Man or Machine: 2 (Body Electric) (3 page)

“How many lovers have you had?”

There was no shame in admitting it to a robot, was there? Especially a robot who’d been a virgin up to about an hour ago. “One. Actually.”

“It’s more statistically usual for an unmarried human of your age, educational background and social status to have had more than one lover.”

“Yes, well, most unmarried humans of my age, educational background and social status aren’t spending all their time studying robotic theory.” She pulled her shirt on and buttoned it up. It came down to mid-thigh. “Anyway, there are more important things in life than good sex.”

The robot waited attentively for her to explain more.

“Like math and physics. And…” She searched for something. “World peace.”

“You didn’t create me to engineer world peace.”

“Well, not as such, but if you wanted to then you could.” She found her underwear on the floor, realized she’d rather have a clean pair and took one out of her drawer. “I didn’t make you just to be a sexbot. You’ve got an evolving personality and huge computational ability. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t be a useful member of society if you want to be. Like a real human.”

And how was she, the real human Ilsa Morgenstern, a useful member of society? Cooped up here in the Morgenstern mansion, associating only with her family and robots?

“Anyway…Dallas,” she continued. “That was absolutely great. You were astonishing, especially considering this was your first run-through.”

“Thank you, baby. Is the experiment over? Would you like me to occupy myself elsewhere?”

“Um.” That seemed a bit cold and dismissive, didn’t it? Great sex, thank you, now let’s get on with something else. But that was the whole advantage of a robot; he wouldn’t have his feelings hurt when you preferred spending some time with quadratic equations. In fact he could join in. Though at the moment, Isla needed a little time on her own.

Because she wasn’t meant to feel this way. She hadn’t expected to. She’d thought that if she invented a robot to have sexual relations with, it would all just sort of happen in a logical fashion. She hadn’t expected that she would still be a bit shy afterward. Physically satisfied but emotionally wobbly.

She needed to get used to all of this.

“I think I’d like a shower,” she said.

Dallas stood up and waited by the bed. “Do you want me to scrub your back?”

“No, that’s fine. Thank you.”

“May I offer you assistance with anything else? Tidying this room? Coding new subroutines? The man in your closet?”

Ilsa had started for the en-suite bathroom, but at this, she froze.

“There’s a man…” Her gaze tracked to the double doors of the walk-in closet. They were shut. “A human man?”

“Yes,” replied Dallas, his voice unwavering. “Were you not aware?”

Her mind raced. Her brother Jonathan was the only man who lived in the mansion and he was in Taipei for the week. The mansion was heavily alarmed against intruders, infrared cameras were everywhere and there were three robots who were programmed to immediately apprehend unauthorized strangers.

But her bedroom door had been unlocked. Until Dallas locked it before they’d had sex. So if there was a man in her closet, he’d been in there the whole time. He’d heard every minute of her sexual encounter with the robot. And he had probably just heard that she’d learned of his presence.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, keeping her voice light as she sidled to the doorway of the en suite and the call button on the wall there. “There’s no way anyone could get into the mansion.” She shook her head wildly at Dallas and held her finger to her lips, hoping he’d understand, despite his logical brain, that she was talking at cross-purposes to herself.

“Nevertheless—” Dallas began but she hit the call button and flew across the room to him in one swift movement, clapping her hand over his mouth.

“I’m lying,” she whispered into his ear. “There isn’t supposed to be a man in my closet. I don’t know who he is. Stay quiet and be ready to back me up.”

Dallas nodded. Ilsa scanned her bedroom, searching for a weapon of some sort. There wasn’t much—three laptops in various states of disassembly, a pair of headphones and a half-full box of cereal she’d had as a snack last night. A pair of Converse sneakers, her discarded jeans and a glass of water.

And a six-foot construction of superhuman strength and intelligence. Whom she’d trained as a lover, not a fighter.

The door to Ilsa’s room unlocked and opened and Red stepped in. Make that
two
superhuman constructions in the room, except that Red was fully programmed in six different forms of self-defense. She must have been the closest housie to respond to Ilsa’s call.

“Security breach,” Ilsa whispered to the female-shaped robot, who was as bald and as glowing-eyed as Dallas. Her skin was a deep, even scarlet and her face was calm and expressionless. She registered no surprise at Ilsa’s words.

Instantly, quicker than thought, she seized Dallas by the neck with one hand and lifted him off the floor. The bigger, male robot dangled in her grip, looking down at his attacker.

“Nice to meet you,” he said. He held out a hand to Red to shake.

“Not him!” Ilsa cried in a whisper. “He’s meant to be here! The breach is in the closet!”

Red put down Dallas. “My apologies,” she said and strode to the closet. With Ilsa close behind her, she wrenched the doors open and flicked on the closet lights.

It was a large closet with walls of shelves and a full-length mirror on the insides of both its doors. There weren’t many clothes in it; you didn’t really have to hang up the jeans and t-shirts that made up most of Ilsa’s wardrobe. A black dress hung near the back—the dress she’d worn to her father’s funeral two years before. Her winter coat was beside it in a dry-cleaning wrapper. On the floor, neatly lined up, were a pair of boots and six identical pairs of red Converse Chucks.

And in front of all that, a brown-haired man sitting cross-legged on the carpeted closet floor. He was entirely dressed in black—black jeans, black sneakers, black long-sleeved t-shirt. A black backpack and a silver laptop sat next to him.

He looked up, grinning, and gazed past Red, straight into Ilsa’s face.

“Hi, Ils,” he said. “Long time no see.”

Ilsa stepped backward, her hand flying to her chest, her mouth dropping open, all the air vacating her lungs.

Hal?

Red stepped into the closet and in a swift move, she hauled the man to his feet and pinioned his arms behind his back. “Ow,” he said mildly.

But Red’s grip forced him to drop what he’d been holding. It fell to the floor and Ilsa, who’d thought this could never possibly become any more horrifying, took another step backward in horror.

It was a remote control.

Red brought the man out of the closet and into the bedroom. He was taller than she was but she held him with no difficulty whatsoever. Then again, the intruder didn’t appear to be struggling. He looked around appreciatively.

“This is very impressive, Ilsa.” He gazed at Red and then at Dallas, who was standing in readiness where Ilsa and Red had left him. “I never expected anything this advanced.”

“What—what are you doing here?”

“Congratulating you, mostly.”

“How did you get into the house? You didn’t set off any of the alarms.”

Red was holding him too tightly for him to shrug but he raised his eyebrows. “Your security is good but it hasn’t been updated for two weeks at least. Took me about seven minutes.”

“Shall I call the police, Ilsa?” asked Red.

“No. I mean yes. Maybe. But not yet.”

“It’s great to see you,” Hal said to her in the crisp English accent she remembered. He was still smiling at Ilsa as if he weren’t being held captive by a naked red robot. “You haven’t changed at all. Well, not in any ways that most people would notice.”

His grin was the same, still wide, still white, still the thing that transformed his rather ascetic face into something breathtakingly beautiful. She’d never seen his smile for the first fourteen months she’d known him by sight at MIT. It had appeared quite suddenly one day when they’d been standing together by chance next to the Coke machine.

She’d known his name and that he’d come from Cambridge University and that he was brilliant, maybe even as brilliant as she, and nothing else about him. She’d dropped a quarter and he’d leaned down and picked it up and when he’d given it back to her, he’d smiled.

She’d been unable to speak to thank him.

His smile wasn’t going to do that to her now. “You broke into my house and hid in the closet and you think it’s a good idea to exchange pleasantries?”

“What I’d really like to do is ask you for some schematics for these beauties, but that would probably be rude.”

“What would you like me to do with him, Ilsa?” asked Red.

She paused, undecided. She had good reason to call the police but did you call the police when someone you knew broke into your house? And how would she explain the robots to the police anyway? The townspeople already suspected something odd was going on at the Morgenstern mansion, especially these days, since Cally had started going out in public regularly with her boyfriend Blue. But they didn’t know the full extent and calling the police to hand over a man in the custody of a naked red female robot would cause even more rumors.

Plus, Hal wasn’t dangerous—not physically anyway. He hadn’t come here to harm her. She knew why he was here.

And that wasn’t half as terrifying and humiliating as what he had done while he was here.

“Ilsa? Are you all right?”

Without turning round, she knew the precise, human-sounding voice that came from her doorway. Blue had also heard and answered her summons.

“Ah,” said Hal, “this is the fellow I’ve heard about. I can see why people have been talking about him.”

Ilsa took her eyes away from Hal to look at Blue. The tall blue robot was standing in the doorway. Unlike Red and Dallas, he was fully dressed, in the sort of clothes he had come to favor since he started wearing them—soft, faded jeans and a black sweater. He had to wear clothes because, like Dallas, he was anatomically correct and because, unlike Dallas, he’d been out in public.

Hal’s words confirmed her suspicions.

“We can’t let him go,” she told Red. “Give him to Blue and please go get some rope.”

“Kinky,” said Hal but his attention remained on Blue.

“Ilsa, do you think this is a good idea?” Blue asked.

“You’re questioning Ilsa?” Hal said to the robot in a voice hushed with respect. “You’re questioning your
maker
? Astonishing. Absolutely astonishing.”

“I would question anyone who was proposing to tie up another human being in her bedroom, unless it was by mutual consent,” said Blue. “But you have no right to be here and I recommend that the police are notified at once. I will do it right now.”

“No!” cried Ilsa, grabbing Blue’s firm arm. Even without a phone, he could have a line of communication open with the police within seconds. “Don’t call the police. Let me deal with this in my own way, Blue.”

“Ilsa, I do not think—”

“Blue, please. Please trust me to know what’s best for my family.
Please.
”

Hal was watching this exchange avidly. Ilsa knew, with a sick feeling in her stomach, that he was taking every bit of it in.

“What do you propose to do?” asked Blue.

“Like I said. You hold him and Red can go find some rope. I need him kept safe until we can figure out why he’s here.”

“If you want the intruder secured, ropes are less trustworthy than Red.”

“I don’t want him to be close to the housies for any longer than he has to be. Please, Blue. He’s a spy.”

“A spy?” She could see Blue turning the concept around in his head. “You mean technological espionage?”

“I want to steal your secrets,” said Hal cheerfully. “Oh yes, Mr. Blue, that is correct. I want to steal them in the worst way, especially now that I’ve seen what they can do.”

What they can do.
She glanced at Dallas. His penis, even flaccid, was impressive. It would be blatantly obvious what he could do, even if Hal hadn’t witnessed the entire thing.

She felt sick.

“We can’t let him succeed,” Ilsa told Blue fervently. “If it got out what we were doing here, we’d have people descending on the mansion. Scientists, the press. He could publish what he’s seen, what he’s worked out. People could copy everything. They could copy
you
. But without knowing everything about you, without including all the things that give you free will, they’d just be creating automata. A whole race of automata to be bought and sold. A whole race of slaves.”

“I did not feel that I was a slave when I did not think,” said Blue. But his gaze was on Red. Who held Hal unthinkingly.

“Is it right to create more, Blue? Without knowing what you truly could become?”

Blue was silent. Hal watched, his eyes curious and intelligent beyond belief, taking it all in. She’d seen him looking at a computer that way. And once upon a time, he’d looked at her that way too.