by Tom Holt
‘Looking for something,’ Len replied awkwardly. ‘I thought I, um, dropped a 4BA grubscrew.’
Three small red lights on the sides of the robot’s head flashed greedily. ‘Here,’ it said, ‘allow me. I’m good at finding things.’
‘No, it’s all right, honest . . .’
‘I exist,’ said the robot determinedly, ‘only to serve. Budge up.’
A few minutes later, the burnished steel head popped out from under the bench and turned towards him. ‘You’re sure you dropped it here?’
‘No,’ Len replied wretchedly. ‘In fact, I’m pretty sure I dropped it, er, somewhere else.’
Pause. Flashing lights. Faint whirr as an automatic cooling fan cut in for a second or so. Bleep. ‘Then why were you looking under here?’
‘Dunno. More light under there, I guess.’
Flink. Bleep. ‘That sounds improbable. Cross-reference with archive material also indicates strong resemblance between your answer and a very old humanoid joke about the drunk and the policeman. You were hiding.’
Len signed. ‘All right. I was hiding. What about it?’
‘Why were you hiding?’
‘Because,’ Len replied irritably, ‘ever since I put that damn Protestant work thing in your head, you’ve done nothing but badger me. I’ve had enough, do you hear?’
The robot looked hurt - see above for the detailed technical stuff, plus a slight but perceptible quiver of one steel lip. ‘But I’m only trying to help. I exist only to serve. And, as you yourself observed, this place is a pigheap.’
‘No it’s not.’
‘Yes it is.’
‘No it’s not.’
‘Yes it is. Excuse me,’ the robot added quickly, ‘but I base this observation on a detailed schematic diagram with extensive written commentary contained in an article in Engineering Today, issue two hundred and six, page forty-two and following, entitled “Ideal Workshop Management; Theory and Practice”, which states that—’
‘Don’t care,’ Len interrupted angrily. ‘I like it this way. And besides,’ he added, with a broad gesture, ‘look at it. I could eat my dinner off this floor.’
‘I’d rather you didn’t. It’s taken me long enough to get it halfway clean without having to mop up gravy. Although if you insist I suppose I’ll have to, since I exist only to—’
‘Shut up.’
‘There’s no need to—’
With the speed and grace of a leopard pouncing, Len leapt across the room to the tool rack and grabbed a Phillips head screwdriver. ‘That’s it,’ he snapped. ‘It’s coming out. Here, hold still while I get the retaining bolts.’
‘With respect,’ said the robot, ducking neatly behind the Great Machine, ‘I don’t think you want to do that. You think you want to, but you don’t really. My logic centres—’
‘Come back, you aggravating bucket of bolts.’
He grabbed; and it was a close-run thing, between his own innate machine’s sense of timing and distance and the robot’s precisioneered reflexes. In the event, though, all he got was five fingers’ grasp of air.
‘My logic centres,’ continued the robot, as it scrambled hard right and ducked under the horizontal arm, ‘state categorically that there are cases where to observe the letter of an instruction may be to deny the true spirit of service in its deepest sense. Missed,’ it added, as Len grabbed again. ‘Can’t catch me!’
Exhausted, Len flopped against the side of the machine and caught his breath. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘you win. Stop dodging around and I promise I won’t disconnect it.’
‘Logic centres infer like Hell you won’t,’ replied the robot. ‘Evasive action will continue until you replace the screwdriver.’
Len sighed. ‘All right,’ he groaned, putting the screwdriver back. ‘For pity’s sake,’ he went on, ‘I do have more important things to do than chase my own blasted robot round my own blasted machine—’
‘You have?’
‘No. No. Please forget I said—’
‘Please state nature of task and define priority of assignments. Come on, we’re wasting valuable production time.’
Instead of replying verbally, Len made an unambiguous hand gesture and sat down on the bench. ‘All right, you win. I haven’t got anything particular to do. I just don’t want to spend the rest of my life tidying up this damn workshop just to please a damn robot.’
‘Excessive reliance on obscenities and expletives tends towards restricted vocabulary growth and general decline in overall verbal skills. Instead, why not use some meaningful adjective, such as tiresome or annoying?’
‘Get - I mean, stop being annoying. Thank you.’ Len closed his eyes, then opened them again. ‘We need something to do,’ he sighed. ‘Otherwise I’m going to seize my bearings. Something,’ he added rapidly, ‘besides perfecting the immaculate workshop. Let’s make something.’
‘Sure thing, boss. What had you in mind?’
Len hesitated, his brain suddenly frozen. It wasn’t the sort of question he’d ever faced, back in the days when he was a production-line machine running continuously except for occasional short breaks to fill up the oilers and clear out the swarf. And ever since he’d acquired the human body, he’d been working flat out modifying the machine and building the robot. Now the machine was as good as he could make it, and the robot - well, if anything, it was just that wee bit too efficient.Was there truly nothing left to do? If so, what was to become of him? When there’s nothing for a machine to do, someone unplugs it while the sales manager goes out and buys lunch for potential customers. But human beings don’t have plugs. Or sales managers.
‘Um,’ he therefore replied. ‘Actually, I’m open to suggestions.’
‘I exist only to serve. Please wait.’
With a muted symphony of bleeps, the robot went into a sort of cybernetic trance, presumably indicating deep communion with the Net. Len was just about to creep across to the rack and get the screwdriver when the robot bleeped back into life and said, ‘Altruism.’
Len frowned. ‘You what?’
‘Altruism,’ the robot repeated. ‘According to the consensus of received opinion, the priorities governing human motivation should consist of (a) enlightened self-interest, followed by (b) altruism. Charity begins at home, and when home’s sorted you go out and help others.’
‘Is that right?’
‘Sounds a bit improbable,’ the robot admitted. ‘My survey of all humanoid philosophical argument was necessarily somewhat cursory, and I am presently reassessing data to eliminate any latent error. Still, that’s what it seems to say in the big book of words. Consideration of the humanoid axiom “Don’t do as I do, do as I say” might prove illuminating in this context.’
‘I wish you’d go easy on the long words,’ Len grumbled. ‘The guy who had this brain before me only ever read the headlines and the sports pages. However, I think I get the drift of what you’re saying. And I guess it does make sense. In a way.’
‘Thank you for those few kind words.’
‘What you’re saying,’ Len went on, ‘is that when one plant’s got spare capacity and there’s another plant running flat out and still not getting through the work, it makes sense to subcontract.Yes?’
‘From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs; Karl Marx, 1818 to 1883, quotation from “Criticism of the Gotha Programme”, page - sorry, I forgot. Yes.’
Len stood up, walked round the shop a couple of times and sat down again. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘So let’s go and do something useful. Any suggestions?’
The robot hesitated.
‘Well?’
Flink. Bleep. ‘Perhaps you’d like to be a bit more specific,’ it said. ‘Because if I were to give you a readout of all the pieces of work within our capabilities and requiring attention in the public interest within a twenty-mile radius of this location, I have a feeling that after the first twenty minutes you’re going to throw a spanner at me.’
‘
Ah. Right.’ Len’s brow creased like the spine of a cheap paperback. ‘You mean there’s lots of things that need fixing in this city alone?’
A mere bleep and flink cannot of themselves be interpreted as a snigger, so the robot didn’t snigger, exactly. ‘You could say that,’ it said.
‘Really? How odd. I thought you said it was the consensus of human philosophy or something.’
The robot shrugged. ‘Maybe they’re all busy except us. You want to start with something simple?’
Len nodded. ‘Might as well,’ he replied. ‘After all, we’re new to this lark, both of us. What’s simple but extremely helpful and conducive to the greater good?’
The robot considered. Insubstantial particles of information screamed along silicone leylines like the ghosts of dead bullets. Light flashed.
‘We’ll need,’ it said, ‘lots and lots of paint.’
‘The fact is,’ said the stranger, sitting down and summoning further coffee in one fluid, practised movement, ‘we represent a syndicate of substantial business interests, and we’d like to do business. Now,’ she added, looking the laptop squarely in the screen, ‘you’re a limited company, you’ve got to admit I’m talking your language.’
The laptop considered for a moment. ‘Your pronunciation is awful,’ it typed, ‘but I get the general idea. What’s the deal?’
‘Pretty straightforward, really,’ the stranger replied. ‘You see, we have an idea for a product. Once it’s in production, it’ll sell itself, absolutely no worries on that score.’
‘Better mousetrap?’
The stranger smiled strangely. ‘Let’s say a better approach to the whole mouse issue. Where we need you guys - and a few more like you, negotiations are in hand on that front - is in product development. R and D. Which are, you’ll agree, the sinews of successful business.’
The laptop oscillated a sine curve of green-glowing question marks across its screen, a digital shrug. ‘We both read the same Ladybird book, I can tell. Get specific.’
‘Ah.’ The stranger leaned back a little; approved body language for Not so fast, buster. ‘Point is, we’re at a stage where discretion is still fairly essential. I really need to know whether you’re interested before I can give you names and account numbers.’
‘We’re interested,’ Maria interrupted. ‘Then again, you’d be amazed at the wide range of things that interest us but which we wouldn’t want to get caught up in. Road accidents, great military disasters through the ages, two dogs bonking—’
The stranger frowned, and continued to address her remarks to the laptop. ‘Obviously,’ she said, ‘at this stage all we’re looking for from you is an in-principle commitment, in general terms. Just to see if our concepts interface with your concepts.’
‘Thought you said you were talking my language. Sorry, I don’t speak gibberish.Well actually I do, but only enough to order a beer and ask when the last bus leaves.Why don’t you tell us who you are, and then we’ll know. And stop treating my associate here as if she was just part of the décor. I have her word that she’s through with all that stuff now.’
The stranger looked affronted, but only for roughly the time it takes spit to evaporate off a red-hot ceramic hob. ‘So sorry,’ she said, unpacking the scowl into one of those foldaway smiles you can take with you anywhere. ‘No offence. You want to know who we are? We’ll tell you.’
The male colleague on her left tugged at her sleeve. ‘No we won’t, Ginger dearest. Remember, we agreed—’ He would undoubtedly have said more if the pinch of jacket material between his finger and thumb hadn’t turned into a live scorpion. ‘Ginger,’ he hissed, ‘that’s not—’
‘Whist,’ Ginger replied. ‘Do excuse him, it’s his first big meeting on this side of the - ooops, I’m getting ahead of myself. Like I said, we’re a syndicate representing substantial business interests.’
‘Yes?’
‘From Hell.’
‘Ah. Right.’
‘Or at least,’ Ginger went on, as blithely as if she’d just announced that she worked for the Prudential, ‘we use Hell as part of our corporate umbrella, but we aren’t actually part of what you’d call the Infernal infrastructure. ’
‘More like a group of independent traders operating from a basically eternally damned home base,’ added the male colleague on her right. ‘That is, our registered office is there, likewise a lot of our banking and capital structure. But we don’t have to do what they say.’
The other male nodded. ‘They don’t even know we exist. At least, not as a syndicate.’
‘Precisely.’ Ginger amplified the smile. ‘What it fries down to is, we’re all devils - quite highly placed ones, really - and this is a little sideline of ours which we’re hoping to expand into something a trifle bigger.’
Maria raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh yes?’ she asked. ‘How much bigger?’
Ginger beamed at her. ‘Universal domination, dear. We plan to cut out God. Bumble, would you be a dear and see where that coffee’s got to?’
The male on her right got up without a word and strode away, returning shortly afterwards with a solid silver samovar on a trolley. Meanwhile, the laptop’s screen, which had gone totally blank, filled with characters again.
‘Ah,’ it said. ‘Now I know who you are.You’re a bunch of loonies.’
Ginger’s brows drew together, though the smile remained as bright and warm as a valleyful of fallout. ‘Do I detect just a hint of scepticism?’ she asked.
‘Does a trained surveyor detect a bloody great mountain he’s just busted his nose against? Yes, sister, you do. Now push off. Maria, get the bill, we’re leaving.’
‘Don’t do that,’ Ginger said. ‘How’d it be if we convinced you that we’re who we say we are?’
‘Probably rather unpleasant,’ the laptop replied. ‘Still, I suppose you might just as well.’
Ginger exchanged a brief glance with her colleagues; and then there was a flash, or some similar lighting effect, and for an infinitesimally small fragment of a second, a moment so brief as to make the time occupied in showing one frame in a reel of movie film seem like waiting for a bus in the rain, Maria saw the three of them in their true shapes . . .
‘Fair enough,’ she said, when they’d stopped doing it. ‘So that’s what you really look like when you’re at home, is it? Gosh.’
‘Yes. Well, actually, no, because back home we just slip into any old thing that’s comfy. It’s a bit like Bavarian national costume; they’re supposed to wear it all the time, but really it’s only for the tourists.’
‘I see,’ Maria replied. ‘So you’re fiends from Hell. That’s fine, really. Bigotry isn’t one of my faults, I’m delighted to say. It was more that stuff about taking over the Universe that we found a bit hard to swallow.’
‘Oh, but that’s all perfectly straightforward,’ Ginger replied soothingly. ‘Bumble, you fool, this is tea, not coffee.’
‘Is it? Blast.’
‘Take it away and get some coffee, there’s a pet. No,’ Ginger continued, ‘it’s a perfectly feasible commercial proposition, provided we can come up with the goods. All it comes down to really is good old supply and demand.’
‘Ah.’
‘A monopoly position, you see,’ put in the male colleague who wasn’t Bumble.
The laptop blinked. ‘Sorry,’ it read, ‘you’ve lost me. Explain.’
‘Of course.’ Ginger nodded, paused for a moment while Bumble filled her cup from a gorgeous silver coffee pot the size of the FA Cup, and went on. ‘You see, when it comes to providing intelligent humanoid life forms to populate universes with, there’s basically only one supplier.’ She glanced upwards. ‘Him. Got the market sewn up.’
‘A monopoly,’ asserted the non-Bumble. ‘Just like I said.’
‘And the thing about monopolies is,’ Ginger said, ‘that the longer they carry on for, the more vulnerable they are once someone finds a way of breaking in. Imagine you’re the one with the monopoly; you don’t bother tr
ying to improve the product, you just keep churning out the same old models, year after year, because there’s no alternative.’
‘Like the British motorcycle industry,’ Bumble grunted.
‘Exactly. So when suddenly there’s a new kid on the block, with a brand-new all-singing-and-dancing improved version for a fraction of the unit cost - well, you know what happens next as well as I do.’ She sipped her coffee, made a slight face and put the cup down carefully. ‘So if we could come up with a new, improved version of the tired old Homo sap—’
‘Which’d you rather have,’ Not-Bumble interrupted, ‘a nice shiny new Nissan or a Hillman Minx?’
Maria nodded slowly. The stuff about motorbikes and cars was going over her head like swallows flying home for the winter, but the message was plain enough. ‘Assuming,’ she said, ‘you have customers. And, excuse my ignorance, but surely there’s just the one?’ She imitated Ginger’s upwards glance. ‘Him.’
The three demons exchanged tolerant smiles. ‘That’s a common misconception,’ said Bumble, with the air of a mechanic explaining that sixty horsepower doesn’t actually mean sixty long, flowing tails sticking out the back of the carburettor. ‘Actually, it’s all about sideways dimensions and alternative universes. Science stuff. We won’t bore you with the details right now. Suffice it to say, we know there’s a market out there just crying out for the right life form at the right price.’ His face moved and ended up smeared with his personal interpretation of the demonic smile. ‘As we said, the tricky part is coming up with the right design concept.’