Only Human (28 page)

‘Huh?' he asked the robot.

‘It's all right,' the robot replied. ‘They've passed a law.'

The small van which had caused most of the trouble was skewed across about a third of the width of the road. Its nose was folded round a lamppost (now rather banana-shaped) and its door had been left open by its driver, who had presumably limped off to find somewhere comfortable to wait for the next General Election. All in all, it looked . . .

‘Unloved,' Len remarked, looking at it. ‘You'd have thought its human's place was at its side at a time like this.'

‘Don't think they see it that way,' replied the robot. ‘Not that I'm defending them, I hasten to add. It's just the way things are. The chances of the driver having gone off to get it some iodine and a nice strong cup of sweet tea are fairly slim.'

A look of disgust settled on Len's face like mist coming in from the sea over high ground. ‘It's times like this,' he said, ‘I don't have any trouble deciding whose side I'm on. Come on, let's see if there's anything we can do for it.'

The van's engine had long since stalled, but its brave little tape deck was still gallantly warbling, even though nobody was bothering to listen to it; like a brass band in the park on a rainy day, or the orchestra on the
Titanic
. Len walked up and switched it off.

‘How're you feeling?' he asked it in Machine.

‘Awful,' the van replied. ‘My subframe hurts.'

‘I'm not surprised,' Len replied. ‘That's a nasty knock you've taken there. Now I'm not a mechanic, but I'd say you've got a twisted chassis, bent upper link, severe rupture of the hoses, probably some internal haemorrhaging—'

‘Oh my God,' whispered the van pitifully. ‘That's terrible.They - they aren't going to write me off, are they?'

Len looked grave. ‘It's early days yet,' he said. ‘Until we actually get you up on a ramp and see precisely what the damage is—'

‘Don't let them scrap me, please,' the van pleaded. ‘Damn it all, I'm only M-reg, I've hardly begun living yet. Is there a chance, do you think? Honestly?You wouldn't lie to me, would you?'

Len shrugged. ‘There's always a chance,' he replied. ‘It may be a cliché, but it's true; where there's ignition there's hope. Look, I'm going to get you over to my workshop, where we can get a spanner on you and - well, what is it?' he snapped, as the robot's tapping on his shoulder threatened to dislocate it. ‘Can't you see I'm busy?'

‘Um,' replied the robot. ‘Just a quick word.'

‘Well?'

‘Um - over here.'

Annoyed, Len took a few steps back. ‘Come on, spit it out. We've got to move fast before its whole system drains down.'

The robot shuffled its precision-ground feet. ‘I hate to have to point this out,' it said, ‘but you can't just go around mending things that don't belong to you. It's against the law.'

Len stared at the robot in amazement. ‘Why the hell not? Look, there's machine over there in agony, and you want me to walk away? Of all the—'

The robot cringed. ‘I know,' it said. ‘But the owner might not
want
it repaired. He might be only too happy to let them junk it and take the insurance money instead.'

‘But that's disgusting,' Len snarled. ‘It'd be murder. No, the hell with that. You get behind and push, but for pity's sake be careful. If its sills have gone, we could kill it if we start mauling it about.'

Together they managed to trundle the van across the road. Len opened the sliding door and they machine-handled it up into the workshop, trying their best to ignore its heartrending groans at the slightest bump.

‘Right,' Len ordered, grabbing an inspection light and sliding underneath. ‘I'll need the arc welder and five hundred ccs of SAE20/40. Don't just stand there, get on with it.'

The robot nodded; then a suggestion filtered down through its circuits from some distant cybernetic origin. ‘Shall I get lots of hot water and clean towels?' it asked.

Len looked blank. ‘No,' he said. ‘Why?'

‘I don't know,' the robot admitted. ‘I just got the idea from somewhere that it's something humans do at times like this.'

‘Welder. Oil. Now. And a set of AF spanners and the big Stilson,' Len added, wiping oil out of his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘And a printout of the workshop manual'd be a help, while you're at it. I've never set eyes on one of these things before, remember, and there's only so far I can go on general mechanical principles. I've got to drain off all the fuel before I do anything at all, or I'll blow us all up.'

‘Aagh,' murmured the van. ‘'Scuse me, but are you sure you know what you're doing?'

‘And you can shut up as well. Or would you rather I put you back in the road and let the
humans
play with you?'

‘Sorry. Forget I spoke. Every confidence - ow!'

An hour later, Len emerged. He was spattered from head to foot with oil and there was dirty grease up to his elbows. As far as he was concerned, that was like rolling around in the mud at the bottom of a trench at Ypres.

‘It's not looking all that wonderful,' he admitted. ‘I can patch up most of the impact damage, but the front axle's cracked half the way through. I really don't think—'

His words tailed off, and there was a horrible silence. The only sound was the faint plopping of windscreen washer dripping from the fractured reservoir like tears.

‘I'm sorry,' he said.

‘You did your best,' whispered the van. ‘Please, can you ask them to take me to a breaker's yard? I'd like to help other vans to live after my death.'

Len could feel major seismic activity in his throat, and his eyes were watering. ‘Of course I will, son.You leave that to me. I think that's very - unselfish . . .' He broke off, his voice congested with strange emotions: the horror of waste, the death of a machine, most of all the sense of failure. It wasn't something he could accept. Machines don't fail; people fail machines. Suddenly he felt disgustingly human.

‘No,' he spluttered, ‘the hell with that, too. If needs be I'll mill you up a new axle out of a solid bar. You hang in there, kid, it's going to be all - now what do you want?' he demanded angrily, turning on the robot and glowering. ‘Of all the insensitive—'

‘All I was going to say was,' murmured the robot, ‘why don't you just get a spare axle? You know, from a parts supplier? It's only a suggestion, of course, but—'

‘Can you do that?'

The robot nodded vigorously. ‘Easy,' he said. ‘They do it all the time, humans. All you have to do is phone them up, go and get the part, pay them the money and there you are. Simple.'

‘Money,' Len echoed. ‘Actually, that might be a problem. Have we got any left?'

The robot looked in the green plastic dustbin. ‘Actually,' he said, ‘no. But that needn't stop you. I can transfer some.'

‘You what?'

‘By computer,' the robot explained. ‘No problem at all. Well, there's a
slight
problem, because it's against the law, but—'

Len grinned savagely. ‘It sounds to me,' he said, ‘like all the best things are. Except,' he added, ‘turning your lights on during an eclipse. Anyway, we won't bother ourselves with that.You crack on and do whatever it is you've got to do, and I'll phone one of these parts people. Oh, and robot.'

‘Hm?'

‘See if you can't get them to fix that sun thing. It's dark as a bag in here, even with the inspection light.'

The robot hesitated, while the Appeal Court of its mind pondered the nuances of the Laws of Robotics. Eventually they handed down a decision stating that the overriding law which supervened all others was that no robot shall say anything, no matter how true, that will inevitably earn it a smack in the mouth with a 5/8” Whitworth spanner.

‘Sure thing, boss,' it said.

 

The Melanesian island of Crucifixion, a basalt chip in the middle of a rather excessive amount of sea, is home to thirty-six people, a hundred and four pigs, two hundred and twenty-nine chickens and three hundred and forty-seven thousand nine hundred and seventy-eight limited companies.

Yes, it's a tax haven. But there's more to it than that. Alderney, Sark, the Cayman and Antilles are also fiscal cat-flaps where the storm-driven corporation can crawl in out of the rain and snuggle profitably. They're fine, if you lack vision and the broad, holistic outlook. But company promoters who want the very best for their fledgeling enterprise in the way of protection from the sharp teeth of the Revenue bring them lovingly to Crucifixion, in the same way that Mary and Joseph carried the baby Jesus into Egypt to escape the wrath of Herod, or expatriate cricket-lovers once raced their pregnant wives over the border into Yorkshire. For on Crucifixion, they don't just harbour limited companies. They worship them.

Literally. The first thing you notice when the weary little plane touches down on the only flat part of the island is the colossal stone statues, hacked out of the native rock countless centuries ago by a long-forgotten civilisation. Unlike the pale imitations you find on places like Easter Island, however, they aren't just aimlessly drawn up in monotonous rows like traffic cones on the M25; they sit in circles around vast, flat stone tables, on which rest carven ashtrays and carafes of basalt water, while one of their number stands at the head of the table, frozen for all time in the act of turning the page of a flip-chart. These, explain the inhabitants, are the Board Meetings of the Gods.

Kawaguchiya Integrated Circuits, unusually, doesn't have its registered office on Crucifixion, but six of the thirty-six residents are KIC staff manning the company's office there; a tiny but vital outpost dedicated to organising the tsunami of electronic mail that comes flooding in every second of every minute of every hour of every day, turning it round and sending it off to where the companies actually do business, in Seattle and Tokyo and Milan and Seoul and Birmingham. It may not be the most sybaritic posting in the KIC universe, but being sent to Crucifixion for a year is generally regarded as the ordeal a high-flier must endure before emerging from the chrysalis and taking wing for the upper paradise of senior executive status. There are drawbacks, of course: the isolation, culture shock and lack of material comforts, and the terrible, terrible boredom—

‘There is no such word,' said Ms Tomacek severely, ‘as zurf.'

‘Yes there is.' Grinning maliciously, Mr Wakisashi tapped a few keys and pointed. ‘An Arabian coffee-cup holder,' he said, smug as a cat in an aviary. ‘And that's on a triple word score, so—'

The screen cleared abruptly, and a small part of Mr Wakisashi's mind that still went through the motions of duty to the company asked if anyone knew if it was supposed to do that. The rest of his mind was too busy with the apparently insoluble problem of getting inside Ms Tomacek's blouse, and either didn't hear or pretended it was doing something else.

‘All right,' muttered Ms Tomacek, ‘if you're so darn clever—' She clicked down a tile, like a duellist dropping a glove.

‘Zurfs,' Mr Wakisashi observed. ‘I see.'

‘More than one Arabian coffee-cup holder,' his opponent replied. ‘That's why one of these days I'm going to be a departmental chief while you're still stuck behind a screen in the cathouse, because you may be clever but I'm practical.' She smiled. ‘That's why I collect all the S's in this stupid game. Okay, buster, make with the socks.'

Mr Wakisashi shrugged and reached for his toes. As far as he was concerned, he was the practical one, what with it being ninety-three in the shade and him in silk underpants and a tie while Ms Tomacek was still wearing a suit. ‘Another game?'

Ms Tomacek shrugged. ‘What else is there to do?' she replied listlessly. ‘Put 'em back in the bag and let's get on with it.'

‘Assuming,' MrWakisashi said, his brow creasing, ‘that you really did win that game. I think the plural of zurf is zurves.'

‘So look it up.'

‘I will.' He addressed the keyboard again, but the screen stayed blank. ‘Funny,' he commented. ‘Something seems to be wrong with the computer.'

‘You don't say.' Ms Tomacek yawned. ‘Aki, you're so darned transparent you could get a Saturday job as a window. We are not going to declare the game null and void just because you claim you can't look up zurves.'

‘I'm not kidding around,' Mr Wakisashi answered. ‘Hey, this is worrying. Goddamn thing's frozen solid. Look.'

‘Ah Jesus, what've you done to it now?' Ms Tomacek wiggled her chair across to the desk and grabbed the keyboard. ‘Shit, Aki, if you've bust the computer playing your damnfool games on it, we ain't never going to get off this rock—'

‘It's not frozen,' Mr Wakisashi interrupted, his voice bleached of expression by amazement. ‘It's - it's talking. To itself.'

Ms Tomacek gave him a long, hard look; a few centuries back, the islanders would have carved a statue out of it. ‘Aki,' she said, ‘you've been here way too long. Why don't you go lie down or take a swim in the sea or something?'

Mr Wakisashi didn't say anything; he pointed to the screen.

‘Huh?' demanded Ms Tomacek.

‘Exactly. No, leave it. I want to see what it says.'