“Can I see him?”
They exchanged glances. “We don’t think that’s wise.”
He rose unsteadily. “Why did you drag me up here, then?”
“He’d ... dissolved.”
“You mean, the charge from the bot -”
One shook his head, measuring his words. “The evidence suggests that Professor Summerskill -” he wetted his lips “ - was a clone.”
Alfred clapped. “Bravo, gentlemen. You nearly had me there.”
“No,” said one. “He’s loopy,” hissed the other.
“I knew Ken for thirteen years and fucked him for twelve. I’d have noticed if he wasn’t human.”
“We’ve run tests. He’s genetically other.”
It was abhorrent. But the more they talked ... Ken had always looked older than his age. He didn’t sweat. He was always cold. His unnaturally slow heartbeat. How he’d unravelled the past year, as though his cells were disintegrating. His sexual incontinence. His self loathing. His punch clock morality, as though “good” and “evil” happened to other people.
“Here’s his suitcase,” one of the men said.
It was lightly, untidily packed. A cravat with lemon stripes. His shabby slippers. The watch Alfred had given him the birthday before last. Nothing like a note. Though there was a picture of them at university, eating candy floss. Ken had looped an arm over his shoulder, clamping Gussy with the other.
The best of times, he’d written. A matter of opinion.
***
Gussy was inconsolable. Ken had been his lover, yet he wasn’t trailing about as though the world had ended. Gwyn was hurting too, but her mother barely noticed.
They held the funeral in the chapel. Gussy sat with her hands in her lap, attention elsewhere. Alfred watched the minister squirm when he said ‘dearly beloved’ or ‘he will be missed’. When he went to take the remains Gussy snatched them back.
“Do you think he’s watching us?” Gwyn whispered.
“Wouldn’t put it past him.” He’d be looking down and sniggering - no, not down. Ken wouldn’t have got into heaven.
“I hope he isn’t. It was a poor service.” Her arm through his, they walked beneath the rain slicked trees.
There was too much of Ken to fizzle out. You expected to find him smoking in his lair, espousing crazy theories. Perhaps that’s why Gussy had closed the north wing. She wanted to be alone with him.
Him? Not so much. But he wasn’t Ken’s widow, wasn’t Ken’s anything.
Loss never gets easier. You think that you’ll feel a blunting of the emotions, but it doesn’t work that way. Even years later you can be cut to the heart.
Gussy led a solitary life in the north wing. She was planning a monument to Ken, where his ashes could be laid to rest. For the time being she carried the urn to and fro. Alfred had a terrible urge to smash it whenever he saw it.
One day he visited her in her study. She’d always been neat but the sterility of the room was hurtful. She’d unpinned the charts, packed away the legions of stationery.
“Hello, Alfie.” She didn’t look up.
He could see the skull through her skin. The tea tray trembled. He put it down. “You’re not well, are you?”
“Cancer. I’ve a few months at the most. Ken knew.”
He didn’t ask why she hadn’t told him. “I can get the best doctors -”
“There’s nothing to stick around for.”
“What about the kids?”
“Marcus is his father’s creature. Always was.”
“Gwynnie, then. She’s a right to a mum -”
“You do it better than I could.”
He dashed the tray against the wall. “What’s more important than seeing your kids grow up?”
Her eyes fell upon the urn. Since he couldn’t damage it, he did the next worst thing. He swept up the plans for the memorial and launched them at the fire.
Chimera was a great place to sulk in. You could hide in and out of the rooms, hone your moping skills. Alfred cracked first. Brooding was Gussy’s forte, not his. He came across her by accident, sitting on the plinth.
“Sorry,” he muttered.
“Is that as good as it’s going to get?”
“Probably.” He sat beside her. “Are you still going ahead with this apotheosis?”
“Why not? I’m already a heretic.” On a serious note, “They’re erasing him from the record. If I don’t honour him, who will?”
“They can’t. He changed so much.”
“CER thinks it’s for the best.”
“Hypocrites,” he growled. “Never liked ‘em.”
“They’d disown me too if they could get away with it.”
“They’d better not!”
“Come off it, Alfie. A hundred years from now, people will have forgotten us, but there’ll still be robots.” A wry smile. “Maybe humans will become obsolete.”
Alfred had a vision of Lux guttered, robots crawling across the ruins like cockroaches. “Thea forbid.”
Maybe the scheme wasn’t so bad. It saved her from madness, numbed the pain. She was already confounding the doctor’s expectations. “I’m not going anywhere till it’s finished,” she said.
Of course Gwyn had to be told. She took it calmly. “Is it the same thing that killed Uncle Ken?”
“Yes,” he said without thinking. It was convenient, it saved questions - and it was true from a certain perspective.
He and Gussy received few guests. They lived in a handful of rooms. Two people with the same love, the same disappointment. She spoke of Ken often. She seemed to think that if she didn’t, he would fade. Sometimes Alfred wondered if his ghost was leeching strength from her.
The night the memorial was completed, she lay on the foundation stone. He sat up with her so she wouldn’t catch cold. He asked her what he’d always wanted to know.
“Did you and Ken ever -?”
“Nearly.” She couldn’t leave the story there. “It was when we were dating. I’d cooked him a nice meal, we started kissing, and things progressed. I wanted to so much, but he said”- the impression was pitch perfect - ‘Terribly sorry, but I’m bored rigid. This isn’t working for me at all.’”
It was cruel but he had to laugh. “He was never one to let you down gently.”
“Perhaps it wasn’t meant to be, but why did you do it? There were thousands of men you could’ve had. Why did you take the one I wanted?”
For which there was no answer.
She died a fortnight later. He wondered if it was deliberate - if anybody had the bloody mindedness to choose when they died, she did. They were walking in the Experimental Garden. He had to hold her upright.
“He asked me to marry him,” she said, apropos of nothing.
For Gussy there was only one ‘he’. “When?”
She beheaded a giant daisy. “Remember when you had that blazing row? A month after.”
If he carried on standing he’d have one of his spells. He didn’t hate Ken now, but still - “What did you say?”
“No. I wanted a husband. He couldn’t be one.”
“At least he asked you.”
“Alfie, Alfie. When are you going to let go of your anger?”
He watched the floral clock open, close, open. “Fifteen thirty. Let’s -”
Whatever he was going to say shattered. Gussy was grey, wheezing, tears beading her eyes. He tried all the resuscitation methods he knew.
She whispered as she died. He didn’t want to hear it. He knew what it would be.
How do you describe absence? Alfred had never been good at naming emotions so didn’t try. Stars faded, life went on. He couldn’t remember most of it. Pickups, skirmishes with the law. He was banned from driving after cruising stark naked down the Royal Mile. He’d been off his face at the time.
One scuffle he didn’t regret. He’d agreed to work with CER on two conditions: that they gave Gussy her due and built her a proper memorial. This particular day, he’d stopped
by to pay his respects. A door banged. He crushed himself against the wall. The pitter of high heels, a nervous gasp.
“You must be so proud.”
“A light went out of my life that day.”
The figure was seedier, the hair greying, but Alfred wasn’t mistaken. Lucas, pulling women on his wife’s memorial. After everything he’d put her through in life, he was demeaning her in death.
Most people have an angel and a devil on their shoulder. Alfred had two devils. Now they roared with one voice: “Kill the fucker.” He ignored the shocked tourists, the girl screaming. He hit and hit until Lucas couldn’t get up.
‘The accused shows no remorse,’ the police file said. He refused to explain why.
The years passed. Gwyn grew up. Lucas hanged himself. Nanny’s summary: “Good riddance to bad rubbish.” Alfred’s was more succinct: “Twat.”
With the rising infertility rates, the law had been modified. It was no longer a sin to sleep with a machine but the psych tests ensured that only a select minority could do so. Alfred found himself in a world he no longer recognised, a caveman with outdated beliefs. It could only be faced through a mist of alcohol.
Nobody cared about explorers now, least of all unstable ones with a drink problem. He was officially discharged.
“I don’t want to do this,” Jerry Etruscus said. “It’s just -” doggy sigh - “not the same country anymore.”
“Move with the times or move on?”
“Good man. Well put.”
So he retired. He didn’t wear it gracefully. Boredom pressure cooked his nerves, anger exploded out of him. The stroke was a relief. It explained some of his behaviour, though not all. His universe shrank. Gwyn. Nanny. His duties. His inventions. He didn’t want or need anybody else.
Until Josh came.
Recovery, Part 2
Josh was very quiet while Alfred told his story. He frowned as he reached the end.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’ve spent years trying to forget. They made it easy enough. Ken was wiped from the record, his inventions attributed to Gussy. All official pictures of him were destroyed. The one in the Lux Museum is the only one in existence, but it’s the only sanctioned portrait of Gussy so it had to stay. It was illegal to mention him. Olive Omatayo thought that if she offered him a posthumous pardon, I’d stop seeing you. Somehow it didn’t matter anymore.”
“No wonder you hate robots.”
“Only that one. Never you.”
Josh stroked his hair, thoughtful. “Do you think Guy loved Ken?”
“As far as I’m aware you’re unique.”
“It’s cruel, squelching a robot for the human’s crime.”
“It’s the last indignity, forcing their lover to watch. I couldn’t bear to.”
“I’d pulverise them,” Josh said. “What did you see in him? He doesn’t seem to have a single redeeming feature.”
“Then I’m not telling it right. Yes, he could be a bastard, but we had our moments.”
Josh made a sceptical noise. “If it turned out he’d faked his death, would you go to him?”
“No.” Alfred didn’t hesitate. “I have you.”
Josh nuzzled him. “If you want me to return the favour -”
He pretended not to catch his drift. “Are you sure you don’t want to go abroad? We could set up in the robot colony -”
“ No thanks. I’d rather take my chances here.”
“Is that your final answer?”
“Running off says we’ve done something wrong. I refuse.”
“You’re a stubborn blighter.”
Alfred was lying on top of Josh, knee in the crook of his groin. As he felt him stir, he moved with it. He unbuttoned his shirt so their chests fitted together. Josh brought himself out, held their cocks together. “Yours is bigger than mine,” he said.
“You can’t pick a lock with a jumbo sausage.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“No idea. Yours is exquisite.”
He bent and kissed it. Josh moaned. Alfred might have been back at Frome, staring at his idol without the faintest idea what to do with his big raw body. He knew what he wanted but couldn’t form the words.
“Can I -”
Josh waited patiently.
“May I go down on you?”
“Isn’t it degrading?”
Alfred had never seen it in that light before. “I shan’t if you don’t want me to.”
Perhaps it was demeaning, slurping on your knees, but when did sex have anything to do with dignity? Discovery, yes. Wanting somebody so badly you thought you’d die, certainly. But dignity? A big fat no.
“If it’s you it’s alright.”
He licked Josh’s thighs, his stomach, his groin. Hands went to his hair. He took him into his mouth, moist and straining. He did it gently at first, listening to Josh’s sighs, reading his body. He darted his tongue over his balls, the fine golden hairs. As he teased harder, Josh’s voice became deep and shuddery.
“Let me -” He scrambled down the bed.
He’d always known Josh was thorough. “Bloody hell,” he breathed, as he applied that talented tongue to his cock. “Bloody hell!” as he took him all the way in.
He was apprehensive at first - what if he didn’t like the taste? As Josh sucked greedily, he laughed with relief. It had always been his favourite sex act, both to do and have done. More intimate. In the past he’d been lost in a frenzy of arousal - now, though it was as heady as before, he was acutely conscious of Josh: not just the heat and wetness, the sounds, the up and down motion of his head, the softness of his lips, but his presence, him.
Soon he couldn’t deny it any longer. “I can’t hold back -”
“Don’t. I want it all.”
Alfred’s head filled with light and noise. He fell slack, lying heavily against Josh’s hip. He put an arm around him. All he could smell was oil and cum.
There was nothing like looking at your partner after love, blushing and biting his lip. Josh looked so naughty. Whoever said robot eyes weren’t expressive was talking bollocks.
“I’ve made my choice,” Josh said. “You’re stuck with me whether you want me or not.”
“Lucky I want you, then.”
Had Ken and Guy made these vows? They might have done it in this room, for all he knew.
“Whatever happened, they’re at peace now,” Josh said. It was uncanny, the way he dipped in and out of his mind.
Alfred rolled on top of him. The ghosts of years took flight.
So that’s it, Josh thought. If only humans could be honest rather than torment themselves. It would save a great deal of pain. Perhaps he was looking at it the wrong way. If Alfred had too much past, his was pristine. Well, other than that. He wouldn’t burden him with the knowledge.
He hated Ken Summerskill more than he’d hated anyone. As soon as he was alone, he tore the print of him and Gussy in half, consigning his side to the fire. He had to stab it with the poker before it burned. He kept glimpsing smirk or horsy nostrils. Thanks to him there’d been all that wasted time. Thanks to him, Alfred thought he was unworthy of love.
I’ll make it up to you. I swear.
Perhaps it was the two days’ rest - or the restorative powers of sex - but he felt better. He kept to his room for the form of the thing. Even his arm didn’t bother him. Part way through the afternoon it began to itch.
Nanny brought up his meal and took the tray away. He watched the sun set over the fields, the night school of bats. He waited, wondering what pose he should be discovered in. Reading a book? Lying on the bed? Looking out of the window?
It took him until midnight to realise Alfred was staying away. Had he offended him? How could he after this morning? He wanted him so badly - yes, to sink his teeth into, to make him come, but also the quiet afterwards. It was his favourite part of the day when they were abroad, talking till the sun came up.
He wanted him now.
He swa
llowed any nerves he had about Chimera at night and followed the halls, the banisters to Alfred’s wing. He hadn’t been up here since Gwyn caught them. What did she think of the situation? She’d lost her temper while scrubbing out the graffiti, though that was probably due to the scale of the task.
He pushed Alfred’s door. It opened, revealing empty space, the mirror with its shooting star of broken glass. Puss lay on the rug, chewing the one eyed doll she dragged everywhere. She growled when he touched the four poster’s curtains.
Where was he now? A late night errand? A relapse? He’d seen his stupors. Gwyn had told him about the flipside: prowling the halls naked, challenging the paintings to fights. How did humans have all these contradictions and not explode?
As a last resort he went to the library. He shivered when he saw the sash of light beneath the door. He moved noiselessly across the carpet, followed the flutter of newspaper. It was coming from the green wing chair he usually sat in.
“Hello, trouble.”
Josh kissed Alfred’s neck. “How did you know it was me?”
“Nanny conks out as soon as she’s heard the World Service. Gwyn won’t go around the house in the dark. And if either did what you just did, I’d be concerned.”
“Can I join you?”
“No reason why not.” Alfred shifted the newspaper so Josh could sit on his lap. “It’s some new thing, numbers in a grid. I can’t get this box.”
Josh looked at it. “I don’t think that’s a two. Maybe a seven?”
Alfred examined it from another angle. “You’re right. How did you do it? I’ve been staring at it for half an hour.”
“You’re better at crosswords. I don’t like those cryptic ones.”
“It’s happened. I’m up at silly o’clock, doing puzzles. I’ve turned into my parents.”
“I think that one’s nine.”
“Now you’re showing off.”
Josh ran his finger along the page. In a ghostly voice, “Nine ... nine ... nine ... all taken.” He borrowed the pencil and tickled Alfred with it.
“Josh?”
“Yes?”
Love and Robotics Page 63
