by Rachael Eyre
“It's not so bad, you know. It's only work. He can’t get you in here -" and she pressed her bosom, above our memory storage banks.
I wished I could confide in her. That after being with Juno, loving her, the bare act wasn't enough. It had to involve intimacy, tenderness. Anything else was a lie.
But I was in enough trouble already.
***
Lucy must have had the place watched. Juno only left the premises two days a month, to stock up on supplies. She had delayed the trip, making excuses, but the others had grown suspicious. She had to go.
He arrived three hours later.
Zena brought me the news. She squeezed my hand, whispered, “Remember what I said.”
“What, shove a finger up his hole?”
She made a face. “You know what I mean. Failing that -" she pulled a ruby hairpin out of her beehive - “stick this where it hurts.”
I slid the hairpin down the back of my dress. It was a green velvet I'd put on for luck; I would never trust it again. Outside work I preferred trousers but the clients expected a bit of glamour. “Give them something they don't get at home,” Juno always said.
I took as long as I could, but it still had the same destination. Captain Lucy in the lobby, dressed up like a turd in a gift box.
“Hello again.” He smiled, or at least showed his teeth. “I'm glad you thought better of our arrangement.”
I sat beside him on the squeaky couch. I didn't want to be with him anywhere private, who knew what he would do. “Do you want a drink?”
More enamel. “Gin on the rocks.”
Fixing his order, I thought of Azita’s stories. How spies could put powdered poison inside a ring, split it open and stir it into a drink. Or courtesans who covered themselves in toxic paint, their partner expiring as they entered them. If I was braver, more ingenious, I'd’ve done that to Lucy. Only he was a cop, and wise to such tricks.
I returned to the lobby and handed him his glass. He downed it in one, like the spiv he was, and hooked an arm around my waist. “Where do you think you're going?”
Hating myself, hating him, I said, “Not here. Madam’s room.”
He licked his lips as though I'd offered him a rare delicacy. “Where the magic happens.” Yes, he really said that. The man thought and spoke in clichés. Remembering Bibi’s lessons, I laughed. It didn't sound convincing.
He gravitated straight to Juno’s chair. Where she used to tell me off, a twinkle in her eye. “You should learn to play nicely with others,” she used to say, or, “Honestly, Elle, what am I going to do with you?” Or more recently, sitting on each other’s laps, embracing after love.
You can't have in here, I chanted to myself. You can't have in here.
Zena was right. He wasn't interested in anyone’s gratification but his own. He ripped the dress aside - I heard the fabric tear. He skewered my legs apart and probed me with a cold, clawed finger. “Black velvet,” he purred.
I wished I could vomit. I'd heard of clients with fetishes, but had never encountered one before. Tough titty, girls - if he was going to reduce me to my colour, I wasn't about to oblige. I made myself as stiff and unyielding as possible.
Something was going wrong in his fist. Before he had been supremely confident, marking his territory; now the purple grub in his hand was failing. Try as he might, the worm wouldn't grow. I did laugh then. I couldn't help it.
His slap sent me across the room. I heard the hairpin fall, get lost in the carpet.
“I'll show you, you little whore -”
Before he could do his worst, I was clasped to a familiar bosom, surrounded by the perfume I loved best in the world.
“Baby!” Juno croaked. “Rio fetched me - never again -”
I thought I'd been rescued. But a pair of handcuffs clicked behind us.
“Juno di Rocco, you are under arrest for unnatural relations with an artificial life form. You need not say anything …”
I don't remember much else. When I came round hours later, the room was wrecked. Furniture overturned, curtains shredded, the lamp shattered.
Juno was gone.
***
The next few days were hell. We took turns acting as lookout, but the rest of the time we kept to our rooms or the bar, drinking till the steam poured from our ears.
“It's all a mistake.” Zena tried to reassure us. “They’ll realise there's no case to answer and let her go.”
I wished I had her optimism. I knew in my clockwork I would never see her again; Captain Lucy would make her pay. Bibi and Chi wailed, asking what would become of us. It was the only home most of us had known. Without Juno the agreement was void. It was only a matter of time before the authorities turned us out into the streets - a dangerous place for bots.
After three sick, frightened days, somebody came clanging at the doorbell. We froze at the bar, stone cold sober.
“Lucy,” I said. My hand tightened on Juno’s razor.
“That bastard’s not getting in here!” Rio cried, and started making moves to barricade us in.
Zena rolled her eyes. “Don't be an idiot. They'll only blow us up or have us squelched, you know what they're like.”
Bibi started bawling again. Chi cuddled her and said everything would be alright. It was only then I noticed: Krystle and Tatiana had sneaked out, taking advantage of the chaos. What were they up to?
That same instant, the back door burst open. Two men - good looking in a shifty way - strutted into the bar. In arrogance and demeanour they were strikingly like Lucy, only on the other side of the law.
“Who the hell are you?” Zena was the first to recover.
“Never you mind,” one of them smirked. The taller one roared up the stairs, “Get a move on, sugar tits! We ain’t got all day.”
“Not long now,” we heard Krystle call. We could only sit and gawk as she paraded down the central flight, her entire wardrobe on her back. Furs, evening gowns, a tiara, necklaces. Tatiana came soon after, staggering under the weight of a gigantic sack.
“What's this?” Rio demanded.
“Krys and I aren't hanging around here.” It was the first time Tatiana hadn't said something that wasn't a snigger or an echo - everyone stared. “Juno’s is dead; we’ll be too if we stay. These gents -” one caressed her with a huge hairy paw - “have kindly offered us a home.”
Rio lost it then. Calling Krystle a traitor and a cheap little tart, saying he'd always known she was trash. He caught sight of Juno’s best candelabrum sticking out of Tatiana’s bag and tried to yank it out, only for the material to split and shower us with everything gold and silver they'd thought they could hock. Krystle slapped Tatiana, Tatiana started grizzling, Bibi ran around restoring the loot to its rightful place.
Chi laid a hand on Rio’s shoulder. I'd always thought she was silly and shallow, with that grating baby voice, but that day she showed a maturity the rest of us lacked. “Let them go. We don’t need them. They're only holding us back.”
Still clutching the candelabrum, he nodded. Krystle and Tatiana swept from the building with their johns, not giving us a second thought.
***
That evening Rio asked if we could talk in private. I let him into my room, reluctantly. I knew what was coming.
I told him to sit. Instead he paced, clearly unhappy about the task ahead. “Elle,” he said at last, “be honest. Are you and Madam Juno … involved?”
There was no point in denying it. “Yes,” I whispered.
He sat opposite me. “You're a good kid - I’d hate to see you hurt. You know she's not coming back?”
It was my worst fear, but spoken out loud like that, I fought it. “You can't say that. They’ll throw out Lucy’s case -”
“Who are they going to believe? A madam or a cop?” As I protested, “It doesn't matter he's bent. They’ll only see his badge.”
I broke down. “She's the best thing that's happened to me. I can't lose her.”
Artificials are programmed to fi
nd extremes of emotion distasteful; I could see I'd shocked him. Though he was hardly one to talk, the way he'd lost his shit with Krystle. But at the same time there was such a strange expression on his face, as though he'd seen this before.
“Do you remember Fred Willoughby?” he asked.
Privately I wondered what an old punter had to do with anything, but didn't say that. “Vaguely. What about him?”
“I loved him.” He held up his hand as though I’d interrupted, even though I hadn't. “At least - I thought I did. But none of it was real. He’d sleep with me, tell me I was beautiful. All the time he had a wife and kids. I even thought -” he was racked by sobs - “I could leave the business. We could make a go of it.”
I understood what he was trying to say, but refused to apply it to my situation. “That's different. Clients say anything when you're in bed. Juno and me -”
“Do you honestly think you’d’ve come out as a couple? That she'd let us know, the humans know?”
He was only saying what I'd always known, deep down. That didn't mean I wanted to hear it.
“Get lost, Rio.”
He nodded sadly and left.
***
That conversation did what everything else couldn't. It broke me.
I no longer cared what happened to me, to anyone. So when Lucy seized control of Juno’s a day later and installed one of his protégés as manager, I met it with total indifference.
Madam Felicia. Empty headed, simpering faux blonde - no prizes for guessing how she'd earned her position. Maybe that's why her mouth was such a funny shape.
“Things are going to be very different around here,” she proclaimed. It became her catchphrase - that and, “Madam Juno allowed you to grow sloppy. I run a much tighter ship.” She always overstressed the I, as though she was the Goddess herself.
Rio and I were forbidden to take same sex clients. “No unnatural behaviour in my establishment,” Madam Felicia sniffed. “Perverts can get their kicks elsewhere.”
Rio grew sulky and despondent, keeping to his suite. I gritted my teeth, treated my work as a chore to be endured. Though I couldn't help noticing the dregs wound up in my bed: the ones who stank, passed out drunk or plugged away for hours without getting anywhere. Of course Lucy was behind this, though he came nowhere near me himself.
When Robert showed himself into my room, he was just another client. His breath smelt like a mouldy porch, he fucked like he was unblocking the sink - nothing new. He was the last one of the day. I looked forward to the sweet oblivion of standby.
Instead he came back up, a kid given his heart’s desire. “Madam Felicia says you can come with me.”
I didn’t think twice. “Let’s go.”
Summer: An Unexpected Guest
The past week has been odd, even by our standards.
My owner has barely been in during the day. The holidays are over, he's returned to teach at the university. What a peculiar place it must be, that allows men like him to spout hot air and get paid for it. He’s written three books, prominently displayed on the bookcase. Looking from one dust jacket to the next, you see him transform from a callow youth into him.
In his absence I've made two discoveries: veebox and the garden.
For the longest time I thought the veebox was a queer glass cabinet and dusted it accordingly. It was only when Vivaan visited last that its true purpose was revealed. When he asked it to “Play number 8,” a pair of women in body armour appeared, and proceeded to pummel one another. My owner feigned insouciance, but even he was drinking that bitter brown juice and heckling before long. Since then it has been off. “It's a drug for the culturally illiterate,” he said, whatever that might mean.
Although I didn't seriously think it was an amphitheatre for tiny people, I was curious about how it worked. I waited two hours for him to leave in the morning - he's so disorganised, he always returns for his briefcase or tie. Once assured he wasn't coming back, I tiptoed towards the device. “On,” I whispered.
I thought it hadn't heard me, but it was only a time lag. Out jumped the images, so crisp and real I reached out to touch them. Though they jutted some two feet from the screen, it was only smoke and mirrors. To start with I called out numbers, marvelling at the changes of scene.
A swan weaving patterns on a lake. A game show where you plummeted into a pit of snakes if you gave the wrong answer. A nightmare carnival where people displayed their faulty enhancements. One woman had vast leathery wings sewn onto her body; another had clockwork grafted into her skin. “I see myself as a separate life form,” she boasted. The audience retched out of sight.
Whatever indignities these people had heaped upon them, it was nothing compared to the lot borne by robots. They were the punchline to every joke, the victim whenever they needed someone disposable. Although humans were shown as dependent on them, requiring their labour, they didn't like or trust them. They only needed a whisper of suspicion, a murmur of rumour, and they would be marched to the squelcher. A crude, ugly instrument, it crushed artificials in its cruel pincers.
I shivered at the last such broadcast. “Off,” I ordered - but the man’s face being ground into powder refused to leave my thoughts. Was that how the world worked, I wondered? Everybody found someone lesser they could pin their anger and hatred on? I pushed at the door to the garden, desperate to get out - and it opened.
I gaped stupidly. Normally the wolf locked every window and door before he left, and made sure I saw him doing it. “Can't have you wandering off,” he always says. Yet somehow this had been overlooked. I could go outside. I could feel the sun on my skin again.
You're probably wondering why I didn't escape. I'd be lying if I said I hadn't thought of it. But I had seen too much of my owner’s cleverness and malice; I couldn't see this as a happy accident. What if this was some kind of test? Could there be visicams outside, following my every move? Besides - if I ran away, where would I go?
Instead I found a pair of his old sandals and put them on over my slippers. (He insists I wear them at all times, “to muffle the noise”). Slithering and sliding about, I took a few tentative steps outside.
The garden, quite unexpectedly, was wonderful. The house is so blank, chilly and charmless, I’d never suspected it might have hidden treasures. It hasn't been tended for years, but neglect has turned it into a breathtaking wilderness. I sat in the shade of a tree that dripped with moss, watching the dragonflies dance over the emerald pond. I took off the cloth he insists I wear and let my hair fall to my shoulders. I felt myself again: Summer, not Audra. Before long I'd kicked off my shoes too.
I was watching a bee collect pollen, enjoying the sensation of bark between my fingers and toes, when for some reason I glanced to my left. A woman was standing at an upstairs window, peeking between a pair of gaudy gold curtains. She was elderly, but quick and shrewd. She looked horrified.
Was it my skirt hitched above my knees? My hair on show? I scrambled for the slippers, the sandals, and forced them onto my feet. In six clumsy steps I'd crossed the grass and stumbled back into the house.
I pulled the door to, wiped any dirt away. I didn't want to leave an evidence trail of my adventure. I wanted something that only belonged to me.
***
Around the same time I explored the garden, the wolf found a hobby of his own.
I don't take much notice of his movements at night. This is my time, why waste it on thoughts of him? He does nothing remarkable: he sits up late marking students’ work, snorting to himself, or else nurses a drink and a grudge.
This time last week, it was different. He asked me to press his one good suit, then dragged it on over his unwashed body and matted hair. Intrigued in spite of myself, I watched the long shadow saunter across the lawn. Normally you could set your watch by him. Why was he being spontaneous now?
He returned a few hours later, missing the doormat and chuckling. This in itself is new - I don't think I've heard him laugh, unless it's at comments he finds asin
ine (his word, not mine). “Ssh!” he exclaimed. “Mustn't disturb anyone.”
Incredibly, a woman's voice. “Have you got a harem up there?”
The voice was husky, amused - a woman's voice, whereas mine is only a girl’s. There was something rich and brassy about it. The wolf laughed - again! - and gave her what sounded like a loud, messy kiss. I never knew kisses could echo before.
“No one important,” he said.
I lay in my bed, perfectly still, while my owner pulled his guest upstairs and into his bedroom. Though I couldn't hear her at all, he moaned, grunted and groaned - like the foxes we used to hear in the woods at night. “Suck my cock, you beautiful bitch!” he cried.