‘It will fall,’ said Banjo Macrodocious. ‘We will then walk across the land and we will find a place where we can prosper once more. The Book of Robots will be preserved.’
Kavan was silent.
‘There will be a place for you within Artemis,’ said Eleanor.
‘That’s not your decision to make, Eleanor,’ said Kavan.
And now Eleanor turned to him, wearing that familiar expression of contempt.
‘You’ve conquered Shull,’ she said. ‘What’s Spoole going to do about you now? Are you going to let him send you on across the whole of Penrose? Or are you finally going to march on Artemis City?’
‘With what troops?’ asked Kavan. He turned to Karel. ‘Turing City is no more. What would you have me do now?’ He jerked a finger at Banjo Macrodocious. ‘You heard what he said; do you still think that Artemis is wrong?’
‘Yes! A mind is more than just twisted metal!’
‘But why do you think that? Only because that is what your mother wove you to believe. When Nyro’s philosophy is woven into every mind on this planet, then what difference will your feelings make?’
Karel tried to frame an answer. Kavan turned to Eleanor.
‘You ask which way do we march next, Eleanor? I don’t know. But I think that decision cannot be made yet. Because I have crossed the extent of Shull, from the south to the north, and it is only here that I have met robots that truly believed in anything other than just themselves.’
The wind was dropping. The sky was clearing, just a little. A few stars shone above, glimmering amongst the falling snowflakes.
‘We will visit the buildings to the north of here. Just the three of us – you, me and Karel. We will see what we find there. And then we shall decide where we are to march next. North, or south.’
Maoco O emerged from a pile of gangue into what had been Turing City, his reflexes immediately dropping him to the ground for cover.
Everything had gone now. There was nothing left but rock and sky.
He knew the scenario, he had been trained in Arte-misian tactics for reclaiming a city.
The buildings that housed the foundries that used to line this road would have been taken apart brick by brick; their metal frames unbolted and fed into the forges to be melted down and formed into ingots for transportation. The huge acid tanks would have been drained, their contents sprayed on the very dust to make salts out of the scraps of metal that had fallen there, and then the tanks themselves broken apart to make even more ingots, then loaded onto trucks that ran on temporary railway lines laid into this area solely for the purpose of deconstruction. Maoco O could see the faint imprint of the sleepers in the windblown dust that covered the stony ground.
He felt as if his gyros weren’t spinning properly. Everything looked so wrong. Even the sun seemed too big, a wobbly yellowy-red presence, shimmering in a rusty sky; it gave the land a patina of death, of dissolution into crumbling rust.
He tried to make sense of this new landscape. There was the rocky outcrop on which the fort had stood, so that must be the slope leading down to where the galleries had once been.
And over there was the railway station. The station itself was gone, but the railway lines remained. In fact, there were more now than ever: so many lines, they flooded into the valley bottom before spreading out like a river delta. Those lines had penetrated deep into Turing City and had leached all of its metal away, leaving only stone behind. Maoco O could see that even those same railway lines were now being dismantled, loaded up into the trucks that trundled away northwards, taking all that precious remaining metal to Artemis City.
He heard a sudden noise nearby, just around the other side of the pile of gangue from which he himself had emerged. Cautiously, he edged his way around the heap of dirty white stone. The noise came again, the clink-clank of stone slipping down upon itself.
He dodged in and out of the bays and coves of the immense pile of gangue, working his way around to the north till his new ears gradually became aware of another sound. The sound of industry: of diesel engines roaring, of heavy machinery moving, the rumble and roar of rock being dug.
And then he rounded another corner, and the noise was forgotten.
A round, crab-like machine, not much bigger than his head, was squatting at the base of the gangue pile and feeding fragments of rock into its jaws, grinding it all down. Powdered stone spilt from its crude mouth, covering the ground and staining the metal shell of the machine itself. Such an ugly machine, it was roughly constructed of iron, the top of its shell an uneven mix of leftover metals. This was a cheaply made construct.
They were reclaiming even the gangue itself, Maoco O realized. Turing City had been so rich it had left the mined-out slag lying in piles around the city, but Artemis wasted nothing. Maoco O suddenly felt a terrible admiration for their efficiency. He watched the crab machine as it moved forward slightly, selecting a choice piece of rock with its claws to feed into its mouth. There would be some metal there, enough for it to process and add to its own body. It would be a long and tedious job. The machine could process gangue all its life and would still only find a few ounces of metal. And then a terrible suspicion took hold of him, and he crossed to the crab, examined its body, flipped open the top, and looked in horror at what lay inside.
The blue twisted wire of a brain: a Turing Citizen.
He heard scuttling behind him. Another two crabs rounded the corner.
‘Hey, what are you doing?’
The infantryrobot was standing on the gangue hill above him, its rifle at its side.
‘Just looking for my section,’ said Maoco O, easily. He flipped the top of the crab back in place and straightened up. The infantryrobot lifted its rifle to aim directly at Maoco O’s head.
‘What section? What are you talking about?’ He raised his voice. ‘Hey, Camber, there’s something over here…’
The infantryrobot slipped his way down the pile. He leaped forward, landing in front of Maoco O, his gun still covering him.
‘You’re a Turing Citizen, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘Where have you been hiding all this time?’
Maoco O heard more footsteps crunching on the mined stone. That must be Camber, coming to the aid of his colleague. He had to move quickly.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he said, moving towards the infantry robot. ‘I’m new here and I was just wondering…’
‘Stay back,’ snapped the infantryrobot.
‘Goscin!’ The second infanftryrobot came into view. In the merest fraction of a second it took Goscin to glance at his friend, Maoco O leaped forward. This new body was too slow, too weak, but the training, the reflexes were still there. He gripped the enemy’s rifle, twisted it free of the other robot’s hands, rolled forward, stood and turned and fired at Goscin’s head.
Nothing happened.
The safety catch was on, he realized. He flicked it off just as Camber fired, the bullet tearing through his left shoulder, piercing the electromuscle there. Goscin was already charging at him so he turned and shot at him one-handed. His body was badly tuned, he fired too low, the bullet passing through Goscin’s throat. The other robot fell however: Maoco O’s bullet had clipped its coil, disabled its legs, crippling it. Maoco O kicked down at Goscin’s neck, and broke the connection there with his foot.
Another rifle shot, a second bullet hit him, again in the left shoulder. Camber was clearly panicking, either that or his rifle sights were not set correctly. Calmly, one-handed, Maoco O took aim at him and fired.
The bullet caught him dead centre in the skull. Blue wire exploded.
There were more shouts, more footsteps. Maoco O needed cover urgently.
But first he dropped the rifle, looked down at the gangue crab, bent over and flipped open the top. Carefully, with one hand, he eased the mind out of the machine. Fix his arm now, and he could come back for more.