And all the while the network of red fire that covered the hillside was widening, the glow was spreading.
Even the children, thought Kavan. Even the children believe.
‘Shoot the sticky ones,’ shouted Eleanor, unnecessarily. The troops had realized what was happening. ‘Don’t let them get close.’
Another wave of resistance was now advancing: thin, pig-iron bodies almost lost in the snow. They carried slingshots, each loaded with a metal sphere. Kavan watched as they swung them around their heads and launched another volley of wire bombs…
Olam
Olam had regained the sense of seeing by grey light, but there was nothing to see. He was wrapped up in something, so that all he caught sight of was a glimpse of stone, a glimpse of sky. He guessed he was being carried from the hovel.
He had no gyros, he felt no motion. He could hear, though: hear the whistle of the wind, the stamping of feet, the crack of rifles. And he could hear the voice of the robot that carried him.
‘Can you hear me, mind? Can you hear me in there? Wrapped in a sling, all ready for throwing?’
He hated that voice, hated its tinny vibrato, hated its false jollity. Give him his old body and he would have taken such pleasure in taking hold of the robot’s puny neck, squeezing the brittle pig iron, feeling it shatter in his hands, feeling the slipperiness of the coil in his hand as he crushed it and crippled his tormentor.
Most of all though, he hated the fear welled up inside the metal of his own mind: the cold, aching fear that made him feel as if his gyros, his non-existent gyros, were lurching and bouncing and breaking loose inside him. He wanted to cry, to run, to curl up, but he could do none of those things.
‘Where have you come from? I wonder. What did you see as you marched here to our land? All those memories, there in your wire.’
All those memories. And yet the only memory that played through Olam’s mind at that moment was of a detonator being pushed into Parmissa’s mind by long steel fingers.
‘We’re coming to the battle now. There go the sticky-robots. My daughter is one of them. She’s only five years old, but she’s covered in glue and she goes to fulfil her purpose. I wove her that way. I wove her so that she would not be afraid to die.’
Her daughter? She had sent her own daughter to her death?
‘But what about you? What do you believe in? Are you frightened of dying? Will you try and keep your mind together, or will you relax and save your friends? Which will it be?’
Olam wanted to live. He thought of Wien and of his family. Where were they now? he wondered. Dead, most likely. He tried to picture them, but he couldn’t. He tried to picture Wien, with its towers and its islands. Nothing. All he could see now was his section, Doe Capaldi and his fellow Artemisians. All he could remember was what it was like to march through the streets of Turing City, the feel of the gun in his hands, the feeling of welling joy as he fired, as he saw another robot drop dead before him. Such elation!
‘What are you going to be? A bomb, or a dud? What will your final purpose be?’
No! He wasn’t ready. He didn’t want to die. That wasn’t his purpose!
‘Here we go. I will whirl you round three times, and then let you go. Are you going to count with me?’
No! Not yet. He wasn’t going to die. He deserved to live. He possessed the lifeforce, he knew it. All he had to do was concentrate.
‘I can see your troops over there. They look so big, so powerful. All that metal. What a mind I could weave with one of them…’
Concentrate. Don’t let her distract you!
‘One… two… three…’
The words were fainter now, lost in the wind as he spun, and then he had left the sling, he was flying forward. All those stars above. All that expanse of ground below. Soldiers. Artemisian soldiers. Is that what we look like from the air? What about the explosive charge? What would it feel like to die?
He wouldn’t die. All he had to do was concentrate. Concentr…
Karel
Metal spheres continued to fall amongst the troops, each exploding in a tangle of blue wire that instantly contracted, snaring anything within range, choking it, cutting it, destroying it. Eleanor and Kavan and the rest ignored them, even when they fell at their feet, and Karel attempted to do the same. Still, he couldn’t help but duck down when one of the shells sailed over his head. It hit the robot behind in the chest, blue wire swarming over his grey body and tightening. Ripping into the panelling, tightening behind the neck, slipping through the joints and into the coil.
‘Wolfgang!’ called out Kavan.
Karel was amazed. Kavan seemed genuinely upset about the robot’s death. This was not what he had expected. Karel watched as Wolfgang slumped forward, and then tumbled down to the ground.
‘Hey,’ said Eleanor, standing at his side, ‘it’s just metal. Just like the rest of us.’
She was taunting Kavan, realized Karel. She was taunting the robot she wanted him to kill. But why me? wondered Karel. He gazed at the dying Wolfgang. The blue wire was still tightening, still squeezing. That had been a powerful bomb, he thought. More so than the others.
‘Don’t taunt me,’ said Kavan to Eleanor. ‘Wolfgang was a valuable resource.’
Karel looked up. Were the pair of them about to start a fight, here and now? What would he do? Kavan didn’t carry a gun, he noticed.
The front of Kavan’s shell was covered in condensation. They were all similarly covered, noticed Karel, covered in beads of water that ran in hurried little streams down fingers and arms and legs. The heat from the fires across the far side of the bowl was increasing. Red cracks were spreading wider: they now ran red fingers around the base of the skeletal tower.
‘Keep up, Karel,’ ordered Eleanor, and he looked up to see that Kavan was now gone ahead, marching on again, following his troops’ thrust into the heart of the Northern Kingdom.
Karel hefted the rifle, condensation running down his fingers. The wind was lessening noticeably, being pushed aside by the rising heat. The snow had turned to slushy rain.
There is Kavan, just ahead. Why not raise the rifle and shoot him? I could do it right now. I would be killed straight away, but what does that matter? I’ve nothing left to live for, so what’s stopping me? Is it because I don’t want to be a part of Eleanor’s game? Or is it something else?
Because I can see it: that we’re both so alike, Kavan and me. Does anyone else realize that? All those people who whispered and hinted about how my mind was twisted, asking me what I was thinking: as if anybody could really tell what their mother had woven into their mind. And yet, I can see something of Kavan in myself.
He raised the rifle, sighted along its length, took aim at Kavan’s head.
Pull the trigger. Kill him.
A shrieking metal noise rang out. The skeletal tower was sagging, its legs twisting, giving way.
The Artemisian troops sensed victory. They began to stamp their feet as they marched forward.
Slowly, oh so slowly, the great copper sphere at the top of the tower toppled forward.
Kavan
Kavan watched the copper sphere falling; saw the thin, undersized enemy robots running out from its base.
‘You’ve done it,’ said Eleanor, marching at his side. ‘You’ve done it again. And now the whole continent is yours.’
‘The whole continent belongs to Artemis,’ he corrected her.
The copper sphere hit the stony ground and crumpled, split along one side.
‘You’ve defeated the Wizard,’ said Eleanor, and there was wonder in her voice. As if she had really believed in the Wizard.
Kavan had halted. He wanted to call Wolfgang, but Wolfgang was now dead.
‘Look at the sphere,’ he said to Eleanor. ‘Look at it! What do you see inside?’
The sphere was collapsing, like a bubble of glass blown too large. It was splitting into two pieces under its own weight.