Love and Robotics

by Eyre, Rachael

  Ken sat on the other side of a partition, head shaved. “They think I’m contagious,” he said. “Psychos get more respect.”

  “Are you eating properly? You look thin.”

  “Come off it, Alf. You didn’t come here to knit me nice woolly jumpers. Ask what you want to know.”

  “Why did you do it? Did breaking the law turn you on?”

  “Keep your voice down -” Ken hissed.

  “Did it last longer? Did it give it to you better than I can?” Alfred shook his head. “Could.”

  “I was lonely.”

  “You had me.”

  “When you’re globetrotting every month? I missed you so much, I couldn’t stand it.”

  “You could’ve come too.”

  Ken threw up his hands. “It wasn’t possible! Wanking’s okay for a quick fix, but I wanted intimacy.”

  “You got that from a robot?”

  “One time I was upset, he asked what the matter was. One thing led to another. I knew it was his programming, but I could talk to him.”

  “You fell in love with it, didn’t you?”

  Ken’s evasiveness said it all.

  “I’m done here.”

  “Alf -”

  “There’s nothing you can say. I’ve been through hell. Just because you were too yellow to admit you preferred a bot to me.”

  Ken shouted after him. It was no use. He would go to the court case, suffer the fall out, but they were through.

  ***

  Alfred had expected a media circus but it was hushed up. Robotics was such a new, innocent science, a scandal could kill it. He suspected Gussy of blackmail but her cool face gave nothing away. Neither did Ken’s. He’d seen men far gone with disease who looked as he did: bright eyed, ascetic, voice a whisper.

  Yes, he was Professor Kenneth Summerskill. No, he didn’t deny the charges. Yes, he’d been caught in a compromising position. Yes, he was Guy Love. Professor Summerskill was his handler. Yes, he did kiss him on that date, perform fellatio. Yes, they’d had intercourse –

  Alfred must have dozed off. The next he knew Gussy was nudging him in the ribs. “They’re summing up,” she said.

  Satisfied Professor Summerskill was suffering from sex mania, the jury felt a custodial sentence was inappropriate. They would treat his disorder and put him on a course of drugs. Guy was squelched in the courtyard outside. Gussy cried on Alfred’s shoulder.

  Take that, you bastard! he thought. He looked at Ken, flanked by guards. His thoughts seemed a world away from the head that nattered a full minute, then died.

  “Poor Guy,” Gussy whispered. “He was only following orders.”

  There was no time for pity. No time to watch the door clang shut behind Ken.

  “C’mon, sis. Let’s go home.”

  He spent the next nine months trying to forget. Luckily Jerry Etruscus made it easy. “We need a chap like you,” he said, whacking a crocbot with a mallet. “I sniff out danger, you find it. Killin and Ms Sparks have signed up already.”

  His first assignment was to track down Jerry’s daughter, who had eloped with a waiter to Talos. He found her early on, not in the least ashamed. She said she wasn’t coming back.

  He was taken on as an advisor to the Talos police force. He fell in with Dan Boolaky, now a lieutenant, and soon took up where they had left off. He realised what he’d never appreciated before: Boo loved him and wanted to make a go of it. Around this time he confessed he’d been born into the wrong body.

  “That’s why you won’t stay, isn’t it?” Boo said. “You’re weirded out I’m a he-she.”

  “I’m not ready for a serious relationship -”

  “And you still love him. Despite everything.”

  “Says whom?”

  Boo smiled ruefully. “Honey, if your face was a book, it’d be Charlie the Curious Cat.”

  The Mayor sent irate messages ordering him home. Alfred kissed Boo goodbye and gave him a thousand Q for the operation.

  “Don’t be a stranger,” Boo said. Alfred knew it wasn’t a promise he could keep.

  Alfred had always loved how Chimera lay in the lap of the Tessera hills. No matter how he travelled - vix, keli - he liked to walk the last few miles, savour his homecoming. Nanny and Tolmash were on the lawn, the butler holding wool with a long suffering expression.

  “Alfie!” She flung her knitting into Tolmash’s lap. Alfred spun her round. “We weren’t expectin’ you for two days!”

  “I got bored. How is everyone?”

  Tolmash lowered his voice. “Lady A’s not in a good way -”

  Gussy came down the front steps. “I thought it was you.”

  Normally he would swing her as he had Nanny, but something prevented him. She looked so small and pale, her cheekbones jutting out. “Lucas left,” she said.

  “Good riddance!”

  “He’s taken the children. And -” she tried to make it sound inconsequential - “Ken’s here.”

  “What?” He glared at Nanny and Tolmash.“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

  “Where was he supposed to go?”

  He stormed, he blackmailed, but Gussy was immovable. Ken didn’t have any family. He’d been blacklisted and couldn’t work.

  “Come on, Alfie. No one else would have him -”

  “With good reason!”

  “Don’t you think you’re being childish?”

  “This is my home and I don’t want him here!”

  “If you saw him you’d change your mind -”

  “I need time.”

  Alfred went on a fact finding mission tailing a mole. Nothing came of it. Jerry deliberately assigned him low profile jobs. On the way home he took a shortcut through the plantation. A hunched figure was sitting on a bench, knitting.

  “Hello, Alf.”

  Running into Ken like this, he saw the damage ‘treatment’ had wrought. His hair, never plentiful, was a few sorry tufts around his ears. The ivory skin was puffy with broken veins, the fine eyes misted over. He’d lost half his teeth, had a stench of decay. In nine months he’d become an old man.

  “What have they done to you?”

  “Grisly, eh? Look like my own death mask.” The hand on his arm was like sandpaper. “While none’s so fair as my Alfred.”

  Alfred’s eyes felt shamefully hot. “What’s with the knitting?”

  “This stuff I’m taking gives me the shakes. Anything that helps motor dexterity is good. More often it makes a bloody mess.” The self deprecating smile was utterly alien. “How was your trip?”

  It was as though the drug had waited for Alfred to return, then worked its way into Ken’s bloodstream. He was painfully thin but couldn’t keep food down. His breath smelled wretched, sores clustered on his lips. Any exertion exhausted him.

  Ken only minded when he started to forget. It started with small things: where he’d put a book, the combination on his safe. Over time it spread. Whether he’d eaten. Remembering to wash. What date it was. “My mind’s the only thing I have left,” he said. “Once that’s gone I’m finished.”

  Gussy appointed herself his carer. Alfred marvelled she could do it. She persevered, yet tears were always close to the surface. She’d spent the past year perfecting a new form of communication. Everyone’s brainwaves would be connected on one network, giving and receiving information. Ken helped her when he was lucid. After a few arguments they called it the Storm. They unveiled it one day in the middle of the drawing room. To Alfred’s untutored eye it looked like a mangle.

  “Every home will have one,” she said. “The chip in the headset transforms your brainwaves into energy -”

  “Someone can tap into my brain?” Alfred objected.

  “It’s password protected.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Kitty, back me up - Ken! Not in here!”

  He was wearing a dreamy, disconnected look, groping the front of his trousers.

  “I don’t know how much more I can stand,” she whispered. />
  Ken wasn’t her only problem. Her divorce had come through, Lucas citing unreasonable behaviour. Now he haggled for sole custody. She didn’t feel safe seeing him alone.

  Alfred blamed himself for what happened. He was out with Lewis one night, drinking to times past. It must have been twenty three hours when he wandered over the threshold.

  Tolmash was at his side immediately. “M’lud, it’s -” He mopped his forehead. “You’d better see.”

  He followed him to Gussy’s room. Nanny sat with her on the bed, holding her hand. She looked as though half the blood had drained from her body.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Alfred demanded.

  “Lucas came. They argued about the kids. He -”

  Gussy sat up, wincing in pain. “I was going to have a baby.”

  “I found her at the foot of the stairs,” Tolmash said. Alfred glanced at Nanny and she shook her head, her eyes gleaming with tears.

  “I was going to name him after Dad,” Gussy said.

  Rage lent Alfred wings. A plan had sprung into his head - once he’d gathered the kit, he leapt into his vix. He was too drunk to drive but didn’t care. He arrived at Bloom and Kidd’s an hour later. Uncle Bloom had died the previous year; now Lucas owned the practice.

  Alfred still had a key left over from his apprenticeship. All these years later it fitted the lock. He moved through the sombre panelled rooms, the walls painted institutional green. They’d installed a lift since his time. It whispered through the building, up to the third floor. He slid the door open a crack and peered out.

  Lucas was sitting in the room opposite, typing. When Gussy married him he’d had a mediocre handsomeness. Now his true character had wormed through: a double chin, greedy eyes, a permanent sneer.

  Just as Alfred was getting cramp, Lucas started to lock up for the night. Whistling, he took the few steps from his office to the lift. An arm shot out and stuffed a handkerchief into his mouth. He breathed it in and slept.

  Lucas woke half an hour later. He heard grasshoppers scraping, the blood freezing cry of a kestrel. He was on his back in a field, stars wheeling overhead.

  “Hello, Lucas.” Alfred leant on a spade, his foot against a trunk. Five feet away was a freshly dug pit.

  Lucas tried to sit. “Is this a joke?”

  “When have we shared those, brother dear?”

  “I’m not your brother.”

  “A feeling I heartily reciprocate.” He brought the spade down across Lucas’s knees. “Ssh.”

  “Don’t ssh me, you bastard.”

  “Save your breath. No one can hear.” Alfred lit a cigarette. He took his time, smoking it to the dog end.

  Lucas glared at him, the paraphernalia, the pit. He noticed a needle mark in his wrist. “What have you done to me?”

  The smile faded. Alfred threw the dog end away. “What did you do to Gussy?”

  Lucas’s tongue flicked across his lips. “You know?”

  “She miscarried my nephew. Of course I know.” He kicked him. “Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”

  “It wasn’t mine.”

  Alfred sat on top of him, pushing the spade against his stomach. “Gussy hasn’t lied a single day in her life. If she says that was your baby, I believe her.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first. Gwyn -”

  It had been his own fear, years ago. Why Gwyn was so tall, without a scrap of resemblance to her father. He’d carried out tests, telling Ken it was in case they wanted kids of their own. It was one of the lowest things he’d done. “Ken’s sterile.”

  “If not him -”

  “If you value your life, don’t finish that sentence.”

  A streak of spit hit his face. He shook his head. “You really are a barbarian, aren’t you?” He hauled Lucas the extra few feet to the trunk. “A spot of corrective treatment is due.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Spade. Pit. Trunk. You. Do the maths.”

  Alfred dumped Lucas inside the trunk and sealed it shut. He kicked it into the pit and shovelled dirt over it. He rapped on the lid with the spade until he grew bored, then sat on a stool and watched his alarm clock, still tapping. If he strained to listen he could hear Lucas scrabbling. As the alarm went off he towed the trunk out. Lucas fell onto the grass, gasping.

  “It’s normal to feel groggy,” Alfred said. “Once you’ve found your legs I’ll run you home.”

  “You’re a fucking lunatic!”

  “No, just a concerned citizen protecting my family from a thug. Come near Gussy again and you’ll be an interesting bump on the highway.”

  Three days later Gussy came to him with the mail. “Lucas is withdrawing his claim to sole custody. Do you know anything about this?”

  He shrugged. “Perhaps he had an attack of conscience.”

  “You’re a rotten liar, Alfie.” She hugged him.

  Ken was deteriorating fast. It was a matter of weeks, if not days. Somehow they built a friendship on the ashes.

  They met in the afternoons, sat together in the grounds. One afternoon they were sitting in the Dog Cemetery, listening to the bird song. Alfred sneaked a sideways look at him. His hair had fallen out and his veins were like cables, but in repose he was dignified. It was the look he’d worn in quiet moments, after love.

  “What happened to us, Ken?”

  “Eternal consequences.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It’s human nature to fall for the wrong person. You for me, Gussy for Lucas.”

  Alfred frowned. “She only married him because she couldn’t have you.”

  “Proving my point.”

  “Couldn’t you have tried? Made her happy?”

  “Then I would’ve been unhappy. I know life with me wasn’t a bowl of cherries, but we had good times, didn’t we?”

  Alfred didn’t think of the pain and uncertainty, jealousy and anguish. “Yes,” he said, squeezing the large cold hand. “Of course we did.”

  Ken disappeared that evening. One of the maids had given him the number for a fly firm. He was carrying a suitcase, wearing a summer suit.

  Gussy was frantic. She called the police stations. “He’s sick, he can’t look after himself.” The minute she said ‘Professor Summerskill’, their attitude changed. “Haven’t time to look for pervs,” one said.

  “What’s your name? I’ll report you!”

  “Go ahead,” he snickered. The tube cut out.

  ***

  They were gathering in the harvest. Every year Alfred, farmhands and boys from the village made it last a week. Picking the crops by hand, bundling them high, races in wheelbarrows and singsongs. Getting sunburnt, knackered and drunk on homemade cider.

  Gwyn had been expelled again. She was only twelve but growing out of everything: clothes, ideas, schools. Certainly Lucas, who was annoyed by her very existence.

  “It’s no use, Grizzly,” she said. “Auntie Elaine says she’s going to get me into her old college, but I won’t be able to stand it. All that praying and doing things for the good of your health. Ugh!”

  “Have you told your mum?”

  “They can’t make me. If they do, I’ll run away.”

  He sounded the bell. The others drifted into groups, sitting on upturned bins or collapsing onto mounds of wheat.

  “I’ll have a crack at it,” he promised.

  “Do you think Dad’ll listen?”

  She’d made a valid point. Lucas refused to come near Chimera - all communication was via paranoid letters. ‘I used to think you were mad, or stupid,’ the latest said, ‘but now I know you’re evil. No wonder Summerskill turned out a Pervert. You get the partner you deserve’ - and so on.

  “Maybe you could be homeschooled.”

  “What, have a tutor?” Her face lit up. “You couldn’t do it, could you?”

  “Have you seen my spelling? I’m certainly not qualified to make you a socially responsible human being.”

  “You know stuff. Useful st
uff.”

  “What, like which parts of a bear to eat?”

  “Anything you’re not sure about, we’ll ask Mum.”

  “Hmm.” He was warming to the idea. Now there were fewer expeditions in the pipeline, he had to think about his future. He’d considered a desk job in the Force, but he’d die of boredom. Teaching a bright, eccentric student - why not? “I’ll think about it.”

  A figure glided over the field: Tolmash. He had the perfect face for bad tidings: melancholy, jowls drooping. He steered Alfred out of Gwyn’s hearing. “The professor, m’lud. The worst news possible.”

  “Where’s Gussy?”

  “At a matinee.”

  “Hell. I’ll see what I can do.” Alfred passed a tired hand over his eyes.

  He needed to wash. He needed to change. But there wasn’t time. Within the hour he was speeding towards Lux Mortuary. He had identified bodies before, of course; in the Force it was an occupational hazard. He’d never had to identify a lover. He didn’t know if he was up to it.

  Two small neat men greeted him, as alike as a pair of socks. “Lord Langton? Would you like something to drink?” One brewed a peaty coffee, another sat opposite him. They looked like out of work actors.

  “Professor Summerskill was found at eight thirty,” one said. “Must’ve been dead five hours.”

  “How did he -”

  “He was in the bath. Fully clothed.” That was a relief. “Electrocuted himself.”

  “What with?”

  “A robot, m’lud.”

  Somewhere outside his body he heard the coffee tip, heard one say, “He’s out cold!” and the other, “Didn’t know men fainted. Mind you, he’s one of them -”

  He heaved himself upright. “What kind of robot?”

  “Does it matter?”

  He wanted to reconstruct: had Ken grabbed the first thing to hand, or was he thumbing his nose at his detractors?

  “A Home Butler. There wasn’t much of it left.”

  Gussy had given it the green light without his permission. How cruel, turning on the one person who had never wavered in loyalty. He would never tell her.