link up one of the other minds. Do you understand?’
Rust your mind! shouted Karel. All that emerged was a strangled beeping.
‘One beep for yes,’ said the voice.
Karel said nothing.
‘Answer me now or I hook up the next mind. I do that, and you may end up riding this train in limbo until you die.’
To take away his sight as well, to take away what little sensation he had left, the thought filled him with terror. Yes, said Karel, and he heard a single beep.
‘I knew you understood. Hey, think yourself lucky that you are the middle mind. It must mean you’ve got a friend somewhere. Okay, you’ll be setting off soon, so watch the signals.’
And that was it.
There was darkness for a moment, and then his mind was plugged properly into the locomotive. He saw the view down the tracks before him, and then, with a surge of awakening, he felt the power of the diesel engine.
What to do? He practised revving the engine. He practised pulling at the brakes with his arm.
This was what Artemis did to minds, he realized. It treated them like things. Now his mind was nothing more than metal to be employed by Artemis in its never-ending conquest. He had warned Banjo Macrodocious about this, but he had never expected it to happen to himself.
He was jolted from his reverie by the voice. ‘Hey, can’t you see the light? It’s time to go!’
He noticed the green signal shining up ahead. He concentrated on walking, felt the surge of diesel power. He saw the sleepers begin to slip beneath him. He was moving.
‘Okay, engine, I don’t expect to have to speak to you again. We’re off now. Next stop Artemis City.’ Karel heard a little laughing noise, and then the voice spoke again.
‘And take care driving, you’ve got Kavan himself on your train.’
Karel emerged from the wrecked railway station into Copper Valley. The train picked its way over the bridges and points as he headed north. North to Artemis City.
The journey northward passed without incident. Even Eleanor was silent. She just sat in the corner of the carriage, cleaning her rifle, sharpening her knives, making herself ready for the coming battle.
The others were much the same. Wolfgang, his aide, stared at the ceiling, concentrating. Ruth remained standing, swaying with the movement of the train.
Kavan wondered at how he now felt. Was he doing the right thing, or had his hand been forced? Something didn’t feel right.
‘Why is the train stopping?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ said Eleanor. ‘Pendric, Dylan, find out what’s going on.’
The train was slowing to a halt. Two grey infantry-robots slid open the carriage door.
‘Get up the front to the driver,’ called Eleanor, and the two robots dropped out onto the desolate plain that lay outside.
Kavan went to the door and looked out. The sun was going down, huge and red, setting the underside of the dark clouds on fire, lighting up the thin gusts of rain that the cold wind sent splashing over his metal skin. He could see another train in the distance, running on a nearly parallel track. It seemed to be setting out from Artemis City, heading towards Stark or Segre.
‘We’re almost there,’ said Eleanor, leaning forward from the train beside him. ‘I can see the city. I can see the Basilica. It’s all lit up in red.’
The robots waited in silence, the metal of their bodies plinking and pattering as the rain drops fell on them.
There was a shout from ahead.
‘Kavan,’ called Pendric. ‘I’ve got some engineers building an observation tower. There’s something that you need to see.’
‘What is it?’
‘I think you’d be better looking from the tower.’
‘What about the attack?’ said Eleanor.
‘Patience,’ said Kavan.
He dropped out into the rain, and made his way to the skeletal tower that was quickly taking shape.
‘Safe to go up now,’ said one of the engineers.
Kavan nodded, and then swarmed up the rods they had left protruding from the sides of the tower, using them as a ladder.
The city confronted him: a magnificent, smoky mass of metal sprawling over the barren plain.
And, as he looked back at Artemis City, Kavan did something that many of his followers had never seen him do before.
He laughed.
All the choices, all the indecision rolled away.
He would not be attacking Artemis City today at least. Like it or not, his mind had been made up for him. The twisted metal in Spoole’s mind had followed a path similar to Kavan’s. Similar, but not exactly the same. The other’s metal had danced its course around Kavan’s without the two paths ever actually touching.
Spoole had outwitted him: elegantly, delightfully, easily.
It was written before him in the pattern of the rails, slicked with rain and lit up with red fire from the evening sun.
Where once the railway lines had filled the plain like a rough sea, crisscrossing, rising, falling, plugging Artemis City into the rest of the continent, now the lines were raked smooth to circle the city in a neat concentric pattern of lines. Artemis City rose like an island from this red sea, untouched by the pattern of fire that surrounded it.
It was an act of challenge, a parry and an insult all in one. It was the actions of Nicolas the Coward written in metal for the world to see.
Kavan couldn’t enter the city. The railway lines no longer ran that way. Instead, they ran around the city and continued north in an unbroken line.
The message was obvious. Kavan was being sent north to break his troops against the mountain range that cut the continent in two.
‘It’s a challenge,’ said Kavan.
‘Sorry, Kavan?’ queried the engineer that waited at the foot of the tower.
‘Never mind. Tell the troops. We’re to go north. The south is not enough. We are to conquer the whole of Shull.’
The cold wind gusted rain across Kavan’s body. Drops beaded on his metal fingers. He gazed down at them, thoughtfully.
‘The winter is coming,’ he said. ‘The snow will be blowing from the north, and we will be fighting against it, every step of the way.’
‘Can we really do it?’ asked the engineer.
‘The mountains are high and there is no route through them that an army could take. We may have to split our forces. They could pick us off easily in the passes…’
‘But can we do it?’
‘Of course we can. We always do.’
Far away, in distant Yukawa, the radio operator turned a dial.
‘What is it, La-Challen?’
‘I don’t know. Static, but of an odd signature. It’s coming from Shull, I think. Every fifteen minutes I hear the signal. Perhaps you could enlighten me, Cho-La-Errahi?’
