The faux circuitry patterns in beaten copper that decorated the white walls, the brass banister, the soft tread of his feet on the steps – Karel’s senses seemed enhanced in the silence. Every step, every touch of metal on metal was amplified to become the sound of Artemisian troops entering the building.
He almost collided with a robot that was creeping the other way, up the stairs.
‘Whoah!’ In panic he brought up his arm to strike out at the intruder.
‘No, Karel! Stop!’
Their voices echoed in the stairwell. Karel paused, gazing at the apparition.
‘Gustav…?’ he said, relief surging through his circuits. ‘It is you, isn’t it? But what have you done to your body?’
Karel’s sense of the unreality of this evening deepened as he gazed at the other robot. Gustav used to dress pretty much like any other Turing Citizen; in well-formed lightweight metals, brightly painted and enamelled. The contrast to his current body could not be more marked. He now looked like something from a ghost story, covered as he was from head to toe in some heavy dull-grey alloy, the panels sealed so tightly, their seams rubbed down with thick grease. His head was an elongated, curving tube, the eyes much larger than usual and sealed behind thick glass lenses. His hands and feet were larger too, with foil webbing running up to the first joint of the fingers and toes.
Gustav’s voice resonated deep and booming, as if welling up from the bottom of a deep pool. ‘We’re getting out,’ he said. ‘The city has fallen, if not now, then certainly by morning. Haven’t you heard? The City Guard are dying. They’ve fallen back to the fort. They’re holding their ground there, but more Artemisians are arriving by the hour, coming in by the railway. The Guards will be overwhelmed by the morning.’
Gustav’s words kindled the embarrassed anger that glowed dimly within Karel.
‘They’re dying, and you talk of running?’ He was almost shouting. He couldn’t help it. ‘They’re giving up their lives for this city!’
‘I don’t see you joining them,’ said Gustav.
‘I have a wife and child!’
‘So do I.’
Karel lowered his voice, fought to rein in his anger. ‘Listen, if Turing City falls, then the whole southern continent will have been taken. Gustav, there’s nowhere left to run to.’
Gustav nodded, an odd movement with his newly elongated head. ‘Nowhere left here on Shull,’ he agreed. ‘Karel, we’re heading out to sea. That’s why I’m dressed like this. It’s not too late, Karel. Get up to your forge; get Susan and Axel and yourself adapted for water.’
Karel looked at Gustav’s streamlined, watertight body.
‘But we haven’t the metal. It would take days to build something like that…’ A thought occurred to him. ‘How long have you had that body, Gustav?’
Gustav’s posture radiated embarrassment. ‘Hey, Karel, people have known this was coming for months. I’m not the only one to have considered an escape plan.’
Current built in Karel’s electromuscles. ‘I hadn’t heard anything
…’ he said softly.
‘Well…’ said Gustav, and then he took refuge in frankness. ‘Come on, Karel, maybe that’s not surprising. You know what people say about you.’ He held up one webbed hand in apology. ‘Hey, I’m not saying they’re right, far from it…’
‘I’m pleased to hear it,’ said Karel, icily calm. ‘So tell me, what do they say about me?’
Gustav shook his head. ‘Karel, I’m not getting into this argument now: I’m doing you a favour. Get upstairs and get your family kitted out. We’re making our way down to the coast tonight. We’ll walk out under the water and start heading south. There’s metal down there on the seabed: placers and exposed ores. Enough to get by on.’
‘I don’t believe what I’m hearing! What about fire? How are you going to work metal?’
‘You don’t need fire to work metal, Karel. They didn’t in the old days. Robots used to get by just with the strength in their hands. We don’t need these fancy bodies we’ve got used to. I tell you, it will be good to get back to basics. It will be just like starting again!’
Karel’s voice was filled with contempt. ‘I can’t believe you’re giving up so easily. You should be outside fighting.’
His words rang out in the echoing shaft of the stairwell.
‘Like I said, I don’t see you doing any fighting.’ Gustav was dismissive. ‘Listen, ten o’clock tonight, down in the communal area. We’re setting off then. I’m offering you a lifeline, Karel.’
‘Gustav, listen…’
But Gustav turned and resumed his silent progress upstairs. Karel noticed for the first time that Gustav was carrying panels of some kind of alloy. It looked like whale metal, heavy and completely out of place in the white delicacy of the apartment block. Where had he got it from?
Just what was happening here?
She sat in the forge room with Axel on her knee. The living metal of the stove still retained some dying warmth. Karel crouched in front of his wife, speaking quietly.
‘Susan, it’s like they’ve been planning this for weeks – months, even. It’s like Turing City gave up the will to fight before the battle ever began!’
Susan was calming Axel, stroking him, letting him feel the warm current from her hands move through his electromuscle.
‘Susan, did you know anything about this?’ Karel looked up at his wife suspiciously.
‘Karel, I told you! I knew nothing about it!’
‘But you worked for Statistics. You were supposed to know everything! Didn’t you notice a build-up of whale metal in the city?’
‘Karel, you’re scaring Axel…’
‘And it’s such a stupid plan! They don’t know anything about what they will find down there! There could be another robot civilization living there already. Or worse…’ He brooded. ‘You know, out at the Immigration Centre, the one on the coast, you hear stories. Robots with arms a mile long. They reach out from deep under the water to pluck people from the land and drag them down to the seabed, where they strip the metal from their bodies. Leave only the twisted wire of the mind to slowly untangle in the dark depths.’
‘Karel,’ said Susan warningly. ‘Not in front of Axel!’
‘Sorry!’ He smiled down at his son. ‘But what if they are real? What if they are waiting down there for Gustav and the rest to walk into their welcoming arms?’
Susan raised her voice. ‘Karel, stop it!’
‘And even if they are safe down there, how long before Artemis comes looking for them? How long before the next wave of expansion sweeps over the seabeds? Gustav and the rest are just delaying the inevitable. I tell you, we should stand and fight here!’
‘I told you, that’s enough!’
Susan had shouted at him. Susan who never shouted. And now Karel saw the fear in her eyes, and he realized just how frightened everyone was. And he realized that it was far too late to make a stand.
Turing City had already fallen. All they could do was wait…
The land around Artemis City was healthy. The air was filled with the soot of a thousand belching chimneys; the acid rain washed the streets and pitted the copper-lined roofs and killed off all the green organic life. From where he stood on the roof of the city, at the edge of a wide platform built at the top of the basilica, Spoole saw nothing but good, healthy stone and metal. Steel arches and copper domes and riveted iron. Gold chasing and the iridescent patterns of electrolysed titanium. Granite slabs and marble flags and slate roofs and walls. All was ordered, and all was good.
The city was a living thing: full of the heat of the fires that burned in the forges and blast furnaces, the city shrugged off the chill of the wind that had sprung up from the north.