Love and Robotics (34 page)

Alfred remembered concerts as free falling, beer swilling affairs. This was a glossy, high octane production, the fans lined up for worship. As the lights changed and Cora entered, the masses throbbed.

She was dynamite. Yes, she was tiny - five foot nothing in stilettos - but every inch was packed with presence, that powerhouse of a voice. She put on different masks: now she was belting an anthem, now she lilted a ballad.

Josh gazed at her. To think a robot had achieved this with sheer talent! It exposed his star for the sham it was. Rather than be jealous or bitter, he saw her as an inspiration. Even before they exchanged words he considered her a friend.

Then it went wrong.

Cora was doing her trademark triple backflip. Normally she’d segue into her next song. Instead she stumbled and hit her head. Her conditioning failed her. She unhooked her head and examined it.

Silence. The crowd was shocked from its trance. Cora tried to turn it into a joke.

“Um, oops?”

A bottle landed at her feet. “Freak!” someone screamed. More people took up the cry, lobbing whatever missiles they could lay their hands on. The stadium shrieked its outrage.

Only two audience members went against the current. “We have to get her out of here,” Alfred said. “They’ll rip her apart.”

Josh remembered the pickpocket - “Do it lightly, like you’re taking off a glove.” He’d heard the girls in front brag about their backstage passes. Now they were hollering, shaking their fists. They didn’t feel him slide the passes from their pockets.

“Let’s go.”

***

Cora scuttled into her dressing room. She could still hear the anarchy outside. The walls shook -

“Fraud!”

“Whore!”

She pulled off her rocket boots and threw herself into her chair. Fuck, she needed a tot of something. With a vicious twist she unscrewed her head.

This was it. The end of a glittering career. When she sang she forgot everything else. She only listened to her voice, trickling up and down the scales, striking notes unknown to the human throat. She could think about it in these terms because, like everything in her life, it wasn’t hers.

A scroll popped from the tube. She took her time. She knew it’d be a frigid text, followed by his arrival in the dressing room. The inevitable penance.

I made you.

I know.

I can break you too. Would you like that, Corrina?

His pet name. She’d always hated it, just as she hated the smashed nose and single eyebrow, the pierced tongue and tainted breath. Did every artie hate their handler or was she a freak?

The text came as such a shock, she jammed her head on back to front.
‘I can help,’
it read. ‘
A Friend.’

Curiosity got the better of her.
Come see me
, she scribbled on the back. No sooner had it been sucked up than there was a knock at the door. She pushed her hair on straight.

“Ms Keel? A remarkable performance.”

The man offering his hand was a robot - but
what
a bot. Every teenager has a fantasy boyfriend: laughing, golden, surrounded by light. You forget him when you grow up and marry somebody else, but if he turned up on your doorstep, you’d ditch hubby and kids like a shot.

“You’re an artie,” she said stupidly.

“So are you. What of it?”

“But -”
So you can’t help me, you lying s.o.b.

“No time for a teddy bear’s picnic, Josh. They’re getting nasty.”

Another man ducked into the dressing room, human this time. If Josh was the perfect robot, this was her dream sugar daddy. Yes, he’d been through the grinder, but he had a magnetism attractive men lacked. She wibbled her cleavage in his direction. He ignored it.

“Who the flip are you?” she asked.

“It’s a fair question,” the human said. “He’s Josh Foster -”

“- and he’s Alfred,” the artie said. He said it the way a man would say, ‘My wife.’ She felt silly jiggling her boobs. She put them away.

“What brings you fellas here?” she asked.

“You’re in trouble,” Josh said. Alfred added, “We thought you needed our help.”

“I’m a big girl. I can fight my own battles.”

“I don’t think you can,” Josh answered.

Alfred thought he’d overstepped the mark. “We’ll take you somewhere quiet till it simmers down.”

“It’s more complicated than that.”

The sentence was barely out when the door flew open. She felt the old strangler’s hold as her handler approached. She’d never seen such pale eyes, human or otherwise.

“Get your bags.” He didn’t notice her visitors.

“But -”

“You and I -” he gripped her shoulder - “are taking a walk.”

She closed her eyes, expecting her punishment to pan out as usual. The unspeakable taste of him, the slippery leather. Suddenly the fingers let go. “Who the fuck are you?” he screamed.

Her eyes bolted open. Buckled shoes waved from a hole she could’ve sworn wasn’t there three seconds ago. The thrashing feet belonged to her handler. His face purpled as he tried to grab something but missed, floppy fair hair in his eyes. Alfred held him by his tie, watched him spin with scientific detachment.

“I don’t give a ding dong damn who you are,” he said. “You’re lucky I haven’t dropped you.” He shifted to give his victim an uninterrupted view. Forty feet down, pitch black and reeking.

Cora’s handler wetted froggy lips. “D’you
know
who you’re molesting?”

“You wish. Josh?”

Josh produced a wallet and shook it out. “‘
Nick Cole, Capricorn Industries
,’” he read.

“See?”

Alfred shrugged.

“You
must
know!”

“Sorry, old man. Anything interesting?”

“Keycards, cashtots ... Oh!”

“Don’t keep us in suspense.”

“Cora’s statement of ownership.”

She craned to look. Call her vain, but she expected something fancier. Embossed letters, gold twiddly bits. Not a scrappy piece of paper.

Alfred had lost interest in tormenting Nick. Absentmindedly he tied him up with the curtains, stringing him up on a hook in the wall. As the finishing touch he picked up a powder puff and shoved it into his mouth. “What do you think?” he asked.

Josh giggled. “He looks like he’s in a butcher’s shop.”

“You’re lucky there’s a lady present, I’d’ve inserted it in you,” he told his victim.

There was no use in Nick struggling. With every move the curtains cut deeper into him. The hook creaked beneath his weight.

“Come on.” Alfred dropped a wrap over Cora’s head as Josh packed her case. “Let’s get you safe.”

They squashed into the dumbwaiter. Soon they were out in the open air, the hot gritty blast making them gasp. Josh ran to the viewing platform. “Oh, how beautiful! You can see the Cog.”

Cora’s eyes filled with oil. “What have I done?”

Alfred arranged the wrap around her shoulders. “You’ve taken a step towards freedom.”

“He’ll find me.”

“Probably.”

“How can you be so calm?”

“I’ve faced worse.”

“Do you
really
not know who he is?”

“Haven’t the foggiest.”

“Then of
course
you’re not frightened.”

Alfred patted her hand. It was the first time a human had touched her without sexual or violent intent. Josh rushed over. “Have a look at this!”

A magnificent craft rested on the landing strip, wings unfurled. Bulbous front, rocket launchers, blood red sheen. Cora knew it only too well. The Cora II.

Josh hopped inside. She let out a yell - Nick armed his creations to the teeth - but nothing happened. Alfred handed her up and scrambled into the cockpit. She squeezed between them. “Are we doing what I think we’re doing?”

“Yes,” Josh said. “Does it have his name on it?”

An unfamiliar sensation bubbled inside her. She realised it was laughter. “No, it’s mine!”

Josh confirmed yes, it
was
called Cora, though it wasn’t that funny. By now he’d mastered the controls. Swinging the craft around, destroying the platform with its tail, they soared into the night.

I’ve left my handler to run off with total strangers. We’ve tied him up and we’re stealing his craft. I should be cacking myself but I’m not. I feel fricking great
.

Josh shook her awake. “We’re here.”

The wrapper had been twined round her like a blanket. She hugged it gratefully. Away from the pollution of Astaria, it was murderously cold.

Alfred helped her down. Once her eyes adjusted she made out their home. A fair sized condo, all stripped wood and spotted glass. The austerity continued indoors. A fleecy rug, a cushiony couch. Tulips in every vase. Josh went to make the tea. Alfred stacked a gigantic fire. She offered to help but he wouldn’t hear of it. “You’re our guest,” he said.

Soon the merry yellow flames were leaping. As he stoked the fire, a piece of paper drifted from his pocket. It was only as it crackled she made out ‘Cora Keel belongs to -’

“Alfred, stop!”

A stab with the poker and it was history. “You’re your own woman now.” He gave her a crooked smile. “One of us. An outlaw.”

She laughed. She found everything funny tonight. Perhaps it was the only way to react to the impossible.

Josh came out with ‘a few bits and bobs’- actually the best salad she’d eaten. Slabs of cheese, herb sausages, olives. The tea was sweet, flavourful. They sat on the shaggy rug, talking of this and that. Alfred had the means to set her up with papers and a condo. They could divorce her from Nick and put an order against him.

“Is that common?” Josh asked.

“You get a few cases every year,” Alfred explained. “Normally they’re thrown out. But we’ll have proof coming out of our ears, won’t we, Cora?”

She wished she had his optimism. Conditions must be different in Lila - she had to explain several times to Josh. He didn’t get it.

She yawned. “I’m ready to drop. Where can a sleepy girl lay her head?”

“There’s the spare room -”

“I’ll get your case,” Josh said.

She followed him to the top floor. Though he hastily pushed a door shut, she had enough time to capture the inside: a disorderly master bedroom, sheets turned back on the double bed.

“We hope you’re happy here,” he said.

“Thanks.”

“Goodnight -” and he fled.

Cora hadn’t realised how exhausted she was. She slept two days straight, Josh coming in the second evening to ask if she wanted tea. She gaped, unable to place this beautiful man, then memory of the other night came crashing down. She rushed to the window but the craft had gone.

After her old schedule free time was a luxury. She’d never been a reader but her new friends were addicts. They went their separate ways, reading in the hills when it was fine, in a favourite spot when it rained. Hers was a couch beneath the mosquito net. She’d lie and read one of Josh’s trashier books.

She loved the men who had made her escape possible, Alfred more than Josh. She knew arties, there was no mystery about them. She admired Josh’s looks but only in the way she admired her own reflection. Alfred was the first good human she’d met. She was used to men looking at her and only seeing a face and body. Raping a woman earned a life’s imprisonment; a robot was fair game.

She’d originally suspected him of such motives. After a fortnight she saw his behaviour was nothing but kindness - and love, however weird that sounded. Because it was important to Josh, she guessed. She’d never seen a human-artie relationship like it. They were so tender and intimate, their every look full of meaning. You couldn’t be that synchronised and
not
be having sex.

Was she jealous? No. She would never want that with Nick - would never want it with anyone. There was her talent and the need to nurture it. It would always mean more to her than any man.

By the third week she danced with impatience. Surely it was safe to come down the mountain? She used her considerable wheedling powers on Alfred, thinking - rightly - he would be more susceptible.

“I
know
Nick. He’s probably knocking up another artie as we speak.”

Her friends raised eyebrows. Josh knew that if he disappeared, Fisk would leave no stone unturned. Nick seemed cast from the same mould. It wasn’t the robot they prized but control over another creature.

“He can’t have chipped me, he’d be here by now,” she argued. “I haven’t got a certificate or anything to link me to him. I should start a new life. I
want
to.”

On a day like this you could see the Cog of Clockwork City spinning in the distance. If you strained you caught the hums, clangs and industry of a million robotic lives.