Still, they walked and climbed and crawled on, heading south all the while.
‘What was that?’ called Melt.
‘What was what?’
Karel was too busy keeping both hands on the rocks. Despite his heavy body, Melt leaned back, one hand and one foot wedged into a wall.
‘It’s Simrock. He’s speaking to himself. Is that what the Spontaneous do?’
‘Ruth?’ said Simrock. ‘That’s an unusual name. Where do you want to meet? The village? It’s not that far.’
‘What village?’ asked Melt.
‘It’s just around here!’
‘Who were you speaking to?’
‘I don’t know.’ Simrock didn’t seem concerned. ‘I can’t see anybody.’
Karel hurried to catch up.
‘What’s going on, Simrock?’
Simrock pointed. ‘There is a village just around this corner. I know it’s there!’
‘Who is Ruth?’ asked Melt.
But Simrock had already gone on ahead.
‘I knew it! Just here! Can you see it yet?’
‘No!’ called Melt.
‘He’s not speaking to us,’ said Karel.
They rounded a corner and halted, gazing down at the scene below in amazement.
Karel had never seen the village before, and yet he felt as if he knew it. He had the image woven into his mind, along with other tales and stories of childhood. This was how robots used to live, back before the villages had grown into towns and then states. Back when there was enough iron in the ground for all the robots on Penrose.
The village was a huddled collection of little circular buildings, all of the same basic design. Triangular sections of iron were riveted together to make bulging domes, which were fixed into place on stone foundations that rose to about the level of the knee. Flakes of orange rust peeled from the metal.
‘It’s not been abandoned for that long. No more than forty years, I would say.’ Karel looked around in wonder. ‘The village is set back on this ledge, it wouldn’t be visible from below, the rock is too shear above. But surely someone would have come up here?’
Melt said nothing, he pushed on, following Simrock towards the village. It was surrounded by a low stone wall; beyond the wall the ground was paved in wide, broken flags.
Karel followed him slowly, looking around in wonder. He felt as if he had stepped out of his own world and into another. At any moment he expected ancient robots to emerge from the antique buildings, waving to him with simply constructed limbs, peering at him through poorly focussed eyes. He imagined them coming forward and touching his body, admiring the metal, the smooth curves of its construction, scratched and damaged though it may be.
He heard Simrock’s voice, calling out.
‘Ruth? I’m here! Where are you?’
There was movement up ahead in the village. Two, three robots emerging from amongst the low, round buildings.
No, not robots! Karel halted in astonishment. Melt had recoiled, had clumsily assumed a fighting position.
They walked like robots, they had arms and faces like robots, but they weren’t made of metal. They were animals!
Once, when he was a young robot, Wa-Ka-Mo-Do’s father had taken him to visit a tanning factory. He had seen the dead bodies of the cattle, flayed of their skins, lying in a pile, waiting for processing. There was something so exotic and other about the shapes of their internal frameworks, their skeletons, yellow bones smooth and curving in that weird way that suggested intelligent design. But what robot mind would bend and deform a structure in this fashion he didn’t know.
‘You say that,’ his father had said, ‘but I think we could learn a lot from such constructions. The material is light, but it’s strong! Look at the way the curves give strength.’
Organic life was like that, reflected Wa-Ka-Mo-Do. It looked so flimsy and soft, like you could squash it with one hand. But look at the damage it caused…
The west side of Sangrel reminded him a little of the tanning yard. The buildings had lost their roofs, their tiles blown away or shattered. Only the metal skeletons remained, twisted and blackened and illuminated by the fires that still burned orange and white below. One row of houses had been cut lengthways by the explosion, the further half collapsed; flames could be seen flickering through the broken windows. And beyond there, the centre of the blast, a crater punched into the very rock of the city itself, molten rock glowing red at its heart. Wa-Ka-Mo-Do knew about atomic weapons. Those robots close to the blast would find their minds subtly altered, their life spans drastically reduced. Not that anyone would care.
Columns of smoke held up the starry sky, cold and aloof above the damaged city.
‘How many are dead?’ wondered Wa-Ka-Mo-Do aloud. As he spoke, the crackle of gunfire sounded once more. Instantly he moved, searching out the sound. ‘Over there,’ he pointed.
A bell tower, the cap lost in the explosion, the bell still tolling slowly as it swayed in the night, and there, silhouetted by orange flames, two robots, firing down at the lower end of the Street of Becoming. Wa-Ka-Mo-Do looked closer. There on the ground was La-Ver-Di-Arussah, directing her troops to fire back. Successfully. First one, then the other of the two robots fell, the bell still tolling all the while, metal bodies smashing to the ground, shattering into fragments. They wore pig-iron bodies: cheap metal was all the poor of Sangrel could afford.
More shots, from further away, and La-Ver-Di-Arussah turned her troops towards the new attackers. Wa-Ka-Mo-Do saw how the robots were massing, saw how they were approaching the Street of Becoming in ones and twos, silhouetted bodies clambering over the rubble, carrying knives and guns, rocks and stones and metal bars.
He became aware of the slow throb of other bells ringing, all over the city, and he realized that the steady pulse wasn’t the result of the after-effects of the explosion, but rather that the robots had picked up on that rhythm and had taken it for their own, a sign of their rising anger.
Now La-Ver-Di-Arussah and her troops were retreating, coming back towards Wa-Ka-Mo-Do.
‘We need to hold this gate,’ said Gillian, appearing at his side.
‘Get back!’ shouted Wa-Ka-Mo-Do, pushing her back with one hand as a bullet ricocheted from the wall nearby. More shots rang out. ‘Get back into the square, you idiot!’
‘Take your hands off me, robot!’
Gillian unholstered a pistol and raised it to eye level. She squeezed the trigger, and Wa-Ka-Mo-Do heard three faint pops as she fired at the nearest rebels.
‘Get yourself a proper weapon,’ she said, and she turned and stalked back into the safety of the square. She had a warrior’s temperament, if nothing else.
The steady tolling of the bells was rising in volume. It seemed to Wa-Ka-Mo-Do he could feel a pulse of electricity behind it; the long pent-up rage of the robots of Sangrel building up to discharge itself in one lightning burst.
La-Ver-Di-Arussah and her soldiers came running up.
‘They are approaching from every direction, Honoured Commander.’
‘What about Ka-Lo-Re-Harballah?’
‘He got through. The humans soldiers are already organising themselves, getting ready to escort the civilians up here.’
‘Good. We’ll help bring them to safety and then hold back the peasants until the humans have left. After that we will begin the job of restoring order to the city.’
‘Get the humans to shoot them all for us,’ said La-Ver-Di-Arussah. ‘It will come to the same thing in the end.’
Wa-Ka-Mo-Do said nothing. He couldn’t help thinking that she was right. Events had moved way beyond his control.