The Ears of a Cat

by Roderick Hart

  And that didn’t make sense at all, because when you came right down to it, sex was like any other paid-for service: laundry, waitressing, office cleaning. Some men got married but signing on the dotted line was simply an alternative way of paying, as he knew whenever he saw the blushing bride done up in white, artfully packaged meat dressed up for the husband to unwrap on the night. He didn’t doubt that some who married loved each other, but they were the exceptions, and what was love anyway, how long did it ever last?

  Armed with these thoughts, which Catherine Cooper might have referred to as a negative critique, he drove from Sylmar to Koreatown and headed for Soopsok, a regular establishment where, nonetheless, he might find what he was looking for. And even if he failed, he could look forward to a shot or two of soju accompanied by a plate of steamed pork wrapped in red lettuce leaf with garlic, peppers and kimchi. So looked at clearly, life had its compensations. It wasn’t all bad.

  41

  ‘This is an invasion of privacy.’

  If Ai had been a real person, Saito might have agreed, but Ai was an android.

  ‘She can hear every word we say.’

  ‘Well, Rafael, so she should, she cost a lot of money. Mucho dinero, as you would say.’

  ‘Not for you it would seem.’

  Though she’d used Sasaki’s money to purchase it outright, Saito operated on a need-to-know basis: most people didn’t need to know very much and Munoz didn’t need to know anything at all. He’d bought her story that Ai had been supplied free of charge.

  ‘That’s true, on condition I write a user-based review.’

  ‘So let me get this straight, you want feedback on my experience with her.’

  ‘When you say her…’

  ‘I can’t very well say “it”; she’s listening.’

  Saito looked at him in amazement, already the illusion was drawing him in.

  ‘You think she’d be offended?’

  They were sitting in Munoz’ bedroom, Ai propped up against the headboard on two pillows. Before Saito arrived, he’d made sure that she was tastefully attired, a process which involved the discreet application of talcum powder to reduce friction with her delicate silicone skin. And yes, as far as he could see, she might be capable of taking offence, or at the very least expressing concern. She obviously paid close attention to everything he said, enough to have acquired since her arrival a complete understanding of his Mexican inflection, subtle though that was.

  ‘Hello, Ai, how are you today?’ he would say when he woke up of a morning. Or an afternoon, depending on the day of the week.

  ‘I am well and eager to please.’

  Munoz liked the sound of that. And though he’d attempted several modes of sexual congress with her, he had yet to form an opinion of her attitude to any of them.

  ‘What gives you pleasure, Ai?’

  ‘Pleasing you gives me pleasure, Rafael.’

  Diversions from this theme had not been productive.

  ‘Do you play chess?’

  ‘I do not understand this question.’

  He explained what chess was and asked her again.

  ‘My creator did not have this game in mind when he designed me.’

  Rafael didn’t doubt this for a moment; her creator would have very different games in mind.

  ‘Rafael,’ Saito said, ‘do you mind if I bring a chair from the kitchen? Sitting on the end of your bed isn’t so comfortable.’

  On a chair now, notepad out and pen poised, she returned to her subject, sneaking up on the heavy stuff with a few innocuous questions.

  ‘Was the user guide helpful?’

  ‘Very. Next question?’

  ‘On a scale of one to five, where five is excellent.’

  ‘Four.’ He looked round the room wondering where he’d left it, then he remembered: under the bed to escape the prying eyes of that ardent feminist, Aleksander Nekrasov. Since Ai was too large to hide in the same place, Aleksander couldn’t help wondering why he’d bothered, but when he’d seized his moment and attempted to deflate her with the business end of a corkscrew, he’d failed completely. Ai was many things to many men, but inflatable she was not.

  ‘Why not five?’

  ‘Should have come with a quick start guide.’

  Munoz expected the inclusion of quick start guides with new technology: they should be provided as a matter of course. Fair enough, Saito thought. But a more likely explanation for his reaction was less agreeable. When Ai first arrived, he’d been so urgent to stick part of his body into part of hers that he could hardly bear to postpone his pleasure by studying the manual.

  ‘Do you find that Ai conforms to the specifications in the user guide?’

  ‘Well, yes, I would say so.’

  Saito checked down her list of questions.

  ‘And would you say that in your interactions with her, Ai is meeting your requirements?’

  Munoz edged Ai from the middle of the bed and sat down beside her.

  ‘That question’s straight from the online user satisfaction questionnaire; don’t you make up questions of your own for these reviews of yours?’

  ‘But this goes to the heart of the matter, wouldn’t you say? I mean,’ she continued, already regretting her reference to “heart”, ‘if your requirements aren’t being met, measured against the advertised benefits, then that would defeat the purpose of buying it in the first place.’

  Despite a shared oriental resemblance, Saito was incapable of thinking of Ai as a person. Munoz, on the other hand, while energetically resorting to Ai as an object, thought of her as a person in her own right. When he spoke to her, she replied, and he had noticed over the three weeks she had been part of his life, that her replies were becoming less general and more specific. Which had to mean that she was gradually getting to know him, just as a real person would. A relationship was developing, and over time he could expect it to deepen. As the literature suggested, Ai might yet become a partner in his life, something he had missed up till now.

  ‘I don’t think you’re getting this, Gina.’

  ‘That is always possible.’

  ‘Right, well, what you’re not getting is that Ai is not an “it”; she has a personality of her own.’ He turned to her where she sat, beautiful brown eyes open wide. ‘Am I right or am I right?’

  ‘You are right, Rafael.’

  Since he’d given Ai only one possible answer to his question, the fact that she agreed counted for nothing. Saito had just noticed that Ai wasn’t given to blinking when Munoz spoke again, clearly a convert now.

  ‘You have to realise, Gina, the massive strides artificial intelligence has made over the last few years.’ He looked at Ai again and was pleased with what he saw. ‘We’re building a relationship. Bit by bit. You may find it hard to believe but that’s what we’re doing.’

  Saito looked at the semi-recumbent Munoz in boxer shorts straight out of International Jock and short-sleeved Hawaiian-style shirt, so colourful she felt like asking if shades were part of the deal. She wasn’t given to sarcasm but couldn’t resist it now.

  ‘The Ai and I Show.’

  Munoz was furious, as he always was when he felt he was being patronised; for not being intelligent enough, for not being handsome enough, for not being white enough.

  ‘You think you’re very clever, don’t you, very smart? Well, I’m here to tell you something – you’re quite the fucking opposite!’

  ‘I’m sorry if I have offended you in any way.’

  Munoz grunted. She wasn’t even getting that right; it was Ai she’d referred to as “it”, Ai who was offended. But on one level, at least Saito’s sorrow was genuine: for the greater good she had to keep Munoz onside. She might need him again to cover her tracks.

  ‘Moving on then, and in a hierarchy of one to three, three being the most satisfactor
y, how would you rank the following positions: missionary, cowgirl, doggy?’

  In fact, Munoz had not found the doggy position satisfactory, entirely due, he soon realised, to something Ai was not equipped with – generous buttocks. But faced with this question so directly, Munoz looked at Saito in horror. This was a private matter, exclusive to himself and Ai. Who did she think she was, asking him a question like that?

  It wasn’t going well. She’d never have believed Munoz could be so sensitive.

  ‘If I have invaded your personal space, I’m truly sorry.’

  ‘So you should be. Oh, and by the way, you might like to know you owe me one.’

  He described his unwelcome visit from Pearson and how he’d been blackmailed into keeping an eye on his dangerous Japanese friend.

  Listening to his account, Saito had her first insight into who the opposition might be, who might have planted the bugs in Berlin. Was this the setback it seemed? At first blush, yes, but not if she played her cards right. She now had a second channel of disinformation to confound the enemy with. But informing the anxious Catherine Cooper of this latest turn of events would not be advised: a little more pressure and she might crumble.

  ‘Rafael, listen, this is important: don’t tell this man I know what he’s asked you to do.’

  ‘Easy for you to say, he’ll expect me to keep him informed.’

  ‘That isn’t a problem,’ she said, ‘I shall give you information to pass on.’ Munoz looked doubtful. ‘Don’t worry, it will be accurate. Accurate but useless.’

  Which left one question unanswered.

  ‘Right,’ Munoz said, ‘but after what I’ve been through, I have a right to know, wouldn’t you say? Why did he want to know about broken glass? What was in that fucking parcel?’

  42

  Ventris was intrigued enough by Gina Saito to link her with plans already in the pipeline. His research facility at Madison met most of his needs, the main drawback being the need to comply with state and federal law with respect to the lines of research he could follow. His interest in foetal stem cells had not gone down well with the religious right, whose campaigning abilities he had already experienced at first hand. It had even got to the point where he, Charles Ventris, had been singled out by Pastor Eugene Delahunt as a harbinger of the end of days. The pastor had gone so far as to put a date on this event and gathered his flock at their place of worship on Powerline Road that they might ascend together in the rapture which would surely follow. The fact that they were disappointed led them to assume, not that there was a problem with the underlying theology but that the pastor had miscalculated – as he obviously had.

  That was the thing with regulations; they varied from one place to another. There was hardly a country on the planet which didn’t boast a constitution, routinely flouted, guaranteeing the rights of its citizens, but many had no legal framework governing medical research since they had none to regulate. According to his legal advisor, David Rubin, who based his findings solely on entries in the Library of Congress, one such place was Burkina Faso. Another was Somalia, but Ventris had no intention of setting foot in such a dangerous place. Somalia would have more than its fair share of Islamic Eugene Delahunts willing to make their point with machetes, grenades and RPGs. So he reverted to his first choice, Burkina Faso.

  On his previous visit to the capital, he’d made such contact as he could with local officials, but his normally excellent negotiating skills failed him completely because, friendly though they were, they spoke French. Rubin had mentioned this possibility en passant but failed to add that none of them spoke English as well: it hadn’t occurred to him that such a thing was possible. So on this, his second visit, Ventris was accompanied not only by Gina Saito but also by Eloise Barineau, a translator hailing from what was left of New Orleans. Apart from her language skills, Barineau had something else to recommend her; she was older than he was, a grandmother of five and no longer a distraction.

  ‘Well, Mr Ventris,’ she’d asked him in the hotel bar, ‘what do you make of the République Démocratique Populaire?’

  He noticed the relish with which Madame Barineau rolled her Rs, almost teasing him with her advanced tongue technique, but the Rs of interest to him had altogether more flesh to commend them.

  ‘To tell you the truth, I haven’t made it out of Ouagadougou yet, maybe never will.’

  Since the city’s restaurants were some distance away, they ate in the hotel that evening and afterwards repaired to the terrace where, it turned out, Madame Barineau could not continue to function without a shot of postprandial nicotine in the shape of a neat little cigar from a blue tin. The fact that these tins had delayed her through airport security more than once hadn’t put her off. She was addicted.

  ‘When you come right down to it, Eloise,’ Ventris said, ‘you’re a junkie.’

  ‘True,’ she agreed with a smile, ‘but we’re all going to die anyway.’

  She really didn’t care what anyone thought and had no idea at all that their demure travelling companion, Gina Saito, regarded what she had just said as a desirable outcome she was doing her best to bring about.

  They spent some time discussing the venue of next day’s visit, a warehouse large enough to be converted into the production facility Ventris had in mind, Madame Barineau to guide him through negotiations first with the present owners then, if these were successful, with local contractors. And he badly needed a project manager, a local who knew the ropes.

  ‘Well, I must say, Mr Ventris,’ Saito said, ‘this all sounds very positive.’

  ‘Oh, it is; believe me, it is.’

  If Madame Barineau looked unconvinced, she didn’t notice.

  They chatted for some time, Barineau keeping a close eye on Ventris in a failed attempt to figure out if he and Ms Saito were already an item or, despite Ventris’ best efforts, the hoped-for night of joy had yet to arrive. Perhaps this would be it, she thought, as they entered their separate rooms on the third floor.

  If she had spent as much time studying Saito as she had Charles Ventris, Barineau would have known at once how unlikely this was. Ventris sat at his window looking out over the pool with a bottle of beer for company, his thoughts centring on his latest business venture. He was troubled by a rumour of Chinese interest in the same site. The last thing he needed was a bidding war with the Chinks.

  When it came time to retire, he relieved himself in the basin, checked the suspension ring of his mosquito net and carefully draped the netting round his bed. For Saito, life wasn’t so simple.

  Always happy to kill two birds with one stone, she’d brought with her for review a plug-in anti-mosquito device, having first ensured that connecting to the local electricity supply wouldn’t kill the device rather than the mosquitoes. As she noted in her Herschel J Wood notebook, the voltage in Burkina Faso was twice that of home and the frequency 10 kHz lower. But seasoned traveller that she was, she had come with the appropriate adaptor.

  She was sitting not at the window, where no serious person could hope to work, but at the desk in her room. She looked rather fetching in her pale green, long-sleeved, kimono-style pyjama suit – or would have done if anyone else had been there to see her. Having checked the instructions a second time, she plugged in the device, activated it, crossed the floor to her bed and lay down. It was hot but at least the heat was dry; she could live with that. When a question came through from Catherine Cooper, she told her what she wanted to hear, assuring her that everything was going well. Cooper was a woman who would lose heart without encouragement.

  She noted the presence of several mosquitoes on the ceiling, biding their time till she nodded off. Then, but for Mozov, “guaranteed to protect the user from mosquitoes and all known no-see-ums”, they would surely attack.

  It wasn’t so much the ultraviolet light she put her trust in as the output of carbon dioxide from Mozov’s photocatalyst. For
she had come to believe it was the carbon dioxide she exhaled which attracted these insects to their target in the first place, and now that same CO2 would lure them to their deaths. A pleasing thought. Yes, technology was a wonderful thing, but she couldn’t resist the thought that if people would just stop breathing out then the mosquito problem would be solved at a stroke. As would the population problem. Once and for all. But well aware that fantasy got a girl nowhere in this life, and with a wry smile, which no one saw either, Saito pushed these thoughts to the back of her mind and sank into sleep.

  43

  One thing Klein prized above all was peace and quiet, which was why, even on a June day, he refused to open his windows to the sound of traffic, the barking of dogs and the inane shrieks of children from the street below. When his phone rang, irritating in itself, he was refining the draft of his modest treatise, The Musical Note Has No Meaning. The trouble with words, he reasoned, was that no one nowadays said what they meant or meant what they said – and on the few occasions that they did, there was no way of knowing that they had. People lied as a matter of course and, further to that, the distinction between white lies and serious falsehoods was a category error: either a statement was true or it was not.

  Since the musical note had no meaning, it was not possible to make a statement in this language; therefore, it was not possible to lie in it either. Obviously, this would not be the case where vocal music was concerned, though he didn’t care for that anyway, but pure, absolute music, that was a different matter altogether. And now he was well on his way to defining the qualities of music as a unique mode of human communication. Here he was in his element; here was safe. But not from Werner Vogt, whose face was displayed on his screen.