be used as minds for infantry-robots. But you will be safe, waiting for the call. Waiting for the day that Turing City rises again!’
Although they had never heard of Turing City, they felt a surge of hope at the name. They wanted to live. They wanted Artemis City to be defeated.
And so the train drew to a halt. The robots waited in tense anticipation, but now a little of the fear had gone. The doors fell open and the sound of a guard was heard, harsh and commanding.
‘Outside, all of you!’
The robots dutifully filed out into a wide area lit by floodlights and surrounded by darkness. To their surprise there was only one guard, and he was a pitiful thing, a grey infantryrobot carrying an old weapon. But they weren’t fooled. They marched forward in line, into the waiting building.
Inside all was astir, blue-painted Artemisian engineers marched back and forth, sorting through the hoppers of robot parts. Hands and feet and electromuscles of robots from across the continent. Bins filled with blue twisted wire.
The engineers looked on in amazement as the prisoners began to strip themselves down, but then they moved forward and helped them to remove those awkward parts that had stuck together during those long weeks in the wagon without oil or grease.
First the panels, then the electromuscle, then the steel bones; the robots took themselves apart, dropping muscle here and limbs there. The air was filled with the clank of metal, the hum of machinery, the spark of the cutter, the glow of the forge.
The engineers’ surprise turned to disbelief as the prisoners lifted each other onto the final conveyor belt. These robots were of an unusual build, but the engineers had disassembled bodies from across the continent. They quickly figured out what to do.
Now all of the robots from the wagon were lying on the conveyor belt, and the blue-painted engineers moved in to remove their minds from their heads. They cracked open the metal skulls and pulled out the blue wire bundles inside, which they tossed into the fires that glowed yellow-red behind them. The blue metal sagged and then melted, running down through the coal to form a hard metal clinker beneath. Soon the fires would be extinguished and the ash and clinker raked away to be recycled.
One of the engineers moved to the rear of the line. The last robot from the wagon stood there, watching in amusement.
‘I don’t know how you get them to do that, Fess,’ he said.
The man who pretended to be called Banjo Macrodocious was looking on in wonder.
‘Their king had his subjects made to be that gullible. It’s how he kept himself in power.’
‘Well not any more,’ said the engineer briskly. ‘He’ll be through here himself soon. Artemis will have no use for someone like that.’
How beautiful stand the plants in the Emperor’s garden.
Wa-Ka-Mo-Do, self-built robot; warrior of Ko of the state of Ekrano in the High Spires; one of the Eleven, displayed none of the wonder he felt at standing here in the heart of the Silent City. His expression was still, for the mothers of Ko believed in this as they knelt to twist the wire that would form the minds of the next generation: that a robot should have the aspect of a warrior, but the soul of a poet.
So Wa-Ka-Mo-Do’s body was still and silent. Unlike the other robots here in the Silent City, his panelling was painted. The metal had been dipped in scarlet paint and then left to dry smooth. Gloss paint, polished to a shine, easy to chip, easily damaged in a fight. Did the robots of the Silent City understand that? Did they understand that the chrome beading around the eyes, the mouth, the joints in his arms and legs would easily mark? That keeping himself unscratched was an advertisement of his skill?
The red joints of his fingers and feet would move like beetle backs, but for now he was motionless, blending into brightly coloured surroundings. Seen from a distance he was a collection of fragments, sharp amidst the dappled sunlight, hard blades and glossy red painted metal; mind fixed in contemplation of the poetry arranged before him.
Poems written in the medium of organic life: a folio compiled by the robots whom the Emperor had sent out across the planet Penrose, commanding them to seek beauty in every form, whether it be the glow of iron, pulled hot from the forge, or the curve of the body of some young robot in her newly built adult form.
But the Emperor’s vision was wider than this, for he also commanded that his robots look for poetry amongst the lewd profusion of organic life that flourishes in the most unlikely corners of the continents of Yukawa: maybe in the curl of a plant or the arrangement of petals on a flower or the spreading canopy of a tree.
And so those robots, those poets of another age, had travelled the length and breadth of the continent, taking an insect or a seed here, a piece of plating or a cutting there, and had brought them back to be placed in the garden of the Emperor.
And, oh, what vision the Emperor had displayed when he had his stately garden decreed.
A pit, three miles across, long mined of porphyry copper, had been filled with gravel and soil and then surrounded by a wall of burnished iron, bound in brass, inlaid with copper. Stone paths had been laid through the virgin soil, along which robot gardeners walked, sowing seeds, planting roots, watering and weeding, pruning and tending, raising the plants and trees and ferns that were brought to them. Silver insects scuttled across the floor, metal shells flashing brightly. Larger animals paced their gilded cages or pulled disconsolately at feet welded to metal platforms.
In the midst of this, Wa-Ka-Mo-Do finally collected his thoughts and began to walk towards the Silver Circle, the heart of the garden. His iron feet pressed dents into the green turf, his polished scarlet body danced in yellow and gold, the reflections of the cloud of butterflies that burst from the grass with each step. Pollen fell from the scarlet flowers that sprouted in obscene profusion amongst the canopy of the fuchsia trees, it dusted his body, worked its way into his joints and seams to be trapped in the delicate thread of his electromuscle. White pom-poms nodded their heads in the breeze, a stream of pink blossom meandered its lazy way down from the treetops, it wound its way through the golden butterflies, a widening stream of blossom, a river, a wave of pink petals, a tsunami…
From the swirl of colour, a figure materialized. A tall robot, clad in intricately worked metal. He had no arms.
Wa-Ka-Mo-Do lowered his head in submission.
The tall robot spoke.
‘When you meet the Emperor, don’t speak of the world outside of the garden.’
‘I thought you were the Emperor,’ said Wa-Ka-Mo-Do, looking up.
‘No, I am O, his spokesrobot. The Emperor is too busy to attend to all the details of the State of Yukawa. Your audience, however brief, will be sufficient to grant the seal of approval on your mission.’
‘So I am still to see the Emperor?’ Wa-Ka-Mo-Do could not quite conceal the edge of hope in his voice.
‘Yes. The importance of your mission is such that an audience is necessary. Now, it would be appropriate to remain silent until we are within the Silver Circle. A wise robot would enjoy the delights of the garden.’
And indeed now they were passing two tall trees that seemed to have lifted themselves from the ground, their roots standing in a lily pond, the trunks well clear of the water. Wa-Ka-Mo-Do eyed the two creatures trapped in the cages of roots. One of them reached out a metal hand in supplication, eyes glowing pale green, and Wa-Ka- Mo-Do looked away.
They approached the Silver Circle: a loop of silver filigree that wove its way through the garden in a circle half a mile across. Wa-Ka-Mo-Do could cut easily through it with one of the blades in his hands, but he knew he would be dead even as he approached it. The loop of silver rose up in an arch, flanked by two more robots without arms.
They gazed straight ahead as O led Wa-Ka-Mo-Do past them, into the garden beyond, Wa-Ka-Mo-Do struggling not to betray the excitement he felt at being here.
O turned to him. ‘Now we are within the Silver Circle, I will speak freely. You will have heard that Yukawa has been visited by creatures from beyond our shores?’
‘I had heard that they come from beyond even our world, my master.’
