Love and Robotics (70 page)

Lucas’s tongue flicked across his lips. “You know?”

“She miscarried my nephew. Of course I know.” He kicked him. “Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”

“It wasn’t mine.”

Alfred sat on top of him, pushing the spade against his stomach. “Gussy hasn’t lied a single day in her life. If she says that was your baby, I believe her.”

“It wouldn’t be the first. Gwyn -”

It had been his own fear, years ago. Why Gwyn was so tall, without a scrap of resemblance to her father. He’d carried out tests, telling Ken it was in case they wanted kids of their own. It was one of the lowest things he’d done. “Ken’s sterile.”

“If not him -”

“If you value your life, don’t finish that sentence.”

A streak of spit hit his face. He shook his head. “You really are a barbarian, aren’t you?” He hauled Lucas the extra few feet to the trunk. “A spot of corrective treatment is due.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Spade. Pit. Trunk. You. Do the maths.”

Alfred dumped Lucas inside the trunk and sealed it shut. He kicked it into the pit and shovelled dirt over it. He rapped on the lid with the spade until he grew bored, then sat on a stool and watched his alarm clock, still tapping. If he strained to listen he could hear Lucas scrabbling. As the alarm went off he towed the trunk out. Lucas fell onto the grass, gasping.

“It’s normal to feel groggy,” Alfred said. “Once you’ve found your legs I’ll run you home.”

“You’re a fucking lunatic!”

“No, just a concerned citizen protecting my family from a thug. Come near Gussy again and you’ll be an interesting bump on the highway.”

Three days later Gussy came to him with the mail. “Lucas is withdrawing his claim to sole custody. Do you know anything about this?”

He shrugged. “Perhaps he had an attack of conscience.”

“You’re a rotten liar, Alfie.” She hugged him.

Ken was deteriorating fast. It was a matter of weeks, if not days. Somehow they built a friendship on the ashes.

They met in the afternoons, sat together in the grounds. One afternoon they were sitting in the Dog Cemetery, listening to the bird song. Alfred sneaked a sideways look at him. His hair had fallen out and his veins were like cables, but in repose he was dignified. It was the look he’d worn in quiet moments, after love.

“What happened to us, Ken?”

“Eternal consequences.”

“What’s
that
mean?”

“It’s human nature to fall for the wrong person. You for me, Gussy for Lucas.”

Alfred frowned. “She only married him because she couldn’t have you.”

“Proving my point.”

“Couldn’t you have tried? Made her happy?”

“Then
I
would’ve been unhappy. I know life with me wasn’t a bowl of cherries, but we had good times, didn’t we?”

Alfred didn’t think of the pain and uncertainty, jealousy and anguish. “Yes,” he said, squeezing the large cold hand. “Of course we did.”

Ken disappeared that evening. One of the maids had given him the number for a fly firm. He was carrying a suitcase, wearing a summer suit.

Gussy was frantic. She called the police stations. “He’s sick, he can’t look after himself.” The minute she said ‘Professor Summerskill’, their attitude changed. “Haven’t time to look for pervs,” one said.

“What’s your name? I’ll report you!”

“Go ahead,” he snickered. The tube cut out.

***

They were gathering in the harvest. Every year Alfred, farmhands and boys from the village made it last a week. Picking the crops by hand, bundling them high, races in wheelbarrows and singsongs. Getting sunburnt, knackered and drunk on homemade cider.

Gwyn had been expelled again. She was only twelve but growing out of everything: clothes, ideas, schools. Certainly Lucas, who was annoyed by her very existence.

“It’s no use, Grizzly,” she said. “Auntie Elaine says she’s going to get me into her old college, but I won’t be able to stand it. All that praying and doing things for the good of your health. Ugh!”

“Have you told your mum?”

“They can’t make me. If they do, I’ll run away.”

He sounded the bell. The others drifted into groups, sitting on upturned bins or collapsing onto mounds of wheat.

“I’ll have a crack at it,” he promised.

“Do you think Dad’ll listen?”

She’d made a valid point. Lucas refused to come near Chimera - all communication was via paranoid letters. ‘
I used to think you were mad, or stupid,
’ the latest said, ‘
but now I know you’re evil. No wonder Summerskill turned out a Pervert. You get the partner you deserve’
- and so on.

“Maybe you could be homeschooled.”

“What, have a tutor?” Her face lit up. “You
couldn’t do it, could you?”

“Have you
seen
my spelling? I’m certainly not qualified to make you a socially responsible human being.”

“You know stuff. Useful stuff.”

“What, like which parts of a bear to eat?”

“Anything you’re not sure about, we’ll ask Mum.”

“Hmm.” He was warming to the idea. Now there were fewer expeditions in the pipeline, he had to think about his future. He’d considered a desk job in the Force, but he’d die of boredom. Teaching a bright, eccentric student - why not?  “I’ll think about it.”

A figure glided over the field: Tolmash. He had the perfect face for bad tidings: melancholy, jowls drooping. He steered Alfred out of Gwyn’s hearing. “The professor, m’lud. The worst news possible.”

“Where’s Gussy?”

“At a matinee.”

“Hell. I’ll see what I can do.” Alfred passed a tired hand over his eyes.

He needed to wash. He needed to change. But there wasn’t time. Within the hour he was speeding towards Lux Mortuary. He had identified bodies before, of course; in the Force it was an occupational hazard. He’d never had to identify a lover. He didn’t know if he was up to it.

Two small neat men greeted him, as alike as a pair of socks. “Lord Langton? Would you like something to drink?” One brewed a peaty coffee, another sat opposite him. They looked like out of work actors.

“Professor Summerskill was found at eight thirty,” one said. “Must’ve been dead five hours.”

“How did he -”

“He was in the bath. Fully clothed.” That was a relief. “Electrocuted himself.”

“What with?”

“A robot, m’lud.”

Somewhere outside his body he heard the coffee tip, heard one say, “He’s out cold!” and the other, “Didn’t know men fainted. Mind you, he’s one of
them
-”

He heaved himself upright. “What kind of robot?”

“Does it matter?”

He wanted to reconstruct: had Ken grabbed the first thing to hand, or was he thumbing his nose at his detractors?

“A Home Butler. There wasn’t much of it left.”

Gussy had given it the green light without his permission. How cruel, turning on the one person who had never wavered in loyalty. He would never tell her.

“Can I see him?”

They exchanged glances. “We don’t think that’s wise.”

He rose unsteadily. “Why did you drag me up here, then?”

“He’d ... dissolved.”

“You mean, the charge from the bot -”

One shook his head, measuring his words. “The evidence suggests that Professor Summerskill -” he wetted his lips “ - was a clone.”

Alfred clapped. “Bravo, gentlemen. You nearly had me there.”

“No,” said one. “He’s loopy,” hissed the other.

“I knew Ken for thirteen years and fucked him for twelve. I’d have noticed if he wasn’t human.”

“We’ve run tests. He’s genetically other.”

It was abhorrent. But the more they talked ... Ken had always looked older than his age. He didn’t sweat. He was always cold. His unnaturally slow heartbeat. How he’d unravelled the past year, as though his cells were disintegrating. His sexual incontinence. His self loathing. His punch clock morality, as though “good” and “evil” happened to other people.

“Here’s his suitcase,” one of the men said.

It was lightly, untidily packed. A cravat with lemon stripes. His shabby slippers. The watch Alfred had given him the birthday before last. Nothing like a note. Though there was a picture of them at university, eating candy floss. Ken had looped an arm over his shoulder, clamping Gussy with the other.

The best of times
, he’d written. A matter of opinion.

***

Gussy was inconsolable. Ken had been
his
lover, yet he wasn’t trailing about as though the world had ended. Gwyn was hurting too, but her mother barely noticed.

They held the funeral in the chapel. Gussy sat with her hands in her lap, attention elsewhere. Alfred watched the minister squirm when he said ‘dearly beloved’ or ‘he will be missed’. When he went to take the remains Gussy snatched them back.

“Do you think he’s watching us?” Gwyn whispered.

“Wouldn’t put it past him.” He’d be looking down and sniggering - no, not down. Ken wouldn’t have got into heaven.

“I hope he isn’t. It was a poor service.” Her arm through his, they walked beneath the rain slicked trees.

There was too much of Ken to fizzle out. You expected to find him smoking in his lair, espousing crazy theories. Perhaps that’s why Gussy had closed the north wing. She wanted to be alone with him.

Him? Not so much. But he wasn’t Ken’s widow, wasn’t Ken’s
anything.

Loss never gets easier. You think that you’ll feel a blunting of the emotions, but it doesn’t work that way. Even years later you can be cut to the heart.

Gussy led a solitary life in the north wing. She was planning a monument to Ken, where his ashes could be laid to rest. For the time being she carried the urn to and fro. Alfred had a terrible urge to smash it whenever he saw it.

One day he visited her in her study. She’d always been neat but the sterility of the room was hurtful. She’d unpinned the charts, packed away the legions of stationery.

“Hello, Alfie.” She didn’t look up.

He could see the skull through her skin. The tea tray trembled. He put it down. “You’re not well, are you?”

“Cancer. I’ve a few months at the most. Ken knew.”

He didn’t ask why she hadn’t told him. “I can get the best doctors -”

“There’s nothing to stick around for.”

“What about the kids?”

“Marcus is his father’s creature. Always was.”

“Gwynnie, then. She’s a right to a mum -”

“You do it better than I could.”

He dashed the tray against the wall. “What’s more important than seeing your kids grow up?”

Her eyes fell upon the urn. Since he couldn’t damage it, he did the next worst thing. He swept up the plans for the memorial and launched them at the fire.

Chimera was a great place to sulk in. You could hide in and out of the rooms, hone your moping skills. Alfred cracked first. Brooding was Gussy’s forte, not his. He came across her by accident, sitting on the plinth.

“Sorry,” he muttered.

“Is that as good as it’s going to get?”

“Probably.” He sat beside her. “Are you still going ahead with this apotheosis?”

“Why not? I’m already a heretic.” On a serious note, “They’re erasing him from the record. If I don’t honour him, who will?”

“They
can’t
. He changed so much.”

“CER thinks it’s for the best.”

“Hypocrites,” he growled. “Never liked ‘em.”

“They’d disown me too if they could get away with it.”

“They’d better not!”

“Come off it, Alfie. A hundred years from now, people will have forgotten us, but there’ll still be robots.” A wry smile. “Maybe humans will become obsolete.”

Alfred had a vision of Lux guttered, robots crawling across the ruins like cockroaches. “Thea forbid.”

Maybe the scheme wasn’t so bad. It saved her from madness, numbed the pain. She was already confounding the doctor’s expectations. “I’m not going anywhere till it’s finished,” she said.

Of course Gwyn had to be told. She took it calmly. “Is it the same thing that killed Uncle Ken?”

“Yes,” he said without thinking. It was convenient, it saved questions - and it was true from a certain perspective.

He and Gussy received few guests. They lived in a handful of rooms. Two people with the same love, the same disappointment. She spoke of Ken often. She seemed to think that if she didn’t, he would fade. Sometimes Alfred wondered if his ghost was leeching strength from her.

The night the memorial was completed, she lay on the foundation stone. He sat up with her so she wouldn’t catch cold. He asked her what he’d always wanted to know.