For the moment, though, it was under control. Karel worked his way up the valleys and river beds that wound their way back down to the sea. He stuck to cover as he picked his way southwards towards Artemis City. That was where Kavan would be heading, and Kavan was responsible for the death of his child and, in all likelihood, his wife.
This green, windblown land was nearly deserted. Occasionally he would see a soldier in the distance, catch the flash of a Scout as she ran along the hillside, hear a distant shout carried by the wind. At first he had dropped to the ground for cover at any sign of life, more recently he had just continued walking. He was wearing the body of an Artemisian infantryrobot, after all.
But for the most part he was alone. Kavan’s army seemed to be draining from the northern hills, leaving nothing but broken and twisted metal to show for his conquest. The north had been tamed, but at tremendous cost to Kavan himself.
Good, thought Karel. Good!
The stream he was following led to a busy river, flushed with the snowmelt that ran from the surrounding hills. Karel looked at the churning waters and tensed the electromuscles in his weak body, gauging whether or not he should cross. The slope on this side was uneven, giving way to rocky walls that sliced down into the water. The far side was flatter, paved in the rough grass that clung wherever it could in these wild lands.
He decided to try it, and managed to wade halfway across before the current caught him and swept him off his feet. He was sucked below the surface and swept back northwards, his body crashing and scraping on the rocks of the river bed. He snatched for handhold after handhold, eventually managing to find a purchase, hands and feet wedged in the rocky bed. He rested for a moment, looking up through the white swirling patterns of water that streamed around him, seeing the pale glow of daylight above. Then, moving carefully on all fours, he picked his way to the opposite bank and began to climb free of the water.
As he did so, someone grabbed hold of his arm and pulled him clear.
Karel sat for a while on the bank, letting the water drain from his battered body. His electromuscles were shorting with the moisture, he felt weak and uncoordinated. Everything about this land seemed unnatural, the grass that covered the soil, the twisted organic trees that thrust roots into the cracks in the grey rocks, tearing out stones that tumbled into the cold water. And so much water! More than a robot needed.
Still, he had a more pressing concern.
‘Who are you?’ he asked the tall robot who stood silently looking down at him.
‘Banjo Macrodocious.’
‘I should have known.’
Karel had met the robot, or more likely, one of his brothers, before. Banjo Macrodocious. They all had the same name, they were all unnaturally strong. And, despite the fact they were obviously intelligent, they had no sense of self.
‘You shouldn’t stay here,’ Karel warned. ‘Kavan has his troops out hunting for you. He knows that you escaped from the Northern Kingdom before it fell and he wants you all destroyed. Kavan doesn’t believe in the Book of Robots, he thinks it’s nothing more than sedition.’
‘It’s no matter,’ replied Banjo Macrodocious.
‘Why not? I thought the book was important to you! Don’t you carry it in your mind? I thought you all did!’
Banjo Macrodocious was unconcerned.
‘We do. But Kavan and his troops are currently no threat to us, if it can be said that Kavan still commands any troops. The soldiers that once filled our land are marching south. Artemis is undergoing a time of change. Spoole and Kavan and the rest will fight to determine who leads Artemis and what its future direction will be.’
There was an iron-grey lid on this strange land. Karel stared at the dull sky, trying to remember another world, one filled with metal and stone and singing with the current of life.
‘Who leads Artemis has nothing to do with me,’ said Karel.
‘It does. Your wife is in Artemis City.’
Karel felt as if he had been struck by a hammer. For a moment, his head seemed to ring like a bell. Susan was still alive. Happiness and fear mingled within him.
‘Is she okay?’ he asked, his voice almost crackling with joy. Banjo Macrodocious didn’t seem to notice.
‘She is healthy. She works in the making rooms, twisting new minds.’
Now Karel felt his gyros lurch.
‘They’re… raping her,’ he said.
‘Every night.’
He struggled unsteadily to his feet, water still dripping down the grey metal panelling of his body. Mud covered his fingertips.
‘I’ve got to go,’ he said, wiping his hands on the grass. ‘I need to save her.’
‘Not now. Not like that.’
Weak as he was, Karel bunched his fists, squeezing more water from them as he did so. ‘Who are you to tell me what to do?’ he asked, anger surging within him.
Banjo Macrodocious moved forward, blocking his way. He was a big robot, humming with power. Karel was well aware that, even were he not in his current, weakened state, the other robot would have no trouble subduing him. Karel lowered his hands, dampened the anger that was telling him to push the big robot out of the way.
‘Why won’t you let me go?’ he asked.
‘I’ve come to take you to someone who may help you. His name is Morphobia Alligator.’
‘Morphobia Alligator? Who is he?’
‘He’s a pilgrim. He has been looking for you.’
Jai-Lyn was young and sheltered, she had never been outside the Silent City before. Now she was torn between the view from the window of the train and the company of Wa-Ka-Mo-Do.
‘Is it really true that you have travelled all the way from the High Spires to the Silent City, Warrior?’ she asked in awe.
‘Much of the journey takes place on metalled roads, Jai-Lyn, and through the lands of the Emperor. There are few of the robbers and the other dangers of the old tales.’
‘You say few of the robbers! Did you meet any?’ ‘Some. When they realized who I was they did not attack.’ ‘I suppose you made them hand their ill-gotten gains back to the peasants. Am I not right, oh my master?’
‘It is true that the peasants benefitted from my passage.’ The robbers he had met were poorer than the peasants upon which they preyed, reflected Wa-Ka-Mo-Do. He had dispatched the unfortunates with a blow of his sword, cutting cleanly through the metal of their minds, then he had dragged the metal of their bodies to the closest forge, where it was recycled to the benefit of the people, and through them, their Emperor.
‘And what about monsters? Did you meet the Nightwalker?’ ‘There are few monsters in the Empire, Jai-Lyn,’ he laughed. ‘But I saw many marvels. The metal forests of La Wen, where acid is poured into the ground and left to evaporate, and the metal that is washed from the salts blooms as trees under the soil, to be excavated by farmers over the centuries. I saw the great animal farms of Mel-Ka, where the organic cattle roam over grassland and come to slaughter when called. I crossed the four rivers of Fla. I fought there, it’s true, cutting myself free of the squid that reach for metal from the water-’
‘Surely you are the best of all warriors!’
Wa-Ka-Mo-Do smiled at the way Jai-Lyn’s eyes glowed as he spoke.
‘The Imperial Guard would think otherwise.’
Jai-Lyn reminded Wa-Ka-Mo-Do of his younger sister, La-Cor. Bright and skilled in the working of metal. His sister had built a body that caused Wa-Ka-Mo-Do to walk with one hand near his sword when the young men came calling; her conversation had the same eager questioning, always seeking out new knowledge and experience. So similar. At one point Wa-Ka-Mo-Do had traced the symbol of the Book of Robots: a small circle on the circumference of a larger one, but Jai-Lyn did not seem to notice.
Wa-Ka-Mo-Do realized he had been careless in almost revealing himself like that, but she was so like La- Cor…
