‘No, there is just metal, Gearheart. That is what Nyro said.’
Spoole gazed at Gearheart as she used her one good arm to steady herself in the chair. Nothing but metal, he thought. And yet look at Gearheart.
Spoole felt as if his mind had lurched, that a gear had slipped somewhere in the chain.
Look at Gearheart. Just a few strands of metal in her coil had been cut, and yet look at her now. The same metal, exactly the same metal, but for those few nicks. And what a difference it had made!
If Nyro could only hear his thoughts now: this was treason and blasphemy of the highest order. But surely this wasn’t what Nyro had meant? Surely she would understand that Gearheart would have served Artemis better as she had been, not as she was now?
Look at her, struggling with that one bent arm to straighten herself, the lines of her body crumpling like foil in a child’s hand. Maybe Kavan should be leader of Artemis. How can I truly claim to embody Nyro’s philosophy while thinking these thoughts? Speculating that there is something beyond mere metal, something beyond the state?
Gearheart’s arm slipped, and she tumbled forward onto the edge of the steel table. Delicate metal was bent further out of true. Spoole gazed at her in wonder. Gear-heart could never be made the same again, not even if all her metal was melted down and they were to begin again. The world had lost something precious.
Traitor, he chided himself.
Susan was pushed into a wagon with forty other women, and left there for sixteen days.
Sometimes the wagon moved, and the robots that crouched within the darkness of the wagon felt the click click of the wheels on the track through their feet. For a long time the wagon remained stationary, and they listened to the pattering of the rain on the tin roof.
Inside the wagon the women spoke and sang, they cleaned and repaired each other as best as they could. They tapped out rhythms on the sides of the wagon, keeping time with the clicking wheels when they moved, or imitating the motion of travel when they stood still.
They did their best to hold their nerve but, inevitably, someone put the first twist in the wire, starting to build a panic.
‘They’re taking us to Artemis. Look at us all, full of lifeforce, well built. They’re going to rape us.’
That woman was quickly silenced, but the metal now had a twist in it, and it was inevitable that the women would continue to work it in their minds. It was true: all the women in the carriage wore well-built bodies. The Artemisians had chosen the best from Turing City.
Susan didn’t care. Her thoughts kept returning to Axel, his little body lying lifeless on the floor, to how that mind that she had carefully woven had been scattered and ruined.
She thought, then, of Karel, the expression on his face as he had been marched away.
She wondered where he was, or if he was even still alive.
Eventually the door to the wagon slid open, and the dim rain-filled daylight flooding into the interior seemed impossibly bright. The women turned down their eyes as they were led, one by one, out of the wagon and across a narrow cobbled strip. They couldn’t see properly, couldn’t make out their surroundings. There was only the suggestion of tall buildings covered in soot. And the feel of metal all around. So much metal.
Through a door, they were marched along one long corridor after another, then down steps, descending deeper and deeper underground. They could hear voices, many, many voices. Nearly all of them female, they echoed from the bare metal walls of the seemingly endless corridors through which they marched.
Finally they came to a room that was just a bare metal box furnished with rows of benches. Susan waited her turn as the line of women took their places. When they were all seated, an Artemisian woman entered the room and took up position facing them all. A lecture, Susan realized. This was going to be a lecture.
The woman at the front was nothing to look at. Her body was simply made: efficient, but with no line of style and no grace. Iron and steel panelling, copper fingers and toes, she was a little smaller than Susan, but then again, most Artemisians were. They had built themselves small when metal was scarce, and the old habit still remained.
‘Call me Nettie,’ she began. ‘Ladies, welcome to Artemis City. Welcome to your glorious futures as mothers of Artemis!’
So it was going to be rape after all, thought Susan. She wasn’t surprised, and at that moment she couldn’t bring herself to care.
Nettie carried a steel stylus which she used to write on the smooth metal panel set on the wall behind her. The robots in the room watched silently as she formed the letters.
A Child Every Night.
The women of Turing City stirred in their seats, murmured to each other.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ said Nettie, turning back to face them. ‘It can’t be done. Well, trust me, I’ve been there. I’m a Bether and I once thought as you did. Now I know better. It can be done. You can twist a mind every night. Do you want to know how?’
No, thought Susan. No, I don’t. I don’t want to know anything about this.
‘Nyro,’ explained Nettie. ‘Nyro’s pattern. Ladies, who here has twisted wire already?’
No one spoke. No one raised a hand. The women all looked down at the floor, no one wanting to volunteer anything.
‘Come on, ladies,’ said Nettie, ‘you’re safe in here. Forget your troubles, they are now at an end. Tell me, who has twisted wire? No one? Well, I’m sure that’s not true, but I can understand your reticence.’
She smiled at the assembled women. She wanted to be their friend, Susan realized. She wanted them to like her.
‘Well, let me try to talk this through,’ continued Nettie. ‘When a Tokvah twists wire, she will spend some time thinking of the mind she will create. Maybe she takes a walk, storing experiences, remembering certain sights and sounds.’
Susan gazed harder at the floor. If she sees me, she will know that’s exactly what Karel and I were doing…
Nettie continued: ‘Any Tokvah woman wishing to twist wire will invest a lot of time and thought in exploring what she believes to be the best pattern for her child. She will want to make a child that has the best chance of survival in the world, a child that will have the best chance of reproducing in the future. She wonders, therefore, should the child be helpful, or selfish, or trusting, or sharing? Should it be brave and take foolish risks, or instead a coward and risk nothing? Should it be an optimist or a pessimist?’
She paused to smile round the room again.
‘Ladies, these are all hard decisions – decisions that no mother ever feels that she gets completely right. Isn’t it true that guilt is a natural part of motherhood?’ She laughed at that. No one else did.
‘Well, here in Artemis, a woman is spared such doubt. Here she is free to devote her time to more productive activities, for, when it comes to twisting a mind, there is only one pattern: Nyro’s.’
Susan felt her gyros lurch at Nettie’s pronouncement. The poster put up in the railway station flashed through her mind.
‘Nyro’s pattern. This is how you will weave a child every night. By following Nyro’s pattern. Once you have learned it, there will be no need for thought or concentration. Your hands will weave the pattern unaided! Is that not wonderful? Is that not freedom? Freedom from thought, from guilt, and from unnecessary labour?’
The women were stirring.
Somebody speak out, thought Susan. Someone only speak out and I will join in too. I have lost my son and husband. I have nothing to live for. Just one person speak out and I will join in with the chorus of voices that will surely arise.
She waited in the whirring silence, nothing but the hum of robots and their pulsing lifeforce. But nobody spoke.
Nettie clasped her hands together, her plain copper hands.