baked the control rods myself. They don’t contain enough fissile uranium to sustain a critical chain reaction!’
‘They will do, goldenmind.’
And at that Kavan turned and made his way to the engine to direct operations, leaving Eleanor and Dorore standing together in the empty night, on the empty plain, the cold breeze whistling through their bodies.
Dorore turned to Eleanor, desperate for her to understand.
‘Tell him,’ she said. ‘Tell him this train is needed back in Artemis City. My crew will be waiting for me. Pinza, Alycidon and Tulyar…’
Eleanor said nothing. Behind Dorore, the grey robots were withdrawing from the innards of the reaction train. The panels and hatches were being carefully locked back into place.
Kavan returned. ‘Okay, goldenmind, it’s ready. You can get back on board.’
It took a moment for Dorore to register what he meant.
‘Back on board the engine? But it’s rigged to explode!’
‘Yes. And we need someone to drive it to its destination.’
‘What? But you can’t mean… It will explode! I’ll be killed!’
‘Yes. But this way you will best serve Artemis.’
‘Set one of your own troops to drive it!’
‘They would not know how. There is the pressure to keep constant, the primary coolant loop to maintain…’
Dorore paused, registering his tone. ‘You’re being sarcastic.’
‘No. Besides which, my troops are too valuable to waste. Their training and experience offers Artemis much. What can you offer?’
‘I am a goldenmind!’
And at that there was another of those cold silences. And then.. .
‘No. There is no goldenmind, there is no golden body. The wire is not special, only the pattern that is twisted there. There is too much of this thinking back in Artemis City. Some day I may turn my attention there.’
Despite her original annoyance at his intervention, Eleanor felt a thrill at Kavan’s words.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Dorore, who didn’t understand.
‘I mean that the last state that Artemis will conquer may well be Artemis itself.’ He seemed to come back to the present. ‘But now, for you, it is time to get on the train.’
And at that Dorore lost her temper. She had nothing else to lose.
‘You! I know your sort! You are like Nicolas the Coward! You turn away from anything new. You fear it. You fear my mind!’
Kavan didn’t seem to care. ‘You will set off in five minutes.’
‘Why not now?’
‘You will give my troops sufficient time to climb upon the back of the train. Four and a half miles should be sufficient to keep us all clear of the blast.’
And at that he turned and began to walk back along the length of the train.
Dorore turned and looked at Eleanor, pleadingly. ‘What shall I do?’ she asked.
‘Do what he says,’ said Eleanor, turning to glare at Kavan’s retreating back. ‘That’s what we’re all doing.’
‘Where are you going?’
Karel looked up at her from where he knelt, feeding coal into the forge.
‘I’m going to the railway station,’ said Susan, pained by the suspicion in his voice.
‘The station? Why?’
The look he gave her was so hard and unforgiving that she felt as if she were rusting from the inside. She couldn’t even meet his eyes.
‘I need to think. I need ideas to make our child, Karel. There are concepts collected there from all across the continent. Oh, Karel, please don’t be like this. I’m sorry.’
And, just like that, the spell was broken. He rose to his feet and crossed the room and was holding her hands, his body close so she could feel the currents running through his electromuscle, the edge of his lifeforce.
‘I’m sorry too, Susan.’
They held on to each other, tight.
‘You’re a good man, Karel, I never doubted it.’
‘I know, Susan. Come on… Oh!’ He stared at her body and laughed guiltily. He had smudged ash from his dirty hands all down her powder-blue panelling.
Susan saw it and started to laugh too. She reached for a clump of twisted metal and gently wiped herself clean.
‘Let me come to the station with you,’ said Karel.
‘No, it’s okay, you don’t have to.’
‘I want to.’
‘What about Axel?’
‘He’ll sleep for another one hundred and twenty-seven minutes. He’s fine. I want to come.’
‘I’d like that. Thank you.’
Karel gently wiped her hands clean with his. She could feel the current in the electromuscle of his fingers as he did so.
The marble flagstones of the residential area were covered in a fine dust, carried by the cold wind that blew from the north. Oily black clouds were spreading across the sky like a slick over water; the sun seemed to shine a muddy brown that day. Susan rejected this image instantly; she didn’t want her child to grow up thinking of this.
‘I want to hear the ocean,’ she announced.
‘The wind’s the wrong way,’ said Karel. ‘Do you want to catch a train to the coast?’
‘No, Axel will wake before then.’
‘What are you looking at?’
Susan was staring at the white walls of the fort of the City Guard, clearly visible in the distance above the glass-and-iron roofs of the railway station.
‘The fort,’ she said.
Karel said nothing, just squeezed her hand, made her electromuscles pulse in time with his own.
The railway station was set at the head of a wide, shallow valley that cut through the hills at the northern edge of Turing City State. The valley had been excavated centuries ago by porphyry worms, copper animals that had ground away at the fissured rock of the land, sifting through the residue for the frills of copper that had been left behind when acidic magma had bubbled up from deep beneath the world.
Susan had never seen the worms herself, but their memory was woven into the wire of her mind: a memory she intended to pass on to her child.
The worms had been small to begin with, but long years of dining on the thin veins and frills of copper had allowed them to grow fat and huge. By the time the first robots had walked south into southern Shull, the worms stood taller than a robot and were as long as a whale. They had eaten the rock away down to a depth of a hundred metres. Those robots who had first viewed the land that would become Turing City State found a valley filled with porphyry worms, their beaten-copper bodies dull in the sunlight. They watched in wonder as the worms reared up high to nibble at the rocks of the valley walls. Susan now had that image in her mind. It was strange and gorgeous and filled her with a ravenous feeling.
Those first robots had felt the same. A base greed had come upon them, and they had lost control of themselves, falling on the defenceless worms without restraint. Robots had melted their way into the bodies of the worms and had gazed in lust at the brass and copper and tin of their interiors. They had walked through the ringing tubes of their bodies to their minds woven of electrum wire, and a frenzy of greed had overtaken them. They ripped those minds apart, spooling out the electrum wire into the daylight. They had mounted the carcasses with sharp
