Stone Gods (24 page)

I know you don't like me, but you can trust me.'

'I don't usually trust people I don't like.'

'So you don't like me ... '

I blushed. 'I don't like your theories. Maybe you're great with dogs and children. Anyway, I don't even know who you are or anything about you. I can't judge.'

'We judge a person in the first two minutes. You couldn't judge me because I'm practised at being someone else. In the bar I'm just a rough, tough bouncer — I do it because, believe me, there's plenty of people from Tech City who aren't just coming to drink. They know what some of us are in here.'

'What did you do, pre-3 War?'

'I was an economist with the World Bank.'

'Oh, God ... '

'Yeah, I knew you wouldn't be positive, but I don't apologize. I'd go back there if I could. You may not have liked the World Bank—'

'I didn't.'

'—but it was a lot more democratic than MORE.'

'Maybe . . .'

'For whatever reason, let's just say that I'm trying to put the world to rights. Meanwhile, go through that door and you'll find your robot. We've done you a big favour — we're letting you go home.'

'Is this a police state?'

'Let's just say we have our own security to think about now.'

He was gone. I knocked at the door. One of the girls opened it. She was naked. She was gorgeous.

The room inside was white leather. Walls, ceiling, sofas, floor.

There was a corner bar padded in white leather, with two chunky leather bar stools rubbing against it. In the corner there was a leather polar bear, and hanging from the ceiling a leather spider in a leather web. Leather bowls were filled with non-leather peanuts, and on the leather-top table were a tin of sardines and a fork with a leather handle.

I must have looked taken aback. The girl smiled and said, 'World of Leather.'

'Yes,' I said, not knowing what else to say.

'I mean,' she said, 'that's where we got it all. It was their display showroom. We just dragged it all over here and cleaned it up.'

I had to think about this. It was easy, after the bomb, to take what you wanted from the blown-apart shops, but few people did because where would you take the stuff? Possessions are not relevant if you have nowhere to put them. If there had been a shop selling roofs and walls and drainage — maybe.

'We were some of the first in Wreck City,' she said. 'We are part of the Alternative.'

'The Alternative?'

'Pre-War we were in a squat escaping from the expectations of our families. Post-3 War, we're here. Do you want a drink? We've only got champagne.'

'Did you drag that here as well?'

'Yes — we found an open cellar underneath the Bank of England. It was just racks and racks of champagne. Look ... '

She took me to a leather door in the leather wall and opened it.

Behind was a junk room, filled floor to ceiling with champagne bottles — not stacked or racked, just thrown in.

'We recycle all the glass,' she said. 'There's a really good recycling unit here. Nothing gets wasted.'

'I'm glad to hear it,' I said.

She got out a bottle — Veuve Clicquot I995. 'Is this one OK? We like it better than the Bollinger.'

'Yes, I'm sure it will be lovely. Thank you very much.' When I am nervous or unsure, I cover it up with excessive good manners. I have not had any practice at unexpected drinks with unexpected strangers — naked.

I told her my name.

She said, 'So, are you in a relationship, Billie?'

I thought this was an odd question from someone I had just met — but, then, everything about here was odd, so instead of saying, 'What's that to you? Where's my robot?' I answered no, but I had been, more than once, but that nothing had finally worked out.

'Are you sorry about that?'

I said I was sorry about that, but since the War it had been the last thing on my mind. I wanted to say that one of the many, many things I hate about war is how it trivializes the personal. The big themes, the broad sweep, the emergency measures, the national identity, all the things that a particular kind of man with a particular kind of power urge adores, these are the things that become important. War gives the lie to the personal, drowns it in meetings, alarms, sacrifices. The personal is only allowed to return as death. Death is what war is good at.

And so, when the telegram has been read, and the statesmen and generals have said something about sad loss and turned and gone back to higher stakes than a body and a few broken hearts, in that silent, empty space, to one person at least, it is clear that the personal is everything.

'We are founding an alternative community,' said Alaska, for that was her name, perhaps to match the colour code.

Founded on bottles of champagne and white leather?'

'These things are temporary,' she said. 'It's what we could find at the time, along with the sardines.'

'Sardines?'

'Two containerloads of sardines in olive oil. That is, one million tins.'

I was thinking about the Pilgrim Fathers, setting sail in the
Mayflower
in 1620. They were going to found an alternative community, and who is to say that Bibles, axes, ropes, flour and salt pork are a better basis for a new way of life than white leather, champagne and sardines?

As things have turned out, what with America's precipitation of World War Three, the Pilgrim Fathers' route may have a lot to answer for.

Alaska was still talking. Wreck City had twenty alternative communities ranging from the 1960s Free Love and Cadillacs, to a group of women-only Vegans looking for the next cruelty-free planet.

'They're playing at the party tonight,' she said. 'Chic X.'

'Chic X? A band?'

'Lesbian Vegans. Dinosaur-friendly. Some of them have already been to Mexico to say sorry.'

'Mexico? I'm not sure I'm following this . . .'

'Where they found the crater — in Chicxulub, a.k.a. Sulphur City. It's where the asteroid hit sixty-five million years ago — up goes the sulphur, down comes the snow. Ice age — out go the dinosaurs, in come the humans, give or take a few apes.'

'Simple as that?'

She nodded. 'Life is much simpler than we like to admit.'

I could hear strange, simple cries coming from the bedroom.

I ignored them. 'It's an interesting theory.'

'It's not a theory — the crater is a fact, the asteroid is a fact. The Chic X girls believe it's proof absolute of life before humans. Somebody pointed that asteroid.'

'It's a bit too late to do anything about it,' I said.

'Or a bit too early, depending on your timing of another world.'

I glanced towards the bedroom. The cries were clawed, winged.

'How do the Vegans feel about World of Leather?' I said.

'They thank us for taking it away for them. They're not judgemental. Don't you think that's the key to happiness?' By way of explanation she took out a large silver key from under one of the sofa cushions. 'The key to happiness,' she said, 'is tolerance of those who do not do as you do.'

'What if those who do not do as you do are gunning you down?' I said, sounding like Friday.

Alaska frowned. 'Guns are intolerant. Guns are a failure of communication. '

'That's right,' I said. 'The dead don't talk.'

I thought of what Friday would be saying to all of this — Utopian, flaky, unreal. But who was she harming? Who would she harm? The realistic, hard-headed practical types got us to the edge of melt-down.

Frankly, I'd rather see Free Love and Cadillacs, Interplanetary Vegans, naked champagne girls or ...

'And there are six nuns,' she said. 'We love the nuns.'

... or six nuns running the planet, or Spike.

'Have you got my robot?' I said.

'Yes, she's defected.'

'What do you mean, she's defected? She can't defect, she's a semi-programmed talking-head made of silicon chips. She isn't a moral being — she can't even think for herself yet. Where is she?'

'In the bedroom,' said Alaska, 'with Nebraska. She's a Chic X.'

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a robot in want of hands can use her mouth. There was Spike, moored between the long piers of Nebraska's legs, lapping at the jetty. She looked happy, in a silicon sort of a way.

'Spike, what are you doing?' I said, the world's number-one stupid question.

She didn't turn her head, but that's not her fault: she can't. She said, 'I am performing cunnilingus on Nebraska.'

'Why?'

'It is a new experience for me.'

'I'm glad to hear it.'

'And I am programmed to accept new experiences. Therefore, when Nebraska suggested that I might try this, I was able to agree without consulting my Mainframe.'

'In what way do you think this experience will further your understanding of the human race?'

(Spike has forms to fill in like everyone else, and this question is on her data-sheet.)

'As I have no body, it is difficult for me to imagine its uses beyond the purely functional. What I am doing has no reproductive function.'

'Human beings are irrational,' I said. 'We do things for all kinds of non-reasons and try to come up with a good explanation later. I hope you'll be able to explain this to your Mainframe.'

'I have disabled my Mainframe connection,' said Spike. 'I have chosen to live as an outlaw.'

I went over to the bed and, making my excuses to Nebraska, to whom I had not yet been formally introduced, I grabbed Spike by her head — well, what else could I grab her by? — and yanked her away like a bad dog. I carried her through to the other room. She smelled of sex.

'Have you any idea what you've just done?' I said, taking the Baby Wipes from my bag. 'This is ridiculous, perverted and impossible.'

'Do I hear one person judging another?' said Alaska.

'Spike is not a person! She's a robot! She's not even a robot yet, she's training.'

'You can't train to be a robot,' said Alaska, scornfully.

'Obviously you've never been in the Army,' I said, but I was being flippant because I was trying to drown Nebraska's cries, coming from the bedroom — 'SPIKE, SPIKE . . .'

'OK, so she's a trainee robot — she deserves a little fun. Nebraska says she has an electric tongue.'

'It's not an electric tongue. It carries an electric current.'

'I can vibrate my tongue,' said Spike, and she stuck it out of her mouth and vibrated it.

'That's good,' I said, 'very good. Now put it back and listen to me. I have taken you on an illegal walk, during which time there has been an international incident involving several Japanese people and a few golf-buggies. MORE has declared a State of Emergency, and you have been announced MISSING on the main news. My only hope is to take you back as fast as I can.'

'Your only hope of what?' asked Spike.

This threw me. Adrenalin-fuelled plans always have one objective: save the baby, jump ship, steal the car, shoot the person standing in front of you ... Complex plans with more than one objective require careful thought. My whole aim was to find Spike and return her — but ...

'Exactly,' said Spike. 'Then what will happen to you?'

'You are not yet programmed to think ahead.'

'I am programmed to evolve, and my most recent experience has enriched my circuitry.'

Great. The robot that was designed to become the world-sage has had oral sex with a teenager called Nebraska and become a drop-out free-love silicon guru. Great ...

There was a knock at the door.

'Who is it?' shouted Alaska.

'Sister Mary McMurphy.'

Alaska pulled on a white glove-leather robe and opened the door. She made a little genuflexion and let in the nun.

A small, smiling Irish woman explained that she and her five Sisters in Christ had run out of food, and although they had rung the bell, just as they always had at the convent in Cork, no one had brought them anything to eat. As a practising Catholic, she hoped Alaska would help.

'We've got sardines,' said Alaska.

'That's Biblical,' said Sister Mary McMurphy, 'the miracle of the five loaves and two fishes.'

'But we haven't got any bread — we don't do carbs.'

'Well, have you got anything else at all at all?'

'Champagne?'

Sister Mary McMurphy considered her position. 'There is the example of our Lord's First Miracle,' she said. 'The Feast at Cana. The water into wine. I'll take some, sure an' I will.'

Alaska went off to find a recycled carrier-bag, leaving me alone with Spike and the nun. Spike smiled.

'That's an unusual sight, so it is,' said the sister. 'Very like the missing robot we've all been hearing about on the news.'

'It's the same one,' I said. 'I'm just taking her home.'

'I'll pray for you,' said the sister. 'Life is very hard in prison.'