The conquest of Northern Shull proceeded apace. They had blasted through the major mountain range with little incident, and into the country beyond. It seemed that the summit of every hill and mountain here boasted its own castle, and every castle boasted its own king or queen ruling the land immediately around it. Kavan had picked off these kingdoms one by one without any trouble. Self-important little rulers who ruled over their pathetic lodes of iron. Life was too easy for them while they stayed put, squandering their resources on petty squabbles or on building ever more baroque displays of architecture to flaunt their wealth.
Kavan looked out over the view from castle Ironfist, smiling at the name. Queen Ironfist herself had surrendered without a fight then had willingly boarded the train taking her to the making rooms of Artemis City.
Down below he could see the grey bodies of his troops laying railways that would follow the curves of the iron-grey reservoirs, busily linking these lands to each other and ultimately to Artemis City. And then the rain rolled in again, a hissing sheet that quickly travelled the length of the valley. Brooding clouds enfolded the mountain tops, leaving him in grey isolation in his chosen eyrie. The cold wind fluttered through his sheets of foil, and he realized that it was time to move further back inside again.
‘Help me with these, Wolfgang.’
Wolfgang took hold of the other end of the little table and helped him to manoeuvre it through an archway to the space beyond the exposed throne room. This was the kingdom’s parliament chamber, the stone ribs of its vaulted ceiling carved out of the rock of the mountain itself and decorated with silver and a little gold. A great iron slab of a table sat in the centre of the room.
‘Eleanor is here,’ announced Wolfgang.
‘Send her in.’
‘She’s wearing that self-important look,’ warned his aide.
‘Then I’ll have to find something else to keep her busy.’
Eleanor entered the room, her infantryrobot’s body looking more scratched than ever and badly in need of paint. Wolfgang was right, reflected Kavan. She was making a point.
‘Hello, Eleanor. Everything going well, I trust?’
‘So so.’
Wolfgang and Kavan were busy laying out the foil sheets on the iron table. Eleanor twisted her head, trying to read what was written on them.
‘I wonder if this is how Spoole feels,’ said Kavan, reflectively. ‘Only a few weeks ago I was part of the troops attacking Wien. When we took Turing City I may have brought up the rear, but I was part of the fighting there too, after a fashion. Now I do nothing more than sit in this castle and direct operations.’
He waved a hand across the table. ‘These reports are the only sight of the action I get nowadays. Maybe I was wrong to criticize General Fallan as I once did.’
Eleanor sat down in a chair without being invited to.
‘Don’t put words in my mouth, Kavan,’ she said. ‘If I really thought that of you, I’d come out and say it.’
‘And yet you come here with your armour all battered, which is usually a sign that you’re not happy with something. You know as well as I do that a good infantry-robot keeps her body clean and in good repair.’
‘When I get the time, I will. Kavan, I know how hard this is for you. You’re at the pinch of the hourglass. You’ve got Spoole and Artemis to the south feeding you arms and materiel, you’ve got the whole northern continent above you arming up and preparing to defend itself against your attack. Get it wrong and you’ll be crushed between the two of them…’
‘Get it right and I’ll conquer all of Shull. What do you want, Eleanor?’
‘Kavan, there’s something odd happening to the north.’
Kavan was genuinely thrown. He had expected Eleanor to come here and to subtly challenge him, as she usually did. He wasn’t expecting this.
‘Odd?’
‘I don’t know how else to describe it. This is a strange land, Kavan. I don’t think that you’ve experienced it quite like the rest of your troops have.’
‘Ah! So I was right about the battered armour!’
Eleanor rapped at the iron table in annoyance.
‘Okay, so maybe I was making a point. But that’s not why I’m here. Kavan, you need to see this land for yourself. This land is really strange: the lack of metal has stunted it. You must have seen the organic life out there, it’s rife. But have you seen how the robot life changes the further north you go? Have you seen the animals? There isn’t enough metal for them to build themselves properly, so they’re… strange. All of them small, or elongated, or twisted. All engaged in a constant fight for what little metal there is. Tiny beetles that scratch metal from your body and carry it away. Spiders that use magnetic fields to lure those beetles into their lairs…’
‘Should we be afraid of them?’
‘Worms that creep into your skull and twist the metal there into their young,’ continued Eleanor. ‘They say that a robot can walk around not even knowing that these worms are eating away at his mind, gradually robbing him of his thoughts. Other robots try to tell them what has happened, but the worms have eaten that part of the mind that lets him understand this. And so it goes on until the day that robot just dies.’
‘I’ve often heard it said that life can thrive in the most unlikely places,’ replied Kavan. ‘Is this what you have come here to tell me?’
‘No,’ said Eleanor. She hesitated for a moment. ‘Kavan, have you ever heard of the Book of Robots?’
Kavan said nothing.
‘It’s a heresy, I know. But some robots say that…’
‘I’ve heard of it,’ interrupted Kavan.
‘Well,’ continued Eleanor. ‘There are stories. Stories of a road that leads north, right across Northern Shull and then out under the sea to the top of the world itself. Some of the Scouts say they think they may have seen part of this road.’
‘So there is a road that leads north. Is that such a surprise?’
‘Perhaps not. But there are tales also of another kingdom, far to the north of here, further than any of our troops have so far travelled. A kingdom lying almost on the northern coast of Shull itself. A place where there is so little metal that the robots there use organic life as part of their bodies.’
‘Who says this, Eleanor? Because it sounds like the sort of rumours that we ourselves spread before attacking Wien and Turing City. It’s the sort of rumour that saps the morale of your enemy and makes the fight so much easier.’
Eleanor looked down at the table, embarrassed. ‘I know that, Kavan. I realize that. But we’ve heard these stories from the robots in all of the little kingdoms that we’ve so far conquered. And at first I thought as you did, but as we moved further north these stories became more detailed, more specific. Still we thought nothing of them. And then our own troops began to report strange occurences.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like the story of the voices in the dark.’
Karel and the Voices in the Dark
Karel rode the rain-slicked rails northwards. Lately there had been a touch of snow in the endless rainfall which smeared itself across the rails, making his wheels slip as they struggled for traction.
Night was falling; it had already settled in the steeper valleys and cuttings through which Karel struggled.
He guessed he was currently pulling troops. He had seen them lined up by the side of the track outside Artemis City as he picked his way through the points to the marshalling point. Hundreds of grey-painted infantryrobots, washed shiny by the never-ending rain, all fresh from the city’s forges. More metal twisted by busy hands to continue with the conquest of the continent. For a moment Karel had a vision of Susan being forced to work in the making rooms of Artemis. Was that where she had ended up? he wondered. Better than being dead, maybe. He quickly thrust the thought from his mind. Why torture himself? It was better to concentrate on the day at hand.