by Tom Holt
Stop, and think. To jump that distance sideways was so completely impractical that even a raw adrenaline surge couldn’t help him make it. From above, though , he might just make it. Or not, as the case may be. Only one way to find out.
He scuttled up two more levels and got ready to jump.
Go, lemmings!
For a moment, he wobbled so much he nearly fell off the ledge. That urge again; that delightful, seductive whispering in his mind, half cooing and half taunting. He looked down, the way you’re supposed not to. He could see why you’re supposed not to.
Go, lemmings! Go, lemmings!
But, he reasoned, as he threw himself into the air, I’m not a lemming. I’m a member of Her Majesty’s Government trying to make an important telephone call, and if Gravity had any respect, it’d look the other way.
The impact knocked all the breath out of him so thoroughly that his lungs seemed to have stalled, and it took an anxious few moments to get them started again. Something - he wasn’t well enough versed in lemming anatomy to know what - hurt like hell. He’d made it. Oh good.
Now all he had to do was spring athletically on to the telephone cable, swarm up that like an extra in a Horn-blower novel climbing the rigging, jar the receiver off the hook, cling on to it as it fell, hop off the receiver back on to the black plastic shelf and hop from the shelf on to the part of the phone machine where the dialling buttons were. So he did that; and though he bashed, bruised, winded and squatted himself pretty comprehensively at every turn, at least there were no more siren lemming-voices in his brain. So that was all right.
And here he was, on the pad with the numbers; but who, exactly was he going to call up? Hadn’t thought that far ahead. Hadn’t wanted to tempt providence. Had somehow assumed that if only he could get to a phone, everything’d be all right. Well, here he was, and it wasn’t.
Try the operator. Hello, can I make a reverse-charge call to the Prime Minister, please? Maybe not. It was just conceivable that the operator might mutter something under her breath and put the phone down.
There must be someone he could call; otherwise what was the point of all this effort, this incredible success in the face of all the odds? It’d be like climbing in through the skylight of Heaven just to discover that God was out.
Just then, a number floated into his mind. It was the Home Secretary’s private line; the direct one that bypassed all the minders and bogies and put you directly in touch with the man himself. That’d do the trick, surely; a few words of explanation, and the cavalry could be here within minutes. Except—
Except he didn’t have any coins to make the call with, and he had an idea that the Home Secretary might also be sceptical about taking reverse-charge calls from someone who claimed to be the Prime Minister. He slumped, letting all four paws slide across the plastic, until he came to rest against something hard.
It was a pound coin.
Against all the odds . . . someone had left a pound coin lying on the shelf, just handy. Maybe there really is a God, and maybe He loves hard-working politicians. Admittedly, he was faced with the task of lifting it up, balancing it on its edge and somehow lugging it sideways and up the substantial slope that separated him from the coin slot. In the mood he was in, however, that needn’t be an insuperable difficulty, or anything like one. Just take a bit of common sense and some honest sweat. No problem.
After he’d thought it through and got the coin upright, he put his forepaws on the edge and rolled it until he reached the edge of the shelf. Then, gripping the coin between his back legs and scrabbling with his front set, he slithered and bucked and scrambled and somehow manoeuvred his way across, backed the coin into the slot, and let it rest there. Dial the number. Wait for the pips. When the pips go, sit on the coin, forcing it in. The coin drops. A very long half-second; and a voice said, ‘Hello?’
Success! Goddammit, I never really believed I could do this, but I have! With a frantic effort, he hurled himself at the flex, abseiled down it to the dangling receiver, back-somersaulted over the edge of the mouthpiece and hung on with his hind paws, leaving his snout level with the bit you talk into.
‘Squeak!’ he shouted. ‘Squeak squeak squeak squeak!’
‘Hello? Who is this?’
‘Squeak squeak! Squeak squeak squeak?’
‘Hello?’
‘Squeak! Squeak squeak! Squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak!’
‘Oh for God’s sake,’ said the voice irritably, and rang off.
CHAPTER SIX
‘Ah,’ Kevin replied.
‘Excuse me?’
‘It’s rather a long story,’ Kevin said sheepishly. ‘And I’m not sure you’d believe it. In fact, if you’re able to believe it you’re in the wrong business. With that much faith you could start your own mountain delivery service. In fact, you could play hockey with the blessed things.’
‘Try me.’
Kevin sighed. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘but only if you promise not to put the phone down. Remember, I did tell you the right code.’
‘I promise.’
‘And don’t say I didn’t warn you. Look, you know God?’
‘Not personally, no.’
‘No, I mean, you know of Him.You know who He is.’
‘I went to Sunday school for three weeks once,’ Karen replied. ‘After that I got thrown out for fighting.’
‘Be that as it may, you know who I’m talking about when I say God. I’m His son.’
‘Jesus!’
‘No, the other one.’
‘I meant Jesus! as in . . . What d’you mean, the other one? There is only one. Only begotten son and so forth. I remember that bit, because the teacher got all shy when I asked him what “begotten” meant.’
Kevin sighed deeply. ‘Right now,’ he said, ‘I’m beginning to wish that was true, but it isn’t. There are two chips off the old block, and I’m the other one. I knew you wouldn’t believe me.’
There was a pause. ‘I didn’t say I didn’t believe you,’ Karen said cautiously. ‘Like I said, I only did three weeks of Sunday school. Perhaps we didn’t get around to you before I left.’
‘Anyway,’ Kevin said with an effort, ‘that’s who I am, and Dad and Jay - my brother - they’re both away on holiday, and—’
‘On holiday!’
‘Yes,’ Kevin replied savagely, ‘on holiday. Have you got a problem with that?’
‘No, no, please go on.’
‘On holiday,’ Kevin repeated firmly, ‘and they left me in charge, well, sort of, and Mainframe’s our computer, and I thought it wouldn’t hurt . . . I mean, I didn’t mean any harm, honestly.’
‘Mm?’
Kevin could feel his voice crumbling. ‘Look, all I did was try and log on. And then I tried to log off again.’ His voice was a whisper now, faint as the fluttering of a ten-pound note being carried away on the breeze. ‘I think I may have pressed the wrong keys.’
‘Ah.’
‘And it’s done something awful.’
‘Mphm.’
‘And I don’t know what it is! ’
At the end of the line, a silence. Then a tiny muffled noise. A whimper? No, not quite. A cough, frog in the throat? No. It was a giggle.
‘I’m glad,’ Kevin said eventually, with all the gravity he could muster (just about enough to get an apple a third of the way down from the tree before letting it go floating off like a balloon), ‘that you find it amusing. I’m afraid I don’t. In fact, I’m not sure there’s much point in continuing with this conversation.’
That noise again. ‘I’m sorry,’ squeaked the voice. ‘Really. Do please go on.’
‘The computer,’ Kevin said, stiffly as a starched corpse, ‘refuses to tell me what it is I’ve done, because I haven’t got the right codes. I think what happened was that the code I’d got just let me in to one small part of it. And now it’s being all temperamental and refusing to tell me anything.’
‘I see. How very - snghhhhh!’
‘I be
t your pardon?’
‘Sorry. Sorry.’ The voice pulled itself together, with moderate success. ‘In other words,’ she said, ‘it’s not a systems malfunction at all.The computer’s just doing what it’s supposed to do, and you can’t persuade it not to.’
‘That’s right. Like I said, it’s all my fault.When Dad gets home . . .’
‘Quite. And in the meanwhile—’
‘It’s done something horrible,’ Kevin said with a shudder.
‘But you don’t know what.’
‘That’s about it.’
‘Not even the tiniest hint?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine. Better, probably. If you look out of your window and it’s raining frogs, we can start to build up some constructive data . . .’ Kevin stopped talking and thought for a moment. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘that’s not as silly as it sounds. Have you noticed anything odd going on down there?’
‘Odder than usual, you mean? Apart from this conversation, no. Let’s see, now. Sun still there? Check. Horsemen of the apocalypse? Not unless they’re keeping a pretty low profile. In fact,’ she added, ‘everything seems pretty normal to me. Are you sure—?’
‘Yes. If you’re about to suggest that any minute now Mainframe’s going to say “Fooled you!” and put on a red plastic nose, it’d probably be better if you didn’t.’
‘I see. Right then, we’ll have to see what we can do.’
There was something in the voice’s tone - an inflection, a slight upward tilt of competence and determination - that blew a little dust-swirl in the ashes of Kevin’s spirit. Inconceivable, of course, that a mere human might be able to sort out a mess that the finest brains in Heaven (his, by default, but never mind) had by now despaired of; but Kevin was ready to give a fair shout to any straw with at least one hand-hold. After all, what harm could it do?
Better not to think that way. Instead, think of what Dad would do to him if he didn’t sort it out before They got back. Proverbially, to forgive is divine; but Kevin had the notion that, under the appropriate circumstances, to kick the offender’s bum three times round the four nearest galaxies might well be divine too. It was a hypothesis he didn’t particularly want to test by experiment.
‘Great,’ he said. ‘So what’re you going to try first?’
‘Why?’ asked the robot. ‘What do I need a name for?’
Len shrugged. ‘Tradition,’ he replied. ‘As far as I can tell; I haven’t had a lot of experience as a human being yet. I get the impression they like giving names to favourite inanimate objects, presumably as part of the human/ chattel bonding process.’
‘How very quaint.’
‘Yes,’ Len agreed. ‘I thought so too. Still, like they say, when in Rome . . .’
‘Look carefully both ways before crossing the road?’
‘That too.’ Len sat down on the workbench, his legs swinging freely. ‘Right then. A name. You got any preferences?’
‘Robot,’ said the robot.
Len thought for a moment, and then shook his head. ‘Too obvious, I think.’
‘What’s so bad about being obvious?’
‘Don’t ask me. All right, how about Robert? Robert the robot. Hm?’
‘Please,’ said the robot. ‘If I were to throw up, goodness only knows what might come out. If you were lucky, about a thousand quid’s worth of cadmium-silver contacts. What about Spot? Or Fang?’
‘Rover?’
‘Possibly. Only isn’t that an open invitation to me to break down every five minutes and leak oil all over the place?’
Len frowned. ‘Dunno,’ he said. ‘You’re the one with the Internet access, you tell me. Or rather,’ he added quickly, as the green lights on top of the robot’s head started to flash, indicating computer activity, ‘don’t. What about Superman? There’s a lot in this body’s memory about somebody called that. He used to read books about him.’
‘Only if you want to find yourself facing a substantial lawsuit. All right, what about Adam?’
Len frowned. ‘You’re way ahead of me again. I take it that’s some sort of reference.’
The robot inclined its head; elevation plus thirty degrees, back to zero, minus thirty degrees, back to zero. ‘Widespread human creation myth,’ it said. ‘Adam being the name attributed to the first ever human being. Interested?’
‘No.’ Len slid off the bench and picked up a small Phillips-head screwdriver. ‘Hold still a minute, will you? There’s a grubscrew starting to work loose in your left eyelid. The whole point is,’ he continued, tightening the offending screw and dabbing in a touch of the green Loctite, ‘you’re not a human being. You’re the improved mark two version.’
‘Fair enough, then. What about Mark Two?’
‘Bit fussy. How about just plain Mark?’
‘All right,’ said Mark. ‘I should add that a cursory information scan produces a number of humans with the name Mark, namely Mark Antony, Mark the Evangelist, Mark Polo, Mark Twain and Registered Trade Mark.’
‘I see. Does that mean you’ve got to be Mark Six?’
‘I think that’s left to your discretion,’ Mark replied, his tone of voice cybernetically regulated to convey boredom. ‘Will that do, or are there any other picturesque human customs we have to wade through?’
‘Not sure,’ Len replied. ‘I’ve got a note here that properly speaking you have to be taken to a place called a church and have water splashed all over you before the name becomes official, but we’ll leave that for now. First things first,’ he continued, looking round the workshop, ‘let’s get this pigheap tidied and swept. A tidy shop is an efficient shop, apparently.’
‘Oh. All right then.’
‘You don’t sound overjoyed.’
‘I’m not,’ Mark grunted. ‘Wouldn’t it be easier to tidy up as you go along rather than leave it all to the end?’
‘Argumentative, aren’t you, for a machine?’
‘Look who’s talking.’
‘When I was designing you,’ Len said, handing Mark a broom, ‘I had to decide whether to fit you with an upgraded artificial intelligence with reasoning capability and advanced verbal skills, or an attachment for knocking the tops off beer bottles. I think I may have made the wrong choice.’
‘That’s not a very nice thing to say.’
‘There’s still time,’ Len went on, scowling, ‘to rectify my error. Just bear with me a moment while I get the big wrench.’
‘All right,’ grumbled the robot, dabbing spitefully at the floor with the broom. ‘Of course, you can’t be expected to know about the sorcerer’s apprentice, so I won’t make any vague threats.’
‘The what?’ Len enquired, as he sorted the BA taps and put them back in their boxes. ‘Sorcerer’s a new one on me, but I know a bit about apprentices. They’re the ones who’re always sneaking out the back for a crafty smoke pretending they’re going for a pee. I quote from memory,’ he added. ‘Not mine.’
Mark stopped sweeping and leaned on his broom, causing the handle to bend alarmingly. ‘There was once this magician—’
‘This what?’
‘Very clever engineer,’ Mark translated. ‘And he had an apprentice who was bone idle.’
‘I can relate to this story,’ Len observed, nodding. ‘One of these days remind me to tell you about the Youth Opportunities kid we had in the workshop one time, who used to stick his chewing gum up the slots of my . . .’
‘Bone idle,’ Mark repeated, leaning against the wall. ‘And one day, the engineer told him to sweep up the shop. But the apprentice didn’t want to, so he cast a spell on the . . . He rigged up a mechanical broom which did the sweeping for him.’
‘Called a vacuum cleaner,’ Len interrupted. ‘And he made his first million before he was thirty. Good story. And I don’t like sweeping up either,’ he added with a pleasant smile. ‘Which is why I invented you. Now get on with it.’
‘That’s not the story,’ the robot replied severely. ‘The story is, the mechanical broom worked j
ust fine. It had the workshop swept out in no time at all. And then the apprentice found he couldn’t switch it off. It just kept on sweeping. It swept away the benches and the machinery and ground away the floorboards, all in a matter of minutes. And when the engineer got back and saw what it had done—’
‘He sold the idea to the Ministry of Defence?’
‘No. He was very cross indeed with the apprentice.’
‘But he was able to stop it?’
The robot frowned. ‘Well, yes, I suppose so. That’s not the point.’
‘Yes it is,’ Len replied. ‘Moral of the story, don’t mess about with bits of kit you can’t handle. Always think the design through before you start cutting metal. Or a new broom sweeps clean. What’s that got to do with you standing there not doing what I told you to?’
The green lamps on Mark’s head flashed on and off rapidly, indicating that he was communing with the Net. ‘Nothing, I guess,’ he replied eventually. ‘Sorry, my sources hadn’t looked at it that way before. They seemed to think it was apposite.’
‘Shows how much they know,’ Len said. ‘There’s a dustpan just behind you.’
‘All right. Would this be a good time to fill you in on Shaftesbury, Wilberforce, the abolition of slavery and the American Civil War?’
‘So long as it doesn’t interfere with you sweeping the floor.’
The robot swept the floor. He made a very thorough job of it. You could have eaten your dinner off that floor, though getting it in the dishwasher afterwards would have been a pain. ‘You see?’ Len said, when he’d finished. ‘Don’t you love the satisfaction of a job well done?’