‘What?’ Susan was thrown by this sudden change in the direction of the conversation. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked.
‘Is it normal to be a robot?’ repeated Maoco O. ‘You’re a robot and I’m a robot. We’re all robots. Is that normal? Is robot life any more normal than the biological life that creeps across this planet? We are obviously superior to biological life, but why? Why are we?’
The question had never occurred to Susan before.
‘I don’t know.’
Shadows passed across Maoco O’s body, clouds blocking the moonlight that he reflected.
‘We take things for granted, Susan. Artemis assume they rule by right, and you assume that all minds are special. Who is right? How do we know? Where is the answer written?’
‘Perhaps it’s not written anywhere!’ said Susan in frustration.
‘Perhaps! Or perhaps it is written all around us, in letters so big that we can’t see them! Imagine that, we could be walking on a world where the answer is all around us, and we can’t even see it!’
Susan suddenly felt very tired. She wanted to go home.
‘Listen, Maoco O, I don’t know who you are, or why you are telling me all this, but I have to go.’
‘So do I, Susan. I will be missed if I remain out here too long. Listen, I have three things to tell you.’
‘Then say them.’
‘Susan, listen carefully. First, you have friends, don’t forget that. No matter what happens, they will find you. Some day you will see why.’
‘Okay…’ said Susan, feeling very strange.
‘Secondly, remember this, it is not how strong we are. Strength alone does not win the battle. When it comes down to it, will you be strong enough to twist a mind in the way that you know is right?’
For a treacherous moment, that poster in the railway station popped into her mind. She forced it away.
‘I hope so,’ she murmured.
‘And lastly, Susan, when you read the Book of Robots, understand this: it speaks the truth.’
‘The Book of Robots? What’s that?’
‘Look, Susan.’ Maoco O pointed.
She turned.
‘What? What am I looking at?’
Maoco O
Maoco O pointed and, as Susan turned to look, he vanished silently away into the night, slipping unnoticed into one of the Fort’s many concealed entrances. As he did so, his whole demeanour changed. Gone was the friendly competence, in its place was Maoco O: detached killing machine. It was part of his make-up: emotion is just another state of mind, to be adopted according to the situation at hand.
The whole of Fort Accardo was filled with the hum of quiet efficiency. Walking down the metal spiral staircase, descending the rough bore of the rocky shaft, he felt as if he was rejoining the mechanism of a finely balanced machine. But still there was that nagging feeling at work inside him.
Emotion is just another weapon in my armoury, and yet still I work to resist this idea. For it is nowhere written in the Book of Robots that there should be robots such as myself.
He stepped from the entry shaft into the wide open space of the practice range. Once this cavern would have echoed to the chatter of machine-gun discharge, to the crack of directed explosions. Now the weapons racks were full, rows of gleaming weapons lining the entire space to seeming infinity. But the dark grey shapes shone with the polish of newness, not the healthy glow that a weapon acquired by being handled and discharged, by being stripped and cleaned and oiled and reassembled.
It was like this all throughout the fort. We’ve lost touch with our purpose, reflected Maoco O, but without any sense of bitterness. Emotional detachment seemed to fill his every action: did it resemble the emptiness that filled his beautifully engineered body?
That was the trouble with the new paradigm. The bodies the Fort Mothers built were so sleek, so powerful, but in donning them the Guards seemed to experience the world at a distance. It wasn’t their world any more; they had built themselves no part in it.
He stepped from the practice range into the magazine. Three robots crouched around a shape on the floor. A child: crudely built. It was obviously dead.
‘Whose was it?’ asked Maoco O.
‘We don’t know. Not yet.’ Maoco L glanced up at him as she spoke. She looked identical to Maoco O in every way, same mercury skin, same V-shaped torso. She returned to examining the pathetic body.
‘This is the third one this year,’ said Maoco O. ‘Where are they coming from?’
‘From here, Maoco O. City Guards are making them.’
The concept would have filled a robot less emotionally secure than Maoco O with revulsion. As it was, he remained calm.
‘Why? The reproductive urge is not twisted into the metal of our minds. The Fort Mothers would not build us to think of such things.’
‘Not intentionally perhaps, but the pattern of a mind is a complex thing. For centuries mothers have made minds focused around the reproductive urge. The offspring of those mothers that did not do so never reproduced: they are not with us today. The reproductive urge is so much a pattern of the mind that it is impossible for the Fort Mothers not to incorporate it in some way.’
Maoco O looked down at the pathetic metal shell on the ground.
‘So there are still some women in this fort who will seize on any man and try to make a child with him.’ His words were matter-of-fact.
‘And they lack the full knowledge to properly twist a child,’ answered Maoco L.
‘Interesting. It is a problem that should be addressed.’
‘Agreed. Perhaps after the oncoming difficulty with Artemis is resolved.’
Maoco L picked up the tiny shell. ‘I will pass the mind inside here to the Fort Mothers. Perhaps they can decide who the mother is by looking at the weave of the mind.’
‘A good idea,’ answered Maoco O.
But inside a little voice was speaking. Why can’t I be as positive inside this fort as I am when I walk outside? Why don’t I feel the same sense of optimism for the future?
The answer filled the dark stone spaces of the fort. The answer was the darkness, and it was given shape by the geometry of the polished stone walls.
Because there is no future. Because there is nothing to be optimistic about, and no reason to wish for such optimism. All there is, is the day that follows this, and the relentless upgrading of smoothly milled bodies as they approach perfection. What else should one require?
Silently, perfectly, seamlessly, Maoco O passed through rooms of identical robots, heading towards his duty station.
The evening dance was due to begin.
Axel was still young enough to sleep. Karel squatted down before him and gazed into his eyes, wondering where his son had gone to. Karel knew that he had once slept too; he knew that he had once had dreams, back when the metal in his mind was still unfolding and gaining in lifeforce. But that had been long ago and, like every other adult, he had forgotten what it was like. Axel looked so peaceful, following the twists of his own mind, growing new wire, forging new connections and fixing the mind. Karel tried to recall the path he had taken as a child, how he would turn his mind in on itself and descend into sleep. But without success, for the way there was gone.
He heard the front door to the apartment slide open and shut. Susan had returned home at last.
‘Where have you been?’ he asked.
‘Out. Walking. I bought some paint.’ She held up the thin metal case.
‘Let me take that.’ Karel remembered how Susan had been last time they had been getting ready to make a child. So receptive. So creative. She had taken to walking day and night, gazing at the sky, at the sea, at the land. At everything, whether a building, the slope of a pile of gangue, an oddly shaped stone. She was drinking in images and thoughts and concepts, storing up information to be used in the making of a new mind. Too much information, perhaps. She would come home and it would all spill out of her, painted onto the foil leaves of books, scrawled across the walls, twisted into iron and silver. What must it be like to be a woman? he wondered, as he took the metal case and laid it on a table. He took her hand and led her to a chair. There was a shallow foot bath pushed underneath it, already filled with light oil.