knitted electromuscle and his imperfectly forged bones. Maoco O had had no practice at building bodies, he felt ridiculously proud of his first attempt. For the first time in his life, he felt connected with the world. The pressure of his feet on the floor, the tension in his electromuscles as he padded through metal corridors. The sound of his footsteps, the sound of the pounding as the Artemisians plundered the fort; it was as if those noises were passing directly into his mind. He had built those ears himself!
A noise just around the corner made him dodge backwards into a convenient room.
The terror that arose within him was strange. If he was found, he would have to fight – but fight with this weak body? He could be killed! Nicolas the Coward, whispered a voice. But no, he thought, this is not cowardice. For the first time in my life I will be properly fighting. Almost as an equal. What does it matter when this risk makes me seem so alive!
The room in which he found himself was small. An armoury, filled with racks of knives: everything from large pangas to tiny awls. Shiny prying knives and carbon-blacked throwing knives. A rack of carbon-steel kukris sat just next to him, their blades covered in a film of oil.
He took one from the rack and weighed it in his hand. It was a lot heavier than he expected, the balance all wrong for his new body with its thinner electromuscles. At the moment, everything felt strange.
There were footsteps outside.
Maoco O adopted a ready position. How would he fight, dressed as he was?
The door slid open.
The robot outside wore a blue-painted shell. Its arms were long, its fingers thin and prying. It saw Maoco O and recoiled in horror.
‘Turing Citizen!’ it called out.
Maoco O’s reactions were faster than the body he had built. His mind set him leaping forward, his newly built legs stumbled, his arms flailed, and he dragged the kukri in a deep scratching cut down the front of the other robot. The robot looked at the mess the weapon made of his shell and panicked.
‘Help!’ it shrieked.
More footsteps pounding towards him. Infantry-robots. Maoco O’s reflexes told him they were easy prey, but his mind overruled them. As the other robot curled up in a protective huddle on the floor, he scrambled over it and ran out into the corridor.
‘Down here! One of the engineers!’
The voice came from further down the corridor. Maoco O turned and ran, enemy feet pounding along behind him. He was just waiting for the gunshot that would blow his mind apart. It didn’t come, and he felt disgust at the amateurism of these troops. Who had trained them? They were chasing him, rather than just shooting at him.
Round a corner, he dropped through a trap in the floor, hit the lock button and then doubled back along the corridor below. He paused a moment to listen for sounds of pursuit.
Nothing.
Maoco O had escaped.
His body was unsteady, there was a rattle somewhere in his left knee, his gyroscopes were spinning, his electromuscles spasming…
He had never felt so alive!
It went on and on: Nettie lecturing them, drilling them on how to twist a mind the Artemisian way.
The sessions in the making room, kneeling before those young infantrymen. Being made to shake the wire of a half-made mind from your hands over and over again until you became hardened to it. Eventually coming to see what you were doing as nothing more than twisting metal: she realized she was being hammered in the forge of Artemis, her mind folded over and hammered again until it became nothing more than a shining, hardened piece of metal, and she began to see metal as nothing more than metal.
The world outside of this nursery building was fading in her mind, her life with Karel and Axel now seeming like the empty shell of a ghost. She could picture the exterior appearance, but she could remember no life beneath the facade.
There was no chance to speak, and no one to speak to. The women were marched back and forth from the lecture room to the making-room: there was nowhere else they went. One hundred and forty-four steps to the making room over the iron and plastic floors, through corridors lit by single bulbs. Kneeling on the making-room floor before a succession of young men who spilled their wire into her hands, and later looked down with pale eyes as half-completed minds were brushed in tangled clumps from the floor. Didn’t they care what happened to their own wire?
Sometimes there was time for a brief exchange of words in the corridor, a chance for a quick snatch of conversation. She heard the other women exchanging names, words of support. But not to Susan. Word had spread, and the only word she heard from the others was traitor. Why? Because she had been spared death at the hands of the Scout?
Or something else? The rumours had followed her here from Turing City. She was the woman who had married Karel. They were convinced that Karel was a traitor, and now she was, too. Hadn’t she received special treatment?
And there was Nettie. Nettie remained friendly towards her. The other women had seen it. She was the favourite. No wonder they considered her a traitor.
But why? What had she done? Nettie and Masur and Maoco O. Each of them had drawn that same symbol; the circle with the dot at the top. Like it was a sign that she should recognize.
Back and forth along the iron corridor. How many days had she now been here? How many weeks?
It took two hours to make a mind. Over ten thousand twists, and Susan and the other women had been drilled on each and every one of them. Over and over again, so many minds half-made and then abandoned. She felt hollow inside.
Finally, though, the time came.
Nettie, her body as dull and unimpressive as ever, paused before the sheet of polished metal upon which she had sketched out her instructions, then laid down her stylus and turned to face the twenty-two remaining women.
‘And that, ladies,’ she said, ‘is the end of the training. So now we test you.’
There was nothing else, no congratulations. The women were stood up and marched down to the making room.
There Susan took her place, kneeling at the feet of a grey infantryrobot. She reached up and began to twist wire.
And then something happened. Something that had never happened before. The robot leaned down and spoke in her ear.
‘Hello, Susan.’
Susan paused. She glanced around the room. No one else had heard. They were all busy working away, twisting wire. She looked for the silver shape of the Scout. It wasn’t there.
‘Aren’t you going to speak to me, Susan?’
Hands still twisting, she looked up into the yellow eyes of the infantryrobot.
‘Who are you?’
‘My name is Banjo Macrodocious.’
‘Who?’ The name sounded familiar. Where had she heard it before? Had Karel mentioned it?
‘What do you want?’
‘I don’t want anything. That’s why I’m so special. I was made that way.’
‘Why?’
‘So I could do my job. We have two hours together, Susan, and I want to speak to you. I want to discuss philosophy.’
‘Why?’ she glanced fearfully around the room. ‘Are you trying to get us both killed?’
‘We will be okay. Nettie is one of us. No one else here will speak because they are too frightened of what might happen to them. Susan, have you heard of the Book of Robots?’
