The Ice People

by Maggie Gee

Success beyond my wildest dreams.

  For a week or two, we were adoptive parents, enchanted to meet the new member of the family.

  7

  And then the whole of Euro went Dove mad. They were selling a thousand a day, then two thousand, then the figures began to go through the roof and the manufacturers couldn’t keep up. The boys at the Scientists voted that the club should buy a fleet of halfadozen for us to play with.

  There was a honeymoon of many months. The Doves replaced the refreezing of the icecaps as the chief topic of conversation on trains, in queues at the megamarts, on the net … They were more popular than Twyla Anders, the most popular child star the world had ever known, as the screens announced when for the first time the Doves’ share of chat on the global chatnet exceeded Twyla’s, then doubled it.

  The Doves were partly inspired by twentiethcentury cartoon figures, Disney characters like Mickey Mouse, with their bigheaded, knowing, childlike charm, and now the process started to work in reverse, as the Doves inspired comic strips, then whole comics, then hundreds of films starring the Doves, and every child (not my poor Luke – Sarah objected to screen spinoffs) had Dove socks, teeshirts, rulers, pens, zedbands, micros, pollution masks.

  Speaking as a techie, I was full of admiration for the basic Dove design. Its feet could expand to twice their size when it was cleaning or refuelling. It cleaned ferociously, though slowly, because of the time it took to get its feet across a floor of any size. It dusted with its velvety armpads, using sensors to stop it sweeping things to the ground. If it bumped into walls or furniture, it stopped and restarted itself at a tangent. It ‘spoke’, a selection of halfadozen messages that were its least sophisticated feature, saying ‘Hallo’ whenever it came within a metre of a living creature, but unable to distinguish between humans and cats (our snobbish old Persians soon got over their fear and began to ignore it, a little uneasily).

  Refuelling was the simplest and most brilliant touch of all. The Doves could run on any organic matter. In a world that was wild about recycling, the Doves arrived like minimessiahs. RefuelRecycle: R and R. All you had to do was put your rubbish on the plastic feeding mat that came with the Dove, perch the machine on the top of the mound, and with a slurping, sucking sound that was unnervingly like a pet eating, the pile of mess began to disappear, and the Dove slowly settled towards the floor, eyes locked on its food, until it sat satisfied flat upon the floor. The mat was usually left spotlessly clean. As a final touch, the machine would say ‘Thank you’. Luke loved it when our Dove did that, since he was always being nagged by us to say thank you. But I would find myself thanking it. ‘Thank you,’ I would murmur gratefully. It saved me from emptying rubbish bins.

  That first model Dove needed a lot of instructions, unlike later models, that became selforganising, ‘selfmotivating’, as the admen said. We rather liked following ours around – it was fun adjusting the controls, thinking of new tasks for it to do, enjoying our power and its obedience, as we no longer could with servants or children.

  The designers had been cleverer than they knew when they modelled their protégés on humans.

  For what was our world short of? Babies. The Doves’ inventors were our storks. Looking back, those first models soon seemed crude, quite limited in their abilities, but they fulfilled an essential need, for a small new being to enter our life. Instead of refining the dusting sensors, the inventors should have made them say ‘I love you’.

  (As they quickly realised. Later models did.)

  I think I was a little crazy, at the time. I didn’t know where I was with Sarah. She was back, but receiving a lot of phone calls from people whose voices I didn’t know. I had changed; I no longer felt able to ignore it. I was fiercely suspicious of frequent callers or anyone whose calls she took into another room.

  There were women who didn’t sound friendly to me – not that many women did sound friendly, in those days, but these sounded more unfriendly than usual, asking where Sarah was as if I had abducted her. One regular caller finally admitted that her name was ‘Juno’, which I heard as ‘Jeanie’.

  ‘I’ll try to tell her you called, Jeanie.’ I hoped that ‘try’ sounded suitably careless.

  ‘Juno, Juno,’ she shouted gruffly.

  ‘Oh yes, the goddess.’ Perhaps I sneered. Well, perhaps I allowed myself the ghost of a sneer, but that didn’t justify her telling Sarah later that I had been ‘abominably rude’ to her.

  It appeared that Luke quite liked this creature. If his mother was out and he got to the phone before I did, he’d talk to Juno for hours. Sometimes he seemed to be singing to her. When I asked him who she was, he said ‘Mummy’s friend.’ Which surely gave me a legitimate excuse, as a caring parent, to question Sarah.

  I did so one weekend, at breakfast, while Luke still slept in his room next door.

  Sarah prevaricated. I pressed a little. ‘She’s not some guilty secret, is she?’ That led her to inform me stiffly that Juno was the leader of the ‘Children’s Commune’ where she and Luke had been living last year. ‘Well, one of the leaders.’

  ‘Who are the other ones?’

  ‘Well … Me.’

  This was something of a revelation. ‘You never did say where you two went. I thought you were with some bloody lover!’ I found I was shouting with relief, but she looked at me and didn’t comment. ‘What’s a Children’s Commune, for godsake? It sounds like something from the last century.’

  ‘It means what it says. You know, a place for children. A place that’s run for the children who share it. That thinks kids are important. More important than anything else in the world …’ She was going into that overemphatic, intense mode that meant bad faith, or politics.

  ‘Yeah, well,’ I said. ‘We all think that. Even men think that. Well, I do anyway. So can I join this commune?’ I knew perfectly well what the answer would be.

  ‘I don’t make the rules,’ said Sarah. She looked uneasy; she was circling her head as if an ant were under her ear.

  ‘Thought you said you were one of the leaders? Never mind. But they let boys in. Right? Or wrong?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Sarah. She was getting annoyed. ‘So what happens when the boys turn into men? They will do, you know. I’m a scientist.’ (And I suddenly thought of the club, as I sneered, as I heard my smug, unhappy voice sneering. I remembered the Scientists, and Paul, and my secrets, and I thought, is this what we’re coming to? Is this the future for men and women? Are we going to live apart for ever, in endless, wanking loneliness?

  Surely not, because I loved her. And I stopped sneering, and tried to be nice.) ‘Sarah,’ I said, ‘don’t go back there, please. I want Luke to live with men and women. I want him to know who his father is. How is he going to grow up into a man if he doesn’t see what men are like?’

  I could see that she halfagreed with me, but she didn’t want to admit to it. ‘I know the arguments,’ she said. ‘You’re a pretty good father, as they go. I don’t want to take that away from you. It’s natural that men don’t want to lose their children.’ (But she said it as though it were inevitable; as if it were natural that the women should steal them.) ‘In any case, it’s more or less in the past. Juno and I – well –’ She blushed. She looked prettier, younger when she blushed. ‘We had major policy disagreements. She’s a lot more extreme than me.’

  She wanted me to feel she was reasonable, that she was still basically on my side, because, I saw later, she needed to stay until she was finally ready to leave.

  No, that’s not fair, that can’t be true. I think she really was divided. I think she did like our little family, our little life, our private life, our life with the son we both adored. I think she found it very hard to decide. And perhaps my stupidity decided her, later.

  ‘Juno has, um, a very stern voice,’ I said, and was horribly aware I sounded prurient. I tried to erase a mental picture of a mountainous dyke in chains and leather. I wanted to laugh, but I tried again. ‘I mean, are you sure she’s go
od for Luke? He talks to her a lot on the phone.’

  ‘She has a beautiful voice,’ said Sarah, blushing again. ‘If you heard her sing … it’s an incredible contralto. It’s Juno who’s been training Luke.’

  ‘I didn’t know anyone was training Luke – except his Learning Centre, I mean. They seemed happy with him. Does he need more training?’

  Since those early days of singing in his cot before he got up, Luke had always had an exquisite voice. We were accustomed to his perfect pitch and memory for any tune he heard. These days he liked to sing in our bathroom where the echo magnified his liquid soprano.

  ‘Luke has a gift,’ she explained, too slowly, as if it all had to be spelled out to me. ‘The Commune thinks gifts should be developed.’

  It was too priggish for me to endure. ‘A commune can’t think. Only people think.’

  ‘The Dove can think,’ said Luke, who had wandered in silently from his bedroom. His eyes were apprehensive. ‘I think it thinks. Does it think, Mummy? By the way. Juno phoned. She wants us to visit.’

  We had been much more careful about our quarrels since the terrible incident with Luke and the window. Sarah and I adjusted our faces. It was Saturday; we had a whole day to get through. Luke had begged us to take him on a picnic.

  ‘Does the Dove think?’ Luke continued, interested.

  ‘Yes–’ I said.

  ‘No–’ said Sarah.

  ‘– depending what you mean by thinking,’ I finished.

  ‘– because it’s artificial, not natural,’ said Sarah.

  He looked despairingly from one to another. ‘Can we take our Dove on the picnic?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ said Sarah.

  ‘Of course,’ I smiled.

  With Luke’s casting vote, we took our Dove on the picnic, perched on the back seat like a squat second child. Luke even put its seat belt on. How fully we acted our psychodramas out!

  Our mood shifted when we left the city, only three hours’ drive from Melville Road. It was always a glory, slipping out at last from the covered flyway just south of Duxford and zooming down over the ancient airfield with its twentiethcentury aircraft moored like ships. The traffic speeded up at the last moment, eager to escape the city and its tunnels, zooming through into blue air and light.

  That was a lovely day, or most of it was, though it held in its hand the seed of the future. Grass seed, actually. The unexpected.

  ‘We look mad with this thing,’ Sarah giggled, as we struggled through the little hawthorn wood with our picnic things and the heavy Dove. Luke had sworn he would carry the Dove if we brought it, but got tired within a few steps of the car, and we were always wary of tiring him in case it brought his asthma on. So I was carrying the Dove, of course. Men were still the people who carried things, and mended them dutifully when they got broken. I wondered if Juno were particularly strong, and tried not to think if she were good with her hands, that little blush, Sarah’s sudden prettiness … The Dove had never seemed heavy before, but I’d only carried it short distances.

  She’d made a lovely picnic, just like the old days, hollowedout baguettes with egg and fishlax, stuffed okra, crystallised grapes, mango juicecubes and breadfruit cookies. Beyond the wood was a little field, one corner of it heavily shaded, the grass, remarkably, almost green, and when we got there we saw it was because there was water running under the hollies.

  ‘Rivers are coming back’, I said, smiling at Sarah, who smiled in return. ‘The water table might soon be back to normal. Really, you know, it’s a miracle.’

  ‘It’s almost chilly in this shade,’ she said, ‘but no, this is perfect, I’m not complaining. It’s such a luxury to feel cool.’ I put down the Dove with a sigh of relief. Luke ran off and explored the stream, and his singing mingled with the sound of the water, a wonderful sound, a weekend sound, while we bustled about in the picnic basket, clattering glasses and cutlery, the noise of a happy family in the storybooks I had read as a child.

  The Dove sat silent, almost forgotten. Sarah poured us both a glass of wine from the wine chiller. We chinked glasses, briefly, looked at each other. Luke’s voice wove on, silvery, summery. ‘Perhaps it will all be all right,’ I said. ‘You know. Perhaps – everything’s turned a corner. Maybe the earth is healing itself.’ I wasn’t just talking about our planet.

  ‘I hope so,’ she said, and her voice was warm, but her face was a blank against the yellow daze of the sunny field behind her head.

  ‘For Luke’s sake, too,’ I continued, drinking deeply. The wine had never tasted so good. ‘He’s only happy when we’re happy.’

  At that moment he came back, looking unusually boyish with mud on his knees and his shorts half soaked. ‘You’re wet,’ said Sarah with the sharp anxiety she justified as maternal love.

  ‘It’s a proper river, not a stream,’ he said. ‘I climbed out along a branch. It snapped.’

  ‘He’s all right,’ I said. ‘He’s having fun.’

  ‘His chest,’ she began, then saw me frown, and tried to relax, and almost managed it.

  ‘Aren’t you going to switch our Dove on?’ asked Luke.

  ‘Actually I did,’ said Sarah. ‘I’ve just remembered, it didn’t come on.’

  ‘It’s out of fuel, then,’ said Luke. ‘Bother. I wanted to play with it.’

  ‘Wait till after lunch,’ I suggested. ‘It could feed on our leftovers, surely.’

  ‘You didn’t bring the feeding mat,’ said Sarah, though it was she who packed the car. Those little unfairnesses you never forget …

  ‘Probably not essential,’ I said.

  ‘After lunch’ wasn’t soon enough for Luke. ‘I want it now. You promised,’ he said. ‘You could give it some of our sandwiches.’

  ‘You’ll just have to wait,’ I told him.

  ‘No.’ Like his mother, he was obstinate. ‘It isn’t fair. I hate you, Dad.’ He started tugging at the Dove. I went on distributing stuffed okra, bent over the basket, swatting at a fly.

  Suddenly I heard a familiar sound, the faint whirring and whooshing of our new pet. Turning, I saw Luke and Sarah gazing at the Dove in astonishment. It was squatting on the grass, and the sound had shifted to the gentle slurping it made when feeding.

  ‘I put it on ‘‘RefuelRecycle’’, said Luke. ‘It’s doing it. It’s feeding off the grass.’

  His face was triumphant, but Sarah’s was uneasy. ‘I don’t think you should do that, should you? Go on, switch it off. I mean, it’s not our grass.’ She appealed to me. ‘Saul, it doesn’t feel right.’

  ‘I don’t see what harm it can do,’ I said, though I was shaken, I didn’t know why. The Dove powered up in not much longer than it would have taken if we were at home. It tried to stumble up towards the sunlight, but fell on the uneven ground. Luke righted it, and it said, ‘Thank you.’ Outside in the open, it looked even more real. I made Luke switch it off until he’d eaten his lunch, which he did at a thousand kilometres per hour. Then he dragged the Dove over towards the river. It looked like a mutant, lurching child.

  ‘Be careful,’ I told him. ‘It’s valuable.’ Of course it was probably already obsolete, succeeded by a host of more sophisticated models.

  Sarah and I sat and looked in silence at the oval of bare ground where the Dove had been. The earth looked brown, and abraded, without a blade of grass. I had never realised their power before. ‘Goodgod, Saul,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know they could do that. I thought they only ate the things we gave them.’

  ‘I don’t think I ever thought about it. Doesn’t mention it, in the instructions.’

  ‘Maybe no one knows.’ Sarah said, slowly. ‘I mean … it’s not dangerous, is it? We had to switch it on before it could do it …’

  I tried to comfort her. She was frightened. It was my fault for saying Luke could bring the thing along. I think I managed to reassure her; but why did I feel so shaken myself?

  There was a sudden terrible cry from the river away through the trees, then a sound of crac
king branches and a mighty splash, and we were both running, tearing our skin on the brambles as we ran to save Luke. The Dove had killed him, I knew, in that moment –

  But Luke was standing on the edge of the river, up to his thighs in brown water, wailing. It was the Dove that had fallen in. ‘I was playing,’ he sobbed. ‘I was playing … I didn’t mean to hurt it, Mum. I was pretending we were boys, fighting.’

  While half of me was thinking of retrieving the robot, realising it would be completely wrecked, the other part was thinking, he was fighting with his brother, which he’d never done. And needed to do.

  ‘Fighting is naughty,’ said Sarah fiercely, torn between fury and relief. ‘What did we teach you boys, in the Communes? And robots are bloody expensive, by the way. Are you all right? Come out of that water.’

  I rescued the thing, to stop Luke crying, but the muddy water ruined it, and not long after we smuggled it away to the garbage hills, though I told Luke we’d buried it. I think he knew the truth, because he never asked where.

  That night in bed, Sarah came to my arms. ‘You feel so warm and nice,’ she said. ‘I’m beginning to appreciate warmth again.’ She ran her hands over my body. ‘Apparently the new model Doves feel warm … That was so creepy, when it ate the grass. I suddenly thought, they could do without us. I know it’s not true, but it really scared me. Do you know, I think I’m glad the bloody thing drowned.’

  ‘Well, you can’t really say it drowned,’ I said.

  ‘Let’s not get another one.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, for she was stroking my belly, her soft fingers reaching down for my penis, and then it was hard in her small cool hand, and all we needed was each other –

  After she had finished, I lay awake, and I found myself thinking of the new models. They had strokeyfeely panels. They could sort and carry. Even more intriguing were reports I had read about research in progress on selfreplication. Doves that could reproduce themselves …

  In which case, they’d be doing better than us.