Love and Robotics

by Eyre, Rachael

“It’s a function at the Palace,” Alfred cried. “Black tie. That makes you look like a peacock.”

  Josh wished he could take them all home, but where would they go? The problem increased tenfold when Gwyn asked, “What are you wearing, Grizzly?”

  “I’ll scrape the moths off something.”

  “If you think I’m letting my favourite uncle go around like a rag and bone man -”

  “I’m your only uncle.”

  “All the more reason not to show me up. We’ll make you look eligible -”

  “For the love of Thea, no matchmaking! Remember when -”

  They remembered Josh and stopped. He wondered what sort of woman would go on a date with Alfred. He tried to picture him swapping small talk in a restaurant but it refused to fit.

  Gwyn snatched up three suits she thought might do. Three became five, then seven. Alfred looked wrong in everything. It wasn’t his height; lots of tall men can carry off evening wear. It wasn’t his build, though pouring broad shoulders and muscle into some outfits can be tricky. It was simply, like candlelit dinners with imaginary women, it didn’t sit with who he was. He looked as though somebody had stuffed a tiger into a suit for a joke.

  “I look like a rock ape. Don’t I, Josh?”

  “Well -” He didn’t want to hurt Alfred’s feelings, but couldn’t lie either.

  “Isn’t it punishment enough to go without looking like a ninny?”

  “Don’t you want to?”

  “I must’ve been to five zillion of these things. They’re abysmal. But it’s your big night and I promised.”

  Josh chose the twentieth suit in the end. Light grey, smart cut, jazzed up with a scarlet tie and pearl cuff links.

  “You look smashing,” Gwyn exclaimed. “Doesn’t he?”

  “Yes, he does.” Alfred looked at him sideways. “Hard part over. Let’s play.”

  Josh would marvel later there had been a time he hadn’t gazed across the Lux skyline, ridden down the Royal Mile or toured the museums. A time when he was an unknown robot, allowed under sufferance.

  Alfred explained everything he saw. He set up an account for Josh with the city library, took him to see the Forum, showed him the harbour and the Hanging Market. They strolled through the park and added their likenesses to the Wall. When somebody picked Josh’s pocket under the table in a cafe, Alfred brought his foot down on his hand. “When I look again, I want you to be gone,” he said. The thief didn’t need to be told twice.

  Josh’s favourite place was the Butterfly House. A dome with a tropical climate, you passed through dwarf jungles to discover butterflies of every colour. He loved their names: Scarlet Witch, Death’s Head, Tiger Eyes. They traced arcs and whorls, landed on their shoulders. “If you listen hard you can hear them,” Alfred said.

  They sounded like a thousand tiny hearts. “They beat different rhythms,” Josh said.

  “Do they?” Alfred tilted his head. “Yes! Where the Swans’ Flight is, there’s a tattoo like this.” He beat time on his thigh. “While the Dragon Ladies are more -” he clicked his tongue. He took up one noise, Josh another. Before long they had a harmony.

  “Can’t hear a thing,” Gwyn said. A new sound drifted towards them, rich and copper bottomed. “The Temple bells,” she said. “It’s eighteen thirty.”

  “Have to make tracks,” Alfred muttered.

  They pulled up outside CER at ten to nineteen. A familiar figure was standing at Josh’s window.

  “Your praying mantis isn’t a happy bunny,” Alfred said.

  “You won’t be in trouble, will you?” Gwyn asked.

  At the same time, diffidently, “If you find yourself at a loose end -”

  “I’d love to,” Josh said.

  Visits

  Alfred had always found mornings trying. He’d wake, usually with a hangover, and wait for the room to swim into focus. He’d drag on a robe, stare over the park, wipe the crumbs from his eyes. Now he woke with a snap. He showered, dressed with care, paid his tasks little mind. His thoughts were with the carriage clock, the front door, the gravel path. Where Gwyn waited in gloves and tails, calling, “Afternoon, Josh!”

  He’d cross the chequered floor. Josh would be examining some ornament or picture, stepping back when he saw him. “Hello!”

  “What’s new?”

  “We’ve started rehearsing. Dr Sugar will talk; I’ve got to run through some business. CER’ll be open for the day, I’ll be launched -”

  “And I’ll do my speech.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “I said I would, didn’t I?”

  The thought of six hundred pairs of eyes turned Alfred’s stomach to water. He had a recurring nightmare of being pelted with rotten vegetables.

  “They can’t do that,” Nanny pointed out. “Not at the Palace.”

  “What if they boo?”

  “So? Doesn’t hurt anyone.”

  Josh touched his arm. “Dr Ozols says that if you run out of things to say, talk about your dog.”

  “I don’t have a dog.”

  “Talk about Puss, then.”

  They sat in the drawing room, surrounded by an ocean of screwed up paper. Alfred would flick a ball across the floor only for Puss return it. “My mind’s gone blank,” he grumbled.

  “How do you come up with your columns?”

  “I don’t deliver them to a room of strangers.”

  Nanny bounced in with a tray of hot chocolate. “Hello, my little wordsmiths! How’s the speech goin’?”

  “It’s not,” Alfred mumbled.

  “We’re doing our best,” Josh said.

  “My singin’ teacher used to say that if you had stage fright, you should picture the room naked,” Nanny went on.

  “Uh, why?” they said in unison.

  “You can’t be intimidated if they’re wobbly and bobbly.”

  “Nor do I want to imagine them if they’re wobbly and bobbly,” Alfred said. “I don’t know what’s more off putting - this,” he gestured to a page like a game of snakes and ladders, “or bollock naked boffins.”

  “My lot naked,” Josh said. “Once I was in the parts bay and there was this rack of robot - things. I asked Dr Sugar, ‘Are they always that big?’ He went, ‘No idea, but they’re modelled on mine.’”

  Nanny cackled. Alfred laughed in spite of himself. “Enough lollygagging. Let’s get down to it.”

  Between them they banged out a speech. That took two afternoons, learning it a further three.

  “It’s because you’re indoors all the time,” Josh said. “If we get some fresh air -”

  “This was a ruse, wasn’t it?” Alfred asked as they scrambled over the grounds. “You wanted to go outside.”

  “Isn’t it the day you go around the estate?”

  “Do you want to come? You’ll find it awfully dull.”

  “I’m never bored when I’m here.”

  They helped the grounds boys gather windfalls and burn the rubbish, then squelched across a bed of mud to the farm. Alfred expected Josh to blanch but he knelt alongside the others, pulled up crops and saw to the animals. They shied when they first saw him - “I mustn’t smell right -” but once he whispered a few soothing words, they were fine.

  Josh liked milking best. He sat with his head against the cow’s flank, hands a blur as he tugged the udders. “They’re like bellows!”

  “Or bagpipes,” Alfred agreed, as a neglected cow let out a roar.

  To begin with they worked in silence, squirting milk into pails. But Josh could never keep quiet for long.

  “How much of your speech can you remember?”

  “Well -” As Alfred’s thoughts kept pace with his fingers, he was astonished to find it spilling from his mouth.

  “See? You knew all along.”

  The next time Josh visited, Alfred didn’t need to ask. “I’m going to see the tenants.”

  “How many are there?”

  “Twenty. You have to visit them in order, otherwise their noses ge
t pushed out of joint. Pay their wages and listen to their grievances.”

  “You know everybody?”

  “They keep Chimera running. If they went on strike we’d be screwed.”

  He filled Josh in. How Mabel Briers and Ada Snow had been sworn enemies since Mabel published Ada’s secret dumpling recipe, how Bram Carcer stole power from Chimera’s generator, how Cath Royston was always pregnant - he’d delivered her last baby but one. “Never again,” he shuddered. “I don’t know how anyone can put the one he loves through that. Remember it all?”

  “I’ll try.”

  They ducked in and out, chatted with the tenants. For years, certainly since Gussy’s death, Alfred had seen it as a chore to get through: nodded, muttered and got it out of the way. He was sure they knew. They must be laughing up their sleeves -

  Something odd was happening. Josh talked about their work, complimented their allotments. Things Alfred took for granted interested him; the tenants, astonished and grateful, were reluctant to let him go.

  “Was I alright?” Josh asked as they walked back.

  “Are you kidding? They loved you!”

  “You think so?”

  “I know so.”

  “There’s always something to do here. That’s why I like it.”

  “I thought it was the pleasure of my company.”

  “That too.”

  By now they had a routine. Gwyn propped the door open if Josh was coming; he’d go in search of Alfred. His best time was three minutes.

  This particular day Alfred was washing Puss. They were out in the clearing, hosing her down. She hated getting wet and wouldn’t give up without a fight. She head butted, wrestled and budged the hose from his hands.

  “Now I’ve seen everything.” Josh was coming down the path, cool as a crocus.

  Alfred was sopping, bedraggled and trying to shove a lion into a bath tub. Instead of sniggering, the artificial took off his jacket. “Need a hand?”

  While Josh distracted her with her favourite doll, Alfred sneaked by the outhouse and gathered up the hose. Josh grabbed it with his spare hand. They aimed the jet at her. Somehow she ducked beneath Josh’s arm and knocked him into the bath. She pushed the pipe at Alfred, soaking him head to foot. Squinting in triumph, she bounded into the trees.

  “Little mare!” Alfred shook his fist after her.

  “She’s one feisty lady,” Josh agreed. His shirt and twills were plastered to his body, his hair slick. He shivered as he shook the water from his works.

  It took an hour for them to dry. Josh tried running in and out of the laundry but continued to drip and hiss. Alfred ended up lighting a bonfire. “It’s a useful life skill.”

  Josh grinned. “I think you like setting fire to things.”

  “You could be right.” He explained the best way to build a bonfire, and make a smoke signal. “Though it’s unlikely you’ll ever need to.”

  It was the sort of discussion Josh liked best. He threw off examples. “What if I go on the run?”

  “Or you’re shipwrecked -”

  “Or fall into enemy hands.”

  They sat in contented silence, squeezing out their clothes and looking dreamily into the flames. Alfred passed his hands through it and stopped Josh from doing the same. “Can’t have you melting, can we?”

  “I can never do anything,” Josh muttered.

  Changing position, something struck him. He stared so intently Alfred felt unnerved. Nothing was there, only leaves spitting and crinkling. “Can you see shapes in the fire?”

  Alfred humoured him. “What kind?”

  “Women turning into birds. A burning heart with an eye -”

  Alfred’s mouth had gone dry. “And men gambling around a table?”

  “You can see them too?”

  “Since I was a little boy.”

  He’d taken to researching robots in his spare time. Gussy had left many books on the subject. They were very definite on what was and wasn’t possible.

  ‘A robot lacks imagination. It does not see other than is there -’

  ‘Though a robot can react to human emotion, true empathy can never occur -’

  Josh shaded his eyes. “You’re uncomfortable.”

  “No.” Alfred wished he knew what he meant. “Do you want to see more of the house?”

  “I’d like that.”

  It had been quite a trek: across the courtyard, into a tower Josh hadn’t seen before. The staircase corkscrewed into the heavens: no railings, the dimmest bulbs. Add to that a reek of dank and mice, and he wondered how anyone could bear it. They were a quarter of the way up when Alfred stopped.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “You’re quiet, for you.”

  “Sorry if I’m annoying you -”

  “I don’t like this tower either.”

  Alfred launched into one of Chimera’s romances: two brothers who fell for the same woman and tried to woo her. They’d fought a duel in this very tower. The lady waited on the landing, saying their contest was very flattering, but they should have asked her and her answer was no. Josh was so engrossed he forgot his claustrophobia. At last they reached the top, Alfred flinging a trap door open.

  “Did you make that up?”

  Alfred shrugged. “Might’ve.”

  Now it was a tight passage with arrow slits for windows, a studded door every twenty feet. When you looked through a slit you had a vertigo inducing view of the valley. It’d be terrifying to see enemy hordes galloping down it, and Josh said so.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Alfred said. “You could pretend you weren’t in.”

  The last of the doors. If the tower had been too narrow, like sliding up a stone gullet, the space beyond was an even greater shock. Packing cases, ghosts of furniture, family jetsam. Josh had never seen a room like it. “How big is it?” he whispered.

  “Covers half the house.”

  “Gosh.”

  “We played up here as kids. It could do with a tidy, if you want to lend a hand.”

  Where water had seeped in, the walls bloomed. Alfred was dismayed to discover priceless rugs had become rat nests, precious albums bored through by worms. He yelped when moths poured from a wardrobe, glaring at Josh’s amusement. If something was miraculously whole - a painting, a banyan, a gadget - he embraced it. Josh stood up, only to be clouted by a swinging saddle.

  “Sorry! That must be Deidre.”

  “Deidre?”

  “Gwyn’s father wouldn’t let her have a horse so we made her a pretend one.”

  Soon afterwards Josh bumped into a crate of spare parts: glass eyes, jointed hands, wheels. Alfred picked up one of the hands. “I remember this! Changes bulbs -”

  He brought out a lamp, decades old. Josh doubted either would work. As though memory lingered in the monkey fingers, it reached inside, twiddled with the bulb and snapped on a filmy light. “It scared Nanny to death. She said it looked like a hand of glory.”

  “What are these other bits and pieces?”

  “Gussy made tons of proto robots. The Robot Buddy, for one. If we poke around, we’ll find him.”

  For the next hour he tipped out parts and peered inside armoires, deciding it must have been lost. Josh was relieved. He’d seen footage of the Buddy and found it excruciating - how a human must, glimpsing prehistoric ancestors.

  An old hat box, the satin spoiled. He’d try on a hat - that never grew old. They transformed him into a Fin Fantastique fop, a gun for hire. They found a portrait of one of Alfred’s ancestors, a favourite of Queen Juliana. Josh thought he was dashing with his silk stockings, pearl earring and pink wig. “I’d love to dress like him.”

  “Do that and I’d disown you.”

  Josh tugged the lid off another box. Nothing, only papers.

  “What’ve you got there?” Alfred asked. He’d accidentally set off one of the small robots; now he waited with a taser.

  “Letters, I think.”

  “May I s
ee?”

  Josh passed him the nearest, bound in green. He ripped off the ribbon and shook out the sheets. “There’s hundreds!” A tender, rueful smile. “Gussy wrote the best letters.”

  Alfred sat with his feet beneath him, eyes creased with laughter. His writing was slapdash, erratically spelt, confettied with in-jokes - “Watch for Weevils!”, “Hogshead” or “Dead Dog Day”. Some had pictures: him as a teenager, dancing in a string vest and leather leggings; shaggy and tanned in a wet suit, holding up a crayfish; long haired and languid beneath a sycamore tree. “I look like a first class dolt.”

  Josh untied another mound. “Dear Pussykins,” the first began. He slid his thumb into the middle, flipped one out. ‘Knocking around on your lonesome’s supposed to be inspiring, but I have my best ideas with my muse to hand. Besides, we need to jaw about behavioural programming. I don’t think F’s got it.’ There followed a series of formulas Josh knew as intimately as his own skin. “Who writes about robotics in a love letter?”

  “She was keen on her work.”

  “It’s not her, it’s whoever was writing to her.”

  Alfred became unnervingly quiet. “Give me those.”

  His friend’s expression - sullen, hinting at violence - warned Josh it would do more harm than good. “I don’t think -”

  The letters were wrenched from his grasp. Alfred took the pile to the window and held it to the light. “Leave me.” The dismissal was curt, rude.

  Pain burned across Josh’s wrist. “Yes,” he whispered. Alfred grabbed further letters as he left, shoulders shaking.

  The tower was worse second time round. Josh clung to the wall and spidered his way down. He couldn’t have said how long it took, but it seemed like hours.

  He was used to thinking of Chimera as a safe haven. “Alfred seems gruff but he’s a darling,” Gwyn once said; an opinion he’d come to share. If even half the stories were true -

  He stumbled into sunlight. Past the shrubbery where Puss liked to lurk, past the chimera statue that so impressed him on his first visit. Now he wasn’t agitated, he saw it looked sheepish. It reminded him of Alfred, pricking him with guilt. He couldn’t leave things as they were. He’d have to apologise.