by Owen Stanley
This was made from a traditional recipe inherited from the local monks before Henry VIII destroyed their abbey nearby, and was notable for producing some very unmonkish behaviour. The label of Swine Snout depicted a farmyard dominated by a large manure pile, in which assorted pigs were busily rooting, and Smoking Dog was advertised by a hairy monster with very large teeth smoking a pipe. Wife Beater is perhaps best left undescribed. As he surveyed these relics of the Dark Ages, Harry groaned inwardly. Was an ice-cold Budweiser really too much for a civilised man to expect in a presumably industrialised nation?
Shirley informed Ken that the American gentleman was asking about Budweiser. Ken scratched his head and said he thought he had seen a can somewhere only recently.
“I know you was rummaging around in your shed looking for rat poison the other day,” said Shirley. “Could it have been there?”
Ken went off to look and came back with a filthy old can that had been put up on a shelf with the weedkiller and lawn fertiliser in the garden shed long ago. Ken washed it off under the tap in the bar.
“Not in a very good state, I’m afraid. Must’ve been there for years, ever since Don used to run this place. We had some Americans stationed at the airfield back then. But you’re welcome to it. Glad it’s found an ’ome at last,” pouring it into a glass. “We won’t charge you for that. On the ’ouse.”
Harry pretended to be grateful for the warm and rather odd-tasting relic of the Budweiser brewery and thought that Swine Snout might have been preferable. A local inhabitant, dressed in what looked like greased sacking, had just brought his old, wet, and shaggy dog in with him, which was now sitting under the table. Harry noticed the brown stains on the grubby carpet and wondered if they had any connection with the rather unpleasant odour that seemed to be coming from the direction of the dog.
Charles asked Harry what he would like for lunch, and Ken passed them the menu, a sheet of greasy plastic covering a crudely typed list of local delicacies. At the top of the list were pigs’ trotters and then tripe and onions, blackbird pie, jellied eels, boiled calf’s head, deep-fried pigs’ ears, brains in white sauce, ox tail fritters, and bull’s testicle soup as the pièce-de-résistance. Everything, apparently, came with chips and gravy, except the bull’s testicle soup which had mushy peas as a side order.
Shuddering, Harry asked what tripe might be.
“Ah, that’s real delicious,” said Shirley, “a nice tender piece of sheep’s stomach—more flavour than cow’s stomach—but the pigs’ ears are very tasty as well.”
Despair seized him, and for a moment he actually found himself wishing for a McDonald’s. But then, like an island of sanity in a sea of madness, Harry suddenly noticed pork pie at the bottom of the menu and said he would really like some of that.
“A very good choice,” said Ken. “That’ll be old Percy. We only slaughtered’n t’other day. If you’d’a been ’ere then, you’d’ve ’eard’n squealin’. Summat terribul t’were. Still, ’e makes a right tasty pie, no mistake about that.”
Good God, was there no end to these rural horrors, thought Harry.
“’ave some pickled walnuts. Go real well with pork pie,” added Ken, handing him a bowl of strange objects that reminded Harry of old brains floating in the dark brown water of a peat bog.
The big oak door of the bar squeaked open again, and no less a figure than Adge Gumble came in for his usual lunch of pig’s trotters and a pint of Old Stinker. He was stout and red faced, with mutton-chop whiskers, and he always wore a flat black engine-man’s cap and an ancient Barbour jacket. He’d worked up quite a thirst that morning, firing up his Fowler steam ploughing engine for the first time since it’d had its boiler inspection, and had come in for a bite of lunch while it was getting steam up.
Fortescue introduced Adge to Harry, who asked him what a Fowler steam ploughing engine might be. Adge was delighted to meet anyone who was even remotely interested in steam, and an American to boot, and while Harry tucked into his pork pie, which was actually very good, Adge explained that a steam ploughing engine was a revolutionary agricultural invention, and if Mr. Hockenheimer could spare a few minutes after lunch, he’d be glad to show it to him. Strange, thought Harry, my cousin farms sweet corn in Idaho, and I’ve stayed with him a few times, but I’ve never heard of any such thing. Is this some new British invention? He asked Adge, who swiftly set him straight.
“Well, it’s certainly British, but I can’t say it’s exactly new. In fact, they really started getting pop’lar after about 1850 and died out in the 1930s. It was the road tax what killed ’em.”
His glass was empty, and Harry asked if he would like another. “That’s very kind, sir. I won’t say no.” Harry bought him one and decided that having a half pint himself probably wouldn’t kill him either.
While he carefully sampled his Old Stinker, Adge rhapsodised about the magic of steam, the mystical perfume of sulphur and hot oil, the subtle challenges of correct firing, the lamentable qualities of modern coal, and a dozen other obsessions of a true steam fanatic. When Harry had drunk some more of his beer he decided that while Old Stinker smelt like water that had soaked out of an old door mat, it actually tasted rather good, like those cheeses that stank of unwashed feet, but went surprisingly well with crackers.
After lunch, as the three men wandered over to have a look at the Fowler, it turned out that Adge’s missus was a member of the Knit and Chat group. Harry took the opportunity to explain that he didn’t intend to disturb anyone, except, of course, for the drag racers who would have to go. “Good thing too,” said Adge. “Bloody ’orrible racket every weekend.” He just wanted a quiet little factory to develop some special designs for prosthetic limbs for military veterans, and he was working in England because he didn’t want his rivals in California to steal his latest developments.
“Very wise, sir, very wise. But you want to watch out for them Druids as well.”
“Druids?” Harry fairly shrieked.
“That’s right. Bloody loonies from over the Wiltshire border couple o’ miles away. It’s Stonehenge that sends ’em round the twist. Always dressin’ up in bedsheets with flowers in their ’air or dancin’ around bollock naked from what I’ve ’eard tell. And don’t you leave any arms and legs or other bits and pieces lyin’ around whatever you do, else they’ll be makin’ off with ’em for their black magic and the rest of their ungodly nonsense.”
Harry’s mind reeled, but his lurid fears of human sacrifice and burning wicker soon vanished before the sight of the Fowler.
They had reached the great ploughing engine, blowing off a little steam from the safety valve, a thin drift of smoke from its stately chimney, and shimmering with the heat. Harry had never seen anything like it and, despite himself, was impressed by the brutal sense of power that it radiated.
“That’s really a fantastic machine. Just incredible,” he said, his engineering spirits thoroughly aroused. Adge beamed.
“But what’s that big cable drum underneath,” he asked.
“Ah well,” said Adge, “when they was bein’ used for ploughin’, they ’ad two of these ’ere engines, one each side of a field, see, and they’d wind a big plough from side to side by a cable that went round they drums.”
“So one engine by itself is useless,” said Harry, extremely puzzled as to why you would want an engine that didn’t actually do anything.
“I wouldn’t say useless,” Adge replied. “She still goes a treat, and that’s the real thing. I’ll show you.” He climbed up onto the footplate and pulled some levers to set the great machine in motion, hissing and clanking, and waved at them as he drove off, lumbering majestically across the yard back to his workshop.
“He’s quite a character,” said Fortescue.
“I hope I didn’t hurt his feelings by saying it was useless,” said Harry.
“Oh, no, he could see you were really impressed by his machine. You’ve got a friend for life there.”
They all drove back to Forte
scue’s office in the big town of Swineborough, some miles away, to settle the details and to approve the paperwork before it was faxed up to the lawyers in London to be finalised and signed. By the time they had finished ironing out the particulars, it was getting late, and they had to decide where to spend the night. Charles suggested one or two local hotels, but Harry had decided that the sort of accommodation he was likely to find in Swineborough would be only slightly less squalid than the Drunken Badger. So he asked Charles if he could drive them back to the airfield instead.”
As they made their way out of the town Harry expressed his amazement at Charles’s skill in navigating through the tangle of drab streets that all looked alike, and the apparently endless series of roundabouts. “Yes, they can be quite challenging, especially as a lot of the signs are missing or pointing the wrong way. Some visitors get lost for hours, you know, going round and round in circles, and have to be rescued by the emergency services. Quite hysterical in some cases, crying and dehydrated.” Eventually, however, they were free from Swineborough’s charms and arrived safely back at the airfield, from where they flew to London City Airport and spent the night at the Ritz.”
The lawyers handling the sale had their offices in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where Harry and Jerry were able to quickly conclude everything the next morning, so quickly that they managed to arrive back in California late that night.
Harry was well satisfied with the way things had gone in England and that he now had a secure and private base for his project. Lulu-Belle did hint that she would rather like to fly over with him the next time and at least have a look around, but the prospect of Lulu-Belle having lunch at the Drunken Badger didn’t really bear thinking about, nor did it seem very likely that she would find many kindred spirits among the inhabitants of Tussock’s Bottom, even among the Knit and Chat Group, so he painted a very discouraging and dreary picture of life at his new acquisition.”
Fortunately, she and her girlfriends had found some really nice little holidays courtesy of the tour companies, including some skiing in Tibet, where the Chinese had just opened a very chic and exclusive international resort, and then there were all the charity balls and lunches which she really had to organize herself, as no one else seemed up to doing it. So she wasn’t too broken-hearted when he told her that he had to go back to England with Jerry to get his project moving, and anyway, he promised to fly back as often as possible, which was quite easy with the Challenger 350.
Chapter III
As soon as Harry got back to England, he first spent some time setting up his apartment precisely the way he wanted. Although he could have afforded butlers, valets, cooks, grooms, coachmen, and even footmen, whatever they were, he had been fascinated for some time by the whole idea of the Smart Home and the Internet of Things. His dear Lulu-Belle was rather old fashioned in that respect and liked her chefs and maids and gardeners, but now that he had his own apartment, he decided that he was going to seize the opportunity to install all the latest gadgets and computer systems to run his life in the most technologically advanced manner possible without any human assistance. While the team from a leading Californian firm finished installing all the new equipment in his apartment and the Home Sweet Home computer system to run it, he slept in his office, which Jerry had already had equipped with all the furniture, computers, and telecommunications they would need.
After these essential preliminaries had been settled, the next item of business was a meeting at Tussock’s Bottom with Millennium Robotics Plc to hammer out the basic specifications for his robot. It was a highly innovative company that served the European industrial and domestic markets, and its CEO was a wiry little Irishman named Bill Grogan, who drove up one bright morning in his Tesla Electric SUV. Harry lost no time in sketching out his project.
“I want to put on the market a robot that’s kind of a super Personal Assistant, that can give expert and unprejudiced advice on a whole range of business issues. He needs to be far more than just a dumb secretary arranging meetings and making phone calls. Kind of ‘Own your own superman’. But he’ll have to look like a normal human to be attractive to customers, as an aide they would want to have around in the office. It’s no use just having a computer on wheels, with flashing lights that plugs itself into the mains.”
“So, do you think it’s possible to come up with something along those lines?”
Bill thought for a few minutes and then said, “Are you sure you’re not being a bit too conservative, closing down some viable options before you’ve explored them? There’s a lot to be said for six legs, for example. They give a stable platform for a number of functions that are hard to mount on only two legs. Or are you sure you don’t want him to have 360° vision. I can easily give him a rotating head.”
“And probably eight eyes and some antennas as well, but that’s not very good for customer confidence, Bill. I don’t reckon they’re going to feel too happy with The Giant Insect from Outer Space sitting next to them in the office. Let’s just have something normal and comforting.”
Normal and comforting were not what Bill had been hoping for. He was a robot enthusiast, and one of his hobbies was building entries for Robot Wars, for which he had designed some champions, like Vlad the Impaler, Vesuvius (disqualified on appeal for an illegal military-grade flamethrower), and Black Death, and he had hoped that this commission might provide him with an opportunity to design something even more impressive. So, rather sadly, he bowed to commercial reality.
“Okay, I guess you know your own business best, Harry. Just trying to give you a few ideas. But this is your show. What exactly would you like?”
Harry gave him the precise specifications of a man looking roughly like himself, just a little shorter, more muscular, trimmer around the waist, and definitely younger, around twenty-five. But, he added, the robot needed to be able to simulate the activities of eating and drinking so that he could blend in naturally with everyday social situations.
“I can actually do most of that, except the weight,” said Bill. “180 pounds isn’t enough, though. It’ll probably work out closer to 240. Let me explain how we can do this. The arms and legs aren’t a problem. With all the advances in prosthetics that have taken place thanks to your soldiers getting their limbs blown off in Iraq and wherever, we can more or less buy them off the shelf. Just a little tweaking here and there should do the trick. The chest and abdomen will be a flexible steel container. It’s a great help that we can clear out a whole bunch of guts dealing with blood flow, like heart, lungs, liver, and kidneys, which won’t be needed, plus all the digestive gubbins. I hope you don’t want him to breathe, by the way.”
Harry paused and considered the notion, then shook his head.
“If you want him to simulate eating and drinking though, he’ll need a pressurised tank to store the material until it can be discharged at a convenient time and place. A valve in the anal cavity would be the most sensible thing for evacuations; Mother Nature usually knows best.”
“I should have mentioned that for social reasons he’ll have to pass the urinal test. When he’s at a conference he’ll need to be able to go to the bathroom with the other guys.”
“That’ll complicate things,” said Bill. “It’ll need a two-stage retention tank to filter out the liquid as well as some kind of a dick, of course. But we can do it. Anyhow, we can put all that in the lower abdomen. Since we don’t need all those miles of stomach, intestines, and bowels and all the rest of the plumbing, we’ll still have plenty of room in there for the power and drive system.”
“What’s that going to be?”
“I’m thinking a basic combination of electricity and hydraulics. The best type of power source for your project is our latest hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell, probably of the polymer electrolyte membrane type, which will produce plenty of electricity—up to 10 kilowatts—and that’ll power the motors driving the hydraulics. Some of the mechanics are a little complicated, but we’ve just finished building a surgical ar
m for doing retinal surgery, so we should have no problems with the arms and legs for your fellah. Actually, we can use automobile power-steering fluid for the hydraulics, so we can save you a few pennies on that.”
“Thanks a lot. But this hydrogen-oxygen cell sounds kind of scary.”
“Safest technology around. The robot takes the oxygen from the air and just needs a top-up of the hydrogen tank every two or three days, depending on the workload. We could fix a small inlet nozzle for the hydrogen behind one of his ears. Easily covered by the hair.”
“Talking about the ears, what about the head?”
“That’ll be a titanium case for the audio-visual kit, which is more compact than you’d imagine. By the way, do you want taste and smell as well?”
“Didn’t know you could do that!”
“We can give you an electronic nose that identifies the specific components of an odour and analyzes its chemical makeup to identify it. Much more sensitive than a human nose and works with taste as well.”