But a terrible suspicion was growing within Karel that he already knew the answer. He had known all along that this outcome was inevitable. Turing City was falling not because of the City Guard, but because of everyone else. Karel had walked almost the length of Turing City that afternoon, and the only robots he had seen fighting were the Guards and the Artemisians. Few regular Turing Citizens, if any, had bothered to defend their city. They had just left the job to someone else. How much did they really believe in their freedom? He thought suddenly of Susan. Just how did their mothers twist their minds?
The windows rippled: an explosion. Clouds suddenly billowed way into the air, and Karel guessed that an acid tank had ruptured. Hydrochloric acid drifted in a grey pall across the burning streets.
A ghost walked across the scene: Susan’s reflection in the window, outlined in the light of the open door to the forge room.
‘Close the door!’ said Karel. ‘They’ll see us!’
‘But Axel is worri…’
‘DO IT!’
Susan did so; she moved up and gazed out over the city with him.
‘What can you see?’ she asked.
‘Nothing. Nothing but burning.’ He heard the emptiness in his own voice. ‘Susan, I think this is the end. I think it’s over.’
‘It’s never over,’ said Susan, her tone unconvincing. ‘What’s that?’ she asked, pointing to a series of lights moving towards them across the Zernike plain, converging on the burning railway station.
‘More trains arriving,’ said Karel. ‘Reinforcements from Artemis.’
Light filled the room again, now Axel stood in the doorway.
‘Mummy, I thought you had left me again!’
Karel bundled his family back into the forge room, back where they couldn’t be seen by any enemy troops, outlined against the light.
Karel spoke gently. ‘Susan, take care of Axel. I’m going to go out into the block. See if anyone has some news.’
The iron corridor outside Karel’s apartment was so quiet, so almost normal. The lights were dimmed: others obviously appreciated the need to avoid drawing attention to their apartment block.
He walked carefully down the corridor, listening for voices behind the iron doors. Nothing: the building was hollow, a drum seemingly devoid of the beat of life. Everyone was keeping quiet. The silence unnerved Karel as he came to the curled serpent of the brass banister that spiralled up the stairwell. Silence seemed to well up from the floors below, and it took a conscious effort to step forward and to descend into its forbidding depths.
The faux circuitry patterns in beaten copper that decorated the white walls, the brass banister, the soft tread of his feet on the steps – Karel’s senses seemed enhanced in the silence. Every step, every touch of metal on metal was amplified to become the sound of Artemisian troops entering the building.
He almost collided with a robot that was creeping the other way, up the stairs.
‘Whoah!’ In panic he brought up his arm to strike out at the intruder.
‘No, Karel! Stop!’
Their voices echoed in the stairwell. Karel paused, gazing at the apparition.
‘Gustav…?’ he said, relief surging through his circuits. ‘It is you, isn’t it? But what have you done to your body?’
Karel’s sense of the unreality of this evening deepened as he gazed at the other robot. Gustav used to dress pretty much like any other Turing Citizen; in well-formed lightweight metals, brightly painted and enamelled. The contrast to his current body could not be more marked. He now looked like something from a ghost story, covered as he was from head to toe in some heavy dull-grey alloy, the panels sealed so tightly, their seams rubbed down with thick grease. His head was an elongated, curving tube, the eyes much larger than usual and sealed behind thick glass lenses. His hands and feet were larger too, with foil webbing running up to the first joint of the fingers and toes.
Gustav’s voice resonated deep and booming, as if welling up from the bottom of a deep pool. ‘We’re getting out,’ he said. ‘The city has fallen, if not now, then certainly by morning. Haven’t you heard? The City Guard are dying. They’ve fallen back to the fort. They’re holding their ground there, but more Artemisians are arriving by the hour, coming in by the railway. The Guards will be overwhelmed by the morning.’
Gustav’s words kindled the embarrassed anger that glowed dimly within Karel.
‘They’re dying, and you talk of running?’ He was almost shouting. He couldn’t help it. ‘They’re giving up their lives for this city!’
‘I don’t see you joining them,’ said Gustav.
‘I have a wife and child!’
‘So do I.’
Karel lowered his voice, fought to rein in his anger. ‘Listen, if Turing City falls, then the whole southern continent will have been taken. Gustav, there’s nowhere left to run to.’
Gustav nodded, an odd movement with his newly elongated head. ‘Nowhere left here on Shull,’ he agreed. ‘Karel, we’re heading out to sea. That’s why I’m dressed like this. It’s not too late, Karel. Get up to your forge; get Susan and Axel and yourself adapted for water.’
Karel looked at Gustav’s streamlined, watertight body.
‘But we haven’t the metal. It would take days to build something like that…’ A thought occurred to him. ‘How long have you had that body, Gustav?’
Gustav’s posture radiated embarrassment. ‘Hey, Karel, people have known this was coming for months. I’m not the only one to have considered an escape plan.’
Current built in Karel’s electromuscles. ‘I hadn’t heard anything
…’ he said softly.
‘Well…’ said Gustav, and then he took refuge in frankness. ‘Come on, Karel, maybe that’s not surprising. You know what people say about you.’ He held up one webbed hand in apology. ‘Hey, I’m not saying they’re right, far from it…’
‘I’m pleased to hear it,’ said Karel, icily calm. ‘So tell me, what do they say about me?’
Gustav shook his head. ‘Karel, I’m not getting into this argument now: I’m doing you a favour. Get upstairs and get your family kitted out. We’re making our way down to the coast tonight. We’ll walk out under the water and start heading south. There’s metal down there on the seabed: placers and exposed ores. Enough to get by on.’
‘I don’t believe what I’m hearing! What about fire? How are you going to work metal?’
‘You don’t need fire to work metal, Karel. They didn’t in the old days. Robots used to get by just with the strength in their hands. We don’t need these fancy bodies we’ve got used to. I tell you, it will be good to get back to basics. It will be just like starting again!’
Karel’s voice was filled with contempt. ‘I can’t believe you’re giving up so easily. You should be outside fighting.’
His words rang out in the echoing shaft of the stairwell.
‘Like I said, I don’t see you doing any fighting.’ Gustav was dismissive. ‘Listen, ten o’clock tonight, down in the communal area. We’re setting off then. I’m offering you a lifeline, Karel.’
‘Gustav, listen…’
But Gustav turned and resumed his silent progress upstairs. Karel noticed for the first time that Gustav was carrying panels of some kind of alloy. It looked like whale metal, heavy and completely out of place in the white delicacy of the apartment block. Where had he got it from?
Just what was happening here?
She sat in the forge room with Axel on her knee. The living metal of the stove still retained some dying warmth. Karel crouched in front of his wife, speaking quietly.
‘Susan, it’s like they’ve been planning this for weeks – months, even. It’s like Turing City gave up the will to fight before the battle ever began!’
Susan was calming Axel, stroking him, letting him feel the warm current from her hands move through his electromuscle.
‘Susan, did you know anything about this?’ Karel looked up at his wife suspiciously.
‘Karel, I told you! I knew nothing about it!’
