Love and Robotics (14 page)

“Don’t indulge him. Once it’s calmed down, I recommend he moves back to CER.”

“No.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“If he wants to go, fine. But I think he’d rather stay with me.”

“I’m his psychologist -”

“I’m Lady Augusta’s brother. Remember that, will you?”

He was shaking half an hour after she had left. He couldn’t believe her nerve. Making out Josh was some deluded, attention seeking - He emptied one tumbler, then another.

“Dr Malik’s been here.”

He looked up. Josh had his hand on the door handle. “How did you know?”

“She smells of bad coffee and cigarettes. And she gives off vibes.”

“You sound like Nanny.”

“Everyone has them. Hers are malice, temper -”

“And condescension?” Alfred patted the chaise longue. “Whatever they pay her, it’s not worth it.”

Josh sat beside him. “Let me guess. I’ve delusions of grandeur and should move back to CER.”

“Were you earwigging?”

“She’s been saying it ever since I got my flat.” Josh stretched and winced.

“What’s the matter?”

“My back. I jarred it when I went down the chute.”

“I didn’t know robots could get back strain. Guess I am unfit to look after you.”

“You’ll do.” Josh smiled. “Though there
is
something.”

“Which is?”

“Would you massage my back? Nobody else will.”

“I’m not qualified -”

“How hard can it be?” Josh unbuttoned his shirt and lay down.

Alfred reached out. He wasn’t sure what he expected - chalkiness? Sponginess? Instead Josh’s skin was firm and smooth, rising beneath his finger tips. It was impossible to believe it wasn’t flesh and blood.

Josh made an encouraging noise. “That feels nice.”

His back arched. Alfred caught sight of a muscular torso with stiff nipples, a toned stomach, a golden strip leading to his navel. He glowed in the dimming sun. Something Alfred thought was long dead stirred: first in his chest, then somewhere lower down.

He turned away, aghast. “You’d better put your shirt back on.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Alfred’s brain kept playing it back: Josh’s skin, his sounds, the glimpse. It overlapped with quite different images - things he had no right to be thinking or feeling.

No one must know this had happened. Nobody must know the effect it had had on him. It was too dangerous.

Autonomy for Automatons
He’s

The weeks following Malik’s visit were the deepest peace Josh had known. He didn’t need to be anywhere but here, do anything but this.

He knew what was going on in Lux. Gwyn had fixed a veebox and put it in the guest room. Watching the images march across the screen - strikes, looting, protesters clobbered with truncheons - it seemed unreal.

“I’m fine,” he told Pip, Mandy, Madge’s team, the Mayor. “I’m happy.”

Dr Sugar and his wife were taking in damaged robots. He asked Alfred if they could do the same. “We’ve far more room,” he pointed out. “You could put them in the north wing.”

They were having tea in the conservatory. He was answering a fan letter, Alfred reading a book and not getting on with it. A shift in his seat, a snort, a muttered “Imbecile!” When the book landed in the waste paper basket, Josh realised this was a good time to bring it up.

“You did it when those houses were flooded.”

Alfred was wearing his vague look. It meant he’d think about it in his own sweet time, and the answer would be no. “I understand what you’re trying to do. But - I can’t.”

“It’s a good cause! Think -” Josh flailed for inspiration. “Think what Gussy would’ve done.”

“That’s the worst argument you could’ve picked.” Alfred got up, still wearing that maddening expression, and sauntered down the corridor.

Josh didn’t see him for the rest of the evening. Deciding the day had been a wash out, he got ready for bed. He was padding around in pyjama bottoms, shirtless, when there was a knock at the door.

Alfred popped his head in, paling at the sight of him. “I’m not disturbing you?”

“Not at all. I was going to do my exercises, then plan what I’m going to dream.” Josh swivelled his waist, bent his arms forwards and back. One clicked and he straightened it.

“Do you do this every night?” Alfred addressed the curtains.

“Stops me seizing up. Don’t you do something similar?”

“Press ups normally.”

“Will you show me?”

The next ten minutes were silent bar the odd grunt and further clicks, though whether from him or Alfred he wasn’t sure.

“Sorry,” Alfred blurted.

“I thought that’s what it was.”

“You made me do a hundred press ups!” He grinned, friends again. “I’ve been a swine. Sorry.”

“Is this what they call the human temperament?”Josh smoothed a space beside him on the bed.

“I couldn’t stand anything robotic for years. It was too raw. Gussy had all these schemes, and then -”

“What?”

“Nothing.” Alfred looked disgruntled. “She thought society would be different by now. But you can’t change human nature.”

“Would you consider it?”

Alfred rubbed his chin. Despite making constant jokes about his weight, he looked thin. The hipflask was sticking out of his pocket.

“I told you to leave that stuff alone,” Josh admonished.

“Hard when you’re under stress.”

“What do you have to be stressed about?”

Alfred wouldn’t look at him. “Tell me about these dreams.”

“I’m in a four poster like this but at CER. There’s no traffic, everything’s still. I walk through the city, across the highways. Everybody’s gone. Lux belongs to me.”

“Wouldn’t you be lonely?”

“I’ve never seen Malik write so fast. That was before -”

“Before what?”

Nothing had changed. But the fact remained: he didn’t want the world to himself anymore. He wanted Alfred to share it with him.

As he reached the end he heard a soft rumbling. Alfred lay across three quarters of the bed, snoring. Pulling the eiderdown over them both, Josh listened to his sounds until sleep came. The few times he woke, he reached out to check his friend was there.

He woke with the dawn chorus. Alfred had thrown an arm over him in sleep; Josh cosied against it. “Morning,” he said.

Alfred rubbed his eyes and saw Josh. He dropped the eiderdown to the floor and left without a word.

***

Unpredictability aside, Josh couldn’t have asked for a better host. Alfred understood when he wanted company and when he wanted to be left alone. He judged when he needed a day packed with activity - learning to shoot, learning to ride, sports - or quiet. His favourite times were spent sculling the lake in a little boat or going around the estate. He liked helping with the animals, whether Puss, the farm, Gwyn’s rats or a spider so poisonous you had to gas it whenever you fed it. “Nobody wanted him,” was Alfred’s comment on this unusual house guest. Josh couldn’t blame them.

“You’re lucky to have Chimera,” Josh said one day.

“Everything from the farm goes towards its upkeep. There’s a whole tower we can’t use because the roof’s caved in.”

“I thought you were fabulously rich.”

“I wish.”

“What would you do if you were a regular person, with a normal house and job?”

Alfred frowned. “You know, I haven’t the faintest idea?”

“We’re not so different.”

“I suppose not.”

“You like your life, though.”

“You must think I’m the most ungrateful hound.”

“No. Just lucky.”

One of Alfred’s rare smiles. It wasn’t the distracted one he pulled to order but a warm, genuine expression that transformed his face. The furrows across his forehead, the wrinkles around his eyes, even the line down one side disappeared. It was too long and scarred to be handsome but it was a nice face. Josh liked looking at it.

He couldn’t have said how but their dynamic had changed. They communicated without words, reached for one another by instinct. He wondered if they should talk about it but decided against it. He simply thought,
Thank you for being so good to me.

The fourth week Alfred racketed around the hall, stood on his hat, debated whether to take his umbrella. “It’ll rain if you don’t,” Nanny pointed out.

“While if it doesn’t, I’ll look like a prat. Where the devil’s my case?”

Josh came down the stairs. “What’s going on?”

“We’re drawing up the Robotics charter. See?” Alfred touched the badge on his lapel, a little fat robot.

“How can they make progress if they think of us like that?”

“It’s only shorthand. No need to get steamed up.”

Josh waited for Nanny to go to the kitchens. He stood on tiptoe and put his arms around Alfred’s neck.

“What’s brought this on?” Alfred asked with a nervous laugh.

“Nothing.” Josh nudged his nose with his. “Make me proud.”

He released him, breathing hard. “I will.”

Josh followed him onto the drive, waving till the vix had disappeared from sight.

Gwyn was in a better mood than she had been for ages: singing along to the network, grinning at nothing. Alfred’s curiosity was piqued.

“How was the date?”

“Grand! Skating, dinner -”

“Are you seeing - them - again?”

“I hope so.” She rubbed her chin. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Isn’t it time you had a boyfriend?”

He diced with telling her:
Don’t quote me, but I
think
I’m developing feelings for Josh ...

He couldn’t. Her face was as transparent as his own; he imagined the revulsion scrawling across it.

“I’m too set in my ways. Besides, nobody likes me back.”

“Balls. There must be plenty of fellas looking for someone like you.”

A few years ago she’d been determined to set him up with someone, “so you don’t die alone.” Cue a series of lamentable dates. Widows who fancied some cock, fans, out of work actors - once you were in your forties, it seemed all bets were off. After a long haired bell end called Leander, who implored Alfred to put his ‘power’ inside him, he’d had enough.

“They can go on looking.”

“You’re impossible.”

“No. Realistic.”

“Mind you -” Gwyn had the glow of the lucky in love - “it’s when you’re
not
looking you find someone.”

Closing his eyes, he feigned sleep. She changed the station. Alfred’s eyes snapped open. “What’s
that?
”

“This singer - they’re - into, Cora Keel. We’re going to a concert.”

“Rather you than me.”

In an insanely short time they were rolling down the Royal Mile, the Summer Temple bells pealing.

“Bloody hell!” Gwyn gasped.

They’d been prepared for shocks, but this? Splinters of glass, gutted shops, paint splashed billboards, the Wheelie motif chalked in alleys. Alfred caught sight of a bin overflowing with robot parts and shuddered.

“It’s so empty,” she said.

He wondered what she meant. The hordes checked maps, signalled to flies, stepped out of matinees. Then he realised. No robots - the industrious background to daily life. Docking speeding vixes, sweeping the streets, changing the lights.

Before Josh, he’d have focused on negatives. How in the space of a generation they’d become so dependent on mechanical labour, a glitch exposed the sham. How the gangs of volunteers scraping in the wreckage hadn’t a clue. How had basic skills been forgotten?

It was a relief when the bridge lifted and they spiralled inside the Forum’s vix bay. He climbed out and keyed in his code. A message flashed up on the node screen: ‘Code not recognised.’

“What?” He tried again. The same message. Infuriated, he pulled out the refill tube on the vix and blasted it with alcohol. The machine swayed and crashed onto its face.

“I won’t tell Josh if you don’t.”

“It’s only a machine. What are you doing?”

She was swapping her shoes, arranging her hair. “Nothing.” She put away her mirror. “Okay if I go out?”

“Of course. Soak up the scenery.”

He hadn’t known she owned a handbag, yet she snatched that, and a smart jacket. “How do I look?”

Long and leggy, a plait around her head, a braided shirt and twill trousers. Her own unique brand of beauty. “Lovely.”

“Thanks.” She galloped across the bay. “See you!”

The machine at his feet burbled, drunk. He pushed the vix five feet, grabbed his case and headed for Government House.

He sensed the ugly atmosphere the instant he walked through the doors.

While it was simplistic to divide along party lines - Ironsides against, Ribboners for, Yellow Gulls waffling - the stereotypes held true in some respects. Many of the older members had declined to show up. He heard snatches of conversation - “Worst thing that ever happened to this country,” “At least they’ll never strike,” “Yes, but the
cost!
”

Unhealthy teenagers handed out fliers and toys. “Give Automatons Autonomy!” one cried, shaking her fist.

“Nice slogan,” a familiar voice said. Alfred sidled behind a pillar to escape Jerry Etruscus. “Catchy.”

“Can we count on your support, Mayor?”

“Thea’s tits, no! If they start thinking for themselves, who knows what’ll happen? I’d like a bot, though.” He crammed a fuzzy robot into his breast pocket.

Alfred shuffled out, colliding with a young woman who had the high forehead and bright eyes of a fanatic. “Isn’t it awful how our country’s unravelled -” she began.

“Millie, that’s Lord Langton!” A man in bi-focals yanked her out of his path.

Jerry pricked up his ears. “Langton, how the bloody hell are you?” The fastest fat man he’d met, he seized his hand in seconds. There are firm handshakes and then there was Jerry’s. Your hand wilted.

“I haven’t time to chat -”

“The PM said -” Jerry swivelled his finger inside his ear and sniffed at a lump of wax - “she needed to see you.”

“The PM? Why?”

“Not a wiggins. Fancy a swift one afterwards? There’s this bar on Hemp Lane, you can get a girl bot to suck you till your eyes pop.” With a roguish wink, “There’s boy ones so you won’t feel left out.”

“I’ll pass. Where is she?”

“The Yellow Room.” He clapped Alfred’s shoulder so hard he nearly dislocated his arm. “No need to poo yourself. It’s probably nothing.”

The Yellow Room was where the Prime Minister freshened up between Sessions. Having seen it under four previous incumbents, he was curious to see how it looked now. He knocked on the door. No response. He pushed it open and stepped inside.

A double bass surrounded by sheet music. A ginormous lizard, slipping in and out of the bookcases. A hastily tidied play area. Alfred dug a hand into his pocket. He had half a box left. He put his pipe into his mouth, struck a match -

“If you even
think
about lighting that, I’ll have you strung up by your bollocks at Traitors’ Hill,” a familiar throaty voice said.

He extinguished it with his fingers. “Didn’t have you down as a smoking killjoy, Prime Minister.”