Love and Robotics (38 page)

“Get him!”

As the masses swarmed the stage, Derkins heard a voice in his ear. “Mission accomplished. Let’s make a run for it.”

The tide parted. Nick caught sight of Alfred. Derkins had never seen such loathing on a human face.

“If he gets out, you’re dead,” he said as they waded towards the exit.

“What’s new?”

Humans weren’t the only audience that day. Clockwork City had organised viewings; Cora paid extra to have a screen set up at her poolside.

Glen was there, knocking back spirits. He’d come on the condition Sam wouldn’t be there. Kiki and Brad spoke baby talk to each other. Finn told anyone who would listen about his screenplay. “Then they point a gun at the bad guy’s head and the screen runs with goo. He’s got another head underneath it. It’s a twist, you see.”

Josh forced a smile, but it was Cora he was thinking about. He had spent the night on her sofa, guarding her.

“Ironic, isn’t it?” she said. “I promised Alfred I’d look after you.”

“You’re still Cora. You’re indomitable.” All he could think was how easily Nick could break her.

“Ssh!” Glen waved for attention. “It’s starting.”

They turned their eyes towards the canvas. The dot in the centre spread to encompass the screen. The lovers stopped cooing, Finn took a bite out of his pencil. Cora made a noise as though a pin had been driven into her.

Nick was on the stage, talking in a deep, sonorous voice. Josh thought he had heard that style of delivery before, and recently. It was when the gowned figure raised his hand he knew. This was how the Hierophant greeted her worshippers; Nick was tapping into the same sensibility. He was so struck by the imposture, he didn’t listen to the speech.

On screen Nick announced somebody’s name, gestured towards the wings. A man stumbled onstage, wretched in the floodlights. Josh knew him immediately. “Derkins!”

“Who?”

“Alfred’s assistant.” As soon as he said it he realised how implausible it was. Cora moved in her seat, but not fast enough for him to miss the flash of awareness. “You knew.”

“I needed help. He was the only person I could think of.”

Glen sshed them. Nick was letting go, growing impassioned, but something unscripted was happening. The wall behind him filled with a crabbed, dying face. The robots yelled. Old age was unknown in Arkan; surgery and supplements kept the population young. You might achieve distinguished white hair, the odd line to denote character, but wrinkling and liver spots were extinct. They had never seen mortality up close, didn’t know flesh could rot and faculties fail.

Josh had guessed that if Derkins was there, Alfred must be too, but hearing his voice was still upsetting. He and Cora had hatched this scheme behind his back. They professed to be his friends but clearly that didn’t count for much.

“I have to go.”

Cora tried to stop him. “I’d feel safer -”

“You should’ve thought about that.”

He walked across the city that night, shutting his eyes against the images on the screens, closing his ears to the networks. He wanted to see and feel something real. He couldn’t live like this anymore.

***

Alfred took a robotic vix to where the city lights gave way to scrubland, said he would walk the rest. The vix made a baffled chirp. He didn’t care what it thought.

He walked thirty dusty, barren miles, only pausing to top up the sun oil or quench his thirst. He’d done and thought so much over the past few days, he needed a mindless task. He didn’t want to think of the airless room where Carmen died, her dry lips brushing his cheek. “Thank you for what you did for me.” He felt like a fraud. It hadn’t been for her at all.

This tour might have been stimulating and an eye opener, but it was time to go home. Running to the other side of the world hadn’t changed a thing. He was in love with a man he couldn’t have and the joke was on him.

Leaving Carmen’s room, he had gone to buy a news sheet. He’d taken two daily while he’d been away - one for the country he was visiting, the other for Lila. He chucked the first aside, it was nothing but parentheses about Nick (‘The Man Who Seduced a Nation’) and adverts. Typically the Lilan paper ignored the major story and headlined with a home grown one. ‘Robot Love Under Threat?’

Blood pounding in his ears, he read that “recent revelations” had hardened the public’s attitudes. Sex with robots, once a harmless pursuit indulged by hobbyists, was considered a menace to society. There would be a session in the Forum –

He hadn’t the least doubt this had originated with the Prime Minister. If she couldn’t switch robots off for economic reasons, she’d engender a moral panic instead. And if he objected? “I had no idea this affected you, Langton.” Which it couldn’t. Not now.

He arrived in Clockwork City a few hours later, burnt and red eyed. He haggled with an officious pair of securibots, wanted a drink but could only get Formula 40. Gods! He hated this place.

Fatigue made him clumsy. He didn’t get the apartment door open until the third attempt. He stood on the threshold, the room jarringly different the way rooms are after an absence, and called. “Josh?”

“Hello, Alfred.” He might have been a clerk in a store. “Do you need anything?”

Alfred was too exhausted to be polite. “A drink, a shower and bed.” As he sank onto the sofa the last few days caught up with him. “I’ve been busy.”

“I noticed.”

Say what you liked, he’d accomplished something and wouldn’t hear it trashed. “What would you prefer? I let that bastard kill thousands more people? You’re just pissed off I didn’t tell you.”

Josh set down the whisky he had been pouring. “Yes. I am. Do you want to know why?”

“Wouldn’t that break the Code?”

              “Gods, you’re arrogant! You breeze in here, expecting to be treated like a conquering hero, and for what? You put away some crook? Big deal! People do that all the time and don’t expect a standing ovation. But you’re Alfred Wilding, the man without fear! You know better!”

Alfred stared. He hadn’t known Josh could get this angry. He had never wanted him more.

“Do you know what I think?” the artificial went on. “Deep down you’re a coward. You’re scared of what really matters.”

During this speech Alfred had moved closer to Josh. They were only a few feet apart. “And what’s that?”

Josh shook his head and turned away. “We both know what it is. Until you’re brave enough to stop caring what everyone else thinks and
admit
it, I can’t stay with you.”

Alfred had thought of severing ties an hour ago. Now he found he couldn’t do it. “Where will you go?”

Josh shrugged. “We’re expected home in a few months. Let’s view it as an experiment that didn’t work out.”

He filled a holdall with clothes, his sketchpad and camera. Any help was refused. As he heard Josh’s feet retreat down the staircase, Alfred buried his face in his hands.

***

The days that followed were unbearable. Alfred tried Josh’s beebo but it was off, and remained off. He didn’t want to be found.

The first day he succumbed to gloomy, nightmare tinged sleep. He woke, reached for Josh and beat the pillows when he realised his friend wasn’t there. He was too depressed to drink. He made cups of coffee that curdled and attracted flies; he lit matches and watched them burn to the head. Every sound in the street brought him to the window.

The second day he swallowed his pride and rang Sugar. He must have interrupted the doctor’s lunch.

“Hello? Who? Oh, Lord Langton!” Thunderous crunch as he finished chewing. “What can I do for you?”

“Josh is gone.”

“What?”

Alfred gave a rough outline of what he had been doing.

“What?”

He explained Josh had given him an ultimatum - leaving out the crux of it, of course.

“
What?!!!!”

Noah Sugar hadn’t sworn for ten years. Moira said it was bad for your blood pressure and he heeded her advice. His good intentions came crashing down in an avalanche.

“Now, your
lordship
, you’re not budging from Toy Town till you bring Josh back. Your visits will be heavily circumscribed from now on! Got me?”

“He doesn’t want to be found -”

“Neither would I if you were looking for me! Explorer my
arse!
”

He slammed the speakertube. Alfred, chastised, thought he’d better start searching.

Josh walked to the crossroads with one purpose in mind. He wanted to get out of this soulless, saccharine city. He’d take everything modern life had to throw at him: the stink, graffiti, traffic and disorder. He wouldn’t hitch. How could you depend on the kindness of strangers when the one you loved best let you down? He’d wait for a third class nought to rattle by.

The last nought had just been so he was forced to wait for seventy five minutes. He was on his second to last ice cube when one bore down on him, braking an inch from the kerb.

“Wh’thw?”

“I’m sorry?” Josh was mesmerised by the amount of metal in the man’s face, as though somebody had roughed up a functional. He was human alright: body odour and whisky rolled off him in waves.

“I said,” specking Josh with tobacco and phlegm, “which way you goin’, sonny?”

“Somewhere you can’t see Clockwork City.”

The driver put on a high pitched voice. “
Somewhere you can’t see Clockwork City!
  Them nasty ol’ bots frighten little ol’ you?”

Josh made his unimpressed face. Once glimpsed, it was never forgotten. The driver wheezed, tobacco going the wrong way. “Go on, young, young uh -”

Josh went down the aisle, squeezing between a dancing dog and an incontinent goat. He got off at Gill Forest, two and a half hours from Clockwork City. The residents lived in converted pig sties and played banjos on their porches. Everybody introduced themselves as ‘creative’. Alfred would loathe it.

He walked a mile looking for the right house. Eventually he found a former church advertising Rooms to Rent. The owner scrutinised him over horned spectacles. She reminded him of a tipsy owl.

“I don’t normally rent to arties, but anyone’s welcome so long as they pick up after themselves. Whatcha usin’ it for?”

He thought he’d establish himself as who he wanted to be. “I’m an artist. I’ll use it as a studio.”

“How funny! I’m sorta artistic myself. You can move in today.”

Josh had never spent a more productive time than his fortnight in Gill Forest. He made glass instruments that played bewitching tunes, a heart that pumped quicksilver instead of blood, an archetypal robot with hyper-realistic human organs. To his thinking these were no more than clever toys and he couldn’t understand why the villagers were so excited.

“You should hold an exhibition,” Ms Kerrigan said. “Charge entry.”

“Who would want to see it?”

“Anyone! Everyone!”

She had gone from indifference to admiration, bringing him cups of tea and materials. The downside to this generosity was he had to look over her projects - melted pots, hastily rhymed poems, splashy watercolours of sunsets.

She was always trying to suss him out. In an unguarded moment he revealed that his “cute accent” didn’t sound Lilan, it
was
Lilan. Since then he’d been more reserved, despite her regaling him with her past (two ex husbands, a few lovers and a woman friend - “To see what it was like”) and inviting him to skinny dip in the mill pond.

All this activity was an excuse. He’d sit in the belfry of the ruined chapel, the only person awake for miles. He’d end up shutting down amongst the rafters, his dreams a continuation of his conscious thoughts. Alfred would be there, would say all the things he was too stubborn to admit in real life, and there would be joy. Joy of a kind he couldn’t name, but he knew it was higher than Trini and Timothy or Ms Kerrigan throwing off her clothes. He’d wake to find his mechanical heart humming, his groin hard.

The morning after a particularly vivid dream, where Alfred had lain naked upon his heart, Josh started to paint a mural on the ceiling. It belonged to a different class from the pieces on show in the park. It was intended only for him, though as a memorial or icon he couldn’t say. It showed Alfred - Alfred in his dream landscape. His smile was the wistful one only he had seen; his eyes had lost their tired, bitter look. He was pictured standing at a window, the sun and moon circling beneath.

Ms Kerrigan came in with a cup of tea. She noticed the mural straight away. “Who is he?”

Josh refused to be drawn. “Somebody I used to know.”

***

It took Cora to shake Alfred out of his self pitying rut.

He was roaming the precincts one afternoon. Since artificials shut down between fourteen and fifteen, no one was about. He followed a pretty ersatz wood to its limits; it petered out so you could see the miles of road. He was going to turn back, reasoning he had gone far enough for one day, when he saw a figure in a mustard coat up ahead.