‘Is this not wonderful, ladies? Is it not too wonderful? We shall become the mothers of the world. Metal pours into Artemis City from the four corners of the continent. Iron and copper and tin and gold, silver and titanium and tungsten. Now that the railways pass even through the mountains, soon the metal from the northern states will come rolling back here into Artemis. All that metal, pouring into here, into the nurseries. You are here at the centre of the world, ladies, twisting metal into new minds! This building will be the womb from which all life on Penrose will eventually originate!’ A womb? thought Susan. What is a womb?
In a hidden room within the fort, deep beneath what remained of Turing City, Maoco O began.
First he slid the panelling from his body, pushed down on the seams and slid the silver shining metal along the grooves hidden beneath his skin.
He laid the separate pieces on the black stone floor, an intricate jigsaw that formed the broken pattern of his once indestructible body.
He stood in the glow of the forge, looked in the mirror and saw himself standing naked in the red-glowing darkness.
His electromuscles stretched in bands around his body, so thin and so finely knitted that he could barely see the weave. So many muscles, twisting in all directions, over and under each other. More than one mind could comprehend the pattern of.
He reached down and began to unhook them, picking them off one by one and dropping them in their appropriate place on the floor amongst the panelling. He kept on doing so until his legs finally gave way and he collapsed.
He unhooked his legs, unhooked his superlight alloy bones. Then he lifted himself up on his powerful arms and, in that way, walked himself across the floor to the forge. There was metal waiting for him there. Simple iron plate and wire, glowing red in the heat.
A pair of tongs hung waiting in a rack. A hammer and an anvil. A trough of water, a trough of acid.
Maoco O took hold of the tongs, heard their clinking as he pulled metal from the fire. He took hold of the hammer and beat at the metal in a starburst of sparks, molten flakes dropping to the floor.
This is what Nicolas the Coward did, he thought. He gave up his powerful body so he could walk away unnoticed and unchallenged. But I have no choice. This body is damaged. The engineers and the mothers are gone. There is no one to repair it but me.
There was something else, however. Swinging the hammer, feeling the ringing percussion of metal on metaclass="underline" it felt so good. It felt right.
Clumsily, uncertainly, Maoco O set about reinventing himself.
The women sat in the room for hours, listening to Nettie lecturing them on the twisting of wire. The base knot, the deep brain, the emotion vectors – all those things that Susan had known instinctively were rendered obscene by the act of verbalizing. It was like the laying bare of lovers’ secrets; spoken out loud they became nothing more than a series of mechanical motions.
Worse than that, under it all, like a throbbing bass pulse, was Nyro’s philosophy, the skewed beat that drove the whole mind.
Susan’s gyros couldn’t spin properly, she felt dizzy and disoriented, as did all the others, but still nobody spoke. No one but Nettie, standing at the front of the room, declaiming in that thrilled, excited voice, laying down the pattern of Nyro‘s mind.
But the worst was still to come.
The lecture finally ended, and they were led from the room, heads spinning, and taken down the metal corridors to another room, one which was sealed with a great steel door.
The women stiffened, their electromuscle shorting with tension. They could sense something in the room beyond.
Something different.
Men.
The door opened, and they were led into the making room.
Twenty-four men were waiting there: young infantry-robots, standing in two rows before the chairs that lined both walls of the long room. The women were made to walk up the lines and forced to take their own places, kneeling before them.
Someone speak, thought Susan, as she knelt herself. The floor in here was covered in black plastic, which gave beneath her knees a little. The robot that stood before her wore a clean, unscratched body. A thin smear of oil leaked out at the joints of his knees; the plastic soles of his feet were fresh and unworn. He looked as if his body was newly built.
Nettie had followed them into the room. Her voice was more thrilling than ever, and then Susan realized that Nettie was ashamed and embarrassed too. She was trying to hide it. Well rust her, thought Susan, she’s not the one forced to kneel here.
‘Now, ladies, let us practise the first few movements! The base knot and the deep brain! Take hold of the wire and think on Nyro’s pattern as you begin the making of a mind.’
Susan looked up at the young man who stood before her. He gazed down at her awkwardly.
He doesn’t want to do this either, she realized, and then, for the first time since Axel’s death, she felt something else other than numb despair. Anger rose inside her like the bubbling, spitting steam that hisses from hot metal thrust into water. He doesn’t want to do this? So rust him! He’s part of this twisted state, but I’m not. I’m not going to do this any more. I’m going to speak up…
‘No!’
The voice wasn’t Susan’s. Another woman, down the other end of the line had stood up.
‘No!’ she repeated. ‘I’m not going to do this. I will not do this!’
Another Turing Citizen. Susan began to stand up; ready to join in with a voice of dissent, but it was already too late.
No one had noticed the Scout, polished and gleaming, who had been resting quietly in the corner of the room. Now she sprang forth, light flashing down the length of her body, her eyes extending, the blades on her hands and feet sweeping out and slicing through the body of the woman who had spoken, right down through her head. That same brave woman whose voicebox still went on speaking even as the top of her head fell to the ground.
‘Join me,’ she was saying. ‘They can’t make us allllll…’ Then her voice faded to nothing as the top of her head spun to a rest on the rubber floor, the coil of blue wire inside clearly visible, popping and curling out, ends shiny where they had been cut.
Then there was no sound but that of the stricken woman’s body collapsing to the ground in a grinding of metal.
No one spoke. All the other women looked on in horror.
‘Anyone else want to speak?’ asked the Scout, her voice thin like a blade.
The prisoners looked at each other, terrified. Susan felt her anger shrivel inside her. They can’t kill us all, she thought. Yes, they can, she realized.
‘This one moved too.’
Susan looked up in horror, yet contempt too unfolded inside her. It was her man that had spoken. The robot had looked so awkward and afraid she had almost felt sorry for him, but now she saw him for what he was: a coward and a bully, using another’s misfortune to hide his own fear, to massage his own ego.
‘You little coward,’ said Susan, her contempt now greater even than her fear. ‘You Nicolas.’
The Scout was behind her. She could feel the current from its electromuscle, so strongly. A blade hooked around her neck.
‘Shall I remove your coil too?’
A pause. Then Nettie was there. Susan didn’t turn around; conscious of the metal blade touching the wire of her coil, straining to hear the words Nettie urgently spoke to the Scout. There was a pause, and then Susan felt the blade withdraw. She heard footsteps as the Scout walked away.
Relief washed over her. She had been spared. But why?
The woman kneeling next to her was staring in her direction. Why was she looking like that? Susan had almost been killed. Why was she gazing at her with such hatred? The woman spoke, so softly that Susan barely heard the word.