He laughed.
All the choices, all the indecision rolled away.
He would not be attacking Artemis City today at least. Like it or not, his mind had been made up for him. The twisted metal in Spoole’s mind had followed a path similar to Kavan’s. Similar, but not exactly the same. The other’s metal had danced its course around Kavan’s without the two paths ever actually touching.
Spoole had outwitted him: elegantly, delightfully, easily.
It was written before him in the pattern of the rails, slicked with rain and lit up with red fire from the evening sun.
Where once the railway lines had filled the plain like a rough sea, crisscrossing, rising, falling, plugging Artemis City into the rest of the continent, now the lines were raked smooth to circle the city in a neat concentric pattern of lines. Artemis City rose like an island from this red sea, untouched by the pattern of fire that surrounded it.
It was an act of challenge, a parry and an insult all in one. It was the actions of Nicolas the Coward written in metal for the world to see.
Kavan couldn’t enter the city. The railway lines no longer ran that way. Instead, they ran around the city and continued north in an unbroken line.
The message was obvious. Kavan was being sent north to break his troops against the mountain range that cut the continent in two.
‘It’s a challenge,’ said Kavan.
‘Sorry, Kavan?’ queried the engineer that waited at the foot of the tower.
‘Never mind. Tell the troops. We’re to go north. The south is not enough. We are to conquer the whole of Shull.’
The cold wind gusted rain across Kavan’s body. Drops beaded on his metal fingers. He gazed down at them, thoughtfully.
‘The winter is coming,’ he said. ‘The snow will be blowing from the north, and we will be fighting against it, every step of the way.’
‘Can we really do it?’ asked the engineer.
‘The mountains are high and there is no route through them that an army could take. We may have to split our forces. They could pick us off easily in the passes…’
‘But can we do it?’
‘Of course we can. We always do.’
Far away, in distant Yukawa, the radio operator turned a dial.
‘What is it, La-Challen?’
‘I don’t know. Static, but of an odd signature. It’s coming from Shull, I think. Every fifteen minutes I hear the signal. Perhaps you could enlighten me, Cho-La-Errahi?’
The superior took the jack from La-Challen and plugged it directly into his body, a serene expression on his face.
‘It will come again in less than a minute, my master.’
‘Silence, La-Challen. I am listening…’
It had been raining for days, raining in cold gusts that seeped between the panels and dampened the electromuscles. The broken rocks of the mountain were shiny wet, and Olam’s feet were sodden from wading through puddles that jumped under the never-ending impact of raindrops. There was nowhere to shelter, no chance to take apart a shorting limb to dry and clean and oil it. There was nothing here but rain and rock and dust. Lots of dust. So much wet grey dust, it worked its way into body and mechanism. Dust that stuck to the hands and the face and body so that everything was constantly gritty and damp.
Not for the first time, Olam wished he were back in Wien, dressed in his old body, feeling its metal warming in the sun’s heat. Standing in a marble tower and looking out over the bay…
‘Get ready,’ called Doe Capaldi, jerking him from his reverie. His section crouched in the limited shelter of a sheer rock face, their metal skins glistening with diamond drops of rain. Doe Capaldi didn’t seem to care about the weather. Why does he always look so calm? wondered Olam. Why doesn’t this upset him as much as it affects me? After all, he has lost far more than I ever had.
People were running towards him. Olam heard the splash of feet, the clink of metal on rock and the squeaking, unhealthy sound of robots that had spent too long being wet. He looked up the valley to see Spuran’s section pelting back down the newly carved valley, running from…
‘Cover your eyes! Turn off your ears!’ ordered Doe Capaldi. Olam obeyed, just as a hammer struck down on the world.
His mind seemed to bend for a moment, his thoughts elongating. Electromuscle crackled, sending clouds of colour dancing inside his head. And then there was a white light so bright that it filled the inside of his skull. It illuminated the receptors of his covered eyes, sending a lance of lightning deep into his twisted metal, right back to the very start of the pattern – to the first knot tied by his mother.
The ground was shaking, rattling him around like a wingnut discarded on a forge floor. A shower of stone was falling, rocks and rubble rumbling and crashing. His whole body vibrated, he could feel screws loosening under the harsh percussion. A howling wind threatened to tear his fingers from the crack in the rock to which he clung so tightly…
And then the white light faded. So did the rain, for the moment at least.
Doe Capaldi was banging on his head. Immediately, he turned his ears back up, just like he had been drilled.
‘Bomb’s still ticking,’ called Doe Capaldi. ‘We’ve got fifteen minutes. That’s twelve minutes to get it into position, and then three to run to safety. Let’s go!’
The whole section was up now, grabbing hold of the trolley, which ran on big plastic wheels. They were running, up the valley, towards the source of the explosion. Olam ran to the front, kicking aside smaller stones, shoulder-charging larger rocks to push them aside and help clear a path for the trolley and its deadly, ticking load.
The gusting rain returned in cold cannonballs that raised fountains of moisture on the slippery rock. Still Olam ran on, the trolley bouncing behind him. Be careful with the trolley, he muttered to himself, be careful with the trolley.
Doe Capaldi was now by his side, urging the other robots onwards, and Olam felt a familiar stab of hatred.
Further up the newly excavated valley, closer to the source of the previous explosion, and the going was soon becoming harder, the broken rock beneath their feet ever more unstable. There was a rumble to the right, and an avalanche of scree spilled downwards.
‘Zuse,’ swore Olam, dancing over the sliding rock, struggling to keep his feet.
‘Plenty of time,’ called Doe Capaldi. ‘Clear from the left-hand side, where the rubble is shallowest.’
Olam bent and shovelled away fragments of stone with his hands, throwing it back across the valley floor. Later, the sappers would use the stone to fill in the gaps and cracks in the ground as they levelled it, or maybe use it as ballast for the railway lines they were laying northwards. Slowly and inevitably, Kavan’s path to the north – and conquest – was taking shape.
Not that Olam cared at this moment. Behind him, the trolley bounced along, and the bomb was ticking. All he cared about was laying it and getting clear. He had already seen too many dented and half-melted robot bodies along the path, caught too close to the EMP and the subsequent heat of the blast. Above him, the jagged and broken peaks of the valley reached up into low clouds. Olam shovelled rock, making a path for the trolley.
And now the path was clear. Clear enough, anyway. The trolley bumped forward, and Olam got a proper look at the bomb: an evil-looking black glass cylinder, with a metal plate fastened to one end.
‘Go, go, go,’ called Doe Capaldi.
On they went, running for the new head of the valley, seeking the best location to site their bomb. The new valley snaked through the mountains, following the faults in the rock that the nuclear explosions had found. The robots living in the mountains had been totally confused by the haphazard course of Kavan’s clearance, had been unable to plan an attack on the excavation. No one could have predicted which way the track would travel next, not even Kavan and the Artemisians.