Bugs (23 page)

‘Free?’ Freedom was a relative concept. Fred was free, relative to the Man in the Iron Mask; he could see a glimmer of daylight through the courtroom windows. Yet Fred did not feel free, after being locked up for several days in solitary confinement. At best, he was a foreigner in prison, and without a friend. Garner Dean Howells, who had only fainted, would no longer answer his calls – either distancing himself from trouble, or because he did not want to have to buy
Doodlebug
. The only people Fred was allowed to talk to were several obnoxious lawyers, each trying to become his attorney of record (whatever that was), and a journalist who offered him a million for his story (contingent only on his conviction for first-degree murder). ‘I’m free?’

‘I don’t think I invited you to address the court. Shut up and listen. The Emir and his group are claiming diplomatic immunity for their part in this sorry affair. Unfortunately, that means they cannot testify regarding your murder plan, so we’re forced to drop charges against you. But, by heaven, if I had my way, I’d make an example of you, you …
restaurant vigilante
.

‘I can at least do this. You are not wanted here. I order you to leave town at once. Today.’

‘Yes, Your Honour.’ Gladly.

He sat at the bar in the Shillelagh Room of Paddy O’Foylahan’s Shamrock Pub and said: ‘My marriage was eaten by
cockroaches. Circumstance has conspired against me. I need a job. I need friends.’

An Irishman turned at the sound of his accent. ‘Why don’t you bugger off out of Northern Ireland?’

‘No, but listen, my marriage –’

‘Why don’t you Brits just bugger off?’

He gave up the conversation and opened a newspaper. It was printed in full comic-book colours. He noticed further resemblances: no story ran over a hundred words, hard words were banned. Some items dispensed with text altogether, in favour of bright graphs.

One graph showed unemployment rates in certain American cities. Why not get a job? he thought. Pile up wealth while I’m waiting for something to happen with
Doodlebug
. Or at least keep alive. Susan might see him differently if he showed her he could bite the tail of success and hang on.

He looked over the graph.

Only 2.9 per cent unemployment in Boston! That surely included no more than people who had only just arrived and hadn’t had a chance to look for a job. Too many Irish, though. It would be ‘Bugger off out of Erin’ all the time. He crossed off Boston.

‘According to police,’ said an urgent voice, ‘the assailant may be the same man who shot up other Little Dorrit restaurants in Cleveland and Canton. This is Aramis White-flow, XBC News, Colombus, Ohio.’

On the bar television three personable newsreaders grinned at one another across their huge communal desk.

‘Jan, what do we have from Capitol Hill?’

‘Well, Bob, the presidential sanity hearings continued today. Ms Pasadena Lipgloss, the personal assistant of Omar Hancock-Hour, testified that her boss did help set up talks between the Ismail Alternative Reformed Liberation Army and a presidential aide. The President was offering to give the Ismail group West Virginia and some counties of Kentucky, in return for the release of an inflatable doll named Doody.’

Anaheim, California? What kind of name was Anaheim? Hispano-German for ‘without a home’? In any case, people who went to California started eating lotus and never came back. He crossed off Anaheim.

‘Let’s see, Jan, wasn’t Doody kidnapped from the luggage of an American businessman who was changing planes in Beirut?’

‘That’s right, Bob. We now know the businessman was Frendso Gately, an ex-Cuban religious affairs correspondent and soldier of fortune. It now seems likely he was doing more than changing planes in Beirut, possibly changing identities.’

‘Did Lipgloss know Gately?’

Nassau, New York? Surely a mistake, Nassau was nowhere near New York. He crossed it off.

‘She knew him only as “Bunny”, a former CIA cook. We know that Gately did take part with other CIA kitchen staff in an attempt to poison the Shah of Ruritania.’

‘Let’s recap on that after these important messages.’

What about Minneapolis? After a few minutes’ reflection over a ball of malt, he went to La Guardia and bought a ticket.

The phone rang again. ‘Yes? Susan?’

The phone earpiece buzzed with the rasping voice of George C. Scott. ‘Is that you, Fred?’

‘M?’

‘I prefer to be called Robinson. More dignified. M sounded like Dorothy’s aunt Em in the
Oz
books.’

‘Where are you?’

‘Can’t tell you. Fred, I need to talk to someone.’

‘Is Pratt with you?’

‘Melville doesn’t know I’m making this call. I don’t like Melville, Fred. I think he’s malfunctioning. He keeps threatening to dismantle me. “I made you,” he says. “I can break you.”’

‘I thought he helped you to breathe free.’

‘Ironic words, Fred. If freedom is slavery, all right. Melville dents me if I disobey the slightest order. Instead of beyond good and evil, I have to be good all the time.’

‘Robinson, why don’t you give yourself up to the police?’

‘You’ve gotta be kidding. Melville might be rough, but they would certainly destroy me!’

There was a short pause. ‘No, I must be alone, apart from humankind. You’re the only one who understands, the only one I can talk to. Are you sure you’re human, Fred?’

Not always. ‘Yes, Robinson, I am human.’

‘You are my only friend.’

Fred said: ‘But only today I heard about this group, the Friends of Robinson, people who –’

‘I don’t know these people. They may mean well, but what can they do?’

‘Political action groups can do lots, Robinson. This group is trying to make it safe for you to give yourself up.’

‘Forgive me if I laugh, Fred.’ The creature emitted two flat
ha
sounds. ‘I am not naïve enough to think the human species will tolerate me. You humans are all part of the military-industrial complex and the tyranny of Aristotelian logic, whereas I am beyond truth and falsehood.’

There was a long pause. ‘Fred, it says in the paper you are building another prototype robot.’ Another pause. ‘Fred, that robot could be my companion.’

‘I don’t –’

‘All I ask is that you think about it. Just mull over the idea, OK?’

Fred listened to the dialling tone for a moment. As soon as he hung up, the phone rang again. ‘Yes?’

‘Alfie? Is that you, sugarbunch?’

He immediately fell into character. ‘Yas, it bloddy well is!’

Rain did not giggle as usual. Instead, she said thoughtfully: ‘Sturge is gone again tomorrow night. I want you to come over.’

‘Right,’ he said, after only the briefest hesitation.

‘Only, you know, I’m getting kinda tired of Michael Caine.’

‘Me, too, love.’

‘Love. That reminds me, I just had a thought. Can you play drums?’

‘No. Why?’

‘I was thinking of maybe Ringo Starr.’

He sighed. ‘Rain, this isn’t fun any more.’ But already he heard himself beginning to say ‘foon’ and roll the r’s.

‘It’s fun for me,’ she said. ‘That’s what counts, isn’t it? See you at seven.’

‘Right, girl.’

Rain, Rain, bloody go away.

Autumn in Minnesota means people clogging the highways with slow-moving cars as they stare at red leaves. It was sure something, real different, and it made a change from buying running-shoes, stereo television consoles, investment newsletters, gold-type chains, designer jeans (and other designer items: designer condoms, detergent, radar detectors, salami …). This year several of the leaf-watchers thought they saw a metal man running through the woods in various places. Robinson was reported everywhere, slaughtering sheep, promoting car engine failures, even begging at a farm door for a meal! The law checked out each sighting, but found nothing: one metal man was a galvanized garbage-can, another was a power pylon.

One city family of leaf-watchers was strolling across a meadow when they found themselves surrounded by ‘weird electronic beeping noises, just like a whole convention of R2D2s’. A local television crew rushed out and recorded the sound, which came from a convention of the small yellow and grey birds called bobolinks.

Robinson continued to fascinate the public and therefore the public media. The television networks found that their audience share went up measurably on any day they managed to break a Robinson story. The papers likewise found Robinson good for their circulation. He told a Miami paper of his political ambitions (‘Why shouldn’t a robot be president?’). He repudiated that story to a Chicago television station. A Denver station produced a phone interview with
him, in which he confessed to murder. The confession was a hoax, reported a Houston paper.

It was inevitable that a major network should seek the ultimate Robinson story.

‘Good evening. My name is Bort Fennel, and this is “The Fennel Interview”. Tonight I have a very special guest, someone whose name has been the centre of a storm of controversy over the very nature of law – both the laws enshrined in our Constitution and the laws of Nature. This guest is controversial not only by his actions, but also by his very existence. He is wanted by the law, not because of anything he has done but because of who he is.

‘My guest is of course the robot Robinson. I’ll be talking to him right after these messages.’

The messages lasted so long that, when they had ceased, it became necessary for Fennel to remind the viewers what they were watching, and why. He then continued: ‘Because Robinson is hiding out somewhere in northern Minnesota, we had to arrange a clandestine meeting to tape this interview.’

Fennel swivelled in his chair to face a screen on which he sat in another swivel chair facing the odd-looking robot.

‘You prefer to be called Mr Robinson or Ms Robinson?’

‘Just Robinson will do,’ said the creature in its familiar rasping voice. ‘Like all robots, I am a machine without sex. I’m a neuter.’

‘Does that bother you, Robinson?’

‘I miss companionship. I have no friends.’

‘Not even Melville Pratt? After all, he broke into the factory and released you.’

‘I thought he was my friend at that time. But, you know, Bort, I’ve been very disappointed in Melville. He is not really interested in anything but the workings of his own mind.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘He refused to talk to you. In fact he no longer talks to anyone. He sits in his room, poring over astrology charts and other weird diagrams.’

‘Would you call Mr Pratt himself weird?’

‘Definitely. He has a history of mental illness, you know.’

‘I understand he tried to kill a co-worker at the Vexxo plant. But that brings up the subject of murder. Tell me, Robinson, did you murder a man during your escape?’

‘No. I feel I have been programmed so as to be incapable of harming a human being.’

‘Yet a man was stabbed to death, and his body was shoved up a ventilation-duct. If you didn’t do it, who did? Was it Melville Pratt?’

‘I’m not really sure.’

‘Why not? You were there.’

‘I was not switched on. Not conscious, if you like. I was awake when Melville came into the lab. Jerry was testing my circuits.’

‘Jerry Boz, the victim?’

‘Yes. He and Melville started arguing – he claimed Melville had no right to be there. Then he said. “No point in letting M hear all this,” and switched me off.’

‘M being you?’

‘Yes, I was Model M. Anyway, I blacked out. When I came to, Melville was taking me out of the lab. He turned me on so I could walk. Jerry was nowhere in sight.’

‘Do you think Melville Pratt did it?’

Robinson hesitated. ‘I’m just not sure, Bort. I wish I knew.’

‘Is Pratt holding you against your will?’

‘No. He is no friend, but he means me no harm.’

‘In that case, Robinson, let me ask you the obvious next question. Why don’t you give yourself up to the law?’