Rachael stared at him with those copper-sulphate eyes. Two lines of hair like copper wire were stitched above them. From that moment on, Wa-Ka-Mo-Do thought of Rachael as his copper girl.
‘What do I think of Sangrel?’ she said. ‘Do you really want my opinion, or are you just trying to win me over?’
‘Oh, both,’ replied Wa-Ka-Mo-Do. ‘Congratulations, though, for seeing through my strategy.’
‘Now you’re patronizing me.’
‘I wouldn’t dare. Go on, tell me what you think of Sangrel.’
‘I think it’s a lovely place,’ said Rachael, and Wa-Ka-Mo-Do wondered if she was being sarcastic. ‘But I don’t like how you run it. Yukawa is a cruel Empire. Cruel and stupid. You’re selling yourself far too cheaply, you know that?’
‘Selling ourselves too cheaply? What do you mean?’
‘You’ve given away your mines and your land for a song. Now can I go?’
‘For a song? I’m sure the Emperor is being generous to his guests-’
‘Oh, the Emperor! But we have to be nice to him. Look, I’m late. May I go?’
‘You may,’ said Wa-Ka-Mo-Do, thinking about what she had just said. Just in time he remembered the Copper Guard, standing to attention either side of him. ‘But make sure you don’t turn your back to me. I don’t want my Guard to have to kill you.’
Rachael rolled her eyes once more and walked on her way. But she kept her back away from him as she did so.
Ada was a true Artemisian, and a true engineer. Kavan could see it in the way she organized the movement of the Uncertain Army through the mountains. She approached the problem of moving metal from one location to another just as she would any other project, whether it was navigating a railway line or building a bridge.
The robots marched along narrow paths at her guidance, disassembling themselves to be carried by others or even shaping their own bodies into ramps and ladders to enable other robots to climb over them to higher paths, trusting in their fellows to reassemble them afterwards.
She was right, realized Kavan. He had been treating the problem as yet another attack, charging down a path, pushing aside all resistance, but as he climbed from shoulder to shoulder on a pyramid of robots arranged up a rocky slope, he acknowledged that her way of thinking was more appropriate here.
It took them four days to travel the distance to the Northern Road, and often Kavan would look down on a windblown valley, silver and black robots clinging to the sheer sides, body parts being passed hand-to-hand along the edges of ridges. Always there would be blue engineers organizing winches and cranes to collect bodies from the deeper ravines, in order to save the precious metal, and always there was Ada, moving back and forth, organizing and planning and building.
‘Good work,’ he said to her on the evening of the last day. Ada had ordered the robots to remain still at night. Better to lose ten hours’ travel than to waste twenty retrieving broken metal from the foot of a mountain, she had said.
‘I’m impressed. How much further?’
‘You’ll see the Northern Road in the morning,’ said Ada. ‘After that, you only need point your army south.’
‘I want you to remain with me. You’ve proven your worth.’
‘I intend to,’ replied Ada. ‘You’ll need me yet.’
The Northern Road had been impressive enough as they had travelled through the hills of northern Shull. Up here in the mountains it inspired awe in the robots that gazed upon it. Even Kavan found himself wondering at the robots who had imagined it, wondered at the state that had the vision, the planning and the technical proficiency to build it. How would Artemis have fared against them, if they had faced them at the height of their strength?
Kavan was in no doubt, Artemis would have prevailed. Still, the Northern Road was a worthy artefact.
‘I’d say this road even surpasses the railway system of Artemis,’ said Ada, at his shoulder.
The road was built of stone, not metal. Sometimes made of bricks, sometimes of huge boulders, sometimes even carved from the side of the mountains themselves. Seven yards wide and surfaced in cobbles, a low wall on each side, it ran in the shadows of the mountain peaks. Kavan marched amongst the Uncertain Army, part of the metal river that flowed up steep inclines where steps were cut into the road’s surface, a river that ran by the sheets of snow that still lingered up here despite the approach of summer, a river that plunged into the shadows of hanging valleys.
The robots of the plains weren’t used to these high passes; the days when the sun reflected so brightly from the snow that their eyes filled with flashing interference, the nights where the temperature dropped so low that metal became brittle and electro-muscle would tear if flexed too quickly. They were playful in the cold, scooping handfuls of snow from the banks as they passed by, kicking at the ice formed in the lee of the low walls. And then the temperature dropped further and they tapped at joints that seized up through contraction, they looked at canisters of diesel turned waxy by the cold.
Kavan walked with Ada.
‘What if we are attacked here?’ asked a Storm Trooper, its body emitting clanking, popping noises as it stamped along beside them. The cold was not kind to its large frame.
‘We fight,’ replied Kavan, simply.
Only the Scouts seemed happy. Or not so much happy as manic. They jumped and skidded down steep banks of snow, skiing on extended claws towards sheer drops, only flicking a foot at the last moment to veer clear of the edge. Sometimes they went over and Kavan and the rest listened for the distant clatter of metal hitting rock.
There was no sign of any other robots this high up.
‘Oh, they’re here,’ said Ada. ‘They’ll be watching you.’
‘Who will be?’
‘The Borners. This is their territory.’
‘Artemis territory.’
‘No. This isn’t the part we conquered. I’m talking about the real Borners. The robots of the mountains.’
‘You like to draw questions from me, don’t you Ada? Very well, there is time whilst we walk. Tell me about the robots of the mountains.
The Story of the Robots of the Mountains
‘Long ago, robots found the land of Born, a thin stretch of land squeezed between the sea and the mountains. Now, some say that the first inhabitants of that land descended to it from the peaks, and others say that the first inhabitants climbed from the sea, but all are agreed that the land of Born was a paradise for robots. The ground was rich in coal, buried so shallow that a robot did not have to mine, but could pull it straight from the earth. All they had to do was hold out their hands for iron ore to tumble onto them from a nearby mountain. Some days, it was said, even molten lead would rise from the earth around their feet, ready to be scooped up and used. A robot could stand in one place and wait for the materials of the forge to come to it.
‘And so robots flourished in the land of Born. It is said that the whales would come to the shore to speak, secure in the knowledge they would not be harmed, such was the abundance of metal in the land, and so a friendship grew up here between the two species.
‘Some even say that robots travelled from the Top of the World, riding in the bodies of the whales.
‘So the robots lived a life of ease. But such ease does not suit robotkind. For sloth and indolence took hold of those robots, until there came the day that that the best women of Born looked at the men, and they found them wanting.
‘There was much iron to be found in the mountains, so much so that the men took it for granted, making themselves bodies of iron, and never bothering to roam further afield in search of copper or chrome or nickel. Therefore the best of the women began to complain of the diminishing quality of the men’s wire, for the minds that they wove would be much improved by the presence of silver or a little gold, but the men just laughed and said the women were being too demanding, and wasn’t that the way of women?
‘Eventually the best women tired of this. So one night, when Zuse and Neel shared the sky and the snow of the mountains seemed to shine palely itself, the women took themselves along the paths into the high peaks. There
