Only Human

by Tom Holt

  ‘No.’The voice was right on top of him now; he lifted his head and felt a strand of something light and sticky catch in his fur. He squealed.

  ‘Something wrong?’

  A voice above his head. Something light and sticky trailing in the air.

  Aaaagh!

  ‘Are you a spider?’ he whimpered.

  ‘Not just a spider,’ the spider replied. ‘The spider. It’s taken me ever such a long time to find you.’

  Fraud tried to swallow, but his mouth was too dry. ‘Find me?’

  ‘That’s right. Been all over the place. Now then, are you ready?’

  ‘Eeek.’

  ‘I’ll take that as a yes. Here goes, then.’

  There was a reprise of the grisly scuttling noise; followed by a muffled oath and a thump. Then more scuttling, and another thump. Then more scuttling—

  ‘Excuse me,’ Fraud asked timidly, ‘but what exactly are you doing?’

  ‘Inspiring you, of course.’

  ‘Inspiring me?’

  ‘I damn well hope so. If it isn’t working I shall be very annoyed. This floor’s hard, you know.’

  Thump. Scuttle.

  All his life, ever since he’d been a small child with no agenda longer term than a fair and equitable redistribution of the contents of the chocky biscuit jar, Dermot Fraud had been terrified of spiders. He’d always hated the speed of their movement, the length of their legs, the presumed baleful malevolence of their eye-clusters. The fact that sheer curiosity drove this ancient fear out of his mind at a time when by rights he should be on the point of melting from sheer terror says a great deal about the forcefulness of his enquiring mind.

  ‘Sorry to be a nuisance,’ he said, ‘but why are you doing that?’

  ‘I told you,’ the spider panted, trying to catch its breath after a particularly noisy thump, ‘I’m inspiring you. It’s my job.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Well,’ the spider corrected, ‘when I say job, it’s more of a hereditary duty. Hadn’t you realised?’

  ‘To be perfectly honest with you—’

  ‘You mean to say I’ve been doing all this climbing and falling down for nothing?’

  ‘Depends on what you’re trying to achieve, really.’

  The spider sighed. ‘How shall I put it? Seven centuries ago my remote ancestor went through all this palaver for the benefit of Robert the Bruce. It worked so well in his case that we’ve been doing it ever since.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘What we do is,’ the spider went on, ‘we find a statesman or other similar man of destiny who’s going through a bd patch, and then we buck him up by giving him a truly inspirational display of perseverance and sheer gritty pluck.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And you do this by climbing up a cobweb and then falling off again?’

  ‘You got it.’

  ‘Fine. But you needn’t put yourself to the trouble, really.’

  ‘Like I said, it’s a family—’

  ‘Because,’ Fraud went on, ‘I know all about this climbing up-and-falling-down business. I’m a lemming, remember?’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So that’s what lemmings do. I don’t need extra tuition, thanks very much. It just sort of comes with the territory.’

  ‘I see. Don’t you think there’s a difference, though? Between your approach and mine, I mean.’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘That’s interesting,’ the spider said. ‘So you reckon that if Robert the Bruce had spent his life studying lemmings instead of spiders, he’d still have been motivated to sling the English out of Scotland?’

  Fraud thought for a moment. ‘Undoubtedly,’ he replied. ‘Think about it. For a start, the English are still there, resolutely unslung. Face it, refusing to learn by your mistakes and carrying on doing something you know perfectly well is stupid is an integral part of what being a great national leader’s all about.’ Fraud hesitated, thinking over what he’d just said. ‘Because,’ he added, ‘sometimes there are things you just have to do, and the hell with the logic and the common sense.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the spider. ‘Because it’s a matter of honour and principle?’

  ‘Because it wins you elections.’

  ‘I see. And that’s important, is it?’

  ‘Important? That’s what great statesmen do.’

  Halfway through the scuttle part of its manoeuvre, the spider paused. ‘Is it? I thought it was something to do with solving problems and making life better for ordinary people.’

  ‘Well, of course.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘That’s how we do it. Solving problems and, um, the other thing you just said—’

  ‘Making life better for people?’

  ‘That’s the one. We do that by winning elections. Getting rid of the other lot. Gaining power.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘And then keeping it, of course,’ Fraud added. ‘It goes in cycles, you see.’

  ‘Indeed I do. Like lemmings. Ah well, I can see you don’t need my help. Sorry if I disturbed your concentration or anything.’

  ‘No, that’s fine,’ Fraud replied absently. ‘Any time you’re passing, feel free to pop in and fall down at me. In fact, you’ve just done me a big favour.’

  The spider waggled its eyestalks hopefully. ‘Inspired you, have I?’

  ‘Definitely,’ Fraud said. ‘In fact, you might say that because of you I’ve just had a searing revelation.’

  ‘Golly!’

  ‘A turning point. An event horizon. A road-to-Damascus experience.’

  ‘I see,’ the spider said. ‘You mean you’ve just run out of petrol? Lost your exhaust in a pothole? Set off a landmine?’

  ‘Had my destiny revealed to me,’ Fraud corrected dreamily. ‘You’ve shown me what I’ve got to do in order to solve problems and make life better for people.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the spider happily. ‘That old climbing up and falling off, it works every time.’

  ‘The only drawback is,’ Fraud went on, ‘that in order to do it, I’ve got to get my human body back. Any suggestions?’

  The spider shook its head, so that its eyes swayed like Wordsworth’s daffodils in a hurricane. ‘Moral support only, I’m afraid,’ it said. ‘Brilliantly innovative thinking’s not up our web. Still,’ it added, ‘you’ll find a way, I’m sure.’

  Fraud nodded. A strange brilliance glowed inside his mind, like the lights people leave on to scare away burglars when they’re out. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I think so too.’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ‘Aaaagh!’

  With a crash, the machine thumped into the wall and went through it, leaving a machine-shaped hole in it of the kind you generally only see in cartoons. The internal fittings of the staff lavatory on Level 36 of the Sixth Circle of Hell slowed it down gradually, and by the time it reached the row of cubicles where the rogue demons and their captives were gathered, it had come to a graceful halt.

  ‘There you are,’ said the female. ‘We were starting to wonder where you’d got to.’

  Len opened his eyes and saw white. A little existential reasoning produced a rational explanation of why this should be. He reached up, and lifted the lavatory bowl off his head.

  ‘I want a word with you lot,’ he said.

  ‘Do you?’ The female looked at him, puzzled. ‘How very odd. Sorry, but we’re running late as it is. Tell you what, if you ever get reincarnated, look me up and we can have a cup of tea and a nice chat. Guards!’

  She waited. After a moment, her fingers started to drum on the wall. She clicked her tongue.

  ‘Guards,’ she repeated. ‘Hello?’

  The prisoners and her fellow conspirators looked round, expecting a sudden influx of hideously spectral warriors. Nothing happened.

  ‘No guards,’ said the female, her voice rich with elegant disgust. ‘How extremely tiresome. Where can they all have got to, I wonder?’

  Artofel
grinned. ‘This is Hell, remember? And this is the executive loo, senior admin grades only. They wouldn’t dare come in here. Not allowed.’

  ‘Oh.’ The female bit her lip. ‘That’s a nuisance.’ She smiled winningly. ‘Would it be all right if we sort of took the presence of guards for granted?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re going to be awkward and insist on actual physically present guards, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And there aren’t any, are there?’

  Artofel shook his head. ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Bother.’ The female sat down and sighed. ‘In that case,’ she said, ‘how would you feel about a plea for clemency?’

  Artofel made a rude noise as he selected the heaviest chunk of broken cage he could find for use as a club. ‘Amused,’ he said. ‘Now, this may hurt a little, because I’m going to bash your head in. Ready?’

  ‘Just a moment,’ said a voice. It seemed to be coming from directly underneath the machine. ‘Could I make a suggestion, please?’

  ‘Bumble,’ the female muttered, ‘please don’t interrupt when I’m trying to negotiate. Can’t you see I’m busy?’

  ‘Actually,’ replied her colleague, his voice a trifle muffled by the two and a half tons of cast iron he was underneath, ‘you might rather like to hear this. I think it’s quite clever.’

  Artofel tightened his grip on his makeshift bludgeon; but even as he did so, he felt his initial surge of anger beginning to wane, like air escaping from a slow puncture. Now, after all, he had the conspirators more or less at his mercy—

  Something rang a bell. Mercy? To forgive, divine?

  ‘You’ve got ninety seconds,’ he said. ‘And I’m only letting you speak because it’s aggravating your boss here.’

  ‘So kind,’ Bumble said. ‘Actually, could I be really cheeky and ask you to lift this thing off me?’

  Len nodded to the robot, who picked the machine up and put it neatly aside.The squashed demon slowly got up, brushing dust off himself.

  ‘Ninety seconds,’ Artofel warned. ‘Starting now.’

  Bumble smiled apologetically. ‘It’s quite simple, really. We haven’t any guards handy, true, but you’re all still stuck in the wrong bodies, and we can put you right again quite easily; those of you, that is,’ he added, ‘who actually want to go back. Of course, you could wait for Maintenance to come and do it, but I wouldn’t advise that.’

  ‘Good point,’ Artofel admitted. ‘They’re a bit slow,’ he explained to the others. ‘And I think putting us back would come lower on their list of priorities than retrieving Atlantis or filling in the holes in the sky the rain leaks through, and all the other things they’ve been promising to do for ages but never got round to. So that’s the deal, is it? You put us back, we let you go?’

  Bumble made a pacifying gesture. ‘All due respect,’ he said, ‘but that’s not a terribly good deal as far as my colleagues and I are concerned. I know you people do have slight reservations about certain ethical aspects of this project of ours—’

  ‘You bet we’ve got reservations. More than you’d find in a major hotel chain and the whole Apache nation put together.’

  ‘But,’ Bumble continued, politely but firmly, ‘the fact remains that we’ve invested a lot of time and money in this venture. Now then, if I could perhaps suggest a compromise that’ll be acceptable to all parties—?’

  Artofel patted the palm of his hand with his stick. ‘Hang on,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure about this.’

  ‘Why don’t we vote on it?’ Maria suggested.

  Artofel sighed. ‘Indeed. Why not? All in favour?’

  A moment later he made it unanimous by raising his hand as well.

  ‘All right,’ he grumbled. ‘You, carry on. This had better be good, mind.’

  Bumble nodded. ‘It is, I promise you,’ he said, sitting down on a dislodged cistern. ‘Now then, everyone, I’d just like to remind you of what this project was designed to achieve: the improved human being, remember?’

  Len raised an eyebrow. ‘I’ve missed out on all of this,’ he said. ‘Is this small, flat person making sense to anybody?’

  ‘Yes,’ Artofel replied grudgingly. ‘And the plan was to mince all of us up into sawdust and make us into reconstituted Adams and Eves. I hope that bit’s been edited out in the revised version?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Bumble assured him. ‘No need for all that.’ He avoided the female’s eye, and continued: ‘After all, why go to all that trouble when our friend here’ - he nodded politely at Len - ‘has already done the job for us? I’m referring,’ he explained, ‘to that simply gorgeous robot of yours.’

  ‘Who, me?’ squeaked the robot, blushing rust-coloured to the roots of its circuitry.

  ‘You,’ Bumble confirmed. ‘A perfect android. Which means,’ he went on, as Maria opened her mouth to object, ‘there would have to be just a few minor changes made before it’d be what we’re looking for.’

  Len looked stern. ‘Oh yes?’ he said. ‘And what did you have in mind? That’s my design we’re talking about. I don’t see why it should need fiddling about with.’

  ‘Because it’s perfect,’ Bumble said, with a sweet smile. ‘And, for reasons which your colleague here has so eloquently explained, perfect’s not quite right in this instance. Do you think you could make just a few minor modifications,’ he went on, ‘nothing major, a handful of minor glitchlets that won’t significantly affect performance but ought still to be enough to allow a self-respecting deity to feel insufferably smug?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Len confessed. ‘What had you in mind, exactly?’

  Bumble scratched the back of his head. ‘Now then,’ he said, looking round, ‘let me see. With a whole roomful of inspiration to choose from this shouldn’t be unduly difficult.’

  ‘I still think we should bash them just a bit,’ Artofel grumbled, spinning the broken bar in his fingers like a majorette’s baton. ‘And before anybody says anything about forgiving being divine, that doesn’t mean we can’t bash them now and forgive them later.’

  ‘How about this?’ Bumble said. ‘First,’ he went on, looking Artofel squarely in the eye, ‘what aspect of my esteemed colleague from Pensions would be appropriate for inclusion in our revised human? A slight tendency towards shortness of temper, perhaps? An inclination to thump first and reason later?’

  ‘Only if you’re looking for improvements,’ Artofel snarled. ‘If this business has taught me anything about Up There, it’s that there’s too much talking and not enough bashing where it actually matters the most.’

  ‘All right, then,’ Bumble said, conceding the point with a charming gesture. ‘When the proverbial chips are down and push comes to shove, whatever that means, our revised version will talk when he should be bashing and bash when he should be talking. That’s the first amendment. Any offers for number two?’

  ‘Call that an amendment?’ said Len. ‘That’s just a straight copy, as far as I can see.’

  ‘True,’ Bumble said, ‘but with a slight yet significant adjustment that will in practice make a lot of difference. You see, when our titanium friend here talks, he’ll talk with such eloquence, people will have to listen. And when he bashes—’

  ‘I hate to admit it,’ Artofel said, ‘but perhaps the creep’s got something here. Do go on, I’m interested.’

  Bumble bowed courteously. ‘So pleased,’ he said. ‘Now, this delightful young lady on my left immediately suggests a most useful modification.’

  Maria sniffed. ‘Cut the flannel,’ she said. ‘I get the feeling you’re about to insult me.’

  ‘How typically perceptive. Now let me see, how shall I put this? Perhaps you’d be good enough to tell me, in your own words, the difference between a painting and a photograph?’

  ‘Um.’ Maria thought for a moment. ‘Well actually,’ she said, ‘maybe I’m not the right person to ask. I’m not a hundred per cent sure what a photograph is.’

  ‘Then I’ll tell yo
u,’ Bumble said. ‘A photograph is what someone actually looks like. A painting is what someone wants to look like. For your sake, we’ll give the robot the ability to lie. But to lie convincingly,’ he added, ‘so that it’ll be believed, because its lie is so much nicer than the truth.’

  The female demon looked up. ‘Bumble, you old ass,’ she said, ‘this is perfectly splendid stuff. Why didn’t you mention any of this before?’

  ‘Because you never let me get a word in edgeways. And now we come to the machine; what does that suggest, do you suppose? I think a machine cares more about how well the job is done than about what the job actually is. Inspired by this example, the robot will do its job and the hell with the consequences. And do it very well indeed, it goes without saying. Which leads us naturally to our political friend here, from whom we’ll borrow the quintessential enigma of the lemming. Outside every lemming, after all, there’s a human being struggling to get in. Accordingly, the robot will be programmed to do what it’s told; and if that’s not enough on its own to allow any self-respecting God to feel superior to it, then I don’t know what is. Agreed?’

  ‘I don’t want to bash them much,’ Artofel whimpered. ‘Just a bit. Surely that’s not too much to ask.’

  ‘Agreed,’ Maria said firmly. ‘And in return, I don’t have to go back to being a picture.’

  ‘And I can stay a machine?’

  ‘Squeak?’

  ‘And,’ Artofel sighed resignedly, ‘I can finally get back to my desk; oh all right, then. This time you get away with it. You’re still going to get your holidays in October for the next thousand years, though. I’ve promised myself that, if nothing else.’

  Bumble smirked; the rest of the conspirators relaxed. Len had already unscrewed an access panel at the base of the robot’s neck, and was fiddling around with a screwdriver and a small pair of pliers. Something went zap!; he cursed, lifted his finger to his lips, left it there for a moment—

  ‘It’s just occurred to me,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘that if I were to leave this robot more or less as it is, and you lot were to lift a human soul out of somewhere and put it in here, you’d have the makings of a perfect being, just like you originally wanted, but without having to mince anybody up or even break any of your local regulations. Think about it for a moment, will you, before I start mucking it about. It’d be physically superior, if it got ill you could cure it in a jiffy by fitting spare parts, it’s connected up to all the wisdom of the race by computer link, and it’s got none of the self-and-everything-else-destructive tendencies that make the current organic version such a walking disaster area.’ He let his arms fall to his sides. ‘It’s the most incredible opportunity,’ he said. ‘We could do the job properly. We’d make God look like Sir Clive Sinclair.’