‘But you worked for Statistics. You were supposed to know everything! Didn’t you notice a build-up of whale metal in the city?’
‘Karel, you’re scaring Axel…’
‘And it’s such a stupid plan! They don’t know anything about what they will find down there! There could be another robot civilization living there already. Or worse…’ He brooded. ‘You know, out at the Immigration Centre, the one on the coast, you hear stories. Robots with arms a mile long. They reach out from deep under the water to pluck people from the land and drag them down to the seabed, where they strip the metal from their bodies. Leave only the twisted wire of the mind to slowly untangle in the dark depths.’
‘Karel,’ said Susan warningly. ‘Not in front of Axel!’
‘Sorry!’ He smiled down at his son. ‘But what if they are real? What if they are waiting down there for Gustav and the rest to walk into their welcoming arms?’
Susan raised her voice. ‘Karel, stop it!’
‘And even if they are safe down there, how long before Artemis comes looking for them? How long before the next wave of expansion sweeps over the seabeds? Gustav and the rest are just delaying the inevitable. I tell you, we should stand and fight here!’
‘I told you, that’s enough!’
Susan had shouted at him. Susan who never shouted. And now Karel saw the fear in her eyes, and he realized just how frightened everyone was. And he realized that it was far too late to make a stand.
Turing City had already fallen. All they could do was wait…
The land around Artemis City was healthy. The air was filled with the soot of a thousand belching chimneys; the acid rain washed the streets and pitted the copper-lined roofs and killed off all the green organic life. From where he stood on the roof of the city, at the edge of a wide platform built at the top of the basilica, Spoole saw nothing but good, healthy stone and metal. Steel arches and copper domes and riveted iron. Gold chasing and the iridescent patterns of electrolysed titanium. Granite slabs and marble flags and slate roofs and walls. All was ordered, and all was good.
The city was a living thing: full of the heat of the fires that burned in the forges and blast furnaces, the city shrugged off the chill of the wind that had sprung up from the north.
The city was healthy, it was strong… and yet this morning it shook like a leaf spring with the news that travelled up the railway lines from the south.
Kavan had entered Turing City.
What next? wondered Spoole. He didn’t blame Kavan. He had been in that position himself, once. It wasn’t that he had been hungry for power, not exactly. It was just that Spoole had been made to lead. In the making rooms, his mother had knelt at the feet of an Artemisian Storm Trooper and twisted the metal into a mind that would be a suitable leader for Artemis City. And so, as he had grown, it had been obvious to Spoole just how badly things had been run in the city. Spoole knew that he could do a better job, because his mind had been woven that way.
No, it wasn’t exactly that he had been hungry for power; rather, he realized that he couldn’t let things stay as they were.
That was the way it was, for Artemis wove its own leaders. Spoole was made to be clever and charismatic. His mother had twisted into his mind the knowledge of how to make himself so very attractive to women. His father had had that knowledge too; he had shown his son how to build a body that was both strong and agile.
Gearheart knew this. She both loved and hated his body.
‘Your mother was a traitor,’ she would say. ‘Attractive men find it too easy to have children twisted. They lose the sense that a mind is a special thing. They cease to take sufficient care in their directions to the mother.’
‘I attracted you, didn’t I?’ Spoole would reply.
‘I was made to be attracted to you, Spoole. Don’t flatter yourself.’ And at that Gearheart would stand and pirouette, or stretch, or in some other way show off her perfect body. ‘But you have found life too easy, Spoole. You would not make a good father. I will never weave you a mind, since you have no understanding of the balance.’
‘You flatter yourself, Gearheart. Why should I want a child? It was not woven into my mind.’
‘So you say, Spoole, but you are speaking to a woman. No man could understand, but the weave is not so flexible as you might suppose. Some things are immutable. A woman may suppress the reproductive urge in a mind, but she cannot totally remove it.’
‘You manage to suppress the urge,’ Spoole would say, but without heat.
And at that point, the conversation would end. But sometimes Spoole would push it a little further. Just out of reckless curiosity.
‘But, Gearheart, if we were to have a child, how would you twist him?’
‘Him?’ Gearheart would laugh. ‘Not as good-looking as you, Spoole. Men like you tilt the balance away from women.’
Spoole gazed reflectively at the city. He had never seen Kavan, but he had been told that the robot wasn’t attractive. No wonder. Kavan didn’t have the same privileged start to life as Spoole. He wouldn’t have had the education, the access to metal; he wouldn’t know how to build a body as well as Spoole could.
They were different in so many ways, but they still held so much in common. The same need to do what was right.
Spoole wondered if Kavan realized yet how difficult it would prove to bring about the change he wanted. Had Kavan yet glimpsed the essentially one-way nature of his quest? Did he yet see how, once one goal was achieved, another would immediately appear? Did he not see, that no matter how far he travelled, those people beneath him would be gripped with the same ambition, the same need to do what was right, only to do it better than himself? They would be there already, climbing up the stairs behind him, and if Kavan didn’t want their awls in his back, he would have to climb even faster.
Spoole stood on the roof of the city, on the roof of the world, on the roof of Artemis. He looked out at the chimneys and the forges and the factories and for a moment he saw a pyramid, a mound of robots, with himself at the top kicking down, and everyone else reaching and grabbing and pulling themselves up towards him.
He told himself he was being ridiculous, and he allowed his eyes to follow the floodlit railway lines that fanned out from the marshalling yards. He looked into the darkness to the south.
Kavan was out there somewhere. Kavan and his robots moving into Turing City. The first phase of the attack had been successful. Kavan had requested more troops, and Spoole had sent them. He could hardly do otherwise. But all that metal expended on what had seemed a reckless venture? Reckless? Now Spoole wasn’t so sure. Would Kavan win or lose?
Either way, Spoole would win; he would either gain more territory, or lose a potential rival.
But also, Spoole would lose. What would come riding back up the tracks from the south? News of defeat, or worse, Kavan, now a hero, leading a horde of battle-hardened troops?
Spoole looked down at the marshalling yards, and suddenly he smiled. He had the answer.
He turned and signalled to a slim robot that stood patiently near the stairs.
‘Fetch me the head of the engineers. Get me the railway chief.’
The thin wind carried Spoole’s laughter into the night.
There was always someone who wanted to take your place. Let Kavan handle his own would-be successors. Spoole was more than capable of handling his.
Eleanor was impressed by Kavan’s progress, but she was frustrated at the role he had selected for her in it. Kavan never quite seemed to trust her.
She marched through the cold night into the broken remains of the railway station. It was almost peaceful in here under the cold stars, the dark jigsaw pieces of the remaining station walls screening off the sounds coming
