Twisted Metal (34 page)

‘Help me with these, Wolfgang.’

Wolfgang took hold of the other end of the little table and helped him to manoeuvre it through an archway to the space beyond the exposed throne room. This was the kingdom’s parliament chamber, the stone ribs of its vaulted ceiling carved out of the rock of the mountain itself and decorated with silver and a little gold. A great iron slab of a table sat in the centre of the room.

‘Eleanor is here,’ announced Wolfgang.

‘Send her in.’

‘She’s wearing that self-important look,’ warned his aide.

‘Then I’ll have to find something else to keep her busy.’

Eleanor entered the room, her infantryrobot’s body looking more scratched than ever and badly in need of paint. Wolfgang was right, reflected Kavan. She
was
making a point.

‘Hello, Eleanor. Everything going well, I trust?’

‘So so.’

Wolfgang and Kavan were busy laying out the foil sheets on the iron table. Eleanor twisted her head, trying to read what was written on them.

‘I wonder if this is how Spoole feels,’ said Kavan, reflectively. ‘Only a few weeks ago I was part of the troops attacking Wien. When we took Turing City I may have brought up the rear, but I was part of the fighting there too, after a fashion. Now I do nothing more than sit in this castle and direct operations.’

He waved a hand across the table. ‘These reports are the only sight of the action I get nowadays. Maybe I was wrong to criticize General Fallan as I once did.’

Eleanor sat down in a chair without being invited to.

‘Don’t put words in my mouth, Kavan,’ she said. ‘If I really thought that of you, I’d come out and say it.’

‘And yet you come here with your armour all battered, which is usually a sign that you’re not happy with something. You know as well as I do that a good infantry-robot keeps her body clean and in good repair.’

‘When I get the time, I will. Kavan, I know how hard this is for you. You’re at the pinch of the hourglass. You’ve got Spoole and Artemis to the south feeding you arms and materiel, you’ve got the whole northern continent above you arming up and preparing to defend itself against your attack. Get it wrong and you’ll be crushed between the two of them . . .’

‘Get it right and I’ll conquer all of Shull. What do you want, Eleanor?’

‘Kavan, there’s something odd happening to the north.’

Kavan was genuinely thrown. He had expected Eleanor to come here and to subtly challenge him, as she usually did. He wasn’t expecting this.

‘Odd?’

‘I don’t know how else to describe it. This is a strange land, Kavan. I don’t think that you’ve experienced it quite like the rest of your troops have.’

‘Ah! So I was right about the battered armour!’

Eleanor rapped at the iron table in annoyance.

‘Okay, so maybe I
was
making a point. But that’s not why I’m here. Kavan, you need to see this land for yourself. This land is really
strange
: the lack of metal has stunted it. You must have seen the organic life out there, it’s rife. But have you seen how the robot life changes the further north you go? Have you seen the animals? There isn’t enough metal for them to build themselves properly, so they’re . . .
strange
. All of them small, or elongated, or twisted. All engaged in a constant fight for what little metal there is. Tiny beetles that scratch metal from your body and carry it away. Spiders that use magnetic fields to lure those beetles into their lairs . . .’

‘Should we be afraid of them?’

‘Worms that creep into your skull and twist the metal there into their young,’ continued Eleanor. ‘They say that a robot can walk around not even knowing that these worms are eating away at his mind, gradually robbing him of his thoughts. Other robots try to tell them what has happened, but the worms have eaten that part of the mind that lets him understand this. And so it goes on until the day that robot just dies.’

‘I’ve often heard it said that life can thrive in the most unlikely places,’ replied Kavan. ‘Is this what you have come here to tell me?’

‘No,’ said Eleanor. She hesitated for a moment. ‘Kavan, have you ever heard of the Book of Robots?’

Kavan said nothing.

‘It’s a heresy, I know. But some robots say that . . .’

‘I’ve heard of it,’ interrupted Kavan.

‘Well,’ continued Eleanor. ‘There are stories. Stories of a road that leads north, right across Northern Shull and then out under the sea to the top of the world itself. Some of the Scouts say they think they may have seen part of this road.’

‘So there is a road that leads north. Is that such a surprise?’

‘Perhaps not. But there are tales also of another kingdom, far to the north of here, further than any of our troops have so far travelled. A kingdom lying almost on the northern coast of Shull itself. A place where there is so little metal that the robots there use organic life as part of their bodies.’

‘Who says this, Eleanor? Because it sounds like the sort of rumours that we ourselves spread before attacking Wien and Turing City. It’s the sort of rumour that saps the morale of your enemy and makes the fight so much easier.’

Eleanor looked down at the table, embarrassed. ‘I know that, Kavan. I realize that. But we’ve heard these stories from the robots in all of the little kingdoms that we’ve so far conquered. And at first I thought as you did, but as we moved further north these stories became more detailed, more specific. Still we thought nothing of them. And then our own troops began to report strange occurences.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like the story of the voices in the dark.’

Karel and the Voices in the Dark

Karel rode the rain-slicked rails northwards. Lately there had been a touch of snow in the endless rainfall which smeared itself across the rails, making his wheels slip as they struggled for traction.

Night was falling; it had already settled in the steeper valleys and cuttings through which Karel struggled.

He guessed he was currently pulling troops. He had seen them lined up by the side of the track outside Artemis City as he picked his way through the points to the marshalling point. Hundreds of grey-painted infantryrobots, washed shiny by the never-ending rain, all fresh from the city’s forges. More metal twisted by busy hands to continue with the conquest of the continent. For a moment Karel had a vision of Susan being forced to work in the making rooms of Artemis. Was that where she had ended up? he wondered. Better than being dead, maybe. He quickly thrust the thought from his mind. Why torture himself? It was better to concentrate on the day at hand.

Up and up the slope that led along a dark valley, its sides lined by the sodden shapes of organic trees appearing no less strange for being viewed through infrared. He had never been so far north before. The landscape here was different, starker, sharper. Everything was a little poorer and thinner up here: the quality of the light, the stone, the low mountains that had almost descended to the level of the foothills. There was none of the grandeur of the lands through which Karel had first travelled: the terrain up here felt so dead and empty of metal . . .

There was something blocking the tracks ahead!

He gripped the brakes, felt the disks lock in his hands, the wheels slipping on the rain-slicked rails. The weight of the carriages slammed into his back, pushing him forward, unable to stop, pushing him into a fall of rocks that covered the line. He was going to hit them. He was slowing. He was slowing . . . He stopped.

A voice sounded in his ear.

‘What are you playing at?’

When was the last time someone had actually spoken to him? How long had he driven in silence? He didn’t care about the harshness of the voice. It was a pleasure just to be able to speak.

‘Rockfall ahead,’ he explained. ‘It’s covered the tracks.’

The voice could be heard, faintly conferring with someone else.

‘Does it look natural to you?’ it finally asked him.

How should I know?
thought Karel.
All I can see is straight ahead
.

‘I don’t know,’ said Karel.

‘It could be an ambush . . .’ said the voice thoughtfully.

‘It could be,’ said Karel. ‘I can’t see anything to the sides.’

But there was no reply to that.

‘Hello?’ called Karel. ‘Hello? Are you still there?’

The sound of the voice had reminded him of how lonely he actually was. The feeling of power that he had enjoyed while driving the train now vanished, and he remembered just how cut off he was from other robots; that all he was now was a piece of machinery, just something to make the train go. And then the images came smashing through his defences, overwhelming him. All those pictures that he had blocked. Memories of his old life. Of walking with Susan through the galleries. Of talking to her, talking to other robots. Of conversation and companionship: not this endless isolation.

He tried to push the images from his mind, but to no effect. Still they came crowding back.

The memory of the forge, of the nights spent there, Susan sitting opposite him, painting metal with her clever, skilful hands. Of Susan smoothing the weave of his electromuscle. And worst of all – he tried not to think about it, but he couldn’t stop it – the memory that hurt the most – of Axel, of his little boy, sitting on the floor of the forge, fiddling with two pieces of metal, talking about how he was going to make arms that were so strong, how he was going to build a body that would be so handsome when he was fully grown.

All that would never now be.

And for the first time, unable to help it, Karel began to cry. All that emotion that he had blocked for all these weeks came leaking out. It set up a feedback loop in his voicebox – wherever it was now located on that train – and began to whine.

Somebody must have heard.

‘Stop that,’ a voice ordered, and there was a click as his ears were turned off.

Time passed. No one went to move the rocks ahead, but Karel scarcely noticed. Night deepened, and for the first time in days the rain ceased. White light then spread across the sides of the valley. The clouds had cleared, and the light of Zuse, the night moon, shone down unimpeded.

There was a click: ‘They’re speaking again . . .’

Karel was momentarily at a loss. ‘Who is speaking?’ he asked. The voice he remembered, it had come back.

‘Outside the train. Can’t you hear them? They are asking us to look outside. Can you see them?’

Karel gazed along the track towards the fallen rocks, the scene lit up in sharp black and white by the night moon.

‘I can’t see anything,’ he said.

‘We go out and look for them, but there is no one there!’

‘Why don’t you clear the rocks? Let me ride onwards!’

‘We go towards the rocks. The voices call us away!’

‘You’re Artemisian soldiers! You go where you please!’

‘I don’t understand it. The voices call us into the mountains. Some of the troops have already vanished up there.’

‘Why are you telling
me
this? What am I supposed to do?’

There was no reply.

Karel sat in the valley, bathed in the white light of the moon. Eventually, the clouds rolled back overhead. Shortly after that it began to rain once more.

Kavan

‘You spoke to the driver of the train? Who was it?’

‘Karel.’ Eleanor stared at him as she said that name. What was she thinking of now? he wondered. ‘That doesn’t sound like an Artemisian name.’ ‘You know that he’s a Turing Citizen, Kavan.’ Still she stared at him. Challenging him.

He stood up. ‘What happened to the train?’ Eleanor held his gaze for a moment longer with her yellow eyes, and then she continued. ‘A second troop train came up behind, about eight hours later. They found the original train standing empty.’

‘Hmm. How many people know this story?’ ‘Virtually half the army by this time, I should imagine. You know how these rumours spread.’

‘I know. I myself have used that to good effect in the past.’

‘You think you know what happened?’ Kavan waved a hand dismissively. ‘A train full of barely trained infantryrobots travels through new territory. Easy to ambush, easy to pick off one by one as they come to clear a fall of rocks on the line. Robots moving about the mountains, calling out mysterious invitations in the night, and then hiding behind rocks with awls at the ready when a few credulous robots come to investigate? Oh yes, I think I know what happened. And then only one survivor lives to tell the story, who then brings it back to spread fear and confusion.’

Kavan rose to his feet. ‘You were right, Eleanor. I have not spent enough time in these northern lands. I think someone wants to play a game with us. Very well, let us accept their offer.’

Spoole

‘You’re doing well, Spoole,’ said General Sandale. ‘Very well indeed.’

‘It’s not for you to comment on my progress,’ replied Spoole coldly, but he felt a deep sense of satisfaction at the other’s words.