Up and up the slope that led along a dark valley, its sides lined by the sodden shapes of organic trees appearing no less strange for being viewed through infrared. He had never been so far north before. The landscape here was different, starker, sharper. Everything was a little poorer and thinner up here: the quality of the light, the stone, the low mountains that had almost descended to the level of the foothills. There was none of the grandeur of the lands through which Karel had first travelled: the terrain up here felt so dead and empty of metal…
There was something blocking the tracks ahead!
He gripped the brakes, felt the disks lock in his hands, the wheels slipping on the rain-slicked rails. The weight of the carriages slammed into his back, pushing him forward, unable to stop, pushing him into a fall of rocks that covered the line. He was going to hit them. He was slowing. He was slowing… He stopped.
A voice sounded in his ear.
‘What are you playing at?’
When was the last time someone had actually spoken to him? How long had he driven in silence? He didn’t care about the harshness of the voice. It was a pleasure just to be able to speak.
‘Rockfall ahead,’ he explained. ‘It’s covered the tracks.’
The voice could be heard, faintly conferring with someone else.
‘Does it look natural to you?’ it finally asked him.
How should I know? thought Karel. All I can see is straight ahead.
‘I don’t know,’ said Karel.
‘It could be an ambush…’ said the voice thoughtfully.
‘It could be,’ said Karel. ‘I can’t see anything to the sides.’
But there was no reply to that.
‘Hello?’ called Karel. ‘Hello? Are you still there?’
The sound of the voice had reminded him of how lonely he actually was. The feeling of power that he had enjoyed while driving the train now vanished, and he remembered just how cut off he was from other robots; that all he was now was a piece of machinery, just something to make the train go. And then the images came smashing through his defences, overwhelming him. All those pictures that he had blocked. Memories of his old life. Of walking with Susan through the galleries. Of talking to her, talking to other robots. Of conversation and companionship: not this endless isolation.
He tried to push the images from his mind, but to no effect. Still they came crowding back.
The memory of the forge, of the nights spent there, Susan sitting opposite him, painting metal with her clever, skilful hands. Of Susan smoothing the weave of his electromuscle. And worst of all – he tried not to think about it, but he couldn’t stop it – the memory that hurt the most – of Axel, of his little boy, sitting on the floor of the forge, fiddling with two pieces of metal, talking about how he was going to make arms that were so strong, how he was going to build a body that would be so handsome when he was fully grown.
All that would never now be.
And for the first time, unable to help it, Karel began to cry. All that emotion that he had blocked for all these weeks came leaking out. It set up a feedback loop in his voicebox – wherever it was now located on that train – and began to whine.
Somebody must have heard.
‘Stop that,’ a voice ordered, and there was a click as his ears were turned off.
Time passed. No one went to move the rocks ahead, but Karel scarcely noticed. Night deepened, and for the first time in days the rain ceased. White light then spread across the sides of the valley. The clouds had cleared, and the light of Zuse, the night moon, shone down unimpeded.
There was a click: ‘They’re speaking again…’
Karel was momentarily at a loss. ‘Who is speaking?’ he asked. The voice he remembered, it had come back.
‘Outside the train. Can’t you hear them? They are asking us to look outside. Can you see them?’
Karel gazed along the track towards the fallen rocks, the scene lit up in sharp black and white by the night moon.
‘I can’t see anything,’ he said.
‘We go out and look for them, but there is no one there!’
‘Why don’t you clear the rocks? Let me ride onwards!’
‘We go towards the rocks. The voices call us away!’
‘You’re Artemisian soldiers! You go where you please!’
‘I don’t understand it. The voices call us into the mountains. Some of the troops have already vanished up there.’
‘Why are you telling me this? What am I supposed to do?’
There was no reply.
Karel sat in the valley, bathed in the white light of the moon. Eventually, the clouds rolled back overhead. Shortly after that it began to rain once more.
‘You spoke to the driver of the train? Who was it?’
‘Karel.’ Eleanor stared at him as she said that name. What was she thinking of now? he wondered. ‘That doesn’t sound like an Artemisian name.’ ‘You know that he’s a Turing Citizen, Kavan.’ Still she stared at him. Challenging him.
He stood up. ‘What happened to the train?’ Eleanor held his gaze for a moment longer with her yellow eyes, and then she continued. ‘A second troop train came up behind, about eight hours later. They found the original train standing empty.’
‘Hmm. How many people know this story?’ ‘Virtually half the army by this time, I should imagine. You know how these rumours spread.’
‘I know. I myself have used that to good effect in the past.’
‘You think you know what happened?’ Kavan waved a hand dismissively. ‘A train full of barely trained infantryrobots travels through new territory. Easy to ambush, easy to pick off one by one as they come to clear a fall of rocks on the line. Robots moving about the mountains, calling out mysterious invitations in the night, and then hiding behind rocks with awls at the ready when a few credulous robots come to investigate? Oh yes, I think I know what happened. And then only one survivor lives to tell the story, who then brings it back to spread fear and confusion.’
Kavan rose to his feet. ‘You were right, Eleanor. I have not spent enough time in these northern lands. I think someone wants to play a game with us. Very well, let us accept their offer.’
Spoole
‘You’re doing well, Spoole,’ said General Sandale. ‘Very well indeed.’
‘It’s not for you to comment on my progress,’ replied Spoole coldly, but he felt a deep sense of satisfaction at the other’s words.
They were in the command room, looking up at the partial map of Shull that was engraved directly onto the steel wall of the basilica. The southern part of the continent rose twenty feet up the same wall and was picked out in great detail. The former city states conquered by Artemis were now bound to Artemis City by the lead chasing of railway lines. For ten years now Spoole had gazed at that same, nearly unchanging, map. Only now was any detail of the section to the north of the central mountain range being filled in. The path taken by Kavan’s nuclear excavation of the mountains had already been engraved on the map, and now the branching lines of the railways were expanding outwards, the detail of the surrounding countryside being slowly etched in as survey data was sent back bit by bit.
Spoole gazed with pride at the growing map, visible testament to his success as a leader.
‘Testament to Kavan’s success,’ remarked Gearheart, as he joined her in the glassed-in office at the southern end of the vast room. ‘They’re all saying it. General San-dale, the commanders, the computers, they all know the truth.’
‘Peace, Gearheart,’ replied Spoole without heat. He was used to these outbursts.
The battered robot was propped up in a chair overlooking the vast floor of the command room. The ranked desks of the computers could be seen, steel robots studying a constant stream of sheets of copper foil. They scanned their contents and made marks on still more sheets of foil that were collected and summarized and collated, and so produced reports on the growing wealth and strength of Artemis City.