Twisted Metal (3 page)

Karel resumed his progress along the walkway, still surprised by the number of the Made that had turned up here. Such robots had had their minds twisted by their mothers from wire spooled from their father. But the Made were usually seen on the northern borders of Turing City State, as refugees from Bethe and Wien. How had they made it all the way down here, to the southern coast? And there were so many of them . . .

He saw elegantly engineered robots from Stark, their shiny smooth casings humming with quiet power as they patrolled the confined space of their holding areas with proud dignity. There were short, unassuming robots from Bethe and Segre, sitting in groups, staring out through the bars. And even the peculiar builds of robots from distant Raman and Born could be seen, with their magnetized bodies and overlarge feet and hands.

Most surprisingly, there were the Artemisians. The city state of Artemis was not supposed to recognize any difference between normal metal and the carefully twisted metal of the mind. Robots born into a low rank were held to be expendable in the Artemisian State. Karel guessed that their mothers would have twisted their minds towards thoughts of escape as a more likely means of survival than service at the bottom end of Artemisian society.

Suddenly the sheer number of people in the large room made Karel feel giddy, as if his gyros were spinning too fast. Metal hands, metal feet; metal floors, metal bars. Grilles and wire and water splashing inside and booming beneath his feet and, meanwhile, all that other motion around him. It seemed as if the entire world was pressing in on Turing City. Newly constructed Artemis railway lines were spreading across the land. They brought metal to the Artemis forges that made new robots daily, even hourly, robots that poured in metal waves across the southern part of the continent of Shull. Could little Turing City’s walls really hold up against that encroaching tide? Who knew? If the rumours were true, even mighty Wien looked to be on its last legs, ready to fall at any time.

‘What are you looking at?’

The words jolted Karel from his reverie. The speaker was an Artemisian war robot. A Scout. Her body was made of katana metal, silver grey and hard. Her hands and feet were lean and sharp, mirror-bright blades almost totally retracted, only the very tips emerging to scratch curls of swarf from the metal floor as she advanced. She brought her head right up to the bars, stooped a little so that it was level with Karel’s face. He could see how her eyes were recessed behind their narrow slits, withdrawn beyond the reach of any blade. Now she allowed them to protrude ever so slightly, signalling her contempt.

‘How much longer are you going to keep me in here,
Tokvah?
’ she whispered.

With a speed that surprised everyone present, Karel slammed a hand into her face, sending her reeling back across the cell, a grinding noise from his arm signifying a stripped gear. All of a sudden everyone else in the holding cells was very, very quiet, all of them staring at Karel, now flexing his hand, flexing his supple, city hand made of light metal, finely engraved with swirling patterns barely seen in the light, then continuing to walk the gangway towards the rear of the vast room. He seemed oblivious to the way the other immigrants drew back in their cells as he walked by.

Gates followed just behind him. ‘
Zuse
, Karel,’ he swore. ‘I just don’t understand you, I really don’t.’

‘Not in front of the clients,’ muttered Karel, but Gates didn’t seem to hear.

‘I just don’t get the way you’re made. Most of the time you act like a classic Turing City robot: behaving as an individual, but still capable of cooperating for the good of all, and then you turn around and pull a stunt like that.’

‘I don’t see why hitting that
Tokvah
stops me being a cooperator,’ said Karel.

‘Maybe. I don’t know. Hey, I’m not judging! But there’s just something about the way you’re made. People talk, you know.’

‘Let them,’ said Karel.

They had stopped at the very rear of the holding pens, just before the door that led to the isolation area where Gates and his team kept the special cases.

‘So,’ said Karel. ‘Is there anything I should know about this character you’re holding in here?’

‘There’s nothing really to tell,’ said Gates, still eyeing Karel with a thoughtful expression. ‘I’ve never known a robot like this one . . . I think you’d better speak to him yourself.’

Karel folded his hands together, feeling how the right hand was slightly bent out of true from where he had hit the Artemisian. That could be repaired later. For the moment he felt apprehensive, more so than he would have expected. He wondered what lay behind this door that necessitated him being dragged all the way here, away from his work, away from his wife, Susan. Especially when she had been acting so oddly lately, suddenly so emotional. Karel tried to dismiss the thought. She had been like that the last time they were planning a child, he told himself.

‘Very well,’ said Karel. ‘Let me through.’

Gates opened the door.

‘Cell number two,’ he said.

Susan

‘What’s the matter, Susan? You look like Oneill herself has just spoken to you.’

Deya’s face was filled with concern.
Why can’t we make a face that fully masks our emotions?
wondered Susan.
We can build blank masks or we can build faces
.
Why can’t we build a buffer between our feelings and our expressions?

‘Susan, speak to me,’ Deya insisted. ‘Is it Karel? Are you worried about him? I heard he was out at the coast today.’

Deya has such a pretty face
.
I could never build anything so delicate, or so well formed
.
The curve of the brows over her eyes, the line of her cheek
.
When she speaks it’s like a breeze blowing on flutes
.
No matter how I tune my electromuscle
,
I can never pull a smile like hers
. . .

‘Susan, stop staring at me like that!’

‘Sorry, Deya. I’m okay. Just a little, I don’t know . . . angry I suppose. And shocked.’

Deya turned this way and that, looking around the metal and glass arches of the railway terminus, trying to determine what had upset her friend.

‘Susan, is it this?’ She pointed to the letters, engraved on the sheet of steel at the top of the notice board.

Susan nodded.

‘Oh, Deya, I know I’m being silly. I shouldn’t let it affect me like this.’

‘It annoys me too, Susan, but I don’t let it spoil my day.’ She smiled. ‘But then again, I’m not making plans at the moment.’

‘Who told you?’

‘Susan, it’s so obvious. For weeks now you’ve been walking around storing up bits of conversations and mimicking character traits and observing other people’s interactions. You and Karel are going to have another child.’

‘We’re thinking of a little girl,’ Susan admitted.

‘You’re the chief statistician of this state,’ said Deya. ‘If anyone is going to build a successful child, it’s you.’

‘Deya, you’re just like Karel. You make it sound so easy.’

‘It
is
easy, Susan. Robots have been doing it since Oneill showed them how.’

‘You don’t really believe in Oneill!’

‘No! A figure of speech! But Susan, I believe in you, and you should know better than anyone what makes a successful robot. You have all the necessary figures delivered to you on metal film.’

‘I know what makes a successful robot in Turing City,’ conceded Susan. ‘But is
that
the right way? You can see what it says . . .’

She read the notice again:

‘I didn’t know they had taken Wien!’ said Susan.

Deya laughed dismissively. ‘Don’t believe everything you read, dear.’

‘I don’t care,’ said Susan weakly. ‘It makes a good point.’

A diesel engine revved once, twice, somewhere behind them.

‘I can’t
believe
you’re talking like this,’ said Deya. ‘How many robots are there in Turing City at the moment?’

‘In the city itself, or the state as a whole?’

‘The city.’

‘Thirty-three thousand, one hundred and nine.’

‘And how many of them are built according to Artemisian philosophy?’

‘Twenty-one.’

‘Twenty-one! Hah! Well there you go.’

‘That we know of, anyway. But this time last year there were only four.’

‘So what? There’s no choice, Susan. Who is going to sacrifice their child to Artemis in this city? We have so much more going for us. Look!’

She pointed to the high-vaulted roof of the station, the way that the thin, white-painted metal joined in delicate curves, the way that patterns of sunlight coloured by the glass illuminated the scrollwork of the wrought iron.

‘I bet they don’t have that in Artemis,’ said Deya.

‘I bet they don’t. But I wonder if they were saying the same in Wien, just before the invasion.’

‘I told you, Wien has not been invaded. That notice is lying. Anyway, we’re stronger than Wien.’

‘But are we strong enough? It makes me wonder whether it’s worth even making a child any more . . .’

‘It’s never been a good time to make a child! But you know you’re going to, Susan. You have the capability. You’re not like Nicolas the Coward.’

‘Am I not, Deya? I really don’t know if that’s true any more.’

Susan stared out through the big empty end of the station, out across the wide valley, with its low railway bridges crisscrossing copper-green rivers, looked out at the deep blue sky that covered Shull, and she felt terrified. Some days she had felt as if the rails that emerged from this station were carrying Turing City’s philosophy out to an entire continent. Today she felt as if they were like an open door inviting in whatever darkness was now waiting beyond its borders.

Karel

Everything in the isolation area was painted white: new paint daubed on old, forming uneven patterns and waves on the metal of the floor and walls, white paint gathered on the bolts and rivets holding the building together. The sea could still be heard booming and crashing outside, but now the sound seemed more distant, muffled.

There was a click as Gates locked him in. Now Karel was alone. There were three cells in here, each sealed with a heavy metal door, a tiny porthole placed in its centre. There was a sudden bang, and a rapid staccato hammering started to his right, like a blunt drill skidding across steel. Something was trying to get out, trying to attack. Karel ignored it.

Cell number two was right in front of him. Karel peered through the porthole.

The man inside there was big: a body built for ore mining, with wide shoulders and great shovel-shaped hands. This was a robot that could have formed spontaneously beneath the earth and then dug his way free. His body was red iron, rusty and scarred, but with great long streaks of shiny metal showing where the corrosion had been scraped from his body in his climb to the surface. His eyes were tiny and recessed below a circular brim that ran around the top of the head. His legs were short and squat, ideal for pushing and scrambling through tunnels.

Everything about the man suggested strength and power, and Karel now needed to step inside that cell in his delicate city body. No wonder Gates had told him so little about this client. This was his way of getting his own back, the tough south coast folk teaching the city slicker a thing or two. Gates and Cabeza and the rest would be laughing at the thought of Karel stepping in to meet this giant.

Well, let them, thought Karel. He grasped the handle and pulled open the cell door. The handle only appeared on the outside of the door, and the isolation room was rigged so that only one cell could open at a time.

The man inside remained standing in the middle of his cell as the door opened. Only his eyes moved.

‘Would you like to come out here for a moment?’ asked Karel. ‘Stretch your legs?’