Love and Robotics (80 page)

“Hello, Ms Wilding. Our friend got himself into a pickle this morning -”

“Is he alright? Can I see him?” she cried.

“He’s fine, which is more than I can say for the other fellow. He got lucky this time. Which begs the question: how long do you want him to stay lucky?”

“You said if I agreed -”

“Verbal agreements aren’t binding, Ms Wilding. How does tomorrow sound?”

There was only one answer. “Yes. Come in the afternoon.”

“See you then.”

The Reluctant Traitor

Josh woke without forebodings. He’d fallen asleep holding Alfred’s pillow, his voice in his ears. Had he imagined their conversation? He tested the link tentatively.

“Bloody hell, Josh! I fell out of bed! Warn me next time.”

“Sorry. I wanted to say good morning.”

“Another lump shouldn’t hurt. Drat, that’s the tenth grey hair this week.”

“They’re as warm as the rest. - This time in the morning, I always think of - you know.”

He felt Alfred redden. “Me too.”

“I could help you along if you want.”

“Nah, old Wank Hands’d shout tips. I don’t want G-wing inviting me to their gangbangs.”

“What’s a gangbang?”

“Sometimes, when prisoners get lonesome in the night ... You get my drift.”

“Oh. That’s all, really. Yesterday was bad, but - it can only improve, right?”

Holding someone in your thoughts was the oddest feeling, more and less at the same time. He missed the sensation of being in Alfred’s arms, feeling his heart race, but when you held someone like this, you had all of them.

“Talk to you at midnight.”

“I’ll be there.”

Whoever had said that love and robotics were the most complicated subjects had known their stuff. Josh went downstairs, radiant as only a lover can be, but with a touch of sadness too.

When he joined the AEA in the dining room, the second part of the proverb came into play. Put a number of artificials together and you have a dispute. Esteban was saying it was in every artificial’s interest to practise a profession. Kay and Fay, the hustler robots, said he had to be joking.

They were an uncanny pair. No one was sure if they were twins or lovers - and as Cora pointed out, did you really want to know? They were all sharp angles and spiky haircuts. They slouched and snickered, made insolent yawns and impatient huffs. Yet they were prolific hustlers. No one understood it.

“Your hard earned cash’ll end up in human pockets,” Kay said. “Like they don’t have enough already.”

“Isn’t hustling a job?” Josh asked. “The oldest profession?”

Fay scowled. She saw any contradiction of her brother/lover as a personal slight. “All the time we’re thinking how much we hate them. They fuck us, we hate them.”

“Why not? They hate us,” Kay agreed.

Dee had had enough of this melodrama. “The right to work is one of the most important. It allows you to earn your own money, live as you choose.”

“Whatever,” Fay shrugged.

“Yes, this is boring.” Kay flounced out after her.

Saffy said, eyes on the floor, “I wouldn’t know how to make a living. Howard kept me close.”

“It’d feel disloyal to Erika,” Anke said. Erika was the old lady she had looked after.

Hector tried to reconcile the factions. “We’ve been given certain abilities,” he said. “We should use what we have -”

“What they want us to have, you mean.” Esteban’s dark eyes burned. “You’ve only worked in academia. You’ve no idea how ordinary bots live.”

Cora signalled to Josh with her eyebrows:
Outside.
She hated it when the talk became too political. They left through the garden doors and walked until they were out of hearing.

“I wish we’d never started that goddamn group,” she complained. “It’s all he thinks about.”

“Don’t you want to be free?”

“’Course I do. But there’s gotta be a way that doesn’t involve so much red tape.”

“What, like bickering about stationery?” That was the theme of the previous day’s row. “I see what you mean. We’ll try and keep to the point in future.”

Cora sat in the kissing seat, shredding a nearby bush. She hardly seemed aware of what she was doing.

“Cora, are you alright? I haven’t seen you this jumpy since -”

“No,” she said emphatically. “No, I’m not.”

“Are you and Esteban fighting? I’ll have a word -”

She seized his hands. “Promise not to tell. I know it sounds screwy -”

“Try me.”

“I don’t think Nick is dead.”

Josh was so stunned, he laughed. This was the worst thing he could have done.

Cora’s glare would have stripped paint. “I knew you’d react like this.”

He explained as patiently as he could. “You shot him in the head. I blew up the factory. No one could survive that.”

“I was right before, wasn’t I?”

“He was alive then, and in the world ... I hate him as much as - well, almost as much as you, but it flies in the face of logic.”

“Logic schmogic. We’ll see.”

***

Lucy’s call couldn’t have come at a worse time for Gwyn. She and Pip were in the reunion phase: if they weren’t in bed, they were strolling hand in hand, oblivious to all else. Gwyn had wanted to prove her dedication by inviting her to Chimera.

“Cool! I get to meet ev’ryone!”

“You’ve met Nanny and Josh -”

“The arties, I mean. And Puss!”

With Josh’s capture set for that afternoon, she had to invent an excuse. She’d always been a terrible liar. It sounded hollow to her own ears when she said, “Change of plan. Nanny’s doing a massive spring clean. We’d only get in the way.”

Astonishingly Pip didn’t smell a rat. “I want to see y’, not y’ house.” Gwyn had compromised and agreed to show her Langton village. That couldn’t hurt.

It was a relief to escape the house. Josh and the artificials had been in the dining room, squabbling. It had given her the eeriest feeling when she opened the door and let him know where she was going. He rose, saying, “I’d love to see Pip,” but Cora waved him back down, whispering, “Give the gals some private time!” If the guilt wasn’t bad enough, eighteen pairs of glassy eyes gazed at her. Josh was alright, really, but it wasn’t natural.

She trekked to the station, a hamper beneath her arm. If she hadn’t been so preoccupied she would have noticed the detours passersby took to avoid her - people she had known all her life. Her thoughts were divided between Pip and the unhappy event that afternoon.

Pip threw herself off the craft and into her arms. The piercings were back and her hair was mauve. Her yellow dungarees and furry boots were impossible to ignore.

“I look like an old lady with a pink rinse! Y’ aren’t disappointed, are y’?”

“No,” Gwyn said quickly, “of course not.”

She let Pip take her arm, reasoning she could hardly shock the village more than Alfred had. It was in this defiant frame of mind she showed Pip places of local interest. The graveyard, where she told her the story of the Larch Toaster. The Hanged Man, where Harry Bailey took them through to the back and said anyone who didn’t like it could do one. A few disgruntled regulars left. Harry poured them a double.

“Ignore them, Ms Wilding. When your uncle’s found innocent -”

Gwyn kicked Pip’s ankle before she could object. “Thanks, Harry.”

“I’m sure it’s a misunderstanding. We all knew he was gay - not that there’s anything wrong with that,” he stuttered, noticing their linked hands, “but there’s a world of difference between liking men and boning bots. I spent three days with him and Josh and never noticed anything funny.”

He gave them a pile of toasted tea cakes - “On the house -” and left the room mid bow.

“Never underestimate the power of denial,” Pip said.

“It’s not that so much.” Gwyn groped for the right words. “Around here, it isn’t just undoable, it’s unthinkable.”

“We know humans can love bots and vice versa. Look at Mandy and Guy -”

Gwyn spat beer down her front. “What d’you mean, Mandy and Guy?”

“Y’ must’ve noticed. Love at first sight.”

Gwyn rubbed her knuckles across her forehead. “Nothing makes sense any more. Life’s gone all - oh, piss
off
,” at a gaggle of kids making kissing noises outside the window. Pip brought down the blind.

“It’s not as weird as it sounds. She used to fancy Josh -”

“Josh
and
Guy?  Is she robosexual or something?”

“Why not? We like girls. Some dumbasses think that’s unnatural.”

“Maybe she’s settling because she can’t get a human boyfriend.”

Pip rolled her eyes. “I’ll pretend y’ didn’t say that. Maybe love’s more fluid than we like to admit. Some women love men, some love women - an’ some love bots. Is that so hard to believe?”

The complexity of the human heart was further demonstrated when she took Pip to visit the library. Estelle was on duty, forcing Gwyn to confront something she had ignored for years: her oldest friend was in love with her. Pip quickly grasped the situation. She shook Estelle’s hand and scuttled into Fiction.

“You didn’t tell me you had a girlfriend,” Estelle murmured.

“ We’ve been on and off, what with everything -”

A grim smile. “I do watch the news, Gwyn.”

“Spare any comments. I’ve had a bellyful from the villagers.”

“I was going to say that if you need help, or if Lord Langton wanted books - never mind. I won’t keep you.”

Gwyn drifted over to Pip, wondering when her life had become a farce.

Cora returned to the house in a state of high dudgeon. She knew she was right. She wasn’t going to sit around twiddling her thumbs. She would find Nick and finish him off. And if Josh didn’t like it - well, he could kiss her fat fanny.

The weapons room was kept under lock and key, but that didn’t matter to an artificial. She ran her hand over the lock, heard it give and went inside.

There was enough ammunition to arm a small principality. Some looked illegal, others as though they hadn’t been used for centuries. All looked lethal. She selected the gun that was the closest to her old one - lost in the factory - and twirled it over her head. As she did this, she noticed a mirror in the corner of the room. She knew Alfred kept mirrors at different vantage points, reflecting the surroundings rather than the observer. This one gave her a sweeping view of the drive.

She dropped her pistol.

A drab grey craft hovered, careful not to attract attention. As she watched, two brawny white clad men climbed out. They assembled a contraption like a body clamp, covered with switches. She knew what it was. She remembered the taste of the metal as it forced her to bite down. The manacles chafing her ankles and wrists. Above all, the volts they shot into her temples -

She banged onto the landing. “Everyone! We’re under attack!”

Everybody stopped what they were doing. Kazuo and Jesse spilled from the games room; Anke had been brooding on the window seat; Saffy teaching a mystified Tutu tricks. Even Fay and Kay showed up.

“Perversion Prevention are here for Josh. They must not be let in.”

The tension disappeared from Kazuo’s face. This was something he enjoyed, ingenuity and tactics. “Excellent.”

“Where’s Josh?” Dee asked. She and Hector must have been interrupted doing the crossword. “I’ll find him -”

Hector caught hold of her sleeve. “I forbid it. Those bullyboys would make mincemeat of you.”

“I’m perfectly capable, Heck.”

“We’re wasting time.” Esteban emerged from behind the grandmother clock. “Now, what I think we should do -”

“Young man, as long as I’m in this house, I call the shots. You do as I say.” Nanny was coming down the stairs, bearing an arsenal of weapons. She threw two to each artificial.

Kay sneered. “Like I’m gonna do what some old lady says?”

A knife juddered in the wall behind him. “If you don’ want to be broken up for parts, you cocky little shit pot,” Nanny said calmly.

There were no further arguments.

Josh peered around the grounds, checking no one was watching. Satisfied, he let himself into the Experimental Garden. He hadn’t been here since he told Alfred he was getting married. He retraced their old route, stopping at the blue rose bush. He picked one, not caring if it snagged his skin.

“Alfred. What are you doing?”

A yelp and a wallop. “I’ve knocked a glass of water over my landscape. Actually it’s an improvement.”

“What’s it of?”

“Who knows? Whatever they say, I’ll smile and nod.”

He couldn’t be sidetracked. “Cora thinks Nick’s alive.”

A long, uneasy pause. “That changes things.”

“You don’t sound surprised.”

“Nothing surprises me anymore.”

“She shot him in the face!”

“Have her instincts been wrong before?”

“No,” Josh admitted. “Though I still think no human could’ve walked away from that level of damage.”

“No human, no,” Alfred said slowly. “Some other life form, perhaps -”

“You’re not suggesting Nick’s a robot? Cora would’ve known - we all would -”

Alfred wasn’t listening, pursuing an idea of his own. “Even if he’d survived being shot, he would have burned in the explosion ... unless ... yes ... that’s the only way that makes sense. What do you know about clones?”