It was so easy to kill. The discovery had been a revelation to Olam.
Just point the rifle, pull the trigger, and watch as another robot slumped to the ground in a cloud of blue wire. All the fear, all the uncertainty of the last few days evaporated as Olam raised the rifle and squeezed.
He marched through this strange city, with its iron arches and shattered glass and, where once he would have felt timid and uncertain, he now felt invincible. He was the man causing the fear, not the man feeling it. He was in charge, in control.
‘Don’t be careless,’ warned Doe Capaldi, walking at his side, scanning the upper storeys of the galleries that surrounded them.
‘I’m fine,’ said Olam. ‘Hey, look over there.’
A glint of reflected sunlight, so easy to miss. Fine, powdered glass, trodden into the plastic matting at the entrance to a store. A trail, leading into the building.
‘Someone went in there,’ said Olam, the lust rising within him. ‘Someone sneaked in after we smashed the glass.’
Olam didn’t like the look Doe Capaldi was giving him. ‘I’ll send Janet in,’ he said.
‘No way,’ said Olam. ‘I know the orders: maximum disruption. I spotted it, I get to go in.’
He was off into the store before Doe Capaldi could tell him otherwise. Zig-zagging across the shop floor, keeping low. Dodging for cover between the plastic sheeting that was hung on display all through the shop. Pushing past sheets of plain red, green, yellow and blue. Slipping past black and white checks, turquoise and purple knotwork; through a riot of paisleys and tartans.
Olam found the shop disorienting after the grey of the Zernike plain. This city was so colourfuclass="underline" there was barely a place where plain stone or metal could be seen.
He heard a mechanical whirring, the faintest click. Someone was upstairs.
Hot and lovely current poured into his electromuscles, his movements became staccato and excited. Up the stairs, gun at the ready. The sound of footsteps, over there behind the green door.
He moved forward, gun at the ready, kicked the door open with his foot…
There was a woman inside, two children sheltering behind her. She held an awl in her hand. She dropped it as soon as she saw Olam.
‘No!’ she cried. ‘Please!’
Olam raised his gun and felt the current surge inside him. He held it in check as he pointed the rifle at the child on her left, held it there a moment and then moved the gun to point at the child on her right.
‘Please,’ she said, her voice emitting electronic squeaks of fear. ‘I’ll do anything!’
‘Anything?’ said Olam. He pretended to think about that, but the urge was too strong and his finger squeezed. The head of the child to the right of the woman exploded, the twisted metal of its brain tangling over its mother’s shoulder. The woman cried out; the other child stared at him, frozen in fear.
‘Would you really do anything?’ said Olam, his gun now turned to point towards other child. He pretended to think some more. ‘Then come here and kneel before me…’ he said.
Sobbing, her eyes fixed on the gun, the woman did so.
Olam felt so strong. He felt like an aristocrat. The current was constantly building inside him. He couldn’t control it; he dropped his rifle, seized his awl and plunged it into the head of the woman who knelt before him. The remaining child screamed, but Olam stabbed again and again, his electromuscles crackling with energy.
Maoco O waited in darkness, cut off from the world.
How long had he waited here? Did it matter?
They had lost forty soldiers in the explosion at the station, a further forty were badly damaged and in need of urgent repair. There was talk of a counter-offensive, but for the moment they had been told to hold position. Maoco O waited patiently. He was a soldier, and his mind was woven so that he could wait for ever, if need be.
And then, something odd: he heard Susan somewhere nearby. Close enough to touch, even. He could feel her fear. Not just for herself, but for the other robot that stood by her: her husband. Susan and her husband. That was not all. Maoco O sensed eight other Turing City robots standing not an arm’s length away.
And now, finally, he felt the approach of the Artemisian troops.
So many of them, and so close.
It was time…
Maoco O exploded from the gangue, white dust billowing and shrapnel stones ricocheting and ringing off the bodies of the surrounding Turing City robots. He had fired six head shots before the Artemisian infantry had time to react, their bodies slumping to the ground, tangles of wire unwinding from their minds as they fell.
He was calm. Away in the distance, undetected by regular robot senses, he saw more infantryrobots standing on the metal walkway between two buildings, exposed against the skyline. One, two, three shots and they fell to the ground in a rattle of broken metal.
In slow motion, the brightly painted Turing City robots were turning to gaze at him with a mixture of fear and awe. There was Susan. Did she recognize him? He doubted it. The robots were edging closer to him for safety, but not too close, wary of the black spike of his rifle, the needle points of the armour-piercing bullets emerging from the cartridges on his belt, the razor curve of the sword fixed on his back. Gangue was slipping back into the hole from which he had leaped, dust was settling, blown in eddies by the cold wind, the ground still slipping beneath their feet.
Maoco O took all this in, and he was bored. The attack had finally arrived, and it was so much less than he had been expecting.
Maoco O heard the grinding noise first, but the edgy crowd of Turing City robots soon picked up on it too. Someone was approaching. Someone in incredible pain.
A robot dragged itself around the corner. A child. And it was burning. White flame at its joints, its paintwork blackened and peeled away, its mouth locked in an endless scream. It was trying to say something, trying to modulate that endless electronic squeal.
A woman was screaming. And another one, transfixed by the sight of the burning child, the hot metal over its chest beginning to sag.
Maoco O shot it in the head. A merciful end. More footsteps. He could hear more Artemisian troops approaching.
‘Get behind me,’ he said to the Turing City robots. He was calm. This battle was a dance, and he was following the steps. He shifted, and the extra metal that he carried around his body fell away. No civilian had ever seen the true shape of a Turing City City Guard Robot. They did now.
From behind him he heard stunned gasps, the sound of applause, and it was a moment before Maoco O realized it was himself that they applauded. His body. They were looking upon perfection for the first time. He tried to remember what it must be like for them, it was so long since he had first seen such a body as his own. He had felt himself special too, once. But now he was just calm.
He went to meet the foe.
Everything about him was curved and sharp. Curved arms swept forward to hands like blades, his body curving from his hips to his head, poised ready to strike; his legs curved and sprung. Everything about him suggested smooth, slicing motion. As he walked he sliced the cold wind in two, he cut a path through the settling dust.
The Artemisian robots let loose a volley of shots, but Maoco O was already leaping through the air in a smooth silver curve, punctuated by the launch of four silver shuriken that went spinning from his hands to lodge themselves in the wrist and knee joints of four of the attackers.
Maoco O was calm as he descended, as he stepped lightly onto the raised barrel of a rifle, the face of the infantryrobot below gazing at him in slack incomprehension as it pulled the trigger, but Maoco O had already stepped forward onto the tip of the awl held up by the next soldier.
A crowd of them, milling beneath him as he danced on their confusion. Conscripts, Maoco O guessed, judging by their poor order and discipline. They all sought to turn their rifles on him, but Maoco stepped lightly from barrel to barrel just as the shots were fired, he danced on the tips of the awls, he was a quicksilver blade that reflected the cold sky and the dust and metal of the city, too fast to catch. And, as he danced, he reached down and broke the coil of a robot, or hooked his awl into a skull and jerked it back with blue wire wrapped around it. Beneath him, the infantry upon whose guns he danced were beginning to panic, but Maoco O was still calm.