The other women stared at her. So did the men at whose feet they knelt.
‘Hey,’ Susan said to them. ‘Get back to work.’
Slowly, much to Susan’s surprise, they all did so.
Banjo Macrodocious leaned forward. ‘Do you know, Susan, that there are many who would agree with you. Some people say that the Book of Robots is written all around us at the moment, in the twisted metal of the million robot minds that inhabit this planet.’
Susan resumed weaving too.
‘Well, I like that interpretation better,’ she said.
She was a quarter of the way into the pattern now, two and a half thousand twists gone, nearly eight thousand left.
‘And some people,’ continued Banjo Macrodocious, ‘say that the first robots were rather crude, and over the years they have improved themselves, and that we have yet to see the perfect robot.’
‘That may be,’ replied Susan equably.
‘Karel may find the answer,’ said Banjo Macrodocious. ‘He travels north – north to where the answers lie.’
‘Do you think I will ever see him again?’ asked Susan, gripped by a sudden longing. It hurt, because it cut so deep. All the walls that she had built up within herself, the layers of insulation she had placed over her emotions, were suddenly sliced cleanly through, and the silver edge of her feelings shone through.
‘I don’t know,’ said Banjo Macrodocious.
Already Susan was sealing herself off again, soldering over the breaks. She was kneeling on a concrete floor in a metal room again, deep underground in the heart of Artemis City. There was nothing else now but Artemis.
‘I don’t suppose I will,’ she said. ‘Turing City has gone. It will not rise again.’
Maoco O
‘What’s your name?’ asked Maoco O.
The newly built robot moved its arms experimentally, then looked down to see that it had no legs as yet. Maoco O had left it to build its own; things would be more efficient that way.
The robot looked up at him, green eyes shining. ‘I’m Gabriel,’ it said. ‘Thank you for rescuing me.’
‘Don’t worry. You’ll have the chance to repay me. We’re going to build more bodies, and we’re going to rescue more minds.’
Gabriel hadn’t fully registered the words; he was still lost in the horror of his recent experience. ‘It was awful on the gangue,’ he said. ‘Those crab bodies… they had no senses, only the feel for metal.’ He was beginning to babble. ‘There was nothing but emptiness, the crushing of rock. A lifetime trapped there…’
‘Not any more,’ said Maoco O. ‘You’re free now.’
Gabriel couldn’t let go of the memories. ‘My wife, my children. They pushed us all into those crab bodies…’
‘I told you, we shall rescue them all. Step by step.’
Gabriel waved his arms around, seemingly without control.
‘To see, to hear, to move… You wouldn’t believe the feeling. ..’
‘I know,’ said Maoco O. ‘I know. Just take your time, Gabriel.’
This was going to be harder than he had expected, but Maoco O could do it. He knew it. First his own body, then Gabriel’s, then the others. He had a collection of minds already, laid out on shelves next door.
Some of them were crippled, having had their coils crushed. The robots in those minds were irretrievably separated from the world. Doomed to thirty or forty years in silence and darkness, and then death as the life-force leaked away.
But some of the minds he had collected were whole. There was enough metal left outside for bodies to be built for them. There were even City Guard minds among them. Maoco O would patiently show them how to build their own bodies, how to reconnect with the world once more.
There were even places to hide while they rebuilt themselves. Turing City wasn’t quite dead. Not yet.
‘What’s your name?’ asked Gabriel.
‘My name? Maoco O.’
‘A City Guard! What happened to your body?’
Maoco thought of his former body. So fast, so powerful. When Turing City had seemed strong, it had seemed so important. Now that the city had proven to be as brittle as poorly cast iron…
‘My body? This is my body, Gabriel. It changes from day to day. Now, come on, let’s get those legs built. And then I will teach you how to fight.’
Artemis City was growing. Metal girders seemed to spring from the ground, climbing up towards the moons, a few remaining snowflakes blowing through their skeleton frames. Metal plate crept across the ground. Metal hammers rang, and black smoke billowed from chimneys. Molten metal spilled red and golden from blast furnaces, splashing out into blackened moulds.
Spoole stood at the top of the city and looked out at a landscape turning to metal.
‘He’s coming, Spoole,’ said Gearheart. ‘Your son is coming home. How does that make you feel?’
‘My son?’ said Spoole.
‘Oh, Spoole, we both know who Kavan is. Don’t you feel proud? That your wire is strong? Does that satisfy your virility? Does it make you feel like a man? Or don’t you like it, the fact that you are no longer the greatest?’
‘Be quiet, Gearheart.’
Gearheart slammed down her spoon-shaped arm. Her battered, misshapen body was so ugly now. Spoole noted the lightest speckling of rust beading on her chest panelling, and he felt disgusted.
‘Don’t tell me to be quiet,’ snapped Gearheart. ‘You call yourself an Artemisian? Look at you skulking here in this Basilica while better robots than you are off changing the world. All that metal flowing into this state, and what are you building? More troops? More weapons? More railway lines? No! You are expanding Artemis City to your greater glory. Spoole, you have forgotten Nyro.’
Spoole looked down at Gearheart, her battered shell lying on the floor nearby. She couldn’t see the view from up here, but she didn’t care. She didn’t seem to care about much at all, any more.
‘Forgotten Nyro?’ said Spoole. ‘You know, maybe I have. Or maybe not. Maybe Nyro’s philosophy wasn’t woven into my mind as strongly as into others’. Remember, I was made to lead. I wonder if we leaders can ever consider ourselves truly expendable? I think we will always see ourselves as different to the metal around us.’
‘Kavan doesn’t think so,’ said Gearheart. ‘And he has conquered all of Shull. He’s a better Artemisian than you, Spoole.’
‘Maybe he is,’ said Spoole.
He looked out again over the expanding city. Cold metal in the pale sun.
‘Does it really matter, Gearheart?’ he asked. ‘Someone takes some metal. She twists it, and it thinks for forty or so years, and then it dies. Look at this city. Some of the metal that makes up these buildings would once have been minds, would once have thought. It may do again sometime in the future. Minds live and die, and all the while metal twists its way across the surface of Penrose, in the form of cities and railway lines and body plating. Once the metal is extracted from its ore, it will dance its way across this planet for all time. Sometimes it will think, and sometimes it will not. But all the while it will just be metal.’
As he spoke he knelt down by his consort’s body. There was rust here at her neck too, he noticed. Red speckles of it. The Gearheart of old would never have allowed herself to have sunk to these depths. And yet she was the same Gearheart, the same metal in every respect, save for those few tiny cuts that the Scout had made.
‘What is the matter with you, Spoole? What are you doing?’ Gearheart sounded worried.
Spoole was crying, he was shocked to discover, a faint electric whine emerging from his voicebox. But that was silly. There was nothing here but metal. Why should one piece of twisted metal feel anything for another piece?
