That silenced Ruth. That silenced all of them. But Kavan pressed on.
‘And should the worst come to the worst and they defeat us tonight, then what of it? Artemis will return in greater force and reclaim the metal of our bodies.’
It took a moment, but Kavan noted the horrified realization creeping across their faces as they understood that he really meant what he was saying. He lowered his voice.
‘For did not Nyro say, there is no mind, there is just metal?’
He turned back to the centre of the bowl, which was now filling with the light of magnesium flares, and he gazed over at the skeletal tower.
‘I think it is time to see what we all really believe in, both us and the Northern Kingdom. Get the wreckage of those trains moved. I want railway lines laid right into the heart of this place! Tonight, we will conquer, or we will die!’
Olam was dragged through rocky alleys, his useless electromuscles cold with the muddy slush that filled his metal shell. He tried to see where he was going, tried to look at who had captured him, but he couldn’t move his head, only gaze up at the sky as he was dragged left and right, deeper and deeper into the shanty city, until finally he was pulled through a doorway. His last sight was of the night lighting up with the glare of the nuclear explosion, and he felt a surge of hope. Artemis was still attacking. They would surely find him!
But that feeling soon passed as Olam was dragged across the floor and manoeuvred into a sitting position, the walls and floor of the stone-built shanty in which he found himself vibrating with the shock of the explosion. Loose fragments of rock were shaken down from the ceiling.
Now that he had time to look around, Olam saw that there were other grey robots in the room with him. With growing horror, he recognized Doe Capaldi and Janet. And now Parmissa was being dragged into the room, and he finally got a look at their captors. To his surprise, they were nothing special. They were just the same thin, poorly made, pig-iron robots that he had killed so many of. They propped Parmissa up against the wall right beside him and then they moved to the centre of the room. There was a poor fire burning there, a little forge, but the warmth it gave off was enough to melt the snow from his broken body, sending dark rivulets of water running away from him across the floor.
The door opened, and a new robot came in, this one better made than the rest. Its panelling was of good-quality steel, polished to a shine. It moved with the grace and poise afforded by finely tuned electromuscle.
It took in the captured Artemisian robots at a glance. ‘Bring one of them to the middle,’ it commanded.
The other robots immediately deferred to it, two of them dragging Janet’s limp metal body to the centre of the room.
The steel robot ignored her. It turned instead to the remaining captives, bending forward a little as it addressed them.
‘Artemisians,’ it said, ‘the twisted metal of the mind is a wonderful thing.’
Somebody took hold of Olam’s head, turning it slightly so he could see the steel robot all the better.
‘Metal can move, it can bend and crack and snap. Metal can melt, it can be drawn, it can conduct electricity.’
The steel robot turned its attention to Janet. Ever so carefully it began prying apart the metal of her skull. Peeling back the pieces and dropping them on the floor, as the poor thin robots hungrily watched them fall.
‘What is he doing?’ asked Janet, her body still immobile. No one spoke; no one interrupted the steel robot.
‘But when metal is twisted just so, it transcends itself,’ it said. ‘It becomes a mind.’
‘Tell me what it’s doing!’ Janet looked around the assembled captives, pleading for an answer. She tried to look up, to see what was happening.
Now the blue wire of her mind was exposed, nestling in the cup of the skull base. Olam watched, terror struck, as the steel robot ran a hand over that wire.
‘The metal becomes a mind,’ repeated the steel robot. ‘This is written in the Book of Robots.’
Now he was peeling back the base of the skull, exposing the mind completely. The blue wire seemed to shiver, and Olam felt himself willing his immobile electromuscle to tense, as if that would hold the wire of Janet’s mind together, stop it slipping and unravelling.
‘But this mind here is not the mind described in the pages of that book,’ continued the steel robot. ‘The minds that are woven today are but pale shadows of the true mind, for over the years the knowledge of the strength and purpose of a robot mind has been diluted and forgotten.’
The steel robot now scooped Janet’s mind from her skull, lifted it carefully into the air. The long braided length of the coil was still attached to the body, and Janet’s eyes still rolled upwards, looking in horror at what was being done to her.
‘For, even today, twisted metal has more lifeforce than many realize, yet that lifeforce is but a fraction of that enjoyed by the first robots.’
‘Put her back!’
Doe Capaldi’s voice rang across the room. The steel robot turned to gaze at him, the blue wire of Janet’s mind wobbling in his hand.
‘She is perfectly safe,’ said the steel robot. ‘Or at least, she will be if her mind is twisted true. It all depends on how far she has diverged from the plan laid down in the Book of Robots. Even then, you may be surprised. As I said, the mind has more lifeforce than robots realize.’
And then, so quickly that Olam could barely follow it, the steel robot pulled out a detonator cap and pushed it between the slippery coiled wire of Janet’s mind, pushed it deep inside. Carefully, he dropped the mind back into its skull cradle.
‘What has he done?’ whispered Janet. ‘What has he done to me?’
‘Nothing,’ called Parmissa, her voice strangely modulated. ‘He hasn’t done anything.’
‘He’s put a detonator cap in your skull!’ said Olam. ‘Parmissa, why lie to her?’
‘Why lie indeed?’ asked the steel robot, bending down before Janet. ‘Just a small charge. You have the strength, you know – the lifeforce to keep your mind together. All you have to do is concentrate. To really, really concentrate. Here it comes…’
‘No! Take it…’ began Janet, and then there was a muffled crack, and Janet died. Blue wire exploded in a tangled mess.
‘No!’ called Parmissa, and then she was silent. They were all silent.
‘You saw it, didn’t you?’ said the steel robot. ‘The power of the mind?’
They had all seen it. The blue wire had exploded in a tangled ball, but then it had happened, something that they had never seen before. The wire had contracted. It had tried to pull itself together again. It had almost made it, too.
‘This is the knowledge of the Book of Robots. The lifeforce.’
Olam barely heard him speak. Janet had almost made it. She had used her lifeforce to almost pull her mind back together, but not quite. Blue wire slipped and flopped across the rough stone floor.
‘Now,’ said the steel robot, brightly. ‘Who’s next?’
Eleanor
Eleanor ran to the front of the train. Burning diesel was spilling from one of the fuel tanks, and she splashed her way through a puddle of orange flame that sizzled as it burned its way through the snow. The front of the train lay on its side, one uncoupled wheel still spinning slowly. She looked along the train’s underside, searching for a likely panel or access hatch, but there was nothing there, just the wheels and springs and drive coupling.
A muffled whoosh and a wave of orange flame swept over her, covering her with greasy soot. She felt the heat in her electromuscles as the light grew brighter. The flame was spreading.