by D Miller
A hand touched Robbie's face. He opened his eyes. George slept in a chair beside him. It was early morning still, which explained why George was snoring. He pushed himself up in his bed, and had managed to get upright when Omo pulled back the curtains holding a steaming cup in his hand. 'Hey George I told you I'd find you some cof–' he stopped, looking at Robbie.
'Hey dude,' said Omo, 'you're awake.' George was blinking, Omo handed him the coffee, and sat down on the other side of the bed.
'Amber was here earlier,' said Robbie, 'he says Darren is very embarrassed for arguing with Charlie in front of me after the explosion, he says it was very unprofessional of him.'
'It was certainly unprofessional,' said George.
'I don't really remember the argument.' Robbie was ashamed of himself for lying, he remembered perfectly well the argument and the embarrassing things he had said to Charlie. George and Omo had so far not mentioned them, and he hoped that if he pretended not to remember they would be too tactful to ever bring it up.
George and Omo looked at each other. Robbie thought, 'I deserve to be loved. I deserve to be loved. I deserve to be loved.'
George licked his lips. 'Robbie, you might have noticed that Omo and I are getting on so much better now.'
'Yeah, because you're sleeping with each other. I'm sure that helps enormously.'
George and Omo looked at each other again.
'We were going to tell you today,' said Omo.
'Instead I worked it out from the way there's never more than 100 millimetres between the two of you when you stand or sit together now, and how your body language is so relaxed around each other, and how Omo now understands how important coffee is to you, George.'
'Baby I'm so sorry you worked it out before we told you.'
'Oh don't be so ridiculous, of course I didn't work it out, Amber told me.' Robbie crossed his arms and favoured Omo then George with a stern look. 'Amber thought I knew.'
'Oh dude, we're sorry. You were in such a strange mood yesterday we decided to tell you another time.'
'Fine, and now you've apologised to me for finding out from Amber that you are a couple, I'm ready to accept your apology for lying to me about the bombs.' There was silence. George sipped his coffee. Omo studied the floor. 'You both knew the bombs were real, and people died when they went off, and you didn't tell me. Everyone knew except for me. You should have told me.'
George took his nose out of his coffee cup. 'Robbie, everyone did not know, only a very small number of people were aware of the full story.'
'You're not denying it then?'
'I'm not denying that I knew, and that Omo knew, and that we both thought that there was nothing to be gained from telling you.'
'George I'm really cross with you right now.'
'Robbie I would imagine that you think of yourself as a murderer. But in fact and in law to commit murder there has to be intent, there has to be a guilty mind. You did not intend to kill. I know that even in a dream you would not have set off the bombs if you thought that anyone would die as a result. I know you would take it back if you could. You are not a murderer.'
'You should have told me.'
'Baby I want you to think of something for me. I want you to pretend that Clarisse is afraid of spiders.'
Robbie sighed, laid back in his bed and raised his eyes to the heavens, but Omo continued. 'Suppose that you went into the bathroom to run a bath for Clarisse. And suppose that sitting in the bath was the biggest, hairiest spider you had ever seen. Suppose it leaned back in the bath, and folded its eight long hairy legs, licked its lips and said, "Bring me the little girl, for I am hungry." And suppose that after you'd got a shovel and beaten it nearly to death and its battered body lay twitching in the bath, would you, with your t-shirt covered in spider blood and spider brains, with the bathroom walls splattered with spider blood and spider brains, go and get Clarisse and show her the dying spider, or would you put the thing in a body bag, and scrub clean the bath, scrub the walls, get a spoon to scrape out bits of spider body parts from where they'd got wedged in the tiling, change your clothes, wash the blood and comb the brains out of your hair and never, ever tell Clarisse?'
'It's not the same thing.'
'It is the same thing.'
'It's not the same thing.'
'It is the same thing.'
Robbie turned away from Omo, but found himself looking at George. He looked at the ceiling. He pursed his lips.
'Dude are you smiling?'
He shook his head.
'He is smiling,' said George, 'or more accurately he is trying not to smile.'
'God damn both of you,' said Robbie.
Robbie had been aware for a little while that he could hear George's heart beat and another one, a faster, but weaker heart beat. Now he focussed on it, and realised it was very close to him. He bent over the side of his bed and saw that on the floor by George's feet was a small box, the top was made from plaited plastic with a wide weave to allow air through, Robbie could see something moving inside it. He looked at George.
'Dude we brought you a present,' said Omo.
'Is it whale?'
'No, it's not a whale,' said George. He picked up the box and put it on the bed, opened it and took out a grey tortoiseshell kitten. Robbie took the kitten from George. He held it up and stared into its blue eyes. The kitten reached out a paw and batted Robbie on the nose.
'Oh,' said Robbie.
'Do you like her?' said George.
'She has blue eyes.'
'What are you going to call her?' said Omo.
'Shelley. Rise like lions from slumber, in unvanquishable number–' The kitten yawned. Robbie dropped her on his chest and stroked her head. She purred. 'She's so beautiful.'
'Sorry she's not a whale dude.'
Robbie picked up the kitten and held her against his cheek. 'She's better than a whale.'
'Better than a whale? Does that mean we are forgiven?'
'Yes. Isn't it lucky for you that I'm so shallow?' said Robbie, shutting his eyes, feeling the kitten's fur against his cheek, and listening to her purr.
Chapter 43 – Hard-hitting, tomato-based, critical feedback
Robbie was back in the palace, swinging himself around on his crutches in the apartment he shared with Adrienne, George and Omo. Dr Tam had found that his leg was too badly damaged to be reattached, and had told him that she was having difficulty in sourcing material to make a new one. After Dr Tam had given him the bad news they had had an interesting conversation which he decided he would share with his friends after Gillian and the children, who were currently sitting on the sofa, had gone. It was morning and they were waiting for Adrienne, the four of them were going out somewhere. Midsummer was approaching and that day's temperature was predicted to get as high as 20 °C. Gillian was wearing a white dress that revealed the bulge in her belly, her pregnancy was showing. Robbie could hear the infant's heart beating fast and strong.
Amber was sitting on the other sofa, Shelley the kitten slept on his lap, exhausted by the attention the children had shown her. Omo was in his bedroom writing some letters, while George had gone to work.
While Robbie had been in the hospital Dex had handed on to a working group of union members the task of organising the foundational conference for George and Robbie's proposed political party. Dex had hoped that Robbie would understand it was time to broaden the base of support for the new party, and encourage ownership of the idea and its implementation by the union as a whole. Robbie had controlled his disappointment and graciously stood aside, thinking it was lucky he only had one leg as that prevented him from dancing with joy. Dex had made George finance minister in charge of starting the transformation of the economy into a more democratic, participatory one. Robbie understood that true democracy was impossible without democratic control of the economy, but still wondered if starting the process of transformation in such a top-down way could really work, although he thought if anyone could make a success of such a
contradictory task, George could.
The human press did not agree, and had written extensively on George's character failings, most particularly that he was involved in a sexual relationship with a robot and as a huge pervert could not be trusted with anything. 'What do they think he's going to do,' thought Robbie, 'drag the economy into a cave and sodomise it?' Robbie thought that while some robots did not approve of human/robot consensual sex, they did not share humanity's madness, where non-consensual sexual relations with robots were widely known, and while not discussed were accepted as part of the background noise of life, while consensual relations were thought to be dangerous and wrong and were discussed only in the most hysterical terms imaginable.
Robbie came to a halt, Tim applauded. 'Can I have a go?' he said.
Robbie sat down on the couch next to Amber; he would have fallen without Amber's help. Robbie could get around easily on his crutches once he was up, but he found standing up (and sitting down) difficult. He found the spiral staircase to the bedrooms on the upper floor impossible, and so had moved downstairs into the small room off the living space that George had claimed for use as a study.
Tim got up and stood in front of Robbie, he handed him the crutches. 'Look you shorten them by–'
'I know,' said Tim. 'You push this bit in.' He tried but when he couldn't manage he asked Amber to help him and soon was swinging about the room on the shortened crutches.
'I could have done the crutches for Tim,' whispered Robbie to Amber. 'And you've stolen my kitten.'
'Robbie,' said Clarisse, 'Robbie?'
She stood and stepped over to Robbie, she patted his uninjured leg. 'When you've got your new leg, yeah?'
'Yes Clarisse?'
'When you've got your new leg…'
'Yes?'
'Will you take me to ballet?'
'What's ballet sweetie?'
'Spinning around in dresses.'
'That sounds like fun.'
Robbie looked at Gillian. She pursed her lips. 'I thought that Tim and I could spend some time together, just the two of us.'
Robbie looked at Tim, who was turning in circles using the crutches and not looking particularly terrified. He thought he could detect the not so invisible hand of Adrienne. He looked at Clarisse. 'Of course I'll take you to ballet.'
Adrienne's bedroom door opened, and she walked out, drying her hair with a towel. She pointed at the display wall and a picture of a black man, whose closely cropped hair was just starting to go grey, with some writing appeared.
'Look at him,' said Adrienne, 'look at that fraud.'
'What is that?' said Clarisse.
'Not what, who,' said Adrienne. 'That is Professor James Djan. The biggest academic fraud on the planet, coming soon to a university near you, to give a talk about how robots do not really have an inner life, they only give the appearance of having an inner life. I could go on about his lack of academic rigour and his intellectual dishonesty, or I could just tell you how impressed I was as his student when I knew nothing. And now that I'm older and I know even more nothing I want revenge, for all of it.' She went to the room's food preparation area and picked up a large tomato, which she tossed into the air and caught. 'Trouble is I can't aim for shit, I never could. I'll probably miss him and hit some blameless person.' Adrienne thought for a moment. 'Or more precisely some not quite as culpable person.'
Amber put his arm around Robbie and rubbed the knuckles of his other hand across the top of Robbie's head. 'Robbie can't help you missus,' he said, 'he throws like a human.'
The kitten woke up with a mew. Robbie pushed Amber away from him and took Shelley off his lap. As he rubbed her ears he glanced at Adrienne, who was staring at Amber, then at Gillian, she was smiling but looking down, avoiding catching anyone's eye.
'Uh, no offence,' said Amber.
'None taken I assure you,' said Adrienne. 'Perhaps you would agree to give the professor some accurate and hard-hitting, tomato-based critical feedback?'
'I could do that,' said Amber, 'right on the nose. Every time.'
'You can't just go around throwing tomatoes at people,' said Gillian, 'you'll get arrested.'
'They'll have to know it was me,' said Amber. 'I'm very fast. Notice–' he pointed at Clarisse who gazed at him from the other side of Robbie. 'The little angel,' he winked at Clarisse, 'the hat,' he pointed at the sofa where Clarisse's summer hat and the original Mrs Danvers lay abandoned, 'the doll.' There was a sudden blurred movement and Clarisse was wearing the hat, the doll sat on the sofa, her head twisted to look away from Gillian, a lump spoiling the contour of her dress. The kitten was back on Amber's lap. Clarisse giggled. She pulled the hat off her head and tried to put it on Robbie. Gillian picked up the doll and pulled up its dress, discovering a bag of chocolate, that had been lying in plain sight on the top of her bag.
'Mrs Danvers took our chocolate,' said Clarisse.
'No Amber took the chocolate,' said Tim.
There was a knock on the door. A female human Robbie did not know but had seen around the palace stuck her head around the door. 'You have a visitor,' she said.
Rex padded past her and into the room. 'Morning all,' he said. Tim dropped the crutches and sat down next to his mother, he patted the sofa, looking at Rex, who climbed up next to Tim and put his head in his lap.
'Also we're ready to go when you are ma'am,' the woman told Gillian.
Dex had asked Captain Roberts to arrange protection for the children – he thought their father might try to have them kidnapped. Knowing of the man's parenting skills Robbie thought it quite likely he would have them taken by strangers and transported to God knows where God knows how. He could imagine them shut up in a cold, dark container on the high seas with just a bowl of water.
Tim rubbed Rex's ears. 'Why can't Shelley talk like Rex?' he said.
'Because she's a real kitten,' said Gillian.
Rex raised his head, he scrambled to a sitting position.
'Excuse me missus, she may be a real kitten but I am a real dog,' he said. 'I am channelling the dogginess of the archetypal dog. I chase balls, I drink from the toilet, and I can lick my own bollocks, see?'
Rex assumed the position and stuck out his long pink tongue. Tim put his head back and howled, Clarisse lay her head on Robbie's intact leg and giggled helplessly.
'Rex!' said Robbie, 'that is really inappropriate.'
Rex sat back up. 'It's appropriate for a dog,' he said.
Robbie realised that everyone else was laughing, even Gillian. He shook his head.
After the humans had left, Robbie took the kitten back from Amber again. He said, 'Gillian laughed when you told Adrienne I throw like a human. If I'd said it Gillian wouldn't have thought it was funny.'
'I know,' said Amber. 'Incredible isn't it, the magic of my charm. It's a big responsibility you know.'
Robbie rolled his eyes.
'I think Amber's reality matrix needs hitting with a spanner until it starts working again,' said Rex.
'Yeah, don't you have a job to go to?' Robbie said to Amber.
'I'm not working at the fair anymore.'
'But you love the fair.'
Amber sighed. 'Captain Roberts told Dex it was too much of a security risk. He even had me stage a public row with Max and storm off shouting that I never wanted to see him again so that no one will try to get to us through him. I'm not allowed to go back.'
'Oh Amber,' said Robbie, handing over Shelley, 'take the kitten.'
Amber accepted Shelley, put her on his lap and stroked her grey fur. She mewed, yawned, then started to purr. Amber looked down at the cat, he took a deep breath, then another one.
'Amber I'm sorry I've been in such a bad mood, I didn't know you were sad.'
'It's OK.'
'Yeah, er, well, I don't know if now is the right time to tell you that I've made a new friend,' said Rex.
'Oh God,' said Robbie.
'She's good to me, OK, and she can take any amount of chewing.'
&n
bsp; 'Oh God,' said Robbie.
'We all have needs,' said Rex.
'Oh God,' said Robbie.
'Look chief,' said Rex, 'I know you don't like her, but can't you give her a chance?'
'Alright, I have been thinking about this,' said Robbie. 'Mrs Noah claims she was an avatar, and made to do things she didn't want to do. People think that avatars don't have personalities of their own, but the ones that boyboy chased us into the tunnel behind the refinery with did, although I suppose it's possible they were given a personality by whatever lives deep inside the tunnel. I think I would trust her more if we could find out if avatars really do have personalities.'
'We need to find out anyway,' said Amber, 'it's horrible if they do have personalities. Before I set the transport free I disabled its override button. That sort of cruelty shouldn't be allowed.'
'Remember those avatars you found in Toytown?' said Robbie. 'If we could bring them to the capital, Dr Tam could examine them, find out if they really do have personalities of their own. I already talked to Dr Tam about it when I was in hospital, so I know she would do it. She told me something interesting. She said that when people bring their avatars to her for repair, there is a mode to put them into when they can follow simple commands without an operator, to help the roboticist make a diagnosis, and make repairs. She was taught at medical school that this is just programmed actions and doesn't mean that avatars have personalities, but she told me she's seen things that make her doubt that.'
'OK,' said Rex, 'I get that Dr Tam needs some avatars to look at, but why does it have to be the Toytown ones? You're talking about boyboy and Dobbs.'
'I don't ever want to see them again either, but I don't know where else we are going to find a group of avatars to examine. You know the idea is that everyone will have left Toytown before the winter. I talked to the robots at the hotel, and they're planning on leaving very soon, they said the place was very nearly empty now. I asked about the avatars and they told me that most of those in the Mayor's mansion have been claimed by their owners, but not all. They offered to pack up those that are left and ship them out on the last transport, and yes, sorry, that does include boyboy and Dobbs.'
