A tough hairy hand clamped around his arm. “Where d’you think you’re going? There’s paperwork.”
The moodfreak’s high evaporated after he was taken into custody. Anguished keens could be heard from his cell. Alfred and Archos worked through the mountain of papers. At a protracted yell, Alfred said, “It’d be kinder to smuggle a rope in. That was his sister in law.”
Archos knocked back his fourth black coffee. “I bring ‘em in. I don’t judge ‘em.”
“How do you sleep at night?”
“Piss off home to your boyfriend, willya?”
Josh was nowhere to be seen when Alfred got back. Boo fixed him a drink and heard his story, shuddering and exclaiming in the right places. “Are they any closer, do you think?” she asked
Alfred rubbed his eyes. “Haven’t a notion. Won’t have sweet dreams, that’s for sure.”
The bar was dead. Boo locked up an hour before closing. “Bet they think I’m peddling the stuff.”
“No!” He was shocked.
“They say all sorts of crap downtown. Fancy a nightcap?”
They swapped tales of the villains they had known, warmed by the drink and flickering lamps. “Why did you leave the force?” Alfred asked.
“I lost my idealism.”
“What do you mean? You’re the most optimistic person I know.”
“My sarge turned out to be a stinker. I tried to shop her but she had friends in high places.”
“Sorry.”
“My heart was never in it. How’s retirement treating you?”
He considered. “Alright. I keep busy.”
“Like muscling in on investigations?”
“Hey, they sought my advice.”
“’Course they did.” Her foot slipped out of its sandal and poked him.
Looking at her through a film of whisky, he didn’t see Boo, aging bohemian, but a younger shape that still affected him powerfully. He took the foot in his hands and kissed it.
“Freddie, what are you doing?”
“Being spontaneous.”
“Don’t mess with me. You’ll wake up tomorrow and feel like a right prat.”
He lifted her from her chair - heavier than expected, but he was hardly svelte. Laughing and colliding with furniture, they made their way upstairs.
Boo was right. The spell had lasted while they kissed on her bed, tussled with each other’s clothes. She cried, “You poor love!” at his scars, but they didn’t put her off. It was when it had to go further he became stuck. He’d heard enough of the theory from Derkins and nobody raised by Nanny could be ignorant of the mechanics. The reason was something that no one in the world could help with. She wasn’t Josh.
“Is everything okay?” she asked. “Do you want to stop?”
He nodded. She put on her dressing gown and fetched iced water (“You’re a funny colour. You need to cool down.”) She poured them each a glass and lay beside him.
“Maybe it’s for the best, Freddie. I’d hate not to be able to look at you in the morning.”
“Can’t think why. I’m a git then.”
“Maybe I like gits.”
Finishing his glass, he tipped out the ice cube and slid it down the back of her neck.
“Damn you, you know I’m ticklish.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
She emptied out her ice cubes, let them slither across his chest. “You asked for it.”
It couldn’t have been less sexy. He dabbed an ice cube down her spine, she flicked one across his belly. They were breathless, laughing. The door sprang open.
“Boo, have you seen Alfred –”
Alfred could only imagine how it looked: Boo nosing a cube between his thighs, him reaching round to smack her bum, both as naked as the day they were born. Any doubt was swept aside. If a robot could be heartbroken, Josh was.
“I have to go,” he said quietly. He bowed to Boo, closing the door behind him.
Coward! He hadn’t thought of a single excuse. Fuming beneath his breath, Alfred pulled on his clothes.
“Freddie?”
“Not now.”
“Yes, now!”
“I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“You fancy an artie. Seems a good place to start.”
Alfred thought, not for the first time, how inadequate the word ‘fancy’ was. “It’s not one sided.”
“Oh, it gets better! You think your carer -”
“He’s not my carer. Where’d you get that idea?”
“What else can he be?”
“Don’t you watch the news? He’s an icon. Really famous.”
“So you and this ‘really famous’ artificial” dig each other?”
“I don’t see why you’re taking this so hard.”
“Don’t you?” Boo’s mascara was running; she wiped it aside. “Listen, genius, ‘cause this is the last time I’ll degrade myself. You’ve come up with countless excuses over the years. ‘I love Ken’, ‘You’re not the one,’ ‘You’re a woman’- and now you prefer a bloody robot?”
“Boo, I’m sorry. Josh is out there, in a state, because of me. Can’t we bury the hatchet and find him?”
Josh paced the beach. Chill winds chapped his face, sea and sky smudged into shadow. Bars were dotted along the front, offering light and warmth. He wasn’t fit for company.
You lied to me.
Was that why there had been secrecy on Alfred’s part, blushing on Boo’s? Were they a couple?
That night before Boo knocked, when he and Alfred reached for each other, he had been so sure. He’d thought at last he understood his feelings, saw them reflected in Alfred’s eyes. When their bodies met he’d wanted so much more.
His mind tossed up statements Alfred had made: “You’re my best friend,” “I tell you everything,” “I’ve never fancied a woman.” Liar, liar, liar.
“Are you looking for someone?”
The stranger was a lady of Linese appearance, a few years younger than Boo. Her clothes were chic but funereal; she wore long black gloves and a feathered cap.
“Let me buy you a drink.”
He went to move on, then thought, Why not? He didn’t stop to wonder why a woman might want a young man this late.
He would wish she had been as harmless.
They sat in the back bar. His new friend ordered “the best you’ve got, and pronto” - the waiter put him in mind of a tailor’s dummy. A cigarette glowed in her fingers but went nowhere near her lips. She watched him minutely, never blinking. After an hour he was certain.
“What are you thinking about?” She popped marzipan into her mouth.
“You’re an artificial.”
The crimson smile revealed filed teeth. “You too.”
“Is it that obvious?”
“Only things a connoisseur would notice. The way you carry yourself. Turning your head rather than your eyes when you look at something. Wearing short sleeves on a night like this.” Another cube was snapped up. “You must try harder.”
“Oh.”
“I’ll forgive you since you have a lot on your mind. Owner trouble?”
“What makes you think that?”
“It always is.”
“I caught my owner with someone. A human.”
“Poor baby.”
Josh helped himself to the marzipan. “I thought I meant something to him.”
“That’s humans for you. They create us to love them unconditionally but hate it in practice. Really they want their shit back tenfold.”
“You know a lot about humans,” Josh hazarded.
“Of course I do,” she said. “I study them.”
***
“We should try Manny,” Boo said. “They’re friends, aren’t they?”
“Are you sure that’s wise?”
She bounded across the landing and rattled the door. “Manny? We want a word.” Nothing. She tried the handle. “Cheeky sod! He’s locked himself in!”
“Doesn’t he normally?”
Perhaps it was his knee jerk dislike of the man but Alfred had a hunch. “Allow me.” He shouldered the door, crashing it open on the second attempt.
Manny wasn’t there but plenty of contraband was. A hubar lamp, white hot. What looked like a ticker tape machine spewing reels. A pair of gloves rested on the desk; Alfred put them on. He peeled off a strip and showed it to Boo.
“Fancy a hit of Enlightenment?”
She threw up her hands. “I am so dumb!”
“You weren’t to know.” Her reaction cut deeper than a wronged employer. “You and Manny - ?”
“We had an arrangement about the rent. Which he obviously didn’t need, looking at this.”
Alfred picked the locks on the desk. The first drawers yielded nothing but junk. The fourth was promising. A notepad the size of a tea bag, crisscrossed with numbers. He stashed it in his pocket.
“C’mon,” he said at last. “Josh could be miles away.”
They squashed into Boo’s tiny vix. She crawled along the seafront while he stopped and searched.
“Shouldn’t we go where people are?” she asked after he’d shone a torch into the caves.
“When Josh is upset he likes to get away from it all. Don’t blame him.”
“You really care about him, don’t you?”
“I can’t help it. He’s been good to me, even though I’m the last person in the world an artie should be friends with.”
Alfred tried the bars. The locals expressed their concern. Apparently there were gangs who smashed any robots they came across - news to him. There was still no sign.
He had come to a dead end. Or had he? An amber light sputtered in the building next to the church, a rococo bar with a statue of Talos the Protector.
“Don’t waste your time,” Boo said. “They only open to friends.”
Alfred tapped the window. A sketchy man pulled one of the drapes aside. “We’re closed.”
His eyes were unnaturally pale, his face pink and greasy like the skin under a scab. Alfred hadn’t the least doubt he was talking to an artificial.
“One drink and I’ll go.” He tried to look trustworthy and stupid. He produced his wallet. “I’ll make it worthwhile.”
The robot’s nose twitched. “There’s some whisky sir might like.”
“You’re too kind.”
Alfred followed the robot into the backroom. He picked a table close to the wall, sat and stretched his legs.
“Back in a moment, sir.”
When Josh told him about the right wing bar, he’d put it down to the artificial’s naivety. There was no way he would wander into a nest of villains. Robots might have the edge when it came to logic, but you couldn’t beat human smarts. Sitting here, playing the dumb tourist, he experienced a similar trickle of dread.
There was something off about the room. The furniture was expensive but spiny, the fruits and flowers imitations. It was too clean - antiseptic, almost. You’d expect typical bar smells - tobacco, sweat, food - but there was nothing. There was a scent of sugary decay, but perhaps he was imagining it. The pictures on the walls –
Bile rose into Alfred’s mouth. He could write a treatise about the pictures in bars: watercolours, young men naked bar a fan. These were photographs, of people he had seen recently. A teenage girl hugging her knees, face downcast. A man looking elated, transported. Alfred had last seen her in a body bag, him with brains all over his face.
His beebo buzzed. His first thought was Boo, then he remembered she didn’t have one. Only one person knew he owned a beebo: Josh. A message scrawled across the readout. “Bar by the church. Fixer. Get backup.”
Something was glowing beneath the farthest table. He dipped his hand beneath the cloth. He recognised the beebo immediately. At the same time, a small but powerful hand clamped on his shoulder. “It’s time you left, sir.”
The robot had the element of surprise but Alfred had years of street fighting and a skull that would shatter marble. He butted upwards.
“Nothing personal.” He thought about it. “Actually, it is.” He seized the nearest chair and brought it down on the robot’s head. One eye popped out.
He passed through the alcove it must have used. There was a flight of rough carpeted stairs beyond. He set foot on the first step. It squealed in protest. A quiet step alternated with a creaky one. Once he had worked out the system, he climbed with his back against the wall.
It ended with a high narrow attic, reams of paper fluttering from the ceiling. Flies bumped into the sheets and fell dead. He brought out his handkerchief and wrapped it around his hand. Careful not to let it slip, he pulled one of the trailing strips down. As he thought. It was dotted with the pastilles Manny had cooked up into tablets.
He’d never known a room to be so cold. His breath came out as steam. There was no furniture, only lines of white metal lockers and a black tiled floor. All the windows had been bricked up. He touched one of the lockers, not expecting it to move. Instead a drawer shot out into his hand –
He closed it, nauseous. No wonder there was that sweet, rotten odour. Did every drawer in this room hold a dead guinea pig? It was bad enough when the victims were kids slumming it in clubs. To think of people being enticed here and bottled afterwards –
He’d labelled each one in minute writing. ‘Human Male, 30 years, Stress.’ ‘Female, 15, Nightmares.’ What kind of person was so twisted he viewed his fellows like that? ‘Artificial’-
Wait. Artificial? Hands sweating, heart thudding, he struggled with the drawer. It clicked and refused to budge, as though the occupant didn’t want to come out. There was only one robot who was that bloody minded.
“Josh, it’s me. I’ll get you out of here.”
The force acting on the drawer relented. Josh was curled up in a tight ball, teeth clenched. He couldn’t speak.
Alfred unbuttoned his coat. “Borrow this. Keep warm.”
“Not like this. I’ll ruin it.”
The little body unflexed. Someone had put a soldering iron to the tender skin, burned it so it hung in blackened strips. He could see Josh’s workings grinding, more terrible than a flesh wound would be.
“I disgust you, don’t I?”
“No. Never.”
He knew they should be plotting their escape but a stronger impulse kept him where he was. Alfred knew he wasn’t nice but he tried to be good. Only sometimes goodness didn’t put up a fight. He found the tool jutting from the wall. Still hot. He opened an empty drawer and climbed inside.
“What are you doing?” Josh whispered. “The Fixer will be back soon.”
“Good. Get in your drawer.”
They lay like that, listening for the least sound. The minutes passed. Alfred felt duped and cramped. He was going to suggest they gave up when Josh jolted, sending a shudder through the lockers.
“Still don’t want to play?” a voice taunted.
The words scratched themselves on Alfred’s skull. Armed with this and the memory of Josh’s abused flesh, he lashed out. He burst from his hiding place and drove the soldering iron into the newcomer’s face. He only had time to register a top knot of hair and a crimson mouth screaming before it was obliterated. He dropped the tool and stared at his handiwork, shaky and sick. He had attacked a woman.
The liquid streaming down her ruined cheeks was silver, the skull poking through the skin bronze. An artificial. But he couldn’t feel relief.
“Freddie?” a voice called.
“Up here!”
Boo galloped upstairs. The gauche young man had gone - this was how she would always be and Alfred was glad. She gaped at the steaming remains. “What the -?”
Josh climbed down from the table. “I’d like to introduce you to Zheng Chi, better known as the Fixer.”
The next few days were manic even by their standards. Their first move was to look up Dr Sugar.
“No such thing as a holiday with you two,” he harrumphed. He soon had one o
f the disused labs up and running. Unsurprisingly he had a few words for Alfred.
“Listen, Langton -” stretching his lack of inches – “I know adventure’s your bread and butter, but take it down a notch, will you?”
“We don’t go looking for it.”
“Be careful.”
At least Archos was grateful. He relished the chance to arrest Manny, who he’d never liked, and rounded up the Fixer’s associates. Her faithful Pablo - the robot at her bar - had rooted out civilians with shady pasts and ensured their complicity through blackmail. This cemented Zheng’s conviction humans would do anything to save their worthless skins.
They activated her in the police station. At first she refused to acknowledge her captors, but she caught sight of herself in one of the windows. Screaming with rage, she forced herself to shut down. She had remained off since.
They’d outstayed their welcome, Alfred felt.“You must be dying to have the place to yourself,” he said to Boo. “We’re eating you out of house and home.”
She took it philosophically. “I’ll miss you, but you’re right.”As he gaped, “I never thought Ken was good enough, but Josh looks like he’ll measure up nicely.”
He kissed her forehead. “Thanks for understanding.”
“It’s what I’m here for.” She meant it. “I wish you all the happiness in the world.”
Alfred took his time saying goodbye to the house. He didn’t know when he’d be back. He finished with the garden, his favourite spot. It teemed with memories. He closed his eyes, felt the breeze fan his face. Sun blood red against his lids, the hot breath of honeysuckle. Something stirred at his feet. “Nice try.”
“I was trying to sneak up,” Josh said.
“No can do. I’ve nerves like a cat.”
“I believe you.”
Josh joined him on the seat. He didn’t speak. Normally Alfred liked their silences, but something was wrong. He opened his eyes and took stock of his friend. Josh sat with his feet dangling, toying with the flower in his lap.
“Does it -” Alfred gestured to the bandages.
“Parts keep peeling off.”
“Ugh!”
“Actually it’s quite interesting.”
Was there no limit to the lad’s curiosity? Curiosity. His wordless unhappiness - oh, it was obvious!
Love and Robotics Page 27
