‘I’m sorry, Melt. We don’t mean to frustrate you. That’s our training. Often telling what we think to be true corrupts or changes the people we are trying to learn about.’ Brian held his arms apart in a human gesture. ‘But you must know how we spoke to Simrock. Don’t you use radio to communicate?’
‘Yes, of course we do…’
Then it struck Karel and Melt what she meant.
Ruth leaned forward, genuinely interested. ‘Don’t you find it odd that so few robots on this planet have exploited radio as a means of communication? I mean, the pilgrims, the whales, the hive insects do. That’s about it. Why don’t you?’
‘Why should we?’ blustered Melt. ‘We build radios when we need them.’
‘You have so little curiosity. All of you. You just accept things as they are.’
She was right, thought Karel. We do. He looked at Brian and Jasprit, saw the way they were looking at each other.
‘You know about us,’ said Karel. ‘You know more about us than we do ourselves.’ Something occurred to him. ‘Have you been to the Top of the World?’
‘Why?’
‘No more questions!’ shouted Melt.
‘I’m sorry. Force of habit. No, we haven’t. Why do you ask, Karel?’
‘I’ve been to the top of Shull. There is a place there.’
‘Can you show me on the map?’ asked Brian.
‘I’m sorry. No. But there is a building. I was forbidden to enter, but I looked inside anyway. There is an arrangement of robots in there, all lined up, showing how we evolved.’
Jasprit began to dance at this.
‘Really? We’ve got to go, Ruth.’
‘We will! What else is there, Karel?’
‘A map of the stars on the wall. And the titles of three stories: The Story of Nicolas the Coward, The Story of the Four Blind Horses, and The Story of Eric and the Mountain.’
That had them.
‘Really, Ruth, we have to go!’ said Jasprit. ‘We need to see that place!’
‘We’re interested in stories,’ explained Ruth. ‘They tell you a lot about a culture. I’ve heard the story of Nicolas the Coward. Simrock told us that as you walked here.’
They looked at Simrock, standing placidly nearby. He seemed to have lost interest in the conversation.
‘I don’t know the other two stories though,’ said Ruth. ‘Could you tell me them, Karel?’
‘I’m sorry, no. I never heard them.’
Melt made a noise.
‘Do you know them, Melt?’ asked Karel.
‘I thought everyone knew the story of Eric and the Mountain,’ he replied.
‘Everyone? No.’ Karel gazed at Melt. ‘Melt, where are you from?’
‘Karel, do we have time for this?’
Karel was torn between Melt and the animals. To think he had walked all this way next to someone who knew one of the mysterious stories.
Melt spoke up.
‘Ruth, maybe we can do a deal,’ he said. ‘We need to get down to the plain below. If you help us, I will answer all your questions.’
The three humans looked at each other.
‘We could call up a craft,’ said Brian. ‘But I’m not sure it would take all three of them.’
‘I’m staying here,’ said Simrock.
‘Why?’ asked Melt.
‘This is where Nicolas the Coward will be, not down on the plains below.’
‘Two of us then,’ said Melt. ‘You must have flown up here in a craft. I can’t imagine animals walking this far. Get us closer to Artemis City and we’ll help you.’
‘We can’t take you too close,’ said Brian.
‘Why not?’
‘It’s another state’s… trading area,’ said Ruth. ‘We have agreements.’
‘I think I understand,’ said Melt. ‘Just take us down to the plains, then.’
‘Very well,’ said Brian, and he held out a hand. Melt took it and moved it up and down.
‘You have met humans before,’ said Ruth. ‘In that case, if it’s all the same to you, we will speak to Karel.’
Karel was too heavy for the humans’ flimsy chairs. He didn’t mind, he sat on the rocky ground amongst the curved iron buildings as these creatures from so far away asked him questions.
Such strange questions, at once so obvious but so difficult to put an answer to. Where did robots come from, how did they make children, what was the difference between a robot and an animal? Why were there two moons, why was there metal, how long do they live, what’s the difference between a male and female robot?
And then, the oddest of them all.
‘Take a look around the village, Karel. Tell us what you see.’
‘Why?’
‘We want to see this world through your eyes.’
Karel looked around. From here he could see nothing but sky, he was lost in the cupped hands of the mountain, watched only by the sun. No one knew of this place, but it still seemed odd that it had remained undetected for fifty years, if not the hundreds of years old that it looked.
‘What do you think? Go on. Look around.’
He got up and, followed by Ruth, he wandered around the village. The buildings were just a little smaller than he was: he could not stand up inside those low iron domes. The doors were all low, no more than two feet high, and he ducked to enter one or two, to look around the empty interiors with glowing eyes. In one he found a shallow depression in the centre of the room that might once have held a fire. Looking up, he saw a hole in the roof, flames of rust licking through the iron towards him.
He ducked back outside and turned his attention to the collar of stone on which the iron dome sat.
It was green with organic life, he noted with some disgust. Green fur, yellow splats of lichen, even frills of some pale substance he had never seen before.
He reached out and dragged his finger across it. It felt so insubstantial, almost like it wasn’t there. It was ironic. Up here, in this forgotten space at the top of the world, strong metal rusted, but weak organic life waxed wildly. Only in Turing City had the natural order reigned. Only in that state had the stones been scrubbed clean, the creeping tendrils of green life uprooted and burned, only there had metal walked pure and free. No more.
And then, as he stared at the obscene mush on his fingers, the world seemed to flip. For a moment, that mush was the true, vital life, and his metal body was cold and clean and sterile. Nothing but metal animated by thoughts.
Then the world flipped back again and he laughed. What did it mean to say ‘nothing but metal animated by thoughts’? He was exactly metal animated by thoughts.
The world flipped again, and he looked at those low, wide doorways, and something else became clear.
Ruth was there, standing by him.
‘What is it, Karel?’
‘I think I see. The robots that lived here weren’t shaped like me.’
He found the proof in the next building he looked inside.
Two bodies lay in there. Robot bodies of a sort. They were long, of many segments, two limbs, not quite arms, not quite legs, coming from each section. At one end there was an interface where Karel guessed another segment could be plugged. At the other there was a flat head containing two eyes of a similar design to his own.
The skull of one robot was broken open, and he peered inside at the blue wire in there, maybe not so much like in Karel’s own head, but it was twisted enough to suggest intelligence.
Karel ran his hands over one of the bodies. He moved it, felt the articulation in the joints, saw the way the
