Love and Robotics

by Eyre, Rachael

  “Don’t be soppy.” Alfred was pleased nonetheless.

  The Larch Toaster

  It was two months after the riots. Ashes swirled across the city, the politicians were in session, tough new security measures were in place. All robots had been fitted with attack alarms.

  In this world of uncertainty Josh was truly happy. He was living at Chimera while his flat was being rebuilt. One morning he and Alfred were having breakfast together.

  “Look at this!” Josh exclaimed.

  “Hmm?”

  “The Robotics Charter.” They’d made advances with his digestion; now he could manage porridge and toast. “‘Humans and robots strive for co-existence and co-operation -’”

  “Doesn’t sound bad.”

  “That’s only the first.” He ticked off each item. “‘Humans, as the superior species, should lead -’ You think no small beans of yourselves.”

  “We have free will -”

  “If somebody pushed a human into a furnace, could she put herself together again? Isn’t your offswitch permanent?”

  “Don’t say that too loudly. It’s heresy.”

  “‘Robots should perform their allocated roles to the best of their ability.’ Whether they’re a celeb robot or functional, I suppose. ‘They may not question, compete with or seek to dominate humans’ - equality would be nice. ‘They may not participate in fields they don’t understand’- who are they to say what we can’t understand? Lastly - this doesn’t make sense -”

  “What is it?”

  “‘No human judged unfit may go beyond the owner - property relationship.’ What else is there?”

  Alfred remembered a wet autumn night, the wind soughing in the chimneys. A slurred voice chilling him to the marrow. “I’ve been a very bad daddy -”

  Despite the best intentions, his thoughts kept going awry. Coming upon Josh basking in the sun, dozing in the arbour. Eating berries. Drinking, for Thea’s sake. Watching the progress of liquid down that smooth, straight throat –

  He wasn’t one of those. A Transgressor, a freak. What was wrong with taking an interest in a friend? A friend who looked like a sun god, filled a pair of twills divinely -

  The same went for his dreams, so crass they embarrassed him. Snakes in the grass. Uncorking Josh and downing him in a thirsty gulp. Tunnels and oozing swamps. There was more flesh in his feelings than he had known.

  Think of him as something safe. A table, a chair. At least he wasn’t one of those sad sacks who was in love with his vix.

  Alfred ran his finger along the print, looking for a story. Boring - over Josh’s head - over his –

  “The Larch Toaster!” he said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “E A Larch. Only famous person to come out of Langton. Wrote terrible poetry, a decent novel, tons of short stories.”

  “Why haven’t I heard of him?” Josh asked.

  “His stuff’s pretty schlocky. All blood, guts and heaving bosoms. Sugar wouldn’t approve.”

  “What’s toast got to do with it?”

  “Not toast as in this.” Alfred took a bite from the marmalade slathered triangle. “Toast as in somebody who toasts. Every year on the anniversary of Larch’s death, an unknown person goes to his grave. She - or he - takes a bottle of whisky and bouquet of roses. It’s in three days. Fancy cracking it?”

  “Anything to take my mind off this.” Josh tossed the article onto the fire.

  “They might’ve died.”

  “Doesn’t stop us trying, does it?”

  It was the busiest day of the week. Alfred had to go around the estate and resolve any issues. Will Sherrin and Elijah Duff were disputing that scrap of land again. Sally Phipps had been caught in bed with her stepfather; the scandal had rocked the cottages. Somebody had vandalised Uriel Craven’s statue.

  Next came the post. Since he’d known Josh it had quadrupled - people were convinced Alfred owned him. Finally, a session with his man of business. Bless Derkins, he was a jewel, but he was in love with the idea of opening Chimera to the public.

  It was tea time when he went in search of Josh. He found him in Nanny’s parlour, listening to her relive the past. The room was crammed with paraphernalia: portraits, the first comtec Gussy had built, cigarette cards, exhibition posters, a mantrap of a pram.

  “It’s been very interesting,” Josh said, looking between a picture of Alfred in his Lila Force uniform and a painting of him wrestling an alligator. “You didn’t wear much in those days.”

  “There was a tax on clothes,” Nanny said.

  There must be a family conspiracy of embarrassment. Gussy had loved to air anecdotes when boyfriends came to visit; now Nanny seemed intent on displaying every unflattering picture Lady Constance had ever taken.

  “Don’t you look like your dad?”

  The picture showed him and Lord Arthur on the river bank, bored out of their tiny minds. They detested fishing but his dad believed in the importance of bonding. Five minutes after it was taken he’d dared him to eat a worm. Lord Arthur screwed up his face but swallowed it. “Chewy,” was his only comment.

  At thirteen he was only a few inches shy of Lord Arthur’s six foot six. He’d put his head on his shoulder and pretended he was peering over a wall. They had the same untidy hair, long faces, riotous eyebrows and bent noses.

  “All Wilding men are moulded from the same cheese,” Nanny said. “Overgrown, outdoors mad, bad tempered. Must be that hair.”

  “Bosh.” The air was unhealthily close, she must be hexing someone. “Fancy a walk?”

  There were three hours of daylight left, enough to stroll to the village and back.

  “Once Lulu knows she’s a captive audience, she’ll talk the hind leg off a donkey,” Alfred said once they were outside.

  “Maybe that’s why she spends so much time in the stables,” Josh joked.

  “That’s more straightforward.” Namely her on-off relationship with Bill the groom. Nanny the sexy septuagenarian. Ugh.

  The farthest reaches of the park coincided with the river. After a fumble with the gate they followed it downstream.

  Josh had a mania for the country. Alfred had been puzzled when the artificial begged a basin from Nanny on their way out; now, watching him gather plants, wondered no longer. Odd how someone who lived amongst the smoke and glass of the city could be so responsive to nature. He picked out ivy, three types of bark, a pebble and a snail.

  “I wish they’d build a research lab here,” Josh said.

  “They were going to. Gussy bought the land and drew up the designs.”

  “What happened? Did the locals act up?”

  “Something like that. Then she died and the project got shelved.”

  “She must have been very young.”

  “Thirty six. She was my big sister but she’ll never get any older.”

  Josh frowned. He wasn’t good at these conversations. Ozols had bought him a pair of white mice to teach him about death. While one met a sticky end at Monty’s paws, the other streaked into the ventilation system.

  “Larch,” Alfred said, to help him out. “Did you learn anything?”

  “He seems to have been an unusual man -”

  “Langton breeds ‘em.”

  “He kept diaries but because he didn’t date them, it’s mostly guesswork. He doesn’t seem to have married, had children, done anything -”

  “Except be committed to the asylum,” Alfred agreed.

  “Might they have been mistaken?”

  “Shouldn’t think so. There used to be blackguards marrying heirs and putting them away, but a schoolteacher? Who’d benefit?”

  “He said the devil gave him an ointment that turned him into a wolf.”

  “Weirdo. Well, he did say the most poetic subject in the language was the death of a beautiful woman.”

  “Another thing. Laura.”

  “Ah, yes.” Alfred closed his eyes, recited:

  ‘You walk the halls, the castle of my fancy

>   A thousand candles in your eyes.’” As Josh gaped, “Learned it at school.”

  “You don’t think it’s odd he fell in love with a woman he never spoke to?”

  “Stranger things have happened.”

  “But -” Josh crushed berries between his fingers. “Mooning over someone who doesn’t like you back? What’s the point?”

  Alfred winced. “You can’t apply logic to love.”

  “Bet it didn’t happen.”

  “How much?”

  “Your slide rule?”

  “Why d’you want that?”

  “It’s useful.”

  “Suit yourself. You’re meant to eat those, you know.”

  After wiping livid hands on the dock leaves, Josh popped the berries into his mouth. “Oh, these are fantastic. Let’s go out with a punnet tomorrow.”

  “We’re visiting the school, remember.”

  Josh pulled a face. “Children.”

  “They’re not so bad.”

  “For every nice one you get lots of bastards.”

  “Josh!” Swearing sounded filthy coming from him.

  “Once I was doing a talk and this boy kept kicking my shins. They ask really rude questions, like was Fisk a witch.”

  “Jury’s out. Don’t you get broody sometimes?”

  “What, feel like a chicken?” Josh was perplexed.

  “No, want a family.”

  “No. I can’t anyway. Can’t sing, can’t dance, can’t make little robots.”

  “Little robots would be cute. Get Sugar to cook them up in the lab.”

  “They’re not allowed. He says they thought about it, for couples who can’t, but it’s a grey area.”

  One of the country’s unexpected winds blew up, shaking berries from the bushes. Josh ran a good three minutes before rain like knitting needles started to fall.

  “Tomorrow?” Alfred gasped, catching up.

  “Tomorrow,” he agreed.

  That night Nanny served goomba, her speciality. It had every ingredient imaginable: four types of meat, pineapples, wine, parsnips, tomatoes, onions, drizzled cheese, exotic herbs.

  “I’d marry you for your cooking,” Josh said after his saucerful.

  She patted her bun. “You’re not the first to say so.”

  He waited for her to bustle away. “Has she been married lots of times?”

  Alfred counted on his fingers. “Three husbands, flings and Tolmash.”

  “Your old butler?”

  “Uh - huh.” He poured them a glass of wine each. “Old school romance, like Queen Bathsheba and General Caiaphas. Only nobody got bitten by a snake.”

  “I should hope not.”

  “Tolmash was a cat burglar. I’m serious. Soon after I was sworn in, I held this beastly party. I’d been chased half the evening by Marika Valenska, a horsy blonde with a big cleavage, and I was dying to escape. I jumped out of the window, landed in the flowerbed and saw a man halfway up the wall. His pockets brimmed with jewellery. I offered him a cigarette. He said ‘Thanks,’ then did a double take.

  ‘You don’t - you won’t -’ he said.

  ‘I shan’t, on one condition. Fancy a job?’”

  “Didn’t you worry he’d pinch the silver?”

  “I’d make him polish it. Gwyn aside, I’ve never had a better butler.”

  “How did they meet?”

  “Nanny changes the story whenever you ask. I’d kept him hidden while he was training; nobody knew he was in the house. She went to the market for some mackerel. On the way back there was a terrific gale. Her umbrella was blown out of her hands. Sometimes it hits him in the face, others they roll downhill. Either way, she said, ‘Alfie, I’ve met the most divine man.’ She loved him like nobody before or since.”

  “Gosh. Nanny having a secret romance.”

  “Nothing secret about it, believe me.”

  “Humans are always changing, aren’t they? When you think you know them -”

  “We’re a bugger to predict, alright.”

  They sat in the conservatory, the warmth of the wine and beauty of the flowers a contrast to the howling wind outside. Josh was nose deep in a book about Larch. Alfred began a game of Patience but hadn’t the heart for it. What Josh had said about robot children stirred unwelcome memories.

  Shortly after his forced retirement he’d tried to interest himself in Gussy’s legacy. The science was beyond him but there was nothing wrong with an appearance here, a cash injection there. Every few years there was a Science Fair. He’d skipped the previous two - now he had no excuse. He’d maundered into the Crystal Hall in Eglantine Park, little guessing that here would be a parting of the ways.

  He put off seeing the robots for as long as he could. Holograms. Ultrasonic weaponry. Innovations in the Storm. Dubious tests on monkeys - he bought the gibbon they were using. Finally he sauntered over to the Robotics section. CER put up a muted showing, still reeling from the events of 2150. It displayed the prototype of the Home Butler, a precursor to the beebo, and that was it. Other nations had been busy: robot pets and toys on one end of the scale, military grade machines on the other. He wandered through, thanking Thea he and Gussy didn’t look alike. To most people he was just a gorilla in an expensive suit.

  The last exhibit claimed to make ‘Friends of the Future!’ He went for a closer look. For obvious reasons the emphasis had shifted from replica humans to cutesy, cuddly robots. He spent ten minutes trying to shake a dogbot from his ankle.

  A stocky young man beckoned through the curtain. “Looking for something different?”

  Something about him gave Alfred the willies. He looked in his thirties, middle height, colourless hair, unremarkable - yet. His runny eyes stared too much, his hands were unpleasantly damp. Yellow teeth protruded over his lip. His voice was much too soft.

  Alfred followed his guide into a low room bathed in sterile light. Trolleys were ranged in a semi circle, each with a recumbent figure.

  “These are the latest models. They don’t bite.”

  Alfred bent to inspect them. A gorgeous Hujian woman, a Radan gent in his forties. Their every feature - hair, lashes, nails - was perfect. If it hadn’t been for the tag beneath their right ear, they would have looked as real as him. Certainly they were in better nick.

  “I’ve never seen such life like robots.”

  “You can make an advance order.”

  “Um, no thanks. They’re not my -”

  “Ah.” The man’s voice became solicitous. “You want my special range.”

  They went down a claustrophobic passage, past models of varying ages, races and attractiveness. There was a small blond man that, if Alfred had seen him in a bar and not known he was a robot –

  They edged into a room so cramped it was a wonder his guide could fit into it. The light came on. Alfred gasped, fighting back the urge to vomit. Packed into containers, like fish on a market stall, were a series of child robots. They were naked and vulnerable, their glassy eyes staring ahead. Everything fell into place: the man’s insinuating manner, the winks and twitches. For only the third time in his life, Alfred stared into an evil so vast it threatened to swallow him.

  “Get me the fuck out of here.”

  The man sniggered. “They’re just kid shaped vibrators. Think of all the crime that could be prevented. I mean, it’s only a preference, right? Like being queer -”

  Alfred snatched at something to shut him up. Realising it was a model of a child’s arm, he dropped it and raced outside.

  The tent was dismantled and its ‘special range’ brought before a horrified public. Forty eight hours later the man drove his vix into a ravine. Eric Spalding, aged twenty three. Undoubtedly a genius, yet - whisper - a clone. It made sense. Nobody human would think of something like that.

  “Alfred?” Josh laid his book aside. “Are you alright?”

  “A bad dream, that’s all.”

  “This Larch stuff’s a bit gloomy. Airships?”

  “Okay. Go easy on me.”
/>
  That lovely grin. “I promise no such thing.”

  ***

  The next day was unseasonably hot, so they went for a ramble. Alfred was saddened to see the great oak had been struck in the storm. Her roots trailed across the path. “There’s history in this tree,” he said, stroking the familiar bark. “It’s where Uriel Craven was offered the Protectorship, and where my parents met.”

  “Was it romantic?”

  “Not really. Mum was doing a cycling tour of the county; she’d sneaked onto the grounds. She found the tree, read the inscription -” now blasted into oblivion - “and lined up her camera. Then, crunch! Her foot got caught in an animal trap.”

  “Ouch!”

  “Dad was moping around, he’d come home for the summer, and overheard. He found this little Fells lass hopping about and swearing.”

  “That’s not very lady like!”

  “Love at first sight, he said.” Alfred stopped, embarrassed. Unlike everyone else he knew, who blamed their parents for everything, he had adored his.

  “Tell me about them.”

  “Won’t you find it boring?”

  “I’m always talking about Dr Sugar.”

  They feasted on berries as Alfred talked, Josh listening avidly. His folks. Lord Arthur, gentle giant. He’d dabbled in everything but never found his vocation. Lady Constance had been dynamic and forceful; it was her idea to open Chimera to the public. A marvellous mess - she’d shed hair pins, clean spouse and kids alike with spit - but a loving one.

  “They sound wonderful.”

  “They were.”

  Conscious of the time, Alfred rose so suddenly the trunk seesawed. They landed on the grass, showered with berries. They laughed and laughed.

  That afternoon they went their separate ways. Josh continued his research, Alfred had an article to write. As night fell, Josh went down to the library. Alfred worked in the lamp’s rosy glow, surrounded by balls of paper. He sighed, kneading his forehead. Josh stepped across the rug and laid his hand on his friend’s head.

  “What’s it about?”

  “That’d be telling.” Relenting, “It’s out next week.”

  “Have you packed?”