Bouvan’s eyes flashed in the darkness and he spoke with an emotion that completely contradicted Susan’s first assessment of him as being unfused.
‘Shut up, Appovan!’ he shouted across the night. ‘Why do you always have to interfere? This is my tower, they came to me.’ He turned back to Vignette. ‘Come here, I’ll be gentle.’
He was too. Susan saw the way that he felt around the infantry-robot’s neck and gently opened up the head and pulled the mind clear, unplugging the coil as he did so. He laid the body carefully down on the top of the tower.
‘There,’ he said, holding the twisted metal of a mind towards Susan with his incredibly long arm. She looked to see the coil intact. A sense of vertigo overcame her.
Be careful not to drop it! The words never made it to her voicebox.
Bouvan could see the look of satisfaction on the robot’s face at his successful removal of Vignette’s mind. ‘Your turn,’ he said. She hesitated.
‘He’ll drop you!’ called Appovan from her tower. ‘He’s always been the same. Clumsy! It took him for ever to build that tower, he was always dropping stones. He hit a soldier once! Flattened her! It’s a wonder they didn’t melt him down for scrap…’
‘Shut up, woman!’ shouted Bouvan, eyes flaring.
This was all so unreal, thought Susan, standing here above the world, listening to the two of them argue.
‘You built the tower?’ she said.
‘Oh yes. It took me nearly thirty years. Don’t listen to her talking about me being clumsy. It took her longer. Couldn’t find the right sort of stone, always trying to make patterns, like that was going to make the shot any better.’
‘But that can’t be right,’ interrupted Susan, ‘this tower looks so old. How old are you?’
‘One hundred and fifty years old,’ said Bouvan.
‘Don’t listen to him!’ called Appovan. ‘I’m not a day over twenty!’
‘No robot lives that long,’ said Susan.
‘They do if they’re half-fused,’ said Bouvan, ‘like me and her. This is Half-fused City you’re in. Didn’t you know that?’
Half-fused. Suddenly it all made sense to Susan. Robots of limited intelligence, but robots that lived longer and were stronger. Robots like the ones Nettie had told her about, the sort of minds that Susan would soon have been twisting, had she stayed in the making rooms.
‘Come on, lady. I’ll swap your head with hers.’
‘He’ll drop it!’ called Appovan. ‘He dropped a block of half-melted lead once. What a waste! They were looking for bits of metal for weeks afterwards! Weeks!’
Susan wanted to run back down the steps of the tower, down to the streets below.
Down to where the Storm Trooper searched for her. That thought brought her up short.
She looked back at Bouvan, the half-fused robot. She had had the plan for a half-fused mind explained to her, and she understood something: such a robot would be too stupid to lie. In that sense, she could trust it.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Do it. Swap my head with hers.’
She carefully lay face down on the floor. She felt something touch the back of her head, then her sense of the world vanished, leaving her in darkness and silence. She waited for sensation to return.
And waited.
What if it were a trick?
It was a trick! How could she have been so stupid? To give her mind to a complete stranger, a mad robot who lived on a tower high above the city. Maybe he had dropped her? How would she know? Would there just be sudden oblivion, her thoughts ceasing to exist? Or would her mind be damaged, twisted out of shape? Would she begin to imagine strange places, strange thoughts? Trapped in a twisted world of her own mind?
Then, just like that, sense returned. She could see darkness again, and a long hand moved and she was gazing at the stars.
‘Careful!’ called out a voice. Her own. That was confusing. She hadn’t spoken, she was sure of it.
She remembered where she was, and she realized who had spoken. That was Vignette, now in her old body. She lay still for a moment, getting the feel of her new body. It was really quite well made, she realized. She moved her hands, felt for the edge of the ledge on which she lay, sat up slowly, and she recognized a fellow craftsrobot’s work This body was made of cheap materials, it was true, but an expert job had been made of the construction.
She looked across the other side of the circular chimney to see Vignette gazing back.
‘You build well,’ said the other robot.
Susan felt a sudden stab of jealousy. Vignette was wearing her old body, now she had the use of all the good metal that had gone into its making. Now Vignette looked well made and attractive, a true mother. And she, Susan, was just another infantryrobot.
But this is what she had wanted.
‘You build well, too,’ she replied. The two robots exchanged a look of mutual respect.
Susan got to her feet.
‘Are you going?’ asked Bouvan.
‘Of course they’re going,’ shouted Appovan from across the way. ‘No one ever stays up here, do they?’
‘I used to know other robots,’ said Bouvan. ‘Back when I lived on the ground, but I had to go higher and higher. It’s always been in me to beat Appovan. So they brought me stones and I started to build. Now I live up here, all alone.’
‘You’ve got me, haven’t you?’ called Appovan.
‘But I don’t like you.’
‘And I don’t like you.’
‘Please don’t leave me alone,’ said Bouvan.
‘Come down with us,’ said Susan.
‘I can’t. I have to stay up here. That’s the way my mind was made.’
Susan hesitated.
‘Listen,’ she said. ‘I have to find my friend. I don’t know where she is, but I need to find her. But when I do, I’ll come back here, if I can.’
She was lying, and she knew it. She couldn’t imagine how she could ever return here. Not with Kavan about to attack the city. Not with her a fugitive, fleeing from the making rooms, but she had to say something.
‘Thank you,’ said Bouvan, and he seemed so pathetically grateful that Susan felt ashamed.
‘Come on,’ called Vignette, already descending the steps.
Susan gave a last wave to Bouvan and then followed her. As she went she heard Appovan’s voice.
‘She’s never coming back, you old fool. She was lying so she could get away from you.’
‘She wasn’t,’ said Bouvan. ‘I did her a favour! She’ll repay it!’
Susan turned her hearing right down, shame building within her, and followed Vignette down the stairs.
They reached the bottom of the steps and Vignette made to open the door.
‘Hold it!’ called Susan
Vignette turned back to look at her. Silence. Susan remembered she had turned down her hearing.
‘What is it?’ repeated Vignette.
‘Don’t forget, there’s a Storm Trooper out there looking for me. He’ll be looking for you, now, given that you’re wearing my body.’
Vignette looked down at herself.
‘So what do we do?’
‘Let me go first. Let me do the talking if we meet him.’
Susan pushed the door open and peered out into the night. There was nothing, just the starlit street, the eerie, empty buildings.
Silently, she signalled to Vignette, and the two of them slipped from the tower, pushed up against the shadows. Susan was impressed at how the grey paint of her new body blended into the surroundings.
She began to move down the street, but Vignette put a hand on her arm.
