Twisted Metal (13 page)

But the speakers whistled again, and the fantasy vanished, and Olam was back in the stadium, just one of hundreds of robots who had come here seeking the only apparent opportunity left for survival.

There was yet another whistle, and a voice resolved itself.

‘Good morning, robots.’

Olam followed the turning heads of his fellow captives towards the Royal Box. Only a few days before, Olam had visited the stadium with his brothers to watch the combat: robots in a carnival of customized bodies fighting to the death. Then, the Royal Box had been draped with tungsten alloy foil that flashed iridescent patterns in the wind. Now, it was just another iron box. A nondescript grey robot stood there on the balcony, speaking into a microphone.

‘My name is Eleanor,’ she was saying, ‘second in command to Kavan, leader of the Artemisian troops. Kavan, who was born an outsider and is now part of Artemis. Take him as an example, robots, and remember the words that Nyro spoke. “
Artemis is never intended to be a country. Artemis is an ideal
.”’

‘I told you,’ murmured the aristocrat. ‘They want us. They
need
us.’

‘Silence,’ said another robot, but the tall robot was going to have his say.

‘To think there are some fools still hiding out there in the city, just waiting for their brains to be unwound at the end of an awl. They should have come here, to safety. They should have listened to me . . .’

Eleanor was speaking again. Olam strained his vision to get a better look at her. She seemed so nondescript. So grey. So inter-changeable.

‘And now you, too, have come here to serve Artemis. Some of you, no doubt, with a genuine desire to be part of the Artemesian state. But some of you will have come here through fear, or cowardice. Those in the city beyond would call you traitors . . .’

At her words, Olam felt a lurch in his gyros. He remembered the looks on his brothers’ faces as he had left the shelter of the forge earlier that morning, the foil sheet advertising Artemis’s offer clutched in his hands. He remembered the walk through the clear morning towards the stadium. The city was broken, wreathed in smoke and spattered with droplets of metal, but the tall iron shape of the stadium remained untouched, rising cold and sinister above the streets. For decades, robots had fought to the death in that stadium, the wire of the defeated minds unwound and spooled up and sent off to be melted. Olam had thought little of their fate in the past. Now, maybe, he was going to join them. Perhaps he, too, would meet his death on the stadium floor.

His thoughts were yanked back to the present and Eleanor’s words.

‘. . . but, no matter what your motives, all of you are welcome here. Now, if you will just bear with me a few moments . . .’

There was another whistle and the speakers were clicked off. Eleanor turned away from the balcony. Olam had a surge of hope at her words. Maybe it was going to be okay after all.

‘I told you,’ murmured the tall robot, and suddenly Olam had a clear vision of how things were going to be. A vision of the Wiener aristocracy and their hangers-on, slotting easily into place in the Artemisian army, rising quickly through the ranks, while the likes of him were left at the bottom as always, only one step above the slaves and the condemned. Some things never changed.

The aristocrat murmured again. ‘I’ll tell you something else . . .’

There was a harsh rattle of metal and an electronic whine.

‘No talking!’

The infantryrobot had seemingly appeared from nowhere. He had hit the aristocrat across the back of the head with his rifle. The tall robot was rubbing his head, trying to adjust the set of his mind.

And now Olam realized how the crowd had been silently infiltrated by grey Artemisian troops. They were picking their way through the mass of Wiener robots, pulling random people out of the crowd and herding them towards one of the stadium exits. Olam looked closer. Pulling only the women out of the crowd, he realized. The Artemisian soldier that had hit the tall robot over the head was now examining the woman with the damaged leg.

‘Is there any other damage?’ he asked her.

‘No . . .’ said the woman. ‘No, I’m fine.’

The soldier was unconvinced. ‘Hey, Greta. Come and take a look at this one.’

Another grey soldier came over. Slightly shabby-looking, made of well-worn metal. She examined the damaged leg.

‘Seems localized,’ she decided. ‘But why risk it? We’ve harvested enough. Leave her here.’

The two soldiers vanished into the crowd. Only Olam noticed that one of them had dropped something. An awl. Nonchalantly, he bent down and palmed the glossy black spike.

The aristocrat seemed to be recovering. ‘Best not to speak,’ he said.

The woman looked concerned. ‘What did they mean,
why risk it?
’ she asked, too nervous to heed the tall robot’s advice. ‘Why did they leave me behind? They’ve taken all the other women away.’

‘Not all,’ said the aristocrat quietly. ‘They’ve left the young ones. Now, let’s stay quiet . . .’

Olam felt his gyros lurch again. What was going on?

The grey troops were moving back through the crowd, separating them out. Olam found himself being forced off the gravel that covered most of the ground and onto one of the magnetized running surfaces that ran around the perimeter of the stadium. He felt his feet lock onto it as he walked; and he felt a lurch of fear. This is where robots had been run to death, supercharged and sent hurtling around the track, expending their lifeforce in one burst, whilst he and his brothers had watched and cheered. Now it seemed that the roles were about to be reversed.

He looked around to see that the crowd was being spaced out into groups of three. Olam found himself with the tall robot and the damaged woman. More and more, he realized he had made a big mistake in coming here.

‘What’s going on?’ asked the woman again. The tall robot just rubbed his head thoughtfully.

The speakers whistled. Eleanor’s voice sounded.

‘Future Artemisians,’ she said. ‘Artemis was never intended to be a country. Artemis is an ideal. Artemis does not serve you, nor you it. Rather, you
are
Artemis. Artemis only needs the strong, the clever, the cunning, the artificers.’

Olam’s gyros lurched again. The damaged woman looked at him, fear in her eyes.

‘Prove you have those qualities,’ continued Eleanor. ‘We only need two-thirds of your number.’

There was an uneasy stirring in the crowd. Olam felt removed from the events, he felt as if he were standing in the terraces amongst the grey soldiers, or sitting where he belonged, up there ready to watch the killing, not down here participating in it. Hah, at least if he was up there he would be enjoying this spectacle, not like those grey soldiers above. They didn’t seem concerned by events on the stadium floor; they simply watched it all with bored resignation . . . A shot rang out, jerking him from his reverie. And another. There was a continuous volley of shots. All around the stadium, robots slumped to the ground, blue wire twisting and uncurling from their heads. Grey soldiers walked away, their guns smoking.

‘Five minutes,’ announced Eleanor, ‘or we reduce the numbers ourselves.’

The aristocrat moved coldly and dispassionately, seizing the damaged woman with his two long arms.

‘I saw you pick up that awl,’ he said to Olam. ‘Use it on her.’

‘Please!’ cried the woman. ‘No.’

Olam looked at the shiny black spike in his hand.

‘Do you want them to shoot us?’ asked the tall robot. ‘Use it!’

‘No!’ said the woman, eyes wide with fear. ‘Please, no!’

‘It’s you or us,’ explained the aristocrat. ‘This isn’t personal.’

‘But I have two children . . .’

Olam weighed the spike in his hand. He looked at the tall robot, looked at the whale metal covering his body. The tall robot knew what he was thinking.

‘There’s no point attacking me,’ it said. ‘That awl would never pierce my body. I’m covered in whale metal. Look at you, with your pig-iron plating. I could defeat you with ease, but this woman is weaker. And you have a weapon. So use it on her.’

The woman gazed at him, eyes pleading.

‘What did you expect?’ asked the aristocrat. ‘This is Artemis we are dealing with. Only the clever and the strong serve it. That is why it’s so powerful.’

Olam looked around the stadium. He could see that most groups were, like his own, gripped by indecision. But in some of them a fight was taking place. In a few, robots already lay dead. One lay nearby on the magnetic track, arms and legs pulsing as two young women repeatedly smashed his head on the ground. Olam watched as the unfortunate robot’s skull was buckled and torn. The women pulled blue wire from the widening cracks in great loops, their mouths emitting excited electronic squeaks as they did so.

‘I can’t,’ said Olam, sickened. But maybe also a little excited, he realized. ‘I won’t,’ he said firmly.

‘Then give me the awl and let me do it!’ The tall robot’s voice was cold. There was no anger there, no passion. Nothing but pure logic.

Seemingly without his volition, Olam’s arm reached forward, the awl offered up on his palm.

‘No!’ screamed the woman, her body rattling with fear. ‘Please!’

Olam came to his senses and snatched his hand back.

‘You’re a fool, man,’ said the tall robot coldly. ‘Do you mean to tell me you’ve never come here to watch the fighting?’ He saw the answer in Olam’s stance. ‘I thought as much. Lower-class voyeur. You can watch it, but can you do it? Well, here’s your chance to join your betters! I killed my first robot when I was just ten! You should know what to do; you’ve seen it happen often enough. Come on! We’ve only got a couple of minutes left! Do you want to be killed too? It’s the logical thing. Only she dies, or we all die. Either way she will be dead. You’re condemning both of us as well.’

The woman began to sob.

‘Don’t do that,’ said the tall robot, dismissively. ‘You’re being selfish. Die like a true Wiener.’

He meant it, realized Olam and, out of nowhere, a mad laughter bubbled up inside him.

‘But we aren’t Wieners any more,’ he cried. ‘We’re all Artemisians now!’

And at that, he gripped the awl in his fist, point down, and leaped at the tall robot. The sun was at his back: he saw their shadows stretching out on the ground before them. He saw himself gripping the tall robot around the neck, bringing the point of the awl down again and again on the aristocrat’s skull.

‘You can’t hurt me,’ said the tall robot patiently. ‘I’m made of whale metal.’

He was right. They all three struggled in vain, Olam blunting the point of the awl on the beautiful grey metal of the aristocrat’s skull, the woman desperately fighting to be free.

‘I’m growing impatient, prole. Only one minute left.
Kill her!
’

Olam gave up on the man’s skull. He brought the awl around and stabbed at an eye. The man raised an arm to defend himself, and the woman finally broke free of his grip.

‘Hold him!’ called Olam.

The woman grabbed an arm and held onto it. Olam stabbed at the aristocrat’s eye once more, grazing it.

‘You see!’ The tall robot was almost laughing. ‘You
have
got the motivation. You can kill . . .’

With a gyroscopic lurch, Olam realized that the tall robot was right. So
this
is what those robots on the killing floor felt. It felt good! The feeling rushed through his electromuscle, and he stabbed at the aristocrat again. The eye flared and died. A sharp current ran through the awl into Olam’s hand.

The woman screamed. The tall robot had reached through the damaged plating at her thigh and grabbed the electromuscle there. Now Olam stabbed at the tall robot’s hand.

All around them, he was vaguely aware of more and more robots lying dead on the track.

‘Stop wasting time,’ snapped the tall robot. ‘Kill her!’

The aristocrat honestly believed he could still order him about! Fury overtook Olam. His arms functioned of their own accord. He stabbed for the tall robot’s other eye and was batted away, flung to the ground. He rose and charged forward, just as a volley of shots rang out.

A series of sharp cracks. The spang and whiz of ricochets. Olam looked at the woman, at the tall robot. They looked back at him, at each other, both waiting. There was another volley, and another. Still they waited.

Silence. And then the light faded in the woman’s eyes. She slumped to the ground.

The tall robot gazed at Olam with disgust.

‘They shot her,’ he said. ‘So apart from me losing my eye, what have you achieved?’

Olam felt the lurching inside him come to a halt. It was replaced with a smooth calmness and a cold certainty.

What have I achieved?
he wondered. The answer came in a hot charge of current.
The knowledge that I can kill, if I need to
.

Eleanor

Eleanor didn’t pay much attention to what was going on on the stadium floor. The weak and the unlucky would die, and in that way the overall quality of the new recruits would be raised. It wasn’t as if they were Artemisians yet. At the moment they were nothing more than talking metal.