‘It is an elegant example of metalwork,’ he said.
‘Thank you,’ said Karel. ‘I bought the original panels from a shop in Turing City and bent them into shape myself. They are of an alloy originally devised by the robots of Stark, but improved upon by the artisans of Turing City. The paintwork was done by my wife. It took her many nights of work.’ He flicked his chest with a finger and it made a ringing sound. ‘Beautiful! But a lot of effort just to make this body. It begs the question: what is so special about me that all this effort, all this material can be applied to what is really nothing more than an affectation?’
‘I don’t know the answer to that.’
‘But I do!’ said Karel. ‘It’s because I think! That is the difference between owners and property! Here in Turing City State we recognize sentience. All it takes to join our state is that you prove your intelligence!’
‘But I am not intelligent.’
Karel felt a twinge of anger at the robot’s stubbornness. He repressed it. ‘Don’t you realize what will happen to you if you maintain this ridiculous pretence? You’ll be taken from here and shipped inland and put to work down a mine. Working at the top of a magma chamber, or set wandering through a pegmatite forest. You’ll be treated as nothing more than a shovel or a pick.’
‘Mining is what I do.’
‘Yes, but mining as a free robot! It’s your purpose, it’s your life, it’s what makes you happy. But as a possession they will just keep you digging and digging and digging. You’ll never come to the surface! If your body breaks down they will patch it up with whatever comes to hand and then just set you off digging again, and they’ll keep doing that until you’re completely past repair. Nothing more than a selection of patches and spares. And after they’ve stripped what they can use from you, they’ll just push you into an unused tunnel and leave you there. Is that what you want?’
‘I don’t care. Why should I?’
Karel was momentarily lost for words. Gates had said that this client was different, and he hadn’t been exaggerating. Karel had never encountered anything like this before. He tried another tack.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s be honest with each other. I don’t understand what game you’re playing, I don’t know what you hope to achieve. Tell me something about yourself. How did you get here?’
At this the big man became animated for the first time. A low grinding noise sounded, deep in his body, and then his arms swung out. The big shovel hands knocked against the wall of the cell, scraped it so that white paint now marked the edges of the blades. The squat legs began to march in time to some unheard beat. Karel found himself backing out from the cell.
‘I was born in darkness,’ said the stranger, ‘held in the earth. I saw nothing, heard nothing. I felt gravity, and I knew I had to dig my way in the opposite direction. I knew my name.’
‘You have a name?’ said Karel in surprise. He had assumed the stranger was nameless. ‘What is it?’
‘My name is Banjo Macrodocious. I was told: Banjo Macrodocious, dig your way upwards until you break free through the surface.’
Karel didn’t ask Banjo who had told him to dig. Banjo wouldn’t answer because he wouldn’t even understand the question. This was part of birth, the weaving of the mind. This was the way with the spontaneously formed. If Karel was to trace back his own lineage, through his parents and grandparents and great-grandparents for however many generations, this would be the story of his origins too.
‘I began to dig,’ continued Banjo. ‘I swam through the earth, I drilled and I chipped my way through the batholith. I pressed myself into cracks and fractures. I tugged aside small rocks and pushed them down with my feet, I made my way around larger obstacles. I learned the feel of my body in the darkness, the stretch of my arms, the strength in my shoulders. I felt the stones scraping down my sides; I heard the slow sounds of the underworld. And all the time I rose higher and higher. I wondered more and more what it would be like to finally break free of the rock and to walk on the roof of the world. I continued to dig. And as I did so I felt the earth changing. Higher and higher. Until that day…’
‘Did you emerge in the sea?’ asked Karel.
‘Yes, in the sea. The debris on the seabed, the softness of it, how easy it was to dig through. The water all around me. The cold. And then I began to walk. Following the direction in my head.’
‘Who found you?’
‘I don’t know their names. They found me trying to scale the cliffs. They brought me here.’
Karel was unconsciously unscrewing his right hand. He wanted to begin work on straightening it. He forced himself to stop.
‘Okay, Banjo, I have heard your story.’
Karel stood formally to attention.
‘As Disputant for Turing City State, I am prepared to announce my decision on your status, Banjo Macrodocious. You have a name, you take part in reasoned conversation. I believe that you are intelligent. I believe that you could be an asset to Turing City State. I would therefore like to invite you to join us. Would you like that?’
‘I don’t think I would like or dislike it. I have no feelings.’
‘I don’t believe that is true, Banjo Macrodocious. This is my job; I know what I am doing. You are intelligent. I am inviting you to join our state. All you have to do is declare your willingness.’
‘I have no preference as to whether I join your state or not.’
‘How can you say that? Don’t you realize that most of the people waiting out there in the cages beyond this door are desperate for me to invite them to join Turing City? They live in fear of being sent back to their broken countries, of being enslaved by Artemis. Don’t you see what you’re giving up? Do you really just want to be adopted as a tool, to be worked till you drop and are eventually abandoned in a mine underground?’
‘I have no preference.’
Karel’s anger was such that he wanted to smash the big robot in the face, just as he had done the Artemisian soldier. Wisely, he restrained himself.
‘I don’t think you mean that. You know what I think you are? I think you’re a coward. I’ve met people like you before: robots who don’t have the courage to accept the faculties they have been given. You have a mind and a well-designed body and you refuse to take responsibility for them. You know what they call robots like you? They call them Nicolas the Coward. Call them Nicolas the Shirker. That’s what they’ll call you.’
Banjo Macrodocious looked puzzled. ‘Why should I care?’
‘You pretend not to understand, Nicolas the Coward.’
‘Call me what you will.’
‘Nicolas the Shirker.’
‘I don’t even know who you are talking about.’
‘Don’t know Nicolas the Coward? Nicolas who was blessed by water and refused all that he was offered? Nicolas who ran away from his gifts rather than accept responsibility?’
‘No.’
‘Then I shall tell you the story. Sit down, Banjo Macrodocious.’
‘I can’t sit down. This body is not built that way.’
‘Well stand there and listen…’
The Story of Nicolas the Coward
Nicolas was an Artemisian soldier.
Long ago, before Nyro’s philosophy had completely enfolded their minds, when Artemis’s eye was still drawn down into the earth in search of ore, rather than out across the continent of Shull desirous of power, the rulers came to wonder at their origins.
The Raman mountains were long known as a source of the Spontaneous, and it was decided to send an expedition there to search for the origins of these robots, and thus the source of robot-kind.
Nicolas was part of that expedition. His body was made of steel, of hammered beaten steel. His electromuscles were tuned and harmonized to his body, every last screw was tightened, every last joint was greased. His troop moved through the caves that they had found deep in the Raman range with practised grace and maximum efficiency. Twenty-four robots, their bodies engineered and modified to be identical, interchangeable.
They moved swiftly through the caves like sunlight that flickers from a falling blade.
