Karel pulled the blade clear. Instantly the pain ceased, but something was wrong. He could no longer feel anything below his waist. Kavan had shorted out his legs completely.
He scrambled with his hands on the rock, seeking escape, realized it was pointless, turned to face Kavan, saw the foot lash out. Karel caught it, twisted it, hurled Kavan to the ground.
How did I do that? Where is that coming from?
Kavan rose to his feet. He gazed at Karel thoughtfully.
‘So fast, Karel. We could fight all day.’ Karel began to pull himself forward, his legs dragging uselessly behind him. ‘But what would the point in that be?’
And at that he turned and began to walk away.
‘Hey,’ called Karel. ‘Come back. This isn’t over!’
Kavan said nothing, just continued walking, heading south, back to his army. What was left of it anyway.
Karel watched him go, watched his grey body disappear over the crest of dark hill, dark rocks soaked in melting snow. He didn’t care. Kavan really didn’t care. He really did regard Karel as nothing more than metal.
He heard a faint cry nearby. Eleanor.
Painfully, he dragged himself across the rock towards her.
Her grey body lay slumped on the ground. He examined the back of the neck, saw how Kavan had crushed the coil there. Crippled her. And there was something else. The black shape of an awl, thrust deep into her mind.
Carefully, he turned her head towards him. There was still light in her eyes.
‘Karel,’ she said, static lacing her words.
‘How badly are you hurt?’ he asked.
‘Can’t feel anything really. I can see and hear and speak. But things are fading. The circuits are discharging too fast. I’m dying.’
‘He’s gone.’
‘He’ll send someone back to reclaim our metal. He knows you can’t get far like that.’
‘What about you?’
‘I’m dying, Karel. Current leaking away.’ Her voice-box let out a low buzzing noise. It resolved into a voice again.
‘Karel, take my legs.’
Karel looked down at her body. It was in better shape than his own.
‘Good idea. I’ll take your mind, too. I can carry it with me.’
‘No point. I told you. Lifeforce draining away.’ She let out an electronic burble. Karel was already at work on Eleanor’s legs, disassembling the hip joint.
‘Eleanor,’ he began, ‘He was right, wasn’t he? We’re Artemisians, aren’t we? That was how Liza made us.’
Eleanor let out a bubbling laugh.
‘You know that’s not true, Karel. Not Artemisians.’
Karel felt a wave of relief.
‘But not Turing Citizens either. Liza had a gun held to her head. She was made to choose how our minds would be woven, Artemis or Turing City. Imagine what passed through her own mind then. Hate, rage, despair. What was the right choice to make?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Nor did she, Karel. And there was so little wire for her left to twist… What could she put into our minds with that wire? What choice could she make? She put in anger, Karel. Anger at the world.’
‘Anger?’
‘Anger. More so in you than in me, Karel. All that anger she felt for that robot who was raping her, all that anger was woven into your mind. Because she knew that anger can be so powerful, it means you don’t accept the world as it is, you try and change it. What you have in your mind is something so unusual. Something that few other robots have. You have the ability to choose. You can look at the way the world is and then choose which philosophy you follow.’
And at that point, Karel knew it was true. He wasn’t just the mind that his mother had made him. He could choose his own mind…
‘You’re special, Karel. Many people know it…’
‘If I’m special, then you must be too, Eleanor.’
‘I was,’ she replied.
And at that the light faded from her eyes.
‘Eleanor?’ he said. He gazed at the black awl, lodged in her head, unsure at what he thought. This was the woman who had killed his child. This was his sister.
He stared at her for some time, trying to figure out what he felt.
Eventually, Karel got to his feet. He turned his back on Eleanor and looked out to the north, to the brightening day, looked at the white foam that decorated the iron-grey waves like badly applied solder.
He felt angry, confused, dizzy. His gyros were spinning way too fast, and he sought to slow them. Turing City, Axel’s death, the loss of Susan, his mind placed in a train, and now this…
It was the sudden change. You built up a picture of the world, you slotted everything into place, made sense of everything that you knew, built up a view that fitted all the facts, and then something came along that destroyed it all.
Karel had carried an idea of himself around all of his life, an idea of who he was that had been inviolate, untouched, unseen by anyone else. And then Eleanor had come along and had shattered it.
What should he do now?
His whole body shook. He felt as if it were disintegrating as he stood there, as if it were turning to rust and just flaking away.
Does anybody else feel this? he wondered. Do we all feel like this? Do we all walk through a world building pictures of what is normal, not realizing that at any minute the foundations of our world might be revealed to be false, that they will crumble away, and everything will collapse around us?
Or are some people lucky enough never to see it? Is the obvious falsehood so big that they never notice it, hanging there right in front of their face?
He looked up into the sky; the clouds were clearing. He could just see the night moon, setting for the day. A great orb, perfectly sphericaclass="underline" 7 x 10^22 tons of metal, orbiting the world of Penrose. Such a natural sight.
At least there were no surprises to be had there.
What was he to do now?
The answer, when it came, was so simple that he almost laughed. He grasped at it gratefully, the only certainty in this shifting world.
He had come to the uttermost north of Shull. All of his past lay to the south. Everyone he knew was to the south. Susan, if she still lived, was somewhere to the south.
For the moment, at least, there was only one way to go.
The light of the sun reflected off Zuse’s polished surface as he turned his back on the sea and began to walk.
Epilogue: Cha-Lo-Ell-Curriah
The turboprop of Cha-Lo-Ell-Curriah’s craft spun so quickly it sent ultrafrequency vibrations humming through his frame. The twisted metal of his mind vibrated, his thoughts seeming to come from a little farther away. The pinging that now echoed inside his skull was irritating. It took him a while to realize that it came from the radio.
He clicked the send button. ‘Cha-Lo-Ell-Curriah.’
‘Cha-Lo-Ell-Curriah! Turn immediately on heading oh four oh two.’
‘Affirmative.’
The wide blue sea tilted as Cha-Lo-Ell-Curriah banked the plane, eyes fixed on the navigation device before him. The radio controller had sounded excited, and Cha-Lo-Ell-Curriah wondered why, but manners and discipline prevented him from asking.
He clicked the send button again. ‘Assumed the heading. Awaiting orders.’
‘Cha-Lo-Ell-Curriah, we want you to check if the radar is malfunctioning. It indicates something approaching you from behind.’
I can’t see it if it’s behind me, thought Cha-Lo-Ell-Curriah.
‘It’s travelling at four times the speed of sound,’ added the controller. ‘It should be passing you anytime now.’
Four times the speed of sound? But breaking the sound barrier was supposed to be impossible! Any craft attempting to do so would shake itself apart in the attempt! Obviously the radar was malfunctioning. Cha-Lo-Ell-Curriah composed himself, meditated on iron and water.
And then his craft was shaken by a huge boom. A shadow passed over him, moving at such speed, and then he saw it…