Blood and Iron p-2

by Tony Ballantyne

  Kavan had thought of a possible weakness at this point, he had asked his Scouts for further information. Two of them had died – picked off as they crossed the plain by missiles fired from high above – in order to bring Kavan the answer. The humans were well ahead of Kavan: the Scouts had confirmed that there were many guns at the point where the railway lines pierced the camp. Furthermore, their placement showed they were ready to be turned upon the trains, or indeed in the direction of Artemis City, should the current alliance break down.

  ‘This way, this way,’ said Calor, running back to meet him.

  ‘I can’t keep my feet on this loose stone like you can,’ said Kavan, stumbling on a loose gravel bank. Stark had stripped this land of metal with devastating efficiency. The ground was a maze of pits and broken rubble, criss-crossed by hard packed roads. It was a great place to hide out, a difficult place to traverse.

  ‘Nearly there!’

  Yes, Kavan respected the animals. Yet he felt disgusted by them at the same time. They were so fragile. The robots had captured only three of them, so far as he knew, and each one of them had been broken and accidentally killed by its captors. The first had been trapped in the wreckage of a crashed flying craft. The Scout that had found it had cut off its limbs and lower torso to drag it free. According to her account, the creature had screamed horribly as she did this, and had sent masses of red fluid squirting in all directions before it had died.

  A second pair had been captured almost immediately afterwards. They had been cut from their craft intact, and then sealed in an oil container whilst Kavan was sent for. It was a good plan; the idea had been the steel of the container would block any signals the prisoners might try to send to searching humans. Unfortunately, by the time Kavan had arrived there, the creatures were dead, their skin turned a strange blue colour, at least those parts that hadn’t been burned red on contact with the hot metal, heated by the sun.

  It was only after the second fatalities that Kavan had sent out a message asking for advice on the handling of animals. The advice that came back to him from the Wieners and the few conscripts from the Northern Kingdoms made him more aware than ever just how feeble these humans were. They needed water, grass and leaves to consume, they had to be kept within a narrow temperature range, they had to be exposed to the air. They couldn’t be punctured, they couldn’t be disassembled in any way. It made Kavan wonder if they were worth the bother.

  But he persevered, and when the message came through that two Scouts had finally managed to capture an animal on the ground, one that had walked over a hundred yards from its flying craft, trusting to what turned out to be a faulty robot detector, Kavan had come running.

  The animal had been hurried from the site of the craft by the two Scouts. They had followed standing orders and cut from the creature anything plastic or metal, all the while being careful not pierce any part of its fleshy body.

  They had then led it at blade point across the rocky land to an old Stark village, abandoned after the invasion by Artemis over ten years ago. Kavan had been lucky; he was only fifty miles away at the time. He had immediately begun to travel towards the captive, hoping to reach it before the fragile creature died. It had taken him nearly two days, cutting across the broken ground, hiding from the aircraft that swooped back and forth over the land, desperately seeking their fallen comrade, but now Kavan was almost there. He could see, rising from behind the low hill ahead, the broken tower that would once have housed the village’s clock.

  ‘Come on, Kavan! Come on!’

  Calor was singing with impatience, singing with too much current. Kavan slipped on broken stones as he made his way around the hillside and, finally, he was there.

  The village was built of the incredibly hard, shiny red bricks that only Stark had been able to produce. Any metal had long been stripped away, but the robots of Stark built equally well with stone and metal alike. Tiled roofs remained intact, clear glass windows still stared at Kavan after all these years.

  ‘In there, in there!’ Calor was dancing, pointing.

  Kavan passed through an empty doorway, the missing door no doubt now part of a robot or some other piece of machinery employed by Artemis, and he found himself in a dark space.

  ‘No lights in here: turn your eyes up!’

  Kavan did so. Two infantryrobots and an engineer stood nearby. And beyond them…

  ‘Don’t come too close yet, Kavan!’ warned one. ‘Your body will still be hot from the sun! You’ll burn it!’

  Finally, Kavan found himself face to face with an animal.

  It was female. Kavan was surprised, but he could tell by looking that the creature was female. It was something to do with the shape of the body. She was looking at him with her blue eyes. She was frightened, Kavan could tell, but who could blame her for that? She was a fighter, though. Kavan recognized a kindred spirit, and he wondered that a creature so different, so alien, could have something in common with himself.

  ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘My name is Kavan.’

  The creature unleashed a string of gibberish. Kavan watched her pink mouth moving, saw the pink thing inside darting around as she shaped words with air and flesh.

  ‘Why can’t she speak properly?’ he asked. ‘Is she damaged?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said the engineer. ‘I don’t think so. If you listen carefully there is a pattern to what she says, like she’s communicating, but with a different… protocol to the one which we use.’

  ‘But why speak in a different way to us?’

  Kavan was mystified. Speech was speech. It was one of the signs of an intelligent mind, that it could communicate with another.

  ‘I don’t know. Stefan here has a theory that maybe speech isn’t woven directly into their minds as it is with robot children.’

  Kavan thought about it.

  ‘It sounds plausible. But how are we going to communicate with her?’

  ‘I’ve been working on that. Watch.’

  He held up a hand.

  ‘Hello,’ he said.

  ‘He-shhh,’ replied the female.

  ‘She can’t make the feedback sound,’ explained the engineer. ‘Obviously her voicebox is organic, not electronic.’ He turned back to the female.

  ‘My name is Valve,’ he said, placing his hand on his chest.

  ‘Me shhh issh Luphanshh,’ said the female, copying his gesture.

  ‘Sounds a bit like Luvan,’ said Karel. ‘That’s an Artemisian name.’

  The female was still speaking. She was holding her hand to her mouth, the fingers curved, tilting her head back.

  ‘That means she wants water,’ said Valve. ‘I sent the Scout to get some. She’s fussy. Seawater is no good; it has to be from the stream.’

  ‘Okay.’ Kavan gazed at the creature, weighing it up.

  ‘Four of you looking after her, the humans constantly searching for her. I wonder if it’s worth the effort to keep her?’

  ‘Oh yes, Kavan, I’m sure it is. There is so much to learn.’

  ‘In other circumstances I may agree with you. I came fifty miles hoping to question this creature, and now I find that I can’t. The longer we hold her in one place, the more likely the animals will find her. We can’t take her out of here now; they would spot her in minutes. You know, we would do better examining her body, learning how it works. We’ve never had a whole one before.’

  The creature was looking at him. Her blue eyes were wider, he could see the whites around them.

  ‘She knows,’ said Kavan. ‘Look at her; she knows what we’re talking about.’

  Kavan wasn’t cruel, it wasn’t woven into him. He was merely ruthless. ‘I should make a decision quickly,’ he said. ‘To do otherwise would needlessly prolong this creature’s agony.’

  ‘Give me a day,’ pleaded Valve. ‘I’m sure I can find out something of worth.’

  ‘Like what? How the flying craft work? I have engineers that can do that. What their plans are? We know that. They will continu
e to expand across Shull. I’ve already wasted two days on this. Kill her and put her out of her misery.’

  ‘No!’ said Valve. ‘They’re different when they’re dead. They’re not like robots! You don’t understand, the whole body just stops working when the mind dies. I need to examine her whilst she’s still alive. Let me block the mouth so she can’t make any noise. I can cut her open, see how the parts move.’

  Kavan held the creature’s eye. She did know, she had some inkling about what was being said. She was terrified, and yet, she was fighting not to show it. He admired that.

  ‘No,’ said Kavan. ‘That would be too cruel. We’re robots, not animals. We kill for a reason, and we do it quickly. We don’t torture. Shoot her in the head, do it fast so she doesn’t know.’

  One of the infantryrobots raised its rifle and fired. Grey gel, streaked with red, splattered over Kavan’s body. The dead creature slumped to the ground.

  ‘It’s a pity,’ said Kavan, stirring one of the creature’s legs with his foot. ‘Maybe later there will be a time to get to know more about them, once we’ve regained control of Artemis City.’

  ‘If we regain control,’ said Valve. He looked wistfully at the dead creature. ‘I would have like to have spoken some more.’

  He brightened up.

  ‘Still, at least now we get to take a look inside a healthy one.’

  Kavan began to wipe the grey gel from his body.

  ‘What now?’ asked Calor.

  ‘I think it’s time,’ said Kavan. ‘We’ve spent enough time here on the periphery.’

  He looked down at the dead animal. Strange to think that something so soft could cause so much trouble.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I think it’s time to return to Artemis City. Send out the word.’

  Wa-Ka-Mo-Do

  The evening sky was flushing a deep red: it was the colour of the forge reflected on the roof of the world. The world was warping all around him, its struts and beams under pressure from the animals who had come from the stars.

  The city was a slowly heating pyre, out there in the hot summer countryside robots were being moved to rebellion.

  Wa-Ka-Mo-Do watched as the lake turned black, saw the red fire withdraw as the sun set behind the city.

  The night was approaching.

  Even as he waited for the enemy, there on the dark terrace, the stars switching on above him, even as felt the fear that hummed in the city below, even as he struggled with that mix of boredom and anticipation of the coming attack, even then Wa-Ka-Mo-Do still found the human guns incredibly erotic.

  There was something about the machinery, the way the impossibly smooth metal slipped seamlessly together, the dark sheen of the alien alloy, the way that it shimmered in star light as if it were slicked in oil. Wa-Ka-Mo-Do had touched a barrel, revelled guiltily in the sleek smoothness, the absolutely zero static charge. What was it about these weapons? Did the humans deliberately build them to look so feminine? Were they even aware of what they had done? Wa-Ka-Mo-Do doubted it. It was obvious that the humans had little regard for what robots thought.

  The land seemed darker in contrast to the brilliance of the rising moon, but the lake… The lake reflected the universe in curdled white clouds. Wa-Ka-Mo-Do looked at the stars, shining in the water. That was where the humans had come from, he thought. What else lurked out there? For that matter, what else was lurking here on Penrose, just beyond the horizons? The robots of Yukawa had lived in splendid isolation for so long. Now the universe had come looking for them.

  He wondered how La-Ver-Di-Arussah and Ka-Lo-Re-Harballah were getting on. He had sent them down into the city to try and calm the population. The streets below sounded quiet for the moment, but he knew that wouldn’t last with La-Ver-Di-Arussah down there. Still, if she had remained up here the two of them would probably be fighting each other by now.

  It was peaceful for the moment, though. An island of calm under the stars. Somewhere out there humans were grouping to attack. Land ploughed up and covered in alien crops that poisoned the native life of Yukawa was being trodden by robots speaking openly of rebellion. And here he stood, in this square with humans on one hand and robots on the other, and somewhere in the Copper Master’s house Li-Kallalla would be piecing together the parts of the radio, and for the moment keeping quiet about what he, Wa-Ka-Mo-Do, had done. How long would this suspended moment last? He was happy to have nothing for company but these darkly fascinating machines, singing with that strange alien electricity.

  The guns suddenly raised themselves into the air and turned as one to face the same direction. A rapid pumping sound started up. There was remarkably little noise, it was almost a rippling of the air, but Wa-Ka-Mo-Do saw the electromagnetic field formed by so much metal being sprayed through the planet’s own magnetic field. Orange light flared, out there in the distance of the night. The firing ceased, the guns turned their heads a little and then immediately resumed. Another orange explosion. The guns moved once more. Something was coming out of the night, so fast that one of the guns set up by the Copper Master’s house was cut neatly in half. Now it was the turn of the house itself. Tiles shattered in a line of destruction that snapped off as suddenly as it had begun. The guns were firing once more, pointing at the third orange explosion lit up in the distance.

  After that the guns seemed to lose interest, they lowered themselves, resting. Alien women, exotic and fascinating – they were moving! Up and turning to face the opposite direction, too late…

  Wa-Ka-Mo-Do was tumbling over and over, clattering metal, scraping red paint on stone. The ground was shaking and cracking; Wa-Ka-Mo-Do’s vision was filled with static, he felt his thoughts fold themselves around each other for just a moment, felt time jump forward a few seconds, as he moved from a scene of motion, dust and stones and tiles sliding and shaking through the air, to one of stillness, of the world recast after the explosion; the rubble and debris settled.

  ‘What happened?’ He was speaking out loud, to whom he didn’t know.

  The human guns were dancing around him, bobbing up and down in their bizarre dance, spinning this way and that, lighting up the sky in orange balls, lighting up the distant hills, the far horizons, casting deep, fiery reflections in the lake below.

  Ka-Lo-Re-Harballah was running towards him, flanked by two humans, coolant water shining on their faces.

  ‘What have they done, Ka-Lo-Re-Harballah?’ cried Wa-Ka-Mo-Do. ‘What have they done to the Emperor’s city?’

  ‘Half the west side of the city is gone,’ said Ka-Lo-Re-Harballah. ‘The Street of Becoming is buried beneath the houses that once lined it, the human weapon pierced through to the rock below!’

  Ka-Lo-Re-Harballah had lost most of the panelling from his body. His grey electromuscle was smeared in carbon: he sparked as he moved.

  ‘I’ve failed, Ka-Lo-Re-Harballah,’ said Wa-Ka-Mo-Do. ‘I’ve failed in my duty.’

  ‘No, Honoured Commander. The city still stands!’

  From somewhere deep below them, half felt, half heard, came the sound of rock cracking, the shifting, sliding rumble as more of the city collapsed upon itself.

  ‘Wa-Ka-Mo-Do!’

  He turned to see Gillian, the human commander. The green cloth panelling that she wore was torn, her headset crackled as she spoke.

  ‘They hit us with a mini-nuke, high radiation yield,’ she explained.

  ‘Do you understand those terms, Ka-Lo-Re-Harballah?’ asked Wa-Ka-Mo-Do.

  ‘No, Honoured Commander.’

  ‘I do. It means that robots minds are being affected.’

  Gillian wiped a hand across her brow.

  ‘We’re evacuating this city. There’s a shuttle dropping towards us right now, we need to get all the humans up to this square so they can board it!’

  Wa-Ka-Mo-Do was watching the human cannon, leaping and spinning all around him.

  ‘Your guns seem to be holding off the enemy,’ he observed.

  ‘They will,’ said Gillian. ‘It’s
the radiation that’s the problem,’ her voice was still crackling. So was his own, he realized. ‘And they may try another mini-nuke: go for an airburst, though if they do that they will irradiate the land. There’ll be no crops here for-’

  ‘Damaging the land? This is the Emperor’s land.’

  ‘Not any more, Wa-Ka-Mo-Do, not any more.’ There was a sadness and finality in her words that the headset managed to translate.

  ‘Honoured Commander?’

  Wa-Ka-Mo-Do realized he was still staring, lost in the motion of the guns.

  ‘Yes, Ka-Lo-Re-Harballah?’

  ‘Shall I help escort the humans up here to the terrace?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Wa-Ka-Mo-Do. ‘Yes, quickly.’

  He heard, above the odd purring of the human guns, a new sound. One that was gaining in volume.

  Wa-Ka-Mo-Do looked at Ka-Lo-Re-Harballah.

  ‘What is it, Honoured Commander?’

  Wa-Ka-Mo-Do knew what the sound was.

  ‘Gunfire. Those are robot weapons. It’s finally happened. The rebellion has begun.’

  Karel

  ‘We’re going out of our way,’ said Simrock. ‘The Northern Road will lead us into Raman.’

  ‘So?’ said Karel. ‘It’s easy to walk. Better to take our time leaving the mountains than to rush and fall to our deaths.’

  ‘No,’ said Simrock. ‘There is a better path. An older one. One from before the time that robots walked these mountains.’

  ‘How do you know?’ demanded Melt. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘He just does,’ said Karel. ‘The Spontaneous just do. He was right before, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Come on. Over this way.’

  The Spontaneous robot stepped over the wall at the side of the road. He began to walk up a narrow ledge.

  ‘Hold on!’ called Karel. ‘What do you mean, before the time that robots walked these mountains. Who could have made the path?’

  ‘Robots, of course.’

  He carried on, creeping along the ledge.

  ‘Do we follow him?’ Karel asked Melt.