“Why was she out? There was a siege on!”
“I asked her to get beer.” Timothy hiccupped. Vomit splashed the floor of the lift.
“You disgust me.”
They stayed like that, Timothy grizzling, Alfred avoiding the repulsive mess, for the rest of the journey. He wondered how he would react if it was Josh on the top floor, his life draining away - and couldn’t. It hurt too much.
Timothy tried to escape as they turned the corner but Alfred was having none of it. He shoved him beside Trini. She was leaning against Josh, her breaths fewer and more laboured. Somehow she knew.
“Master Timothy?”
“Yes, babe.”
Josh moved away. He was covered head to toe with oil. He joined Alfred by the window.
“I love you, Master Timothy.”
“Love you too, hon.” He held her as though she was contagious, he stank of sick, but she gazed at him, oil trickling from her eyes, a smile on her beautiful face.
Alfred couldn’t stand it. He made for the ladder to the deck. Though he blamed it on his hay fever, his eyes were red raw. They stood by the rail, watching the waves whip and heave. Alfred took Josh’s hand and held tight.
“That was very kind, my dear,” Josh said.
“I did it for her -” Alfred reached for his handkerchief - “poor mite.”
“You wouldn’t’ve before we met.”
“Probably not.”
“Why?”
“Damn it, you know why!”
The hanky fluttered overboard. Josh passed him the one he kept for emergencies. “I wish I could cry,” he said after a while.
“You’re an odd one. Why?”
“It’d help. At least Master Timothy did the right thing.”
“Yes. Yes, he did.”
He looked away as Josh rested his head on his shoulder. It was the only direct lie he ever told him.
Arkan, Arkan
They stood on the landing bay, watching the Mariana disappear into the distance. “That could’ve gone better,” Alfred said.
He scanned the letter he’d been given by the captain, snorted and made it into a parachute. It skimmed along on the sea breeze for a few minutes before sinking.
“They’re late.” Josh could never understand the human capacity for poor time keeping. “What if the Mariana gave us the wrong day?”
“They didn’t. They’re making us wait.”
“No reason why we can’t use the time constructively.”
After a root through his luggage, Josh found a mirror and a signalling guide. By moving the glass three hundred and sixty degrees, you could spell out all the letters of the alphabet and co-ordinates. Before long they were swapping tongue twisters and questionable verse.
“You’ve no poetry in your soul, Alfred.”
“Not true. It’s all rhyming and rude.”
“I’ll take that off you - ”
A piercing blast. A craft careened into the landing bay, knocking them down. Josh helped Alfred up and dusted him off.
This was a definite change of scene. The squat craft spouted grubby smoke, dribbling oil in its wake. There were no visible portholes and conditions looked far from sanitary.
“Like a brig,” Alfred said glumly. “A plague ship,” Josh agreed.
They hefted their bags aboard. The captain clattered down the gang plank - a stubbled, brutish man who fancied himself. “Arkan,” Alfred whispered. Sure enough, he spoke with a broad accent Josh hadn’t heard outside films.
“A bot, huh?” The captain scratched his ear. “I could do with an extra guy on board.”
Alfred tried to speak, coughed and started again in an accent as stereotypical as the captain’s own. “We’ll work our passage.”
The captain stared at Alfred’s clothes, and the fact he owned an artificial, but this was a craft where few questions were asked. As long as the crew were strong and healthy, he didn’t care. After a few minutes’ bargaining they were allocated a cubbyhole by the engine room.
“What are you doing?” Josh hissed. “You’ll have to keep that silly voice up for the rest of the trip.”
Alfred shrugged. “It’s an experience, isn’t it? Hardship builds character.”
As they pushed open the door to their cabin, a skinny, flea bitten crew member shoved past and spewed across the floor.
“Like that, you mean?” Josh asked.
“Pass me a mop,” Alfred said grimly.
Alfred had feared recent events would cast a shadow, but he needn’t have worried. From the whistle’s screech at five in the morning to their afterthought of a dinner at twenty two, they hadn’t time to brood. The work was hard and strenuous: stoking fires, loading mail bags, operating pulleys.
Their shipmates could be politely described as ‘interesting’. One was a defrocked minister who drank so much stout, he rolled more than the ship. He still offered cut price wedding and funeral services. A cobwebby crone called Gypsy Ruby claimed to read the future in rat’s entrails; she told Alfred his face had bad luck written all over it. A quiet, seemingly respectable old gent was an accomplished thief. He spent an afternoon teaching Josh to pick pockets.
Sometimes they joined the others to drink and play cards. One morning Josh woke to find his ear had been filed off. Alfred started a rumour Josh was part cyborg and his ear would graft itself onto the nearest human. It was returned the same day in an unmarked envelope.
On restive nights they talked into the early hours, told fortunes with their tattered deck of cards. The same images cropped up: the ten of spades, an Ace of Hearts, the Queen of Diamonds. ‘A young woman of fickle but honest character,’ she didn’t sound like anyone they knew.
“Perhaps we haven’t met her yet,” Josh said. At which Alfred scoffed, “It’s all bunkum,” and they returned to the earthier pleasures of Shithead.
The twelfth night Josh was shaken awake. His vision snapped into focus. “What’s the matter?”
Alfred had pulled his coat on over his pyjamas. “Want to show you something.” His breath came out in a rush of steam. “Be careful. The floor’s like a skating rink.”
Josh followed him outside. “Aren’t you going to tell me?”
“I won’t need to.”
Dawn was breaking overhead, the bloodiest, most spectacular sunrise either had seen. It belonged to the infernal regions: a violent palette of scarlet, orange and mauve. It turned the ocean to fire, bathed their faces in a hellish glare. “Now,” Alfred said, nudging Josh.
Ahead of them lay Astaria, the capital of Arkan. Vehicles whizzed around the skyways, crashing in mid air. Jewelled towers glittered amidst the clouds. The light, heat and noise spilling towards them was incredible. A giant steel hand beckoned them into the harbour.
“Thank you,” Josh said quietly. “Thank you for showing me.”
A jeering whoop went up. Josh had taken Alfred’s hand, as he often did at emotional moments; now the crew had come up for a breather.
“What’s this? Slipping each other some sausage?”
Alfred rolled his eyes. Josh said, “Leave him to his wit. No one’s enjoying it.” The troll was left with his mouth hanging open.
Arkan was an education. What would be considered breakthroughs in Lila were commonplace: moving pavements, weather bubbles, immersive reality booths. The people were so perfect, they looked inhuman. Alfred grew sick of the horrified glances.
Josh tried to reassure him. “It’s because you look so interesting.”
“No, they want to know what I have and is it catching.”
Arkan had the largest number of robots per human in the world. Since the Toolan Act of ’58 no human was employed in a low skilled job. All the drivers, waiters, cleaners and newspaper vendors were artificials, built along the same anodyne lines. With no race or discernible features, this army of smiling, inoffensive drones gave you a queasy sense of déjà vu.
Josh was fascinated, stopping to speak to every robot they met. He filed their answers: how much w
ere they paid, did they like their work, how would they rate their quality of life? Their managers hovered, their expressions anything but kindly.
“Let’s check in before you start a riot,” Alfred said.
The first few days were straightforward sightseeing. Arkan’s seat of government, the world’s highest restaurant, a show on the theatre strip. They spent a day at the major network’s studios, where they discovered all the actors were artificials. The bosses were thinking of making this the case in films. Humans were too erratic - an artificial would never join a cult or break up a marriage. The quality of the pictures would suffer, but hell, they weren’t artists.
Josh was bursting to comment but had learned discretion. Sure enough, it came when they were feeding the ducks in the park afterwards. “Alfred?”
“Yes?”
“If artificials do the service jobs and acting, what are the humans going to do?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. There’ll be a whole new leisure class. People born to spend.”
Josh ripped off a slab of bread and flung it into the water. “That’s wrong, isn’t it?”
“How’d you work that out?”
“People need to work. They like it.”
Alfred changed his chuckle into a cough. “Josh, you’re extraordinary.”
“What do you mean?”
“You start a revolution because robots are being made to work, yet if humans –”
“The robots on the Mariana didn’t have any choice. Humans can pick the work they do - at least, they can back home. Here the decision’s made for them.”
“When you put it like that -”
That was the maddening, saddening thing. As much as you wanted to say, Don’t blame me, I didn’t design the world, he was right. Since he saw everything in stark colours, he hated injustice. The old standbys - “It’s always been that way,” “Just because”, didn’t wash. Why should they?
It must have been this conversation that made Josh say that evening, “I want to see Cora Keel.”
“The what of the who?” Alfred was plotting their schedule for the next few days.
“Cora Keel. The singer. Dr Sugar told you about her.”
“Dear boy, you can’t expect me to remember everything Dr Sugar says.”
This was rewarded with a middle grade glare. It really was incomprehensible how fond Josh was of that old goat.
“Alright, he’s a fine figure of a man. Stop scowling.”
The artificial was mollified. “I’d like to meet a robot who does something - one who makes a difference to people’s lives.” He cut off Alfred’s objections. “Stop being nice. I don’t matter in the grand scheme of things.”
“Of course you do, you daft apith. Cora it is.”
Meeting her proved easier said than done. When Josh proposed his idea to Dr Sugar, he was delighted. “I’ll do what I can to make it happen,” he vowed.
When he called Josh the next day, he sounded confused. “They won’t let me speak to her. I thought they wanted it before.”
“Who?”
“Her owners.”
Josh was baffled. “I thought Arkan robots owned themselves.”
“So did I. She’s owned by a company, though its head prefers to remain anonymous. I don’t think the public knows she’s a robot.”
Lying about your humanity was an offence in Lila. Any artificial found guilty would be destroyed. To think there were humans who colluded in such deception!
As though he had guessed Josh’s thoughts, Sugar said, “This is one you’re best off leaving alone. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
A long silence. Taking it as acceptance, he said, “Give Langton my regards. Take care, and Thea bless.”
“Thea bless,” Josh echoed.
Sugar had underestimated him. If anything made a situation irresistible to Josh, it was being told he couldn’t do it - especially if an artificial was involved.
Josh had guessed Alfred wouldn’t be keen but hadn’t expected such mulishness. Sitting in a deserted skycar, marvelling at the panorama below, he’d thought his friend might be in a receptive state of mind.
“Dr Sugar thought there might be difficulties.”
“Oh?” Alfred was naming landmarks as they popped up beneath them. “How so?”
“Her owners aren’t being forthcoming. He thinks we should drop it.”
“Her owners?”
Josh had had an afternoon to puzzle it out. The awkwardness when they’d toured the studio, the boss’s twitchiness as they floated the concept of artificial stars. This was to be done without the humans’ knowledge. “She passes as human.”
“Can they do that?”
“If robots have autonomy, perhaps it includes the right to withhold their identities.”
“Well, their arties are more advanced than ours.” To a polite cough, “Apart from you.”
“Aren’t you shocked?”
“Why? Humans fake things all the time. Look at the people here - do you think they were born with gnashers like that?”
“I suppose -” Josh began doubtfully.
“So why shouldn’t she pretend to be human, if it helps her career?”
“It doesn’t seem right.”
“That’s because you’re used to Lila’s mores. It works differently here.”
“Does that mean we can see her?”
“Whoa!” Alfred peeled his eyes from the lightshow. “What gave you that idea?”
“If her people mean well, I don’t know why they’d keep us from seeing her -”
“Never thought I’d say this, but I agree with Sugar. The whole thing’s fishy. We’re best off out of it.”
Josh was incredulous. “We should look the other way?”
“We’ve no evidence -”
“When did you start ignoring people in trouble?”
The skycraft traced another circuit. Josh tried to lose himself in the blur of lights but couldn’t. He was too conscious of his friend at his side, watching his reflection.
“It won’t bring Trini back,” Alfred said quietly.
“I know. But if we can stop another robot meeting her fate, won’t it be worth it?”
Alfred knew when he was beaten. “Not a word to CER.”
In the space of a year Cora Keel had become a cult. You’d see her on the music channels, flaunting that ultrasonic voice. Her image was everywhere. The asymmetric bob, the face that was exquisite from one angle, pug-like from another. You’d never guess she was an artificial.
Tickets to her shows were like stardust. After enquiries they snaffled two in an auction. Josh played her latest hit as a taster. Alfred jumped. It sounded like whale song mixed with a dentist drill, but what did he know?
The night of the concert, Josh persuaded Alfred into a new suit. It was sharper than he favoured, younger; he felt ridiculous. The expression in Josh’s eyes was worth it. It was hard to keep it cool with someone who looked at you like that.
Josh was banking so much on this. His enthusiasm was painful. He chattered in the fly, regaled Alfred and the driver with Cora trivia. Did they know, had they heard ... You couldn’t blame the cabbie for bringing up the screen.
Alfred remembered concerts as free falling, beer swilling affairs. This was a glossy, high octane production, the fans lined up for worship. As the lights changed and Cora entered, the masses throbbed.
She was dynamite. Yes, she was tiny - five foot nothing in stilettos - but every inch was packed with presence, that powerhouse of a voice. She put on different masks: now she was belting an anthem, now she lilted a ballad.
Josh gazed at her. To think a robot had achieved this with sheer talent! It exposed his star for the sham it was. Rather than be jealous or bitter, he saw her as an inspiration. Even before they exchanged words he considered her a friend.
Then it went wrong.
Cora was doing her trademark triple backflip. Normally she’d segue into her next song. Instead she stumbled and hit her head. Her conditi
oning failed her. She unhooked her head and examined it.
Silence. The crowd was shocked from its trance. Cora tried to turn it into a joke.
“Um, oops?”
A bottle landed at her feet. “Freak!” someone screamed. More people took up the cry, lobbing whatever missiles they could lay their hands on. The stadium shrieked its outrage.
Only two audience members went against the current. “We have to get her out of here,” Alfred said. “They’ll rip her apart.”
Josh remembered the pickpocket - “Do it lightly, like you’re taking off a glove.” He’d heard the girls in front brag about their backstage passes. Now they were hollering, shaking their fists. They didn’t feel him slide the passes from their pockets.
“Let’s go.”
***
Cora scuttled into her dressing room. She could still hear the anarchy outside. The walls shook -
“Fraud!”
“Whore!”
She pulled off her rocket boots and threw herself into her chair. Fuck, she needed a tot of something. With a vicious twist she unscrewed her head.
This was it. The end of a glittering career. When she sang she forgot everything else. She only listened to her voice, trickling up and down the scales, striking notes unknown to the human throat. She could think about it in these terms because, like everything in her life, it wasn’t hers.
A scroll popped from the tube. She took her time. She knew it’d be a frigid text, followed by his arrival in the dressing room. The inevitable penance.
I made you.
I know.
I can break you too. Would you like that, Corrina?
His pet name. She’d always hated it, just as she hated the smashed nose and single eyebrow, the pierced tongue and tainted breath. Did every artie hate their handler or was she a freak?
The text came as such a shock, she jammed her head on back to front. ‘I can help,’ it read. ‘A Friend.’
Curiosity got the better of her. Come see me, she scribbled on the back. No sooner had it been sucked up than there was a knock at the door. She pushed her hair on straight.
“Ms Keel? A remarkable performance.”
The man offering his hand was a robot - but what a bot. Every teenager has a fantasy boyfriend: laughing, golden, surrounded by light. You forget him when you grow up and marry somebody else, but if he turned up on your doorstep, you’d ditch hubby and kids like a shot.
Love and Robotics Page 30