Love and Robotics (81 page)

It was just like him to go off on a tangent. “Not a lot. They were like test runs for robots ... how is this relevant?”

“They were the proto robots. First they were created for barren couples - then, when they were shown to have zero empathy, they became cannon fodder, doing the dangerous and degrading work humans wouldn’t touch. They’re virtually indestructible. The only reliable way of killing one is to decapitate it - or electrocution, at a pinch. Otherwise they can walk away unscathed.

This frightened people, especially when they learned the clones’ originals had been genius level criminals. Perhaps the creators thought it was an interesting experiment, but bad blood will out. They closed Marwood, the compound for clones, after one of the kids firebombed it. He and his friends survived, but all the humans for miles around ... Oh, gods ...”

“What?”

“Cora told me! Months ago! Nick was at ‘some kind of special school - something beginning with Mar.’ Marwood! What if
Nick
was the boy?”

“It seems a tenuous link,” Josh said reluctantly. “Did they release his name?”

“No, but we can find out. I can’t believe I was so thick. She said he was an orphan, they treated him like he was subhuman - it all fits! I wish I’d asked - ”

Gunshots in the direction of the house. Josh started to run, waving aside Alfred’s questions.

“I’ll tell you when there’s time - we’re under siege -”

“For Thea’s sake, be careful!”
             

The connection must have broken - his voice cut out. Josh zigzagged through the vegetable garden and let himself in through the larder trapdoor. He hurtled out of the kitchen and into the hall.

Pandemonium. Anke crawled along the carpet, a spike jutting from her eye. Kazuo was howling, “Want some more?” and firing through the windows. Esteban unloaded shells and handed them to Cora. She spun and aimed them outside. Even the twins were letting rip with a crossbow.

“Has everyone gone completely mad?” Josh shouted.

“Jus’ holdin’ the fort.” Nanny blew smoke off Alfred’s bazooka. “We promised if it came to this -”

Something ripped through the front door, rupturing one of the balconies. It crashed to the floor below, pinning Saffy beneath it.

“Saffy!” Jesse screamed. He clawed through the mound of wood and plaster, but Dee got there first, uncovering her. The damage seemed minimal - until they found her head a few feet away.

Jesse lifted the red gold head tenderly and sat with it in his lap. Dee went to put her hand on his shoulder and thought better of it.

“No,” Josh said quietly. Then, firmly, “No. This isn’t going to happen again.”

Cora put the ammunition down. “Honey, you can’t. I only got off ‘cause Alfred -”

“What’s the alternative? I’m the one who’s broken the law. I’m the one who should be punished.”

They each resigned their posts and shook hands. Cora said, “Fuck that,” and lifted him off his feet. He whispered, “Look up ‘Marwood, massacre.’” Though bemused, she nodded.

Nanny kissed him. “I’ll get this sorted. Chin up, my little clockwork angel.”

The front door was hanging by a hinge. Josh pushed it aside and went out onto the drive. The garden was devastated. Crevasses yawned in the earth, trees were smoking. Somehow the craft was operational, floating in mid air. One of the Gentlemen lay with an arrow in his back.

A small sparse figure clambered from the craft. He had the swagger of a man twice his size. He reminded Josh of a malevolent gnome. “Captain Lucy?”

Lucy smiled, or at least bared his teeth. “Hello, widget. Quite the defence your friends have mounted. If I was a vindictive man I might take names -”

“Leave them alone. I’m the one you want.”

“How touching,” Lucy gibed. A man had taken refuge inside the cage, whimpering; the captain addressed him. “Stop snivelling, Dodd. Let’s get Mr Foster buckled up nice and tight.”

Josh allowed Dodd to lift him into the contraption. He snapped on the manacles, threw the switches. The finishing touch was the metal bar, thrust between his teeth.

“Normally we’d put you out,” Lucy said, “but Langton’s told us what a special boy you are. Personally I think his dick’s doing the talking, but we’ll test it, shall we?”

Josh said nothing. He let his eyes express his fury and contempt.

Lucy let himself into the craft, Dodd heaving the cage in after them. The craft had the same proportions as a horsebox, the narrow grimy window showing Chimera as it sped away.

A golden shape moved amongst the trees. It bounded down the hill, caught up with them. Josh nearly cried out in relief. How could he have forgotten Puss? She wouldn’t let them take him. He heard her claws rake the walls, felt her worry the craft from side to side.

To me. Just a bit closer, that’s right
.

Though he couldn’t articulate sounds, he knew she understood. She stuck her muzzle through, scraped at the cage. Two of the screws came loose.

That’s it, clever girl.

Lucy and Dodd were oblivious. Perhaps the craft was always this erratic. He willed her not to make a sound, even as she dabbed his face with her tongue.

You haven’t got time. Please don’t purr
-

Lucy suddenly glanced in the mirror. Expression barely changing, he reached into his pocket. A shot rang out. Puss fell down in the road.

“You’re in the jungle now, Mr Foster,” he said. “Don’t forget that.”

Gwyn and Pip had been having a picnic on the common. As soon as they heard the explosion, Gwyn threw her food away and ran.

They had reached the woods when the craft streaked by. It was plain metal, unremarkable, but Gwyn knew immediately what it must be. She didn’t have time to react before a gunshot rent the sky.

Pip exclaimed in horror. “Is this Puss? Poor, poor thing -”

Her old friend lay in the dust, her life ebbing away. “Stay with her - keep her warm,” she told Pip.

The words hadn’t left her mouth when Trudy burst into the clearing. Nanny was at the controls, eyes and mouth angry slits. She shoved Pip aside and laid hands on Puss. The great cat crooned, resting her head in the housekeeper’s lap.

‘She’ll be alright,” Nanny said tersely. “Gwyneth, take Pip to the station.”

Nanny hadn’t called her Gwyneth since she was tiny. She knew.

The walk to the station was excruciating. Gwyn and Pip followed the road downhill, not speaking or looking at one another. As it came into view she made a last desperate attempt.

“Pip -”

“I’m not int’rested.”

“Try to understand -”

“Nothing y’ could say would make me understand.”

Nanny and Puss weren’t there when she returned to the clearing. She could have taken the long way home but knew it would be cowardice. She had to face what she had done.

Chimera lay shattered, a stronghold cracked open. She stared around in horrified disbelief. A turret smashed, all the windows gone, a crater in the hall, parts of the staircase collapsed. The hall was full of bodies. The surviving artificials were making stretchers to carry them away. She recognised four: Saffy, Jesse, one of the creepy twins, Hector. Dee lay across him, weeping. 

Nanny was sitting on the window seat. “That awful man must’ve set a timer,” she said flatly. “We were tidyin’ up when it went off.”

Fay dashed forward, gripping a shard of glass in her fist. “You killed my brother, you bitch!”

Cora pulled her off, leaving her to pummel the broken banisters and scream. Gwyn wished it could have been anyone else. Cora’s music had been the soundtrack to her and Pip’s relationship. She couldn’t bear to look at her.

Gwyn went into the garden, threw her arms around her favourite tree and cried her eyes out.

Negotiations

Captain Lucy had applied the volts after all. Josh might not have been able to speak but as he watched a dying Puss recede in the rear window, he began to keen.

Most people have never heard a distressed robot. The noise they emit on these occasions is involuntary. It starts as a buzz, graduates to a wail and ends as a sound that rivals a military siren in intensity. The bar between his teeth did nothing to muffle it.

Lucy whipped round. “Is that you, widget? Would you mind shutting up?”

Manacled, Josh couldn’t make the smallest gesture - and couldn’t have stopped if he wanted to. Lucy, already infuriated, lost it when a rank odour assaulted his nostrils. “Dodd! Have you shat yourself?”

The luckless official squirmed. “I couldn’t help it - the noise - ”

“Get in the back before I vomit. And turn that little bitch off.”

Dodd’s hand shook so badly it took three attempts. When the voltage seared through Josh’s head it came as a relief.

When Josh was next switched on he was in some sort of antechamber. It was tall but poky, eight by eight, with a barred window near the ceiling. He was out of the contraption but handcuffed to a chair. A short, stocky figure paced the room. When they heard Josh stir they pattered over. It was Dr Malik, as charmless as ever.

“I don’t mean to be rude, but why you? Why not Sugar or Ozols?”

“
Dr
Ozols has been relieved of her duties.”

“What? Why?”

“Let’s just say she was surplus to requirements.” As Josh looked away, she said, “That’s the first time you’ve showed attachment to someone other than your boyfriend. Wonders will never cease.”

This statement was so offensive he wanted to refute it, but now he looked closely, he saw she had changed. It was as though she was acting a part, behaving how he expected her to behave. Her heart didn’t seem to be in it.

“Dr Sugar, then. Why not him?”

“Dr Fisk is signed off on long term sick. Sugar’s covering. I can’t say I begged for this assignment.”

She kept twitching and glancing at the door. He realised she must suffer from claustrophobia. It explained why she had never visited him in that cell in CER.

“Where are we? It’s too old to be CER.”

“The Halls of Justice. You’ll be detained here till Langton’s trial.”

“Afterwards?”

She held her file as though it was a security blanket. “You don’t want to know.”

“They’ll squelch me like they squelched Guy.”

“Excuse me, I need a drink. Would you like one?”

“Please.”

He hoped she would forget herself and leave the door ajar, but he heard the key turn in the lock. He thought perhaps he could persuade her to free one hand for the drink, then, when her guard was down, knock her out and escape. He hated the thought of harming her but had no choice.

When she returned he dismissed such thoughts. Red eyed and puffy faced, she held the mug up to his face.

“Whatever you think of me, I don’t want you to die,” she said. “You’d better find an alibi - and make it spectacular.”

They had a gruelling session, lasting three hours. Malik might have revealed an unexpected tenderness but she still had a short fuse. When Josh gave an answer she didn’t like she swore, flinging her file at the wall.

“Don’t you get it? To save yourself you need to absolve yourself of responsibility. Say Langton did it all.”

“But it isn’t true.”

“It doesn’t matter. You’ve got to think about your future. If you don’t want to end up a dribbling tard in the Pit -” Her mouth shut like a trap. She tried another tack. “Maybe we could say it’s an anomaly. A flaw in your programming.”

“Love isn’t an anomaly.”

Using the word everyone knew but seldom said, Malik hurled her file to the floor. “Same time tomorrow. For the love of Thea, see sense.”

***

Gwyn had spent the worst night of her life in her bedroom, away from recriminations. She could hear the artificials working downstairs. They would be holding funerals for their fallen comrades the next day. She had no intention of being there.

What haunted her, more than Pip’s brush off or Puss in the road, was Nanny’s reaction. Yes, she’d felt betrayed and shocked, but hadn’t there been an element of, “What do you expect?”

Gwyn had spent her life trying not to be like Lucas. It was a source of horror and shame that she was part him. She worried his evil would surface in her, like lycanthropy in old films. Had she let him sneak up on her unawares?

No
, she insisted,
it was done for the right reasons. I wanted to save Alfred -

The Lucas part of her taunted:
You did it for only one reason. Spite. You didn’t like Josh and wanted him out of the way.

No - it might have started like that –

So you admit it?

Puss came in when she heard her crying, jumping onto the bed to lick away her tears. Nanny’s witch doctoring couldn’t disguise the bullet wound in her side.

There was nothing left for her at Chimera. She’d leave for Lux tomorrow morning, support Alfred during the trial. She hoped he could find it in his heart to forgive her. She didn’t want to lose him too.

She woke at five, showering and jamming clothes into a case. She opened her bedroom door and checked the landing. Puss must have got up early to chase the bats. She set off down the back stairs, glad the artificials were on the other side of the house. She’d go through the lumber room - no one went there –

“Goin’ somewhere?” Nanny was sitting in a chair she must have dragged down for the purpose.

Gwyn felt like crying. “Look, I’ve got to go -”

“You’re goin’ nowhere, missy. Not till we’ve had a chat. Let’s move this to the kitchen, it’s freezin’ in here.”

She had no choice but to obey. Nanny filled the kettle and made toast. Gwyn waited for the sermon she knew was coming.

“I’m not goin’ to harangue you.” As Gwyn opened and shut her mouth, “I figured you’d’ve done plenty yourself.”

A numb nod.

“I know you, Gwynnie. You don’t always do the right thin’, but you’d never do anythin’ really bad. You thought Alfie was in danger, didn’t you?”

Gwyn put her head on the table and wept. Everything tumbled out: her anger after the talk show, her subterfuge, the break in, her realisation that Captain Lucy was not all he appeared.

“Lucy’s that wors’ possible combination, a stupid psychopath,” Nanny said soberly. “He doesn’ have the brakes other men have - but doesn’ have the brains neither. He’s as bent as they come.” 

“How do you know this?”

Nanny’s gaze travelled to a picture of Gussy on the window sill. She looked more like a religious icon than someone who had lived and breathed.

“Told you, Gussy. Chickens comin’ home to roost.” She took a deep breath and said, “It’s time you knew the truth.”

The tea turned cold as Gwyn listened. The triangle of Alfred, Gussy and Uncle Ken, the loveless marriage to Lucas, Ken’s unravelling. Nanny left nothing out.

“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

“Gussy didn’ want you to know. Whatever Lucas might’ve been, he was your father.”

“He’s nothing to do with me. I hate him.”

“I said you had a right to hear when you were older. It was too raw for Alfie. As far as he was concerned, robots destroyed this family.”

“Ironic much?”

Nanny grimaced. “I thought perhaps he was bein’ taught a lesson. When it became clear which way the wind was blowin’ - well, I wanted him to be happy.”

“It’s funny. You never get used to grownups having lives.”

“Go to bed, get some sleep. I’ll talk to the bots. I’m sure I can talk them round.”

***

Alfred had been in a fever of anxiety since his last talk with Josh. He’d tried desperately to establish a connection but nothing came through. He knew Lucy would make a point of collecting Josh personally - and, following the failed hit, would hanker for revenge. If he’d ever been in any doubt the captain was responsible, his reaction confirmed it. Lucy had been scanning the canteen, smirk at full mast, when Alfred filed in with the rest of his wing. It was wiped clean off his face.

They’d tried to keep Brunowski’s death quiet, but a corpse shaped bundle in a public place is difficult to ignore. Breakwell called them together and said that there was no need for speculation, Brunowski had tripped and hit his head. Alfred couldn’t help noticing the prisoners kept their distance after that.

Friday evenings saw a rare treat: two hours’ veebox. Their viewing was carefully regulated - nothing sexually explicit or violent. Games shows were popular, as was that festering turd Crispin Clay. The guards loitered in the staffroom and played cards.

“Coast clear!” one of the men yelled. “What d’you want to watch?”

A dozen suggestions. Porn, cop shows (always a favourite), the one where “armoured bots knock the shit out of each other.” There were a few worried glances at Alfred. He didn’t know if he should be alarmed or flattered.

“News,” somebody else said. The chant was taken up. Once the height of conservatism, it was forbidden inside, and irresistible. They monkeyed around looking for the right network. Wank Hands grew bored and demonstrated how he’d earned his nickname, all over the rug. At last they found the channel and settled back to watch. Some crowded onto the sagging settee, others squatted on beanbags. Darvish passed Alfred the moonshine he had been brewing in the potting shed. It tasted like ink.

Leadership polls, a new wonder drug, sports. Darvish’s stuff must be more potent than he’d thought, he was starting to nod off. A dig in the ribs brought him round.

“What was that for?”

“There’s somethin’ you oughter see,” Darvish said.

Alfred forced his eyes open. Nothing out of the ordinary, another war zone. It was sad but just another news item. He was drifting off again when a feature in the landscape made his blood run cold. They were viewing the damage by air. A blasted garden, an ivy shrouded wall - and, beyond the wall, a floral clock. The petals fanned and closed in a rhythm as familiar as his own heartbeat. He’d been there with his mother planting, strolled with Gussy, shown it to Josh. It wasn’t a scene from a far flung land but his home.

“That’s your gaff, innit?”

“Thea ...”

“What’s happened to it?”

The item was rewound. The men hushed.

“Chimera, ancestral seat of the earls of Langton, has been the setting for many a skirmish. Yesterday witnessed the most shocking yet: a siege during Perversion Prevention’s capture of rogue artificial Josh Foster. We go live to Chimera for this exclusive.”

The camera shifted to a group on the hillside, each member carrying a blue rose. They were all wearing black. A small Linese woman was weeping. With a thrill Alfred recognised Nanny, then Esteban. The others were artificials, unknown to him but united in grief. Just as he wondered where Cora was, the camera panned to her. She sat regally on a bench, forcing her human interviewer to stand. A horrible little dog dozed on her lap.

“It was unbelievable. By the law of most countries, Josh hasn’t done anything wrong. Their response was totally disproportionate.”

“Are you suggesting Perversion Prevention did this deliberately?”

Cora clicked, the sound of artificial impatience. “Does this look like an accident? The head of PP’s got a fricking vendetta against Alfred - sorry, Lord Langton. Want to know how petty this guy is? He shot Langton’s pet -”

Expletives broke out around the room. Men who had abused Alfred only the other day swore vengeance.

“I’ll get him, easy as winkin’.”

“You’ve only got to say the word.”

“Harming a defenceless animal -”

The words rose and fell around him. He remembered Puss - so loyal and trusting - and clenched his fist. Perhaps he’d cry later, but now all he felt was cold hard rage.

“Lucy is going down,” Alfred said. “If it’s the last thing I do.”

***

The next day being Saturday, Alfred assumed that he would be safe from bureaucratic interference. He was exercising in the yard, a small prim enclosure with a tinkling water feature. Since his efforts to contact Josh inside the building had come to nothing, he thought he would try here. He emptied his mind, honed his concentration –

Pink shoes tattooed over the gravel. “Good morning, Langton.” Breakwell peered down her dinky nose.

He gazed at her with hatred. “Governor.”

“There’s somebody I’d like you to meet. Langton, Salome Feist.”

A mousy woman in a tie neck blouse and ticked skirt dithered behind her. She’d permed her hair, not successfully, and applied makeup with an amateur hand.

“I don’t talk to the press, governor.”

“This is your defence lawyer, Langton. I’ll leave you to get acquainted.”

He took deliberately long strides, hoping to lose Feist. To her credit she managed to keep up.