He couldn’t vanish abroad or go home, the Council was in session, but he stayed away for the last day of Josh’s upgrade. It hurt to think he was in the city somewhere ignoring him. Josh walked in the park, tormented himself with recollections of the other night. He took a fly around town, not caring where he went, and nearly got out at the Forum. No, he wouldn’t play the jilted lover, he’d leave Alfred in there. He got out, giving the astonished driver twice the fare.
He’d walk back. That was punishment enough. It gave him a sour sort of amusement, watching the snow sizzle beneath his feet. He felt quite detached shuffling through the drifts. Foxes fighting in bins, tramps dozing in doorways - they left him unmoved. He wandered into a seedy off licence and bought a brown bottle. Once he’d made sure no one was watching, he took a quick sip. Scorching. If he staggered it he could make it last the afternoon.
The last few blocks were an effort. He didn’t know if it was the alcohol or the snow, and he was so tired, he wanted to lie on a bench and give up.
Alfred. Every thought came back to Alfred. If he’d stood firm and not listened when they’d started spouting about marriage, he could have had him. Would he have realised, if it hadn’t been for Claire? Oh, it was a mess.
In this addled state he didn’t see the figure outside his building. When it registered he let go of the bottle, letting it smash. “Alfred!” He ran, churning the snow as he went, and nearly knocked him over.
“Ye gods, what have you been drinking? I go away to organise a nice treat and you turn into a dipso.”
“You weren’t avoiding me?”
“Why would I do that? Gwyn and Nanny will be here in a few hours. Let’s get you tidied up.”
Gala Night
Josh drank a pint of coffee and had a cold shower. He came out calmer and more sensible, knotting his tie. It was a suit he’d bought months ago but never worn; Claire thought it was ‘poncy’. Lavender with a floral tie, cut to emphasise his narrow shoulders and slender hips. He was wearing a watered silk shirt underneath, the picture completed by an orchid.
Alfred lounged in his favourite chair, drumming a tattoo on the table. He was wearing the red shirt with one of his tweed suits. As he looked up and saw Josh, the beat stopped. He couldn’t speak. No wolf whistles, no japes. They were past that.
“Sorry about earlier,” Josh said.
“Can’t criticise. My first year at Roth, I streaked through the library in a pirate hat.”
Josh opened the last of Sienna’s boxes. It was full of paperbacks. Each cover depicted a dewy eyed girl and a blandly handsome man. An antenna poked out of his ear.
Alfred flipped one over. “Our Robotic Romance by Floella Flotsam. Will Jennifer and Algernon’s forbidden love survive? Find out in this latest instalment of the heart stopping saga.’” He dropped it into the wastepaper basket. “I see where Claire gets her ideas.”
Josh couldn’t get up the nerve to say they were actually quite good. “You could donate it to Nanny’s book club.”
“What else have you got in here? Action figures! I used to love these things. Who’s this wrinkly bugger? Oh, me. Very reassuring.”
“They’ve got a point about your hair. Have you seen it recently?”
“It grows on my head. That’s all there is to it.”
“Don’t you own a comb?” Josh went in search of one, finding it behind the clock. “Hold still.”
Alfred submitted to his ministrations with a martyred expression. Josh was on his fifth stroke when he vanished. Alfred yelled. The artificial rematerialised in the armchair opposite.
“That was awesome!” a voice bellowed.
Josh slid open the window. “I’ll ask the lab rats to get rid of that. My hangover’s back.”
“Right you are, boss.”
Alfred joined him at the sill. “Forgive me for being dim, but nothing that’s happened in the past sixty seconds makes sense. Somebody’s writing pap under the name Floella Flotsam, you evaporated and a man’s living in your shrubbery.”
“That’s Kevin. He’s my stalker.”
“What?” Alfred whipped out his revolver.
“Put that away,” Josh sighed. “Everybody has stalkers now. It’s a sign you’ve arrived.”
“That sounds like Claire talking.”
“In exchange for letting him take the odd picture, he waters the plants and collects the post. We’ll never get burgled.”
“I prefer my private business to be private.” Alfred brought the blinds down. “I hate the thought of somebody watching us.”
Josh put a hand on his shoulder. He shrugged it off. Just as it seemed the evening was ruined, the doorbell jangled. “Door bell!” came a shout from below.
“Thanks, Kevin. - I feel sorry for him. I think he’s a bit, you know, touched.”
“I’d never have guessed.”
Two sets of footsteps, one quick and light, the other ponderous and heavy. At last the door opened and Gwyn slipped inside. Her hair was piled like a sandcastle and kept escaping around her ears; she wore a severe grey dress with epaulets. She should have been ferrying dying warriors from battlefields.
“You look lovely,” Alfred said, and meant it.
“You’re not bad yourself. Hello, Josh. Fancy a night on the tiles?”
“Not in these shoes,” Nanny groused, sidling along the wall.
If Gwyn was striking, she was extraordinary: a furry black dress that had last seen action thirty years ago, clamping in the famous bust. Two mouldering foxes dangled down her back.
“Everyone’s here.” Alfred radiated tension. “Let’s get a fly.”
“What, go back down those stairs? We only just got here!” Nanny complained.
“We’ll take the lift,” Gwyn said. As both men opened their mouths, “As soon as someone invents proper shoes to go with evening wear, I’ll take the stairs.”
They surfaced into a cold fraught night, rain beating down. “What a shame, the snow’ll get washed away,” Josh exclaimed.
Gwyn retorted, “Good. You should’ve seen the sheep on the way here. Thoroughly miserable, poor things.”
“You’ve no poetry in your soul, Gwynnie,” Alfred sighed.
“At least I’ve got -”
His glower stalled her. Josh looked down, hurt.
“Has anyone ordered a fly?” Nanny asked. She picked her way across the lawn and tapped Kevin’s tent. “Young man? Can you recommend a fly firm?”
Kevin swigged from his flask. “Dunno -”
Alfred cocked his gun. Josh blurted, “You can look after the flat - make yourself at home.”
He was forthcoming after that.
***
The fly took them to an ornate marble building, its gates gilded with golden leaves. Gwyn bounced up and down. “Grizzly! Really?”
“I know it’s been a while.”
She was like another person as she took Josh’s arm. “We came here every year when I was little. I wanted to be in the dance troupe, remember?”
“Of course,” Alfred said. “We did whatever we could to talk you out of it.”
“Marcus was insufferable. ‘As if they’d want fat thighs like yours on a chorus girl’.” She smarted from a twelve year old injury.
They brushed past ballet girls in spangles, singers in powdered wigs. A man in a monocle reared up and Alfred sidestepped into the lift - a colleague, a crashing bore who spat. Josh ducked when a stout blonde funnelled into aubergine silk saw him: Floella Flotsam. She was desperate to put her theories about artificial sex to the test; he was very keen it shouldn’t be with him.
“All this spinnin’ and weavin’s given me a powerful thirst,” Nanny said.
“Agreed,” Alfred said. “Let’s put fire in our bellies.” He ordered a green bottle smoking in a bucket, popping it open. “It’s traditional to make a wish as you take your first sip.”
“I’ve got everythin’ I want,” Nanny said. “A good job, a home, family -” She spoiled it with a long wet belch.
“If I m
eet the love of my life, I’ll bring him here,” Gwyn said.
Nanny was startled. Alfred and Josh noticed nothing. Their eyes met and they looked away.
“To adventure,” Alfred said. Everybody echoed it, clinked their glasses together.
The orchestra swelled. They went in according to the seating: Nanny beside Alfred, Gwyn beside Josh.
“It’s like your birthday when you’re little,” she said. “You don’t know what to unwrap first.”
For the next two hours Josh was overwhelmed. Why was everybody smitten with robotics when humans were capable of so much more? This man could sing in harmony with himself, this woman tie herself in knots. He made a mental note to go to the theatre more often.
It was at the beginning of the second act the trouble began. It was a low point in the programme, an experimental dancer whose act seemed to be wiggling her fingers and toes in a body stocking. Josh felt his attention wander. He couldn’t blame Nanny, snoring on Alfred’s shoulder.
Further down their row was a man with a squished face. He’d been forced into his seat by the ushers; he kept rocking and making odd noises. For some reason the woman on stage tickled him and he wouldn’t shut up. Josh couldn’t make out the words at first, but then he started to roar: “Girl! Girl fisting!”
Alfred flushed. Nanny woke and fixed the man with her most baleful glare. As for Gwyn - he’d never seen Gwyn so upset. Pink faced and close to tears, she pushed back her chair and ran out.
“Talk to her,” Nanny said. “It’s time.”
Alfred nodded. “Guard the seats, you two. Good grief, why can’t we have a quiet uneventful evening like normal people?”
He found her in the Winter Garden, leaning against a pillar. “Hello, Bash.”
She smiled at the childhood nickname. She’d got into endless scraps at school, which she always won. She barely looked older with her hair straggling around her ears and a runny nose. “Hello, Grizzly.”
He didn’t want to rush her. They wandered through the display she’d known since she was little: ice sculptures, the sugar castle with its sissy dragon.
“Can you see the damsel waving his hanky?” he asked.
“Poor thing, waiting all these years for someone to rescue him.”
“She’ll climb up the briar and come in through the window, like in stories.”
“I wouldn’t want someone kissing me while I was asleep. It’s a bit creepy.”
“Perhaps she falls under the drawbridge and the dragon eats her.”
“You gruesome creature.”
She started to cry. He put an arm around her, handed over a grimy handkerchief. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s ... I ...”
“That berk in the theatre upset you, didn’t he?”
“I feel so stupid. I’m twenty six years old, I shouldn’t get this wound up. I should - what’ve you been doing with this, cleaning chimneys?”
“No idea. Don’t worry, you still look lovely.”
“I like girls. There! I used to get so confused, think I was a boy in the wrong body. The girls I didn’t fancy bored me. I like men’s games, men’s manners, men’s clothes - but don’t want to be one. Does that make me a freak?”
Alfred tweaked her nose. He’d known since she was fourteen and caught her mooning over a chambermaid. Lucas accused him of ‘putting ideas’ into her head. He’d never told her. “Of course not, sausage.”
“You’re not disappointed?”
“What sort of hypocrite would I be? We’ll leave the breeding and messy stuff to Marcus.”
“I know I’ve been hard on Josh. I haven’t meant to be. All that rot about him being the perfect man. Must be congenital.”
“It’s funny how things work out.”
“Not that he’d notice me. He’s been yours since day one.”
“He’s not mine.”
“Now who’s being dense?”
Josh couldn’t concentrate on what was happening on stage. There was a skit about robots, making the audience crane to look at him, but his mind was outside, wherever Alfred and Gwyn were. Nanny dozed, face stuck to her seat with drool.
Alfred reappeared, a radiant Gwyn grinning. “Crisis over,” he muttered. “There’s thirty minutes left. Let’s enjoy it.”
Josh wished he could speak to Gwyn. Her attention had shifted to the stage already, blocking him. Why were humans so opaque?
They were on the last act. A beautiful black woman strode onstage and began to sing. The voice alone made him clutch the arms of his seat. Two men came out from either wing. One was short and fair, the other taller and darker. Although they didn’t touch, only circled one another, there was a definite frisson. They danced, eyes and hands gliding together.
Shocked murmurs. Alfred was so rigid, Josh worried he was having a fit. He tried to give him a consoling smile but he looked wretched. He was holding his breath and didn’t release it until the two men swayed up the staircase together, fingers entwined. The singer hit her last triumphant note.
The lights came back up. Everyone hurried to get away, they snatched up coats and programmes. Alfred bent over Nanny and tried to nudge her awake. “Come on, Lulu. Home. You can snore all you like there.”
She wouldn’t be roused. Gwyn prodded the stole and something fell from one of the fox’s mouths. “She’s been guzzling this. Neat gin.”
“Lucky her. While we’ve been on the rack -”
“I’ll get the old soak home. What was that firm called?” She bundled Nanny into her arms and trotted into the lobby.
Alfred gazed after her as though she had been a protective amulet. “Well,” he said. “Here we are.”
“Yes.”
“What do you want to do?”
“Where’s open?”
“Ought to be a few bars dotted about. Might be rowdy, though.”
“Can we go for a walk?”
Alfred stared at the rain sprinkling the city. “In this?”
“It’s only water.”
“Anywhere in particular?”
“Wherever the mood takes us.”
“You’re extraordinary, Josh.”
“I try to be.”
Most of the snow had been washed away, turning the streets into icing sugar. Drains overflowed, shop fronts dripped, the roads swam with slush. Every now and then they passed a pub, windows lit and drunken singing leaking out, but that didn’t appeal. Neither was sure what they were looking for. It didn’t belong with city landmarks or Lady Thea, spear in hand and lions at her feet.
“Looks like Gwyn,” they both said, and laughed. Alfred almost lost his footing. Josh caught him, hand closing around his wrist.
“Gods, your hands are warm,” Alfred said.
“If they get sick of adverts they could use me as a grill.”
They carried on walking hand in hand. No one could see them properly so it looked perfectly legal.
“I don’t recognise any of this -”
A blast of salt air hit them in the face. Alfred had to stop Josh from toppling headfirst over a pair of iron bars. Squinting past the rain, he felt a stir of memory.
“It’s the Shingle. Come on.”
“Are we allowed?” Josh asked as they squeezed past a series of fences.
“I don’t see anyone stopping us, do you?”
Josh hadn’t walked upon shingle before and found it hard going. It shifted beneath his feet; now it was Alfred’s turn to snatch at his hand.
“Look at this junk. You’d expect them to tidy it up ... What are those?”
You couldn’t blame him: if you were watching your feet, you wouldn’t be looking for shapes on the skyline. Monsters poised to spring, jaws and claws chiselled down to gleaming bone.
“Ten years ago Jerry wanted to open a House of Curiosities,” Alfred said. “He set me the task of rounding up the twelve most dangerous creatures in the world. Gwyn didn’t live with me, I had no responsibilities. I was an idiot. I thought there was nothing I couldn’t handle.”
>
He shivered. Josh took his hand and blew on it.
“Do you want to sit down? There’s a shell - it looks comfy.”
It looked like the conches in gift shops, only fifty times the usual size. Lying hip to hip, they were sheltered from wind and wet.
“Just as he was going to put it to the Council, the Gaskell factory went bust. It was the second biggest employer in Lux, manufacturing tinned meats. A thousand people were out of work. Feeling was running high. They expected him to shelve the plans, put something in place for the workers. He was deaf to protest.
The House had been open four months and it was haemorrhaging money. A group of the factory workers went down one night and set it on fire, releasing the animals.”
“They let all those dangerous animals out?”
“Jerry had lied about everything else. I’d caught them, I knew what they were like, but the stories sounded like so much flannel.
It was carnage. The Council dragged Jerry out of bed and ordered him to take charge. I was asked to dispose of the animals. The fire blazed out of control, those things were prowling the suburbs ... Ten people were killed, twenty injured. A little girl was mauled past recognition; I pulled the creature off her. It wouldn’t let go of me. Then -”
“What?”
“Nothing.” It sounded deranged to say Gussy had lifted him to safety. She had been dead for five years. “It was the last time I did anything for Jerry.”
They sat in silence, holding hands. Alfred didn’t want to stir, but he could tell that Josh had a question brewing, and it wasn’t going to be easy to answer.
“Humans have a lifetime of memories. How do you know which to keep?”
“It’s whatever means the most to you. You associate memories with people and places you love.”
“Alright.” Josh’s hand was hot against Alfred’s, his breath unsteady. “The Centre’s always been there. My first memory must be when I saw Chimera. I didn’t expect it to be so big. Then you were rude -”
“Abominably rude,” Alfred cringed.
“ - and charged me into the sink.”
“Will you ever let me forget that?”
“You were sweet afterwards. Asking if I wanted to travel with you, our adventures ... I hardly remember my wedding, isn’t that odd?”
Love and Robotics Page 53