us; they’re not even like Dorore: she was true to Nyro right at the end. Turing Citizens don’t think that way. They get others to do their fighting for them.’
Karel
Karel pushed his face close to Susan. She couldn’t hear him, she could barely see him. The golden light in her eyes was blurred.
‘Susan, come on, we’ve got to get away from here.’
The square was in chaos. Black smoke leaked across it like thick oil, orange fire jumped into the air. Even the electrical currents felt wrong, screwed up by the atomic explosion. Robots were running around in confusion: heading to the station, running from the station, trying to help friends to their feet, or simply emitting electronic wails of fear.
‘We need to get back to Axel!’ he shouted, shaking his wife by the shoulders.
The same idea had obviously occurred to Susan. She pulled away from him and began pushing her way through the confused crowd towards the valley wall, heading for home. Karel ran to catch her up, but it was difficult to keep sight of her in the thick black smoke and the melee of frightened people.
And then the confusion increased. There were shouts and electronic screams, and the tide turned against him. The robots began pushing them back towards the centre of the square.
‘Run!’
‘Get out of my way!’
‘Move, you fool!’
He caught sight of Susan, someone had sent her spinning and crashing to the ground, the enamel on one side of her body scraping a pastel blue streak across the white marble of the square.
The man that had accidentally pushed her over went on running, straight into Karel’s arms. Anger singing through the wire of his mind, he tripped the man, pushed him to the ground, fell on his shoulders and took hold of his head and slammed it against the marble paving.
‘K*r**l NNNnnnoo!’
Again he smashed the man’s head on the marble, scraped it forward.
‘K***r**l!’
That was Susan shouting. She had taken him by the arm, she was pulling him away from the man, her voicebox squawking and crackling. Now she was pointing back towards the valley walls, trying to tell him something. There were bodies falling there, brightly painted Turing Citizens slumping and falling, their heads expanding in clouds of blue wire, and Karel’s mind finally caught up.
Gunfire! Artemis was attacking.
‘AAAax***l,’ phased Susan, ‘Aaxxellll!’
Karel felt the sheer rage inside him recede. He looked around, taking in the situation.
‘Artemis! Where are the Guards?’ He saw the answer almost straight away, saw the dead and damaged bodies that littered the space close to the station. All caught in the blast. Karel came to a decision. ‘This way,’ he shouted. ‘We’ll loop down through the galleries and back up around the parliament.’
She couldn’t hear him, of course. He pointed. Reluctantly she followed. He was taking her away from their son.
They began to run again, this time heading south towards the shops and galleries.
‘The rest of the City Guard will be coming,’ he told himself.
‘Run!’ yelled Doe Capaldi. ‘Run! Get into the city, or the City Guard will pick us off out here on the plain!’
All down the line came the sound of leaders calling their troops to action. Olam ran, his electromuscles throbbing with pain, his stride matched perfectly to the distance between the concrete sleepers. That cold, sharp wind that had started in the night was blowing him up the valley, over white sleepers, between the pair of silver rails that he was following. Black smoke ahead of him and grey infantry around him, their feet pounding on concrete as they rushed on and on and on, towards Turing City. He could hear gunfire already; he gripped his rifle tighter, eager to be part of the attack. That was the order: rape and kill. Rape and kill.
Olam couldn’t believe how good that sounded. Something had awoken inside him back in the arena. Something that had long lain dormant. Now it sharpened its blades and charged its muscles, ready for the fight.
Suddenly the ground beneath the sleepers vanished, and he saw bright green water down there, between the gaps. He stumbled and fell, almost lost his rifle. There was a river down there, water dancing along, and in the middle of the water a long copper worm turned its head up to look at him and then slipped quietly below the water’s surface, leaving Olam wondering if he had imagined the sight. And then someone took hold of him and pulled him upright. Doe Capaldi.
‘Come on, Olam. Run!’
And Olam did just that. Doe Capaldi was helping him? No way. He fixed his gaze on that robot’s back and continued to run, heading towards the wreckage of the station, the broken green body of the train plunged into its very heart, its tail cast out across the valley.
Karel and Susan fled through the milling crowds into the shops and the galleries of central Turing City. Everywhere was confusion. People looked round for the Artemisians, looked for the City Guard without success. Where were they? Rumours were rife.
‘The City Guard have cut them all down on the plain!’ ‘The City Guard were all killed in the railway station!’ ‘They are preparing a counter-offensive up by the fort!’ ‘The Artemisians have taken the fort!’ ‘The residential areas are burning!’ Karel was grateful that Susan’s ears were damaged. If she heard that, she would have lost control completely. As it was, it took all his effort to keep her running in the opposite direction from where Axel lay sleeping.
The situation was like a childhood dream. Everywhere still looked so normal: the tall, arching iron galleries with their plate glass windows, the neatly tiled streets that ran through them.
Karel pulled Susan to a rest for a moment by a display of molybdenum ingots in the window of Gros-smith’s, trying to get an understanding of what was going on. Suddenly their situation seemed ridiculous. They were standing on rose porphyry, amidst rose porphyry pillars, looking through leaded glass at some of the most expensive metals on the planet. He was standing in the middle of one of the richest and most powerful states on Shull. Why was everyone panicking? Surely they had nothing to fear, not with the City Guard to protect them?
So where were they? And where were the Artemisians? If there were no City Guard to stop them, they should have made it up to the galleries by now.
Something wasn’t right here, realized Karel. Something wasn’t right, and he couldn’t figure what that was by himself. He looked at his wife as she fiddled with the mechanism of her left ear and he came to a decision. Susan would understand. He needed Susan in working order, right now.
Karel led Susan through the milling crowds to Harman’s, the closest body shop he knew. Susan pulled against him all the way.
‘Aaaaxx***ll,’ she kept phasing, ‘Aaxxellll.’
‘I know,’ said Karel. ‘Susan, listen, I need you to help me.’
Susan didn’t understand what he was saying, but she recognized Harman’s and she realized what he intended. She followed him into the shop without further complaint.
Harman’s was expensive. It used only the very best metals, the finest oils and plastics. The paintwork they produced was on a par with that of Susan’s skill, though invariably more expensive. The staff there were knowledgeable, skilful and, for the moment, absent. They had fled when the panic had gripped Turing City. Only Harman herself remained, a small woman clad in dark iron, a deceptively simple construction.
Karel saw her and began to gabble. ‘My wife, she got caught in the explosion. Her ears, her eyes, her voicebox, they’re all wrecked.’
Harman nodded. ‘Susan always has been a finely built machine,’ she said approvingly. ‘I would have been
