Bugs (10 page)

They bought tiny styrofoam cups of coffee and carried them to a table in the corner.

As soon as he sat down, Pratt flipped open a tablet of lined paper and began sketching block letters.

‘Here, I’ll show you how the name makes itself known to us.’

Pratt pushed the tablet across.

LIVING

mjwjoh

nkxkpi

olylqj

pmzmrk

qnansl

ROBOTM

‘See, Robot M has to be the name.’

‘I can see that, yes. Clever.’

‘Clever?’ Abe Lincoln’s hooded eyes seemed to darken. Then Pratt took back the tablet, turned a page and continued sketching rapidly as he talked.

‘Living, because made of life. Living parts. Words that speak of life. Fred, ever wonder about words like
hand?’

‘I–’

‘Think of all the meanings of a word like that. We talk about factory hands and farm hands, because the world sees factory and farm workers as just hands. A clock has to have hands because it’s pseudohuman; it stands in for somebody who tells you what time it is. What time is it, Fred?’

‘About a quarter to –’

‘Yes, but what time is it?’
A huge gecko hand slapped the table. ‘What time is it? I’ll tell you. It’s time for new hands. Think about that. Time for new – and just think, we say somebody’s an old hand, like Carl is an old China hand, he knows everything. China is clay, too, shaped by hands. Did the hand of the potter shake, Fred? Eh?’

‘Er, not sure –’

‘You help somebody by giving them a hand, or you applaud somebody with a big hand. We hand down our wisdom to our children, but poor kids wear goddam hand-me-downs, like I did! Hand over hand up the damned ladder to the top of the world, a show of hands, a hands-down win, handyman – I thought of calling our robot Handyman, you know? Because you need hands across the ocean, right? Hand-to-hand combat, right?
Mano a mano.’

‘Mm.’

‘Hands up, words of the thief, right? And two thieves put their hands up and were crucified with him, remember?’

‘H’m, yes.’

‘Of course cheiromancy, palm-reading, just a recognition that the opposable thumb is what it’s all about, our destiny is in the hand all right. Crime is red-handed, sinister is left-handed, red is left – all politicos need to th-th-think on that.’

‘Um.’ Fred glanced around the cafeteria. He did not want to meet the gaze of Pratt, whose Lincolnesque eyes were just now showing a great deal of white.

‘One good thief and one bad thief, one on his right hand, one on his left. And he went to sit on the right hand of the Father, you know?’

Looking at the tablet, Fred saw that Pratt was drawing squares, nothing but neat empty squares.

‘Thieves thieves thieves thieves thieves. In Islamic countries they cut off the thief’s hand, if thy hand offends thee, cut it off. The Hands of Orlac, crawling, looking for vengeance. One good hand, one bad hand, fighting for dominance. War in the brain, hemisphere against hemisphere, it’s a war to the death, no wonder whales gave up their hands and returned to the ocean, right?’

‘You have a point there,’ said Fred.

‘But Christ’s name is almost an anagram of Cheiro, the Greek name for hand. Five wounds are the five fingers. Fourteen Stations of the Cross are the fourteen knuckles. Four fingers are the four gospels.’

‘And there are the nails,’ Fred was unable to keep from saying.

Pratt did not seem to require contributions from others. ‘Christ,’ he intoned, ‘is Cheiro is Chi Rho. Just look at the map some time. Is it a coincidence that we have two great learning institutions named after hands? One is Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, the other is MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Duke and Mitt. Draw a line connecting them, and it passes through Cairo, Georgia. Cairo equals Cheiro equals Chi Rho, see?’

He rambled on, speaking of cross-hand piano playing, overhand pitching, underhand dealing, golden gloves, helping hands, backhands, southpaws, hooks, fists, palms, grips.

‘An underlying pattern of thumb and four fingers, throughout history, throughout the universe. Magnetic lines of force follow the right-hand rule, the laws of Nature, DNA twists to the right or left, everything is twisted. The whole universe has an asymmetrical twist, right?’

‘Up to a point.’

‘Because fundamental particles, mesons or whatever, have right-hand spin or left-hand spin,
and there’s more of one kind than the other
. The whole universe is out of balance, and it has to be, to create man. Man and the son of man. And the son of the son. The Robot M.’

Pratt sat back and relaxed, taking a deep breath. The glassiness seemed to pass from his gaze. ‘Anyway, I just wanted you to know how I got the name, Robot M.’

Fred stood up quickly. ‘Where does the time go? Well, this has been fascinating, really fast –’

‘And one more thing, Fred. I have to let you go.’

‘Let me go?’

‘We’ve been having these cutbacks all around. Sorry. Been great working with you.’

Fred could think of nothing to say.

The Lincoln face seemed seized with boredom for a moment. Then it twitched and said: ‘You can come in tomorrow and pick up your stuff, once we get everything moved.’

Lake Calhoun had two faces. From the wealthier west, a wide boulevard swept in towards the lake, passing between two insurance companies that seemed to divide the world: American Hardware Mutual faced Ministers’ Life across the traffic lanes. Beyond them was a region of high-priced high-rise condos, golf-courses, fine old houses and finer lakes.

Fred saw this side only when he drove to work. His basement bedsitter was located on the east side of the lake, the side where the stores took food stamps and (according to their signs) kept only $30 in the till after dark.

Now he decided that it was time to try running around Lake Calhoun. Running around any lake seemed the thing to do, and Lake Calhoun was a great favourite. Every day, at all hours, people in brilliant costumes trotted around Calhoun, as people once cantered up and down Rotten Row, announcing their presence to the world.

At 2 or 3
A.M.,
only a few hardy souls would be pounding along the special asphalt path. But in the daytime, and especially at weekends, the traffic jam of thumping feet and flapping elbows was formidable. Whatever the original purpose of running, it now had become an established part of daily life, like newspapers.

Fred could not afford an elaborate costume; he limited himself to a pair of cheap running shoes with Velcro tabs on them, an undervest and his ordinary trousers. The change jingled in his pocket like bells on trotting horses. Soon he began to find aches within his lungs, down his legs, everywhere. It was necessary to invent reasons to continue:

(1)
Running was democratic.
Unlike school sports, which in America could only be played by highly trained child professionals wearing special helmets, running was something almost anyone could do. It could be done competitively or not, by both sexes together, socially or alone. The ultimate democratic sport, it required (like voting) no skill, training or intellect. But Fred did not have a lot of sympathy with democracy.

(2)
Doctors approved.
They solemnly told Americans that running was very good for them. Film stars confirmed the value of wild exercise. Of course, doctors and film stars had at one time recommended smoking cigarettes, too. Maybe they were not always to be trusted. Not many seemed deterred by knowing that one well-known popularizer of running (as good for the heart) had died, of a heart-attack, following a nice run.

(3)
Everyone does it.
A powerful argument: run because all your friends are running. Fred noticed packs of friends loping along, no doubt under control of a hive mind. He did not want any friends of this sort.

(4)
Run competitively.
For some, running opened new vistas of competition – buying and displaying lots of expensive running clothes. Fred did not have enough money for real clothes, never mind ostentation.

(5)
It’s painful.
People in Minneapolis were Scandinavians, who like pain. One had only to think of Scandinavian inventions: saunas, birching for pleasure (rather than capital punishment), and furniture that tortured the human frame (a chair that forces you to kneel before your computer, for example). Presumably Scandinavians enjoyed sitting (or kneeling) all the way through Ingmar Bergman films.

He paused for breath. Immediately, a cloud of gnats found him and went for the mouth and eyes. He flapped and fought, and started to run again, but they stuck with him.

‘Vait, darlink! Vait a moment!’ called a pleasant, rather rich contralto voice. As he was now gagging, coughing and blinded, he had no choice but to wait. A panting presence approached. A cool hand rubbed over his face, leaving some sour-smelling substance. ‘There. You can look.’

He looked into a pair of wide-set green eyes.

‘Gunats,’ she said.

He was shocked to realize he was in the presence of a great beauty – though at the moment hers was a watercolour
beauty seen through a Renoir mist of tears: a fine cloud of red hair, pale golden skin, slightly tilted green eyes. Expensive pastel running gear in pink and turquoise. ‘Gunats. They like to take drink at the ice.’

‘The ice?’

‘The ice and the mout. You must use this, darlink.’ She held up a small plastic bottle. ‘Buck detergent.’

‘Ah, insect repellent. Good idea. Repels … er, insects. Seem to be a lot of them about, too. I’ve noticed that Minnesota favours every known type of blood-sucking insect: leeches, mosquitoes, ticks, deerflies, horseflies, blackflies …’ He heard his own fatuous flow and broke off. Shut it, shut it!

‘In Minnesota, buck detergent is absolutely necessary, darlink.’

‘Yes.’ Having stopped the inane babbling, he found himself unable to speak at all. Tongue-tied by her beauty, which was even more startling when the mist cleared. This woman had prominent cheekbones, even for America. Why was she calling him ‘darling’? No doubt an actress or something. ‘Uh, thank you so much.’ Say something clever, you jerk!

‘My name is KK.’

‘Fred Jones.’

Her grip was solid, and she gave his hand a single violent shake, as though forcing him to drop a weapon.

‘Shall we have coffee?’ she suggested, taking it for granted that, having met her, he was ready to give up running. This was true. If she had suggested that he fly to South America and pick the coffee beans personally, he would have begun looking up plane schedules.

He hesitated as they passed the McIntosh hamburger paradise, where McCoffee in a styrofoam cup would be exactly in his price range. She took his arm and firmly steered him past it, to an establishment called Geraldino’s, far beyond his means. He said nothing.

‘Is nice,’ said KK, as they took their seats at a pine table. He nodded. The waitress brought hand-written menus. He
read as far as the two-figure price for Spaghetti Pinocchio (‘A meld of robust pesto that segues with a quietly poshified generosity of pine nuts webbed in a spunky cloudlet of homely pasta that does not noble it up unduly …’).

‘Just coffee for two,’ he said.

‘Coffee menu’s on the back.’

There were roughly twenty or thirty thousand coffee choices in tiny script, none costing as little as an entire meal at McIntosh’s.

KK said: ‘So many choices! Only in America!’

The waitress was helpful, leading them through the branches of a tree of choices. They could have regular or decaffeinated; Middle Eastern, European or American blend. The European branch led to Northern or Mediterranean. Mediterranean included French, Italian or Greek.

Once the basic blend was determined, the choice was plain or flavoured (up to twenty flavours, including Marzipan, Mint-Caraway, Buffalo Chocolate Chip, Butterscotch Brownie).

That settled, another cut selected the dairy additive: milk (hot or cold, whole, 2 per cent butterfat, skim or plant milk), cream, whipped cream, yoghurt, bean curd, buttermilk, or something called smetana, which sounded unpleasantly like a substance harvested from beneath the foreskins of sturdy Kurdish tribesmen.

The final cut selected the sweetening agent: white sugar, light or dark brown, Demerara, honey (from clover, orange blossoms, buckwheat, heather, acacia or tobacco), molasses, corn syrup, maple syrup, Nutrasweet or saccharin. By the time their coffee came, in dramatically hand-made earthenware mugs scoured with the marks of natural fingers, Fred could not remember what he’d ordered. It tasted like cheap powdered instant with a pinch of chicory.

He noticed that her sweatshirt was monogrammed. ‘What does the KK stand for?’

‘Kitty Katya,’ she said, after some hesitation. ‘Is stupid name. I prefer plain KK. Vat does Fred stand for?’

‘Manfred. Manfred Evelyn, actually.’

‘Like Evel Knievel?’

‘Sort of. I prefer plain Fred. But tell me something.’ Tell me anything. ‘Where are you from?’