Love and Robotics (86 page)

Feist waited for silence. “Is there any part of the affair you regret?”

Alfred straightened up. The rest of his testimony had been effortful; now he had exactly the words he needed.

“I wish I’d stayed in the country. I can’t forgive myself for leaving Josh vulnerable. In the wider sense, no. I don’t feel guilty or ashamed. I met someone, we fell in love - it happens every day. The only difference is who he is, which shouldn’t matter.”

Applause broke out. Gwyn and Pip whistled. Justice Begum called for order. Feist bobbed her head. “No further questions, Your Honour.”

Sir Matthias waddled to the stand, bloated as a blood engorged tic. He shuffled his notes, stifled a yawn. “Lord Langton. Quite the fan club you seem to have acquired. Perhaps you imagine you’re going to waltz out of here?”

It wasn’t a question so Alfred didn’t answer. The prosecutor’s wattles juddered.

“There is no place in a courtroom for sentiment. I expect these impressionable people think it’s lovely and romantic. I’d like to remind them of cold hard facts. The prisoner in the dock didn’t embark on a tender, mutual relationship with the man of his dreams. Whatever you think of same sex love, that would have been perfectly legal. Instead he coerced an artificial - a mechanical being incapable of independent thought -”

“That’s not true!” Josh shouted. He must have looked ridiculous, striking his booth, but he didn’t care.

“- into sexual relations.” Sir Matthias went on as though the interruption had never occurred. “He hasn’t denied it and we’ve had it confirmed by witnesses. Even Ms Putnam said, ‘They kissed in full view without shame.’”

Alfred folded his arms. “Are you going to cross examine me?”

“Tch! Alright, Langton, have it your way. You were rabidly anti robots before your friend came on the scene, were you not?”

“You know my history. Besides, I believed they did more harm than good, and drove skilled humans out of the jobs market.”

“The nob cares about the plight of the unemployed! How touching!” Alfred’s scowl would have cracked ice, but Sir Matthias carried on. “Yet the instant the artificial came on the scene, your fine scruples vanished. Isn’t that curious?”

Alfred said stiffly, “Have you never revised an opinion? Or is that beyond you?”

Sir Matthias tossed his wig. You could see his own greasy mane poking through. “Not so it landed me in the nick, no ... So you and Foster developed this famous bond, and he regularly came to Chimera?”

Through gritted teeth, “Yes.”

“Forgive me for being dense, but what does one do to amuse an artificial?”

“He’d help me with projects around the house, or on the farm. He seemed lonely, so I -”

“How does a robot ‘seem lonely’, pray?”

“Objection. Allow my client to finish,” Feist said.

Alfred clasped the bar, brow furrowed.
Keep calm,
Josh pleaded.
You can’t lose your temper. You’re doing so well.

That was obviously Sir Matthias’s game. It shone in his porky features, the complacent smile as he heaved his gown across his shoulders.

“Nobody at CER had time for him. Oh, they’d stick their heads in to check he was okay, but no one showed a genuine interest. The first time we met, I picked him up when he fell over. You’d think no one had touched him before -”

Josh could see Sugar sitting bolt upright. Alfred’s words had a similar effect on Sir Matthias. Obnoxiousness had given way to incredulity.

“You actually
touched
him?”

“I helped him to his feet. Is there a problem?”

Justice Begum propped her chin on her hands. “I share Langton’s bemusement. What was he supposed to do, leave Foster on the floor?”

Flecks of spit flew. “The Robotics Code!”

“I know it as well as you. ‘A robot must not touch a human unless it’s a matter of life and death.’ It says nothing about a well meaning human touching a robot.”

The audience repeated it like a catechism. Sir Matthias thundered, “The end result is the same!”

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Alfred said, “but are you suggesting that all this came about because I took Josh’s hand, once upon a time?”

Judge, jury and spectators appealed to Sugar. After a moment’s suspense he shrugged.

What remained of the prosecutor’s control snapped. Funny how he could make the broadest references to “goings on”, any number of cheap digs, but show him an act of kindness and he was undone.

“If that’s true, I’m glad it happened,” Josh said. He was sure Justice Begum smiled.

The rest of Sir Matthias’s questions were rapid fire, non committal. He didn’t even have the energy for putdowns. As he closed with spectacular ill grace, Josh and Alfred shared a smile of victory.             

              Unsurprisingly they stopped for a break. Josh’s guard banged the side of the booth. “You’re coming with me.”

He looked barely out of his teens, his face specked with paper and shaving cuts. Josh had tried to engage him in conversation but he blocked all his attempts. “We can’t be friends,” he’d said only that morning. As if he wanted to be!

They went out into the lobby, the gun chilly through Josh’s sweater. The guard stood by the stained glass window, picking his spots. Josh really wanted a drink but knew his escort would pretend he hadn’t heard.

“Josh!” Sugar scrambled over goggling members of the public. 

“Hello, doctor.”

“What a monkey parade,” Sugar sighed. He stared through the blue and pink panes. “Look at all those rubber necks! Lux has come to a standstill.”

“Sir Matthias unravelled badly there,” Josh said. “Do you think we stand a chance?”

Sugar hesitated. “I know which way I want it to go, but will the law see it that way?”

“How many robots have got off in a Deviation trial?”

His creator finally looked at him. A tear ran down his cheek. “None.”

So that was what they were up against. Feist said there had been thirty Deviation trials involving artificials in the last century. The others were secretive affairs, conducted behind closed doors. Josh had assumed that Guy was squelched because there was no room for doubt. He hadn’t known it was the only possible verdict.

A realist would back down, accept defeat. The press might say how noble their story was, how tragic. Fill a few column inches before they moved on to something else.

If I’m going to die, I want it to be on my own terms
, he thought grimly.

“Come on, we haven’t all day,” his guard said. He might have been condemned already. The man’s eyes barely grazed him.

The walk to the dock was the most difficult thing he had done. Metal biting into his back, faces blurring to form a hostile mass. He fought to keep his newfound knowledge from showing in his face. If it hadn’t been for Alfred murmuring,
Come on, lad. I know you’ve got it in you,
he might have broken down.

Feist gave him a supportive smile. Her hair drifted from its bun, her suit was wilted, but she was determined to give this her best shot.

“Josh. How did you come to visit Lord Langton in the summer of 2162?”

He glanced at Sugar. Feist said softly, “It’s alright. You’re safe to tell us.”

“Dr Sugar came to see me. He was upset by an article Alfred - Lord Langton - had written. CER needed him on side but didn’t see how to do it, since he hated robots so much. As every other tactic had failed, I suggested I should go.”

“Weren’t you worried about your reception?”

“Only when I got there and his lion tried to eat me.” The audience laughed, Alfred lifted his eyebrows. “Well, she
did
. Anyway, since his niece didn’t want to guide me upstairs, I went up myself. He was hitting a suit of armour with a candlestick.”

“He was - what?”

Josh shrugged. “That sort of thing happens all the time at Chimera. He thought I was a reporter and tried to throw me out. It was only when I showed him my offswitch he believed me.”

“And he touched you?”

“Yes  - when I tripped over the skirting board, he helped me up.” As the spectators whispered, “I don’t think it made any difference. Dr Fisk used to touch me all the time; I danced with Gwyn once. I didn’t imprint on them.”

One of the journalists was hissing into her beebo, “Cindy, you’ll never believe this!” A court official strode up the row and laid a hand on her shoulder. When she refused to surrender the beebo he levered her from her seat.

Feist seemed thrown by Josh’s statement. She shuffled her papers for a good moment while she framed her next question. “Describe what happened in your own words.”

Josh wondered whose words he could use instead, but obeyed. “We became friends. Even in the early days I knew I felt differently about him from anyone else. Visiting him was the high point of my week. If I did something, read something, I’d want to tell him. I couldn’t see him for a month when Langton flooded. It was the loneliest time of my life.”

Alfred was wiping away tears and didn’t care who saw. Sympathetic faces outnumbered antagonistic ones. Bar a seething Sir Matthias and two of the jurors, Josh felt that the majority backed them. But would it be enough?

“Are you sure the idea might not have been put in your head? By a book, a film?”

How to explain it without offending the humans? “When I watched or read people in love, it didn’t seem real. They hurt each other, played mind games - I never saw the point of that. I supposed it must be a human thing. It bore no resemblance to how I felt about Alfred.”

“Langton said he realised he was in love with you a year after you met. Did you notice a change in his behaviour?”

“There were times he’d be jumpy, nervous. I’d touch him and he’d freeze. I thought he’d guessed and wanted to let me down gently. I -” he knew how this would be interpreted, but why lie? “- got into bed with him one night when I couldn’t sleep. We always slept together after that.”

“He didn’t try anything?”

“No. I made all the moves later on. He’d say he couldn’t, that it wasn’t allowed. I didn’t understand. By then it was clear he felt the same.”

“Had they spoken to you about love and sex at CER?”

“No, nothing. People might make comments, but, again, I thought it was a humans only activity.”

Feist was blushing but she persevered. “Yet - when you rescued Lord Langton -”

“I didn’t do it consciously. It was like I’d always known. I’d dreamt about it sometimes - it was like a continuation -”

She jolted. “You dream? How?”

“My mind must get bored. Perhaps it’s the rubbish it throws out at the end of the day.”

She returned to her former line of questioning. “As far as you were concerned, you were now in a relationship?”

“Yes. I thought every obstacle had been removed and nothing should stop us from being together. But he’d had a change of heart. While we were on the voyage home, he wanted to go back to being friends. I couldn’t understand what I had done wrong.”

Alfred’s behaviour still confused him. Why couldn’t he have explained about the legal situation? Why hadn’t they moved somewhere it wouldn’t be a problem? Surely there had been alternatives.

Feist was watching him. “Your face is wet. Do you need a tissue?”

“I have a handkerchief -” and he produced it from his breast pocket. As he patted his face he saw what she meant. It was dripping with oil. He must look ghastly.

              “Yet despite having these strong - emotions - for Lord Langton, you agreed to marry Ms Howey?”

              He was glad Claire wasn’t present today. “Whole chunks of that time seem to be missing. I remember telling Alfred, the contest itself, but not what led up to it. I keep remembering a pink drink and a voice asking questions, but can’t say when that was. Maybe I dreamt it.”

              “So you didn’t love her?”

              “I love her as a friend, but I never wanted to be with her like I do with Alfred. What they did to her was cruel.”

              He couldn’t have said how he got through the rest of Feist’s questions. Still she regarded him with that compassionate, puzzled air. He wished she had told him the odds. He was conscious as never before how fragile his body, built for speed and strength, really was.

Malik had tried to screen him from the squelcher waiting in the courtyard. What good was that when he saw Cole’s death every time he closed his eyes? The terrible screams as he and Fisk were spattered with blood, the worse silence as the bones were ground to powder –

Where was Fisk while all this was going on? Would she evade punishment again? Though perhaps it was as well he couldn’t see her, the state he was in.

Up sprang Sir Matthias like a loathsome jack in the box. If he’d been short with Alfred, his manner now was positively insolent. “I’ve been a prosecutor for thirty years,” he said. “During that time I’ve seen innocents sent down and villains walk free. No case has caused me such discomfort as this one - ”

“Objection. My honourable friend isn’t summing up,” Feist objected.