Rebel Without a Clue

by Kerrie Noor

  “What she doing that for?” said the dark lady.

  “Cheek,” said the fairer one. “She’ll not answer me back again.”

  The young girl looked up from the doorway, peering at the rows of benches blocking her view. Through the space she saw Beryl’s beehive passing by and for a minute stopped, panicked, and then raced inside.

  Beryl headed out the back and walked through the grounds of hedges and Zen rock designs. She made her way to the shed, ducking wind chimes about the entrance.

  The wind chimes hadn’t chimed since Hilda left the shed. She had cemented them together with an experimental tofu which, when cooled, had the constancy of concrete. The last thing Operators needed as far as Hilda was concerned was peace and tranquility.

  Beryl waltzed into the shed, using every ounce of energy to look like she was in control. Her masked face twitched as the Operators in command stopped and stared.

  “A few questions,” said Beryl.

  The dashboard Operators looked up. Since when did the esteemed ask questions?

  Beryl placed the H-Pad on the dashboard and let out a nervous cough. A small bead of sweat slid from the corner of her beehive, but in the dark, no one saw. The Operators gathered about the dashboard in silence. The first in command turned the plugulator about and poked at the battery compartment. The first in command had never seen one before.

  “Charging. Hilda says that this is possible on Earth because the atmosphere is—how did she put it—kind?” Beryl coughed again. This time, the first Operator in command noticed.

  “Hilda said this?” said the second Operator in command.

  “Well, in a manner of speaking.”

  The first in command handed the H-Pad to the second. “Well, I guess if Hilda says . . .”

  The second in command looked at the third in command. “What do you think?”

  The third in command whistled through her teeth. “Yes, well, it might work, but you’d be better off with the new model—I mean, why aren’t you taking that?”

  “Budget,” said a voice at the back.

  The first in command threw her a “shut it” look.

  Beryl was getting impatient; she had to get things sorted, get Mex up and running down on Earth. She wanted to hear that it was okay. “Well, is it?”

  The third in command took the plugulator, turned it about, and sniffed . . .

  “If Pete has his plugulator, you’re laughing,” said the dashboard Operator.

  Beryl stared at the slip of a girl speaking to her—the last thing she was looking for was a laugh.

  Chapter Five—The Sidekick

  “A FLICK WITH A WHIP is worth two kicks at least.” —Man Spy Manual, chapter one

  The day after Mex had received her orders, more orders arrived. Pete had just finished giving the hedge-cutting implement a good “going over” with Betty’s Best oil for implements when the doorbell rang. As Her Leathership was packing at the time, Pete answered the door, muttered a “thank you,” and passed a few extra wet wipes to the footman as the footman handed an H-Pad to Pete.

  Pete took the H-Pad inside.

  “Argh, one of those pads,” said Mex, attempting some lighthearted banter. “No expense spared, I see.”

  Pete ignored her.

  Mex was annoyingly scratchy, and ridiculously hopeful. “Maybe it’s good news,” she muttered. Maybe they had changed their minds and she could, as she said to Pete, “remain here on Planet Hy Man and not face men and their midnight shadows after all!”

  “Five-o’clock, ma’am.”

  “What?” said Mex.

  “Five-o’clock shadow, ma’am, and H-Pads are usually used for transportation purposes; it’s their portability that makes them so . . .” He looked at it again. “Portable?”

  Mex stared at Pete. “Portable? I’ll need a suitcase for that.”

  “So it would seem, ma’am.”

  “I mean, if the STD—State-of-the-Art Tech Department—can get rid of stupid plastic packaging, why can’t they make an H-Pad easy to carry? Look at this,” she said. “It’s bigger than Beryl’s beehive hair. I’ve seen postage stamps with a better design than that.” She tossed it across her bed.

  Pete sighed. Her Leathership, as usual, was making a banquet out of things.

  “It’d be easier to open one of those out-of-date soya-slice packets than it is connecting with that thing.”

  “H-Pads,” said Pete, “have feelings too, you know, and it would be wise, ma’am, to remember what side the soya slice is sitting on. Ma’am will be partnered with said H-Pad for the duration of the mission; best to try and oil the proceedings, so to speak.”

  Mex, ignoring Pete, moaned so much that the H-Pad soon kicked up a fuss as predicted by Pete, such a fuss that it took all morning for them to make a connection. By the time they did, the light had gone, Mex’s patience had evaporated, and Pete’s new take on an old-style ratatouille was sitting in the bin, smoldering away like last night’s campfire.

  “You have selected option one; this is incorrect. Please try again . . . please try again . . . please try again,” said the H-Pad for what seemed the hundredth time.

  Typical, thought Mex. In a few hours’ time I am going on a mission to a city that is famous for an accent that even the English don’t understand, and I am supposed to take a wisecracking H-Pad.

  “Please try again.”

  Mex in the end gave the H-Pad a good bash, causing so much coughing and spluttering from the H-Pad that she was about to toss it into the bin, calling her/it among other things a “drama queen.”

  Pete finally took over, caressing the keypad with an Android’s appreciation of fellow kind. The H-Pad purred.

  “Getting a clearer picture now,” said Pete as a small fanfare began to play.

  “Hear ye! Hear ye!” said the H-Pad. “Her Sirness is about to dress up the situation.”

  “It’s Beryl, our great and esteemed leader,” said Pete.

  “Her Supremes-ness is addressing—”

  “Thank you, H-Pad,” said Beryl as her powerful face came into view. “Evening, Mex.”

  “Sirness.”

  Beryl peered into the screen. “You’ve had your hair dyed.”

  “Kind of you to notice, ma’am.”

  “Takes years off you,” said Beryl.

  “Blonde is so aging,” said Pete.

  Mex glared at Pete as the screen panned out from Beryl’s face, showing a backdrop of silk curtains framing a portrait of her—the esteemed leader, younger, leaner, with deep red lips and a black bouffant beehive hairstyle of the fashion decades ago.

  Mex and Pete had been forced to sit on the swinging deck chair because the H-Pad refused to connect anywhere else. And it was a tight fit, even for Pete and Mex’s trim frames. But as Mex had paid a fortune for it and Pete had recommended it, neither said anything. Rather, they sat like tense strangers trying not to touch—not easy on a chair that swung with the slightest movement.

  “We have a situation on Earth we need to address . . .” Beryl said.

  “So you say,” muttered Mex.

  “I warned the Voted In about this, but did anyone listen?”

  “Do they ever, Your Sirness?” said Pete.

  “No, Pete, they don’t; too busy getting down with their sci-fi and sitcoms—how can anyone talk about Men Behaving Badly when Legless’s offsprings are free to roam, I ask you?”

  “Men behaving badly?” said Mex.

  “Yes, ma’am, a mildly funny sitcom of the nineties that many assumed is a literal guide to men behaving, err . . . badly.”

  “Absolutely, Pete,” said Beryl.

  Mex eyed her increasingly sucking-up robot; he was making her position worse and she decided to argue her case. Granted, Legless had spread his seed far and wide and there were now generations of Identities on Earth. But as no one on Earth had a clue—what was the point in trying to fix the situation?

  “But, Sirness,” said Mex. “They just roam about and drink coffee�
��what’s the problem?”

  “Roam; they do more than that,” said Beryl. “They have half the female population hanging on their every word!”

  “Half?” said Mex. “I find that hard to believe.”

  “And women can be a powerful force,” said Beryl. “Look at us, what we have achieved. Once those Identities start to influence women, what will they do? Will they learn to read the Identities’ minds, start to make spaceships, visit us, boss us about, take over even? We can’t just sit still. We must scan this Earth—”

  “We?” said Mex.

  “Attempt some sort of control—”

  “Control of what?” said Mex.

  Beryl’s slim lips clenched. “We must send down the best there is.”

  “That’s you, ma’am,” muttered Pete to Mex.

  “And the most discreet,” continued Beryl.

  “Your good self again, ma’am.”

  “Sirness,” snapped Mex, “is all this absolutely necessary? I mean, Earth is so not now!”

  Beryl tutted—must she really go through all this again? Next time she must remember to have all persons implicated in a mission attend the same meeting.

  “We are talking about the Identities,” continued Mex, “what is there to worry about? I mean their mothers are from Earth, it’s not like they can think.”

  “What?” said Beryl.

  “Think,” snapped Mex. “Humans are not known for their thinking? They are known for their smash-and-grab, blame-it-on-someone-else philosophy. They excel at weapon-making and animal-killing. The last thing on a human’s mind is thinking about new ways to fly to the moon and beyond, unless of course there was some sort of energy source they could steal.”

  Beryl coughed uncomfortably.

  “No, humans do not plan, learn, or take thinking seriously,” said Mex.

  “Apart from a sitcom, ma’am, or sports, or for that matter dogs.”

  “Legless did,” said the H-Pad with a sickening smugness.

  “She has a point there.”

  “Shut up, Pete.”

  “With the Legless gene on Earth, who knows what it may lead to,” continued Pete.

  “I said shut it.”

  “Which is why we need . . .” continued Beryl.

  “The best,” said Pete.

  “The most up-to-the-minute technology,” said the H-Pad.

  Mex glared at the H-Pad. “You serious?”

  “ . . . Pete to accompany you,” said Beryl.

  Mex asked her to repeat it three times. A robot on Earth—whose idea was that?

  Pete was so taken aback that he lost his balance. The swing chair reacted swiftly to the tension in his rigid buttocks and swung back too quickly for Pete and Mex to follow and they both landed on the ground.

  Peter argued against the trip, picking himself up in the process, which didn’t add much weight to any argument. Not that there is much a robot can do to argue apart from stuttering, “But . . . but Your Greatness.” And even that was pushing it.

  “The committee has stated that ‘Pete’s capabilities exceed his post,’” said the H-Pad. “And therefore you must accompany me and her.”

  “I am but a mere robot, ma’am, what could I possibly do?” said Pete. “I am a coordinator, not an Operator, I am not programmed for such things, I clip hedges . . .”

  “You are an Android,” said Beryl, “and never forget it.”

  Pete tried to protest. “But my yoga classes . . .”

  Beryl chose not to hear; instead she pressed the “leader is leaving” fanfare button on the H-Pad and turned up the volume. Trumpets filled the air as Beryl’s face began to fade, leaving just a silhouette of her gray, extra-large beehive hair blending into the background.

  Her Leadership has left the building flashed up on the screen.

  Mex looked at Pete, and for the first time since talk of this ridiculous mission, Mex smiled. Watching Pete suffer pleased her to no end. “I hear the food is good down there. They batter everything, I believe.”

  PETE RETIRED TO SULK on his yoga mat. He was expected to operate an out-of-date recording system with the most opinionated man spy on the planet. Mex and her infallible ego—how many hours had he spent on the patio staring at the Milky Way while listening to how she saved the planet from men, and now he must do it all over again on Earth. Just when he thought he would get a break from it. More stories of how, when she was young, she hunted down men outlawed from any place of authority, men made obsolete by technology and no longer required for breeding, and how it was she who rounded them up and deposited them like cattle to the only place left for men: the basement.

  What had he done to deserve this? The hedge-cutting implements could wait; everything could wait. In fact, Her Leathership could stuff her hedge-cutting equipment and even toss it off the balcony. He was heading for the biggest rust bucket in the galaxy—what did he care?

  He opened his precious plugulator and tried to think.

  THE PLUGULATOR IS A headset worn by robots, making them accessible to their employer when indisposed. This is where Pete kept his collection of logs. One day he hoped to publish them and become the first robot to make it outside domesticity and obedience; maybe even get a little appreciation from Herself . . .

  Pete first starting writing logs for his acrobatic yoga training. Pete with his Teflon-ic leather was so flexible he could, if he wanted to, bite his toenails. Not that a robot of such caliber as he would. However, Pete did hold acrobatic yoga classes for the old and infirm robots, with the use-it-or-lose-it philosophy, and for a while he became something of a guru to robots. When the Voted Ins heard about his classes, they asked him to teach their PA (Personal Android), which amused Mex no end.

  She had been standing in the kitchen when Pete had told her, watching him pack her tiffin lunch box for the day. She asked him what his plans were with a casual glance at the hedge and when Pete explained about his other job, Mex was taken aback.

  “They want you to go to their home and teach their robots how to bend?”

  “Yes, ma’am; it appears that the new version lacks that ability.”

  “At their place of work?”

  “Yes, PAs are discouraged from meeting with the factory/production robots. They are to be trained at home, being that they are a cut above the rest.”

  PAs were similar to the 33 Robot except for the elimination of the “thinking for yourself” and “ask first” genes. And removing this gene had caused a side effect of stiffness on par with a stick insect. It wasn’t uncommon for a PA to do his back in fluffing a sheet, and lubrication didn’t seem to help.

  Mex had looked at Pete as he began to roll up his yoga mats into thin columns of rubber.

  “So it seems your ability to backbend while whisking a soya drink has spread the breath of our city?”

  “So it seems,” Pete had said, pulling another yoga mat from the cupboard.

  “Flexing in a suit of minerals?”

  “Ma’am, minerals are for tablets and flexing is more for your whips.”

  Mex wanted to know what homes Pete went to; did he teach Hilda’s and Beryl’s Androids?

  Pete had quoted the Incognito Secrets Act that “all us Androids must abide by.”

  Mex had called him a robot, continuing on with the jokes about body butter oils and Vaseline.

  “Ma’am, Vaseline is purely for the lubrication of spark plugs—which are these days completely out of date.”

  Now, Pete flicked through his logs. The first log was all about the art of lubrication . . . explaining that while “a mere inhalation of soya oil was enough for him; it was a complex process for the PA.” It had taken him several nights to write this log sitting on the patio with Mex’s running brook music playing in the background. Which after several trips to the toilet she turned off . . .

  A PA requires thick cooking oil dripped into the ear and then plugged with a Teflon pad, after which he must circle like a dog chasing its tail for at least ten minutes. This will
ensure that all joints are warmed for any yoga pose.

  But soon Pete moved on to more interesting subjects to log about. He decided to expand his logs by collecting copies of other logs. While his students spent their lessons twirling or posing—eyes closed—Pete investigated and copied.

  He collected from everyone—Beryl’s “Manifesto to Manifesto the Great,” Hilda’s “Magna Carta is a Starter,” and “The Vegas Diaries,” which was more like a report than anything else. He copied them all—even Mex’s.

  At night, Mex dictated her log while reclining on the swing chair. Pete, after finishing his evening clear-up, would flop on his yoga mat, stating that he was shutting down to regenerate. After muttering a few Ooooms he would close his eyes in silence and wait . . .

  “You present, Pete?”

  “Just rebooting, ma’am.”

  And with the shout of an “On now,” Mex would begin her latest log.

  Of course, anyone who came from the Robots-R-Us area of the city would know that rebooting had gone out with cheese slices. But Mex had no idea, just as she had no idea that Pete had a photographic memory of the verbal kind. As she ranted about Beryl, Hilda, and the useless Voted Ins, Pete with a large inhale of his stomach could record. And it didn’t take him long to find her past logs about the glory days of shifting men from out of their hiding places. He stored all Mex’s stories onto his plugulator, from “Men, a Chromosome Short of Y” to “Beryl before the Beehive.”

  Pete became braver—a robot could go to places no one else knew about. He started to loiter incognito about the corridors of power under the guise of the “I have a message for Herself, is she here?” comment. The footmen never noticed, especially when slipped a small espresso.

  Pete filled his plugulator with every log he had collected, and packed it. If he was going to Earth, so were his logs.

  Chapter Six—The Taxi Driver

  “RUNNING WITH DIGNITY requires more than underwire.” —Mex at the first WRI conference

  At half past one on a Saturday morning, while Mex was scaring the insides out of a dwarf, Pete had been telesprayed to Dunoon. With two flashes and a “hold your breath” command from Beryl, Pete closed his eyes and opened them again to find himself standing on the top of some scaffolding staring into a sea of faces, most of whom were inebriated. This was what he was dreading; this was the reason that when he got his orders to follow Her Leathership he nearly choked on his soya oil. He had been thrust into the world of earthly pleasure and was staring into the faces of men and women who were speaking English, and he didn’t understand one word.