Free Blood and Iron by Tony Ballantyne Page A

lines of trees, carefully farmed to feed the forges of nearby Ban City. But now they had left the trees behind. They were gliding through the grass plains of northern Sangrel Province.
    A robot could see for miles here, look across plains that fed the thin cattle and sheep, bred by Yukawan robots throughout the centuries to remove as much of the muscle as possible to leave the skin and bone that were so useful to industry. Oily crops flowered in the distance, bright yellow marks against the horizon, punctuated by the glint of sunlight on the metal skins of robots tending the fields.
    But something disturbed the harmony. The earth had been churned up to leave great brown scars in the ground.
    ‘What is it?’ asked Jai-Lyn. ‘What’s happened there?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ said Wa-Ka-Mo-Do.
    They gazed from the compartment in silence, two robots in a little place of metal and wood looking out on a world seemingly destroyed. The carefully harmony of fields and cattle and trees, cultivated over hundreds of years of Empire, had been ruined. It was like a robot had wiped his hand across a picture on a sheet of metal, erasing it. The brown churned earth seemingly stretched for miles.
    ‘It’s like when a farmer plants crops,’ said Wa-Ka-Mo-Do slowly. ‘Only much, much bigger.’
    ‘I have never seen a farmer plant crops,’ said Jai-Lyn.
    ‘I grew bonsai trees, back in Ekrano,’ answered Wa-Ka-Mo-Do, engrossed by the scene before him. The excavation was so large. What possible use could it be? And then he saw something else.
    ‘Do you see it too?’ asked Jai-Lyn.
    ‘Yes,’ replied Wa-Ka-Mo-Do, staring at the yellow machine that worked its way across the grassy plain in the distance. The machine was so big, and so smooth. So much metal, it seemed to have been poured in one piece. Behind the machine stretched a brown ribbon of churned earth.
    ‘That’s what’s causing those marks,’ said Jai-Lyn. ‘But I have never seen a machine like it. What robot could have built that?’
    ‘I don’t think it’s robot-built,’ answered Wa-Ka-Mo-Do. He caught a movement high up in the sky. He and Jai-Lyn looked up at the silver shape that drew a line of condensation through the heavens.
    ‘I think the animals have done this.’
    Karel
    Karel followed Banjo Macrodocious through the hills. His metal squeaked as he strode after the other robot: it had been too long since he had had time to tend to it, but of his mental turmoil, there was no sign.
    ‘What’s a pilgrim?’ he asked carefully.
    ‘The opposite of my kind. Morphobia Alligator will explain everything to you.’
    Karel didn’t press the point. If Banjo Macrodocious had been told to say nothing, then he would say nothing. Still, he was distracted by other thoughts. Susan was alive! Somewhere to the south, his wife knelt in Artemis City to twist the wire of other men. He should be heading there right now, yet Banjo Macrodocious was leading him west. He caught glimpses of the Northern Sea to his right as they traversed the rough green hills, cutting across this foreign land of grass and stone. A grey beetle watched him as he walked by, metal shell warming in the sun, then he felt a boiling of electricity at his feet and looked down to see he had kicked an ants’ nest, the little creatures swarmed around his feet, scraping nicks of metal from his soles. He leaped forward, stamping his feet hard.
    Banjo Macrodocious watched him.
    ‘Insects everywhere,’ said Karel. ‘We must be getting near to ore.’ He paused, tasting his surroundings. ‘I can feel it in the ground. Very faint.’
    ‘We are heading towards Presper Boole,’ Banjo Macrodocious volunteered. ‘Its prosperity was built on metal ore and trade.’
    ‘I’ve never heard of it,’ replied Karel.
    ‘That was a long time ago, when many robots still travelled the Northern Road to the paths beneath the sea. There was much trade between Shull and the robots at the Top of the World.’
    ‘You believe