Goeppert and his robots were in. The bullets and shells directed at the bridgehead of troops who crowded at the base of the iron wall were already reducing in number as the Borners went to work inside the city.
Calor suddenly began to laugh. Kavan was used to this, he almost expected it: Scouts pumped current around their bodies at a high frequency, they usually died young and half mad.
‘What is it, Calor?’ asked Kavan.
‘It’s Goeppert. I’ve just realized why he followed you here! The Borners have just taken your city!’
‘Not yet they haven’t,’ said Kavan.
‘But they’re in there, and you’re out here! What if they take it over and don’t let us in? That would be so funny!’
‘Go on Calor. Go and fetch Ada. I want her supervising the work here.’
‘It will take time, Kavan. She could be anywhere back there on the plain.’
‘Then fetch someone who knows what to do! She’ll find her way here, I’m sure.’
Engineers were bundled to the base of the wall. Standing on the bodies of the fallen, they began to supervise the stripping away of the iron, forcing a path through into the city. A huge explosion sounded to their left, and the second of the guard towers was blown apart.
‘Goeppert works well,’ said Kavan. ‘That, or more Artemisians are returning to our side.’
‘Kavan, what’s that?’
Calor tilted her head, listening. Now Kavan heard it too. A low drone, and under it a thumping noise.
‘It’s coming from behind us,’ said Kavan.
The other robots turned to see. There was nothing there. Somewhere beyond the noise and the gunfire they could just make out the glow of the forges and nothing else. The droning noise grew louder, the thumping became more insistent.
‘There’s something up there,’ said Calor, ‘shapes in the sky.’
‘Shapes?’ said Kavan. ‘What shapes?’
As he said it, golden flares ignited amongst the raindrops, they drew straight lines towards Kavan and his troops.
‘What are they?’ asked Calor.
‘Into the trenches!’ called Kavan
The golden lines streaked towards them and struck the ground between the first and second trench. Fountains of earth sprang from the resulting explosion.
Kavan and Calor tumbled down into the inside moat, landing on the gravelled bottom with a jolt that shook their metal frames. Something snapped in Kavan’s right arm, and he lost partial control over his hand.
‘Look!’ shouted Calor. She had landed on her feet, like any true Scout, and was pointing upwards. The top of the trench was a line in the sky, beyond it, something dark moved. A huge shape, lights blinking on its underside.
‘What is it?’ called Calor.
‘I don’t know!’ called Kavan. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it before!’
A second shape moved over the top of the trench. There were machines up there, huge flying machines that groaned and thumped the air. Where had they come from? Where they of Spoole’s invention? Surely not.
Golden flares streaked from one of the craft. One fell into the moat, a few hundred yards from where Kavan and Calor sheltered. It exploded in a wash of soil and sand that rattled on their damaged shells.
‘Go towards it!’ yelled Kavan, ‘See if it’s blown down the walls enough for us to get out of here.’
Calor ran awkwardly along the trench bottom. She had lost her usual light gait, her body was failing due to the damage it had taken.
Another craft flew by overhead, and more robots tumbled into the trench. An infantryrobot landed near Kavan. He heard the splintering crack that disabled her legs.
Calor was coming back.
‘Kavan!’ she called. ‘The last bomb blew out the walls clear to the next moat. We can make it through there.’
He followed her awkwardly down the trench. It was hard to move his right arm properly; his whole body was off balance.
The humming drone of the strange craft had increased. No, realized Kavan, it was rather that the noise of gunfire and shelling from the walls had lessened. The robots of the city wouldn’t want to open fire on their own craft.
He stumbled down the trench, cut through the gap in the walls to the next moat along. There were robots there already, clambering up the walls. Another huge explosion shook the ground behind Kavan, shaking the climbing robots free of their handholds.
‘They know we’re in the trench!’ called Calor. ‘They’re aiming for us down here!’
‘Good!’ called Kavan. ‘Their bombs will shatter the walls and make it easier for us to climb out!’
‘And if they hit us?’
‘Then we will die. We’re only metal.’
Kavan and Calor ran, the patterns of explosions reflecting in the rain water that flowed down their mud- spattered shells. Kavan and Calor and the rest of the robots, infantryrobots, Scouts, Storm Troopers, even some engineers, all seeking a way out of the confusion. All the while, those heavy craft droned and hovered somewhere above, sending down golden tongues of fire.
‘Here, Kavan, here!’ called Calor. She had found a sloping bank of earth, up which she led Kavan, both of them scrambling up into the night above. They emerged near one of the bridges that led away from the mounds onto the plain beyond.
Kavan turned for a moment and looked back towards the city. The gunfire there had almost ceased, bright yellow lights had been turned on to illuminate the walls. Before the walls, the dark craft hovered, sending down streaks of light that burst in golden fountains on the blackened ground. Fires leaped into the sky, fires fell from the night, and the battleground was picked out in bars of light.
‘What about Goeppert?’ asked Calor.
‘He’s on his own now,’ said Kavan. ‘We need to retreat and reassess.’
‘Retreat to where?’
‘Scatter across the plain,’ said Kavan. ‘It will make it harder for those craft to pick us off.’
‘What about Artemis City?’
‘It will still be here tomorrow. We need to understand what is happening!’
The command went out, and the Uncertain Army broke up into hundreds, thousands of little companies that scattered into the night.
A new sound fell out of the night, a piercing whistle that sang from high above. A second noise joined it.
‘What now?’ asked Kavan.
‘Two more craft,’ said Calor, gazing up into the night. ‘Small craft, I think. No. Or are they large craft, but further away?’
‘Never mind that,’ said Kavan, ‘look!’
The humming, droning machines were turning their attention away from the trenches and instead moving towards Kavan and the rest. They began to chase the robots across the plain, golden tongues of fire chasing them into the night.
Susan and Spoole
Spoole was ashamed. Susan could tell. He may not be part of what had happened, he may not have made the decision, but he was still ashamed.
‘Other minds?’ she said. Then she remembered what Nettie had told her, out by the radio masts. The creators had come. The writers of the Book of Robots had returned to Penrose. ‘Is it true?’ she asked. ‘Have our creators come?’
‘No!’ said Spoole. ‘No! They never claimed that. At least not at first. But they pick things up so quickly. They know how to manipulate people, how to win robots over. They know when to lie and flatter, and when to threaten
