Why?’
‘So I could do my job. We have two hours together, Susan, and I want to speak to you. I want to discuss philosophy.’
‘Why?’ she glanced fearfully around the room. ‘Are you trying to get us both killed?’
‘We will be okay. Nettie is one of us. No one else here will speak because they are too frightened of what might happen to them. Susan, have you heard of the Book of Robots?’
Susan felt a thrill. The Book of Robots. Maoco O had mentioned it, what seemed like years ago.
‘I’ve heard of it,’ she said. ‘What is it?’
‘Heresy. It contradicts everything that robots believe.’
‘Why?’
‘The Book of Robots is supposed to contain the map of a robot body.’
‘So? Any woman could twist a map of a body!’ Her tone was bitter. ‘I’ve just spent weeks learning one such map.’
Banjo Macrodocious leaned closer. ‘This is the plan of the first robot.’
Susan was genuinely puzzled, her hands still twisting wire.
‘What do you mean, the first robot?’
‘What if I were to tell you that robot life did not evolve on this planet, as we have all believed? What if I were to tell you that we, too, were designed, just as a robot would design a hammer or an awl or an engine?’
Twisted Metal Page 23
