‘I am.’
Melt walked up. ‘They say it will only take half an hour to get down,’ he said.
‘That will save us a lot of time.’
Karel looked around the three humans, at the strange village.
‘I feel as if I should stay here…’ he began.
‘That’s how it begins,’ said Melt firmly. ‘Promises and help, and before you know it you’re dancing to their tune.’
‘You know,’ said Karel, ‘you’ve remembered your past.’
‘Later,’ said Melt. ‘When we’re down.’
They said goodbye to Simrock.
‘Good luck finding Nicolas the Coward,’ said Karel.
‘Thank you,’ said Simrock.
‘Goodbye Karel, Goodbye Melt,’ said Jasprit.
They climbed from the village, accompanied by Brian and Ruth. Jasprit and Simrock waved goodbye.
‘Not far up here,’ said Brian.
They climbed to a little wind-whipped plateau. Brilliant white peaks surrounded them, framed by the deepening blue sky. Night was coming. Below them the slopes were greyer where the summer snowmelt had occurred.
‘It’s not too windy is it, Brian?’ asked Ruth.
‘They said it would be fine.’
As he spoke there was a low buzzing. Karel saw a flying craft approaching, a huge propeller turning on the top.
‘A helicopter,’ said Ruth.
The craft came closer; it hovered above them and then slowly settled on the plateau.
‘Goodbye,’ said Ruth, holding out her hand. ‘I hope you find your wife.’
Karel took her hand. It was a delicate operation; not too hard so he crushed it, not so soft it slipped from his; he shook it up and down, the way he had seen Melt do.
‘Thank you,’ said Karel. ‘I hope you find out all you need to.’
He shook hands with Brian and then moved towards the craft. The big propeller on the top was blowing down on them, pushing them to the ground. Something within in the craft set up a singing resonance within his body. It was uncomfortable, but bearable.
Karel and Melt climbed on board. They were met by a human wearing something like a robot’s skull over his head, a sheet of glass across the front. He showed them where to sit on the little metal seats. He seemed particularly concerned by the weight of Melt, moving him around the cabin until he was happy with his position.
Eventually they were settled. The note of the engine increased, and Karel gazed out of the window as they rose up into the air.
Susan
Barrack 245 was one of twenty identical corrugated-steel buildings arranged in a four by five grid near the marshalling yards.
The windowless, rectangular constructions crowded together, keeping the narrow concrete paths running between them forever in gloomy shadow. Susan walked with Spoole, now also wearing the body of an infantryrobot, down one of the paths.
‘There is fungus growing down here,’ said Spoole. ‘Here, right in the middle of Artemis City.’
‘Fungus?’ Susan looked at the soft white globes. ‘They’re obscene!’
‘I saw them in Born,’ said Spoole. ‘They used to cultivate them.’
‘Why?’
‘I have no idea.’ He looked up at the sheer wall of the building. ‘This is the place. It’s empty.’
Susan could feel it too. The building could hold one thousand, four hundred and fifty robots, packed in, arms and legs and bodies all pushed together. So many bodies combined would set up a faint hum. Spoole tapped at the wall. They heard the hollow vibration of the space beyond.
‘They’re gone,’ he said.
‘Not surprising,’ said Susan. It had taken them days to reach the barracks. Days of dodging patrols and doubling back on themselves. The order had gone out that Spoole was now wanted for treason against the state. That was a difficult concept for the robots of Artemis, their minds woven from birth to think of nothing but Nyro’s way. That conscripts should turn against the state, that they should only pretend to be Artemisians as a way of preserving their life, that was understood. But for Spoole, a robot whose mind was woven in the making rooms of Artemis, to turn traitor, that was almost unthinkable.
‘What do we do now?’
Spoole had the answer already.
‘Head for the Marshalling Office. Nettie will have been loaded onto a train. We can find out which one.’
They left the barrack area and followed the gloomy concrete paths back out into the sunshine at the edge of the marshalling yard.
Railway lines, their upper surfaces polished silver by the passage of wheels, swept across the ground in every direction.
‘It’s over a mile across,’ said Spoole, proudly. ‘Two miles deep, though some of the lines run back for five miles, almost into the heart of the city.’
Susan looked at the endless rows of the wagons parked on the lines before her. A diesel engine rumbled past, pulling a line of green tankers. She could hear the petrol sloshing around inside them. Only half full. Had the humans taken the rest?
‘Where’s the Marshalling Office?’
‘Down there.’
Spoole pointed south, to the focus of the yard, the place where all of the lines converged through a series of points and crossovers, the place where the hundreds of tracks joined together in ones and twos to leave just sixteen, running from Artemis City and into the continent of Shull. A gantry stretched across those sixteen tracks, a haphazard array of galvanized steel buildings erected upon it.
‘Every train that leaves the city this way passes beneath the Marshalling Office,’ said Spoole. ‘Every train, every item of freight, is recorded there. If Nettie has been taken, they’ll know it. Come on.’
They set off, jumping across the tracks, dodging between the trains that slowly rumbled past.