constructed iron walls of Artemis City, noting everything they could about the animals’ devices.
Spoole seemed to be getting nowhere.
‘I’m being given the run around,’ he said to Susan, as they rested in a forge one afternoon, Susan idly rubbing a file across her seams. ‘Sandale and the rest don’t dare get rid of me, at least not yet, but they’re not going to help me. Don’t worry though. We’ll find your friend somehow. Here, take some of this.’
He handed Susan some platinum wire that lay bundled on a shelf near the fire. Susan accepted it with bad grace. He didn’t seem to get it. He thought they were both friends now, rather than just two people united in a common cause. She looked at the wire, felt it. It was very pure, as good a quality as anything she would have found back in Turing City. She looked around and realized that everything in this room was superior. The plate iron, the chrome steel alloy, the choice of solders in a range of thicknesses. Truly, in Artemis City, not all robots were quite so equal as they would have you believe.
‘I can’t believe that Sandale and the rest would betray Shull to the humans,’ she said.
‘They claim to still follow Nyro. They have gained more metal than they have lost. The animals have presented the city with iron and gold. There are rumours…’ He looked around the room. No one else was present, any robot who entered swiftly withdrew when they saw Spoole there. ‘There are rumours that they have presented Artemis with aluminium.’
‘Aluminium?’ said Susan. She felt a tingle of current in her hands. She was a craftsrobot. What would she give in order to feel the mythical element? ‘Still, even if it were true, you sell your principles cheaply. The animals are taking more than they give. You’ve seen that base they are building. Do you think they will be content to stay there when all of Artemis City is on their doorstep? The whole of Shull will be connected to their base by railway lines.’
‘I know that,’ said Spoole complacently. He was too busy twisting a sheet of copper into shape.
Susan looked at the other robot. She hated him. And yet she followed him.
The next day they had walked the corridors of the Main Index, and Susan was sure she saw robots ducking out of their way as they approached. Spoole was right, she decided, they were giving him the run around. The clerks were helpful, but only up to a point.
Outside, the animals were at work again, erecting a perimeter of guns around their base. Strange guns, almost like robot women, they moved by themselves in a kind of dance, spinning this way and that as they looked across the wide plain. They reminded Susan of the Turing City Guard, the way they too had danced in the night whilst patrolling the city.
That evening there was a shift in the light, lines of shadows moving across the city, golden and dirty in the setting sun, and Susan saw the second craft, the one that had hung there these past few days, descending slowly to the ground, settling within the perimeter of guns.
Blue and silver and black and grey robots crowded the walls, watching the spectacle. The ship came to rest, and a stillness settled over the city.
‘They’re here,’ said Susan, spite in her voice, ‘they have really arrived. I don’t think this is our world any more.’
‘It was never your world,’ said Spoole, ‘it was always Nyro’s.’
A week passed, and Spoole was no closer to their goal. Worse, they were starting to be noticed. Infantryrobots seemed always to be present, standing in rooms, passing them in corridors, repairing themselves in forges they would not normally frequent.
‘The Generals will only tolerate me as long as they think I am not a threat,’ said Spoole. ‘Fools. They always seek to avoid direct confrontation as long as possible. Still, it would be wise if we were to try something else for the moment.’
They left the high rooms of the Basilica and the Centre City, and descended to street level.
‘Where you taking me now?’ asked Susan.
‘The Old City.’
‘Look at the stars,’ said Susan, pointing. ‘They’re falling.’
‘No,’ said Spoole. ‘They’re taking down the wall. They don’t need it now that Kavan has been defeated.’
Susan looked at the stepped shape to the west. She could make out the robots working quickly to disassemble the structure. She guessed they would be shipping it to the forges and factories at the northern end of the city, to be turned it into more soldiers for Artemis.
‘You really think Kavan is defeated?’ she said.
‘I don’t know,’ said Spoole. ‘The Generals always underestimated him, as did I.’
He looked towards the stars that shone in the gaps where the wall had been.
‘I wonder if the animals have done so as well,’ he murmured.
Kavan
Kavan felt the downdraft from the human ship as it flew overhead. It scattered dust and sand across the plain, blowing yet more inside his metal body.
‘It’s landing,’ said Calor, excitedly. ‘It’s landing!’
They lay beneath a thin covering of sand with their heads pressed together, using vibration more than sound to communicate.
‘How far?’ asked Kavan.
‘Just under a mile.’
‘Do you think you can make it, Calor?’
‘I know I can.’
Kavan wondered if he should make her wait, but no. One day’s grace was the most they could hope for, after that the humans would have learned and rethought their tactics.
‘Do the best you can,’ he said, and he felt the current surge as she charged her electromuscles. She held it there, held it, letting it build to peak and then…
She eased her way slowly from the ground, her silver body gritty where the sand had stuck to the thin film of oil with which she had covered herself. Kavan raised his own head above the level of the earth, and saw the luminous green craft in the distance, the big blades on the top of the craft spinning, beating up the dust. Half seen through the haze, two humans were unloading a yellow crate from a hatch in the side of the craft. The robots had watched the humans at work on these crates before. They contained a mechanism that unfolded itself from the box like a robot climbing to its feet. A skeleton of metal that stood up and held out its arms. The Artemisian plain had been studded with pylons over the last few weeks: this would be the next in line. The humans were taking over the land, mile by mile, relentlessly imposing their machinery on Shull. Even the earth itself was not left untouched: out near the western coast, great areas of land had been churned up by human machines that crept back and forth on their hands and knees, turning shiny brown swathes of soil over to face the sunlight.
The advance was remorseless and logical. It was this very logic that Kavan was hoping to exploit: it was so easy to predict where they would be next.
Calor moved forward. The humans had the crate on the ground now; they were unfolding its sides, unaware of the Scout creeping up on them.
She had covered barely one hundred yards when a proximity signal rang out from the craft. The animals’ heads jerked in Kavan’s direction at the same time as Calor sprang forward, releasing stored current through her electromuscles at an incredible rate. She tore forwards, a sandy silver flashing pattern of light, her arms and legs pumping away as she closed the distance.
The humans froze, they stumbled towards their craft, hesitated, returned to the crate, then ran back into the craft. All the time Calor was closing the distance. The humans were inside now, the pitch of the engine increased.
Calor was still too far off, Kavan saw the dust whirling in a pool as the rotors’ speed increased, he saw the black turret at the front of the craft swivel towards the Scout. The craft began to lift, and a line of explosions travelled towards Calor. She easily sidestepped the jumping path that cut across the plain, giving that last desperate burst of speed as the craft lifted higher; she jumped, claws extended
She plunged the blades deep into the side of the machine.
Kavan realized he had just been standing, watching. He remembered his own role and began to run towards the craft himself. The line of explosions turned and began to pick its way across the plain, heading in his direction. Closer it came, and he prepared himself to jump to the side, just as he had seen Calor do, but the line suddenly
