The men were walking more quickly, staring right at her; and her legs would not move.
Although Ellie’s focus had been on the front of her building, it had not escaped her attention that other people and vehicles were travelling in both directions along the road outside. It was not a busy road, mostly used only in the service of the condominium blocks it snaked between. But still, here were people outside of her situation, not allied to either side in the drama.
In the various ‘news’ stories she read about her family, the tabloid in question each time would never fail to scare up a Yes vote in the accompanying vox-pop: ‘Are the Robots a Menace?’ or ‘Should the Robots be Captured?’ Always such leading questions, she thought. Never anything neutral or comforting, never: ‘Do the Robots have Rights?’ or ‘Should the Robots be Left to Live their Lives?’
If those readers woke up and found themselves to be a robot, then wouldn’t they want a bit of peace and quiet? But then, ‘The Robots’ weren’t real to most people. They were like celebrities, or characters in a soap opera – theirs was life with all the boring bits left out. And how exhausting did that sound?
Still, at that moment Ellie didn’t need a Robots supporter, she only needed someone who would help a woman threatened by two men.
Her feet may have been frozen, but were her vocal chords?
All it would take would be a scream, a shout, a rush and a push. Something to bring a distraction and to spur her into action. There was a man across the road, a woman’s heels approaching behind her, a car just coming over the brow of the hill.
But as she went to shout, with the two men in black now only yards away and running toward her, she realised that she knew the car coming over the hill. She had seen it at work, had seen it pulling into the carpark as she arrived at the building. The broken numberplate, the radiator grill Remembrance poppy left on all year round, the Dukes of Hazzard Confederate flag sticker in the back-window. Now the car slowly pulled onto the pavement beside her. The driver leant over to open the passenger door for her. And as she looked in there was Victor, himself looking at the two men through the window, saying,
‘Not a moment too soon.’
Chapter 42 – A Night at the Opera
Beck spent the afternoon in the cinema – the old detective stories were right; it really was the best place to hide out. Not that he remembered any more about the film he saw than of the one he’d seen with his wife the night previous.
After the movie, he walked the backroads, ate in a cafe – luckily he had cash. And eventually, by careful street selection, found his way towards the concert hall.
He had timed it to perfection, arriving ten minutes before the start, and so the foyer and the street outside were flooded with excited, gabbing patrons in every colour and style of evening, casual or business wear – he would fit right in.
After hours on his feet his legs were exhausted. He couldn’t put it off. Coming out from his shadowed vantage point across the road, he moved through the crowd and entered the foyer.
‘Hello, I have a reservation,’ he offered to the woman behind the front desk, handing her the seat number he had jotted down at the Internet cafe.
She keyed it in, and looked to her screen beneath the counter. ‘Ah, Doctor Beck. How lovely to see you. We haven’t had the pleasure of your company for a while.’
‘No, I’ve been overseas,’ he fumbled.
‘Somewhere warm, I hope?’ she asked politely, and Beck feared another lie. Though the five-minute bell was already ringing, and she was far too busy to engage in any further conversation. ‘Here is your ticket, I’ve added the cost and the booking fee to your account. Enjoy the show.’
He had made it without incident. He hadn’t even needed to stump up the cash, every penny of which would be invaluable to him in the coming days. As to the nature of the ‘account’ he evidently held with them, well that was as mysterious as their emails.
As he moved through the plush-carpeted corridor to the auditorium doors, Beck could have done without the distraction of a show – even after the hours he’d had alone to think. It seemed to him that there were too many risks. The mystery concert emails could have been a ruse by Eris’s predecessor to smoke Beck out should he ever go absent without leave. Even if not, then they could already have traced his email account being accessed at the Internet cafe. And from there, find the emails from the concert hall...
Beck had deleted the emails, but this made no difference of course. They could strip a computer for every bit and byte of information, a total history of its use. The emails could be reconstructed and the links within them followed. But how long would that take even a government agency with all their resources?
‘How long is the show?’ Beck asked the usher who guided him to his seat.
‘Four hours, with intermission.’
‘Jesus,’ muttered Beck after the man had gone, as he moved to his seat and sat down. ‘I’ve got to be a sitting duck for all that time?’ The cinema had been different, the ticket bought in cash and no one knowing he was there. But his attendance at the concert was recorded on the venue’s booking system, maybe even on his bank account, and all in his real name. And Beck was dealing with the same agency who’d tracked down the signals of two artifs at opposite ends of the country – there seemed no way they wouldn’t find him.
He looked one way from his seat, then another, then backward – still there were no secret policeman moving along aisles with gun-bulges.
Two minutes to show time, and Beck couldn’t sit. He visited the men’s room and got his breath back, watered his face and the back of his neck. He came out to linger amongst those still on the art deco mezzanine, talking in raptures of the show they were about to see.
The final buzzer went, and along with the very last of them he made his way to his seat.
The performance hall was still painfully bright, and not yet offering the cover of darkness. The stage had no velvet curtain to be raised, and already an oboist was adjusting her instrument, while a double-bass was being carefully placed in its support. Beck already missed the mezzanine, and the casual cover of crowds.
And then the lights went down, and the remainder of the orchestra emerged to applause. Next came the conductor, to similar acclaim. And then silence, and anticipation, and a raising of the baton; and then the clamorous noise of a fire alarm, alongside a calm electronic voice,
‘Fire, fire. Please leave the building.’
The lights went up again, and the eyes and ears of the audience quickly re-adjusted. Bags and coats were grabbed amid cries of frustration. While all the time the recorded woman was narrating,
‘Fire, fire. Please leave...’
Confusion reigned about him, but Beck just closed his eyes and sunk his head into the soft padding of the seat, whispering, ‘Thank you, thank you.’ Eris’s people wouldn’t have done it like this. They would have nabbed him quickly and cleanly while he was a sitting duck in the corridor outside. The relief was immense.
But he was in the brightest light again, and needing to move. Looking every which way for a clue of what to do, he saw none. After the initial disbelief and hesitancy, the audience were now running toward the doors; while the stage was full of technicians dashing on to pick up priceless instruments.
Beck felt sorry for causing them to think that they were risking their life for a Stradivarius; before remembering that there was still no proof that this was anything to do with him. He hoped to God it was though.
Leaving with the flow of patrons, Beck and the others were not ushered back through the mezzanine and down into the foyer, but instead along an unseen exit staircase and out into the dusky street. Cars were slowing up, to make space for the human traffic now spilling out in front and all around them.
‘Please congregate on the other side of the road,’ called one of the ushers, they were now wearing fluorescent fire warden tabards over their black waistcoats.
Across the road was a thick strip of grass
in front of shops and take-aways. Beck made his way there and mingled. Those around him were voicing common sentiments in polite conversation,
‘I do hope there isn’t a fire.’
‘It’s such a lovely building.’
‘Can you believe the alarm going off at that moment?’
‘Yes, the very second the show was about to start!’
Beck smiled and nodded at those talking around him, yet his true attention was elsewhere. He glanced right, then left, then right again. But there was no signal anywhere, nothing out of the ordinary to catch his attention. Suddenly he heard a police siren, and his stomach sank even further.
‘False alarm!’ called an usherette. ‘If everyone can stay where they are, and we’ll get you back in in an orderly fashion.’
Beck thought that if something was going to happen, then it had to happen soon. It couldn’t all be coincidence – the emails, the ‘valued customer’ account set up in his name, the alarm going off. It couldn’t all be an accident; it just couldn’t be. He couldn’t be left in this situation, alone...
‘Doctor Beck? With me.’
Beck turned to find the owner of the voice; but none was to be found among his fellow audience members, all looking up at the building they were happy to soon be returning to.
Beck had felt the speaker too momentarily, as a presence beside him, and he quickly checked his pocket – in it was a note:
Mount Olympus
Don’t run
In his panic, without the speed of his famous creations, it took Beck a full five seconds – that felt like five minutes – to work through every possible mental association he had with the home of the gods of antiquity. Before remembering that Mount Olympus was also the name of a local Greek cafe. Beck hung back a moment longer than the other concert goers.
‘You’ll miss the show,’ called a concerned fellow patron. ‘They’re letting us back in now.’ But Beck followed the advice of the last two words of the note, and turned to walk in the opposite direction.
Chapter 43 – Christopher Robot
Beck saw him at a window seat before he entered. His host rose to greet him as he did so, announcing,
‘Hello again, Doctor Beck.’
‘Christopher. I think I knew it was you.’
‘I’ve already ordered.’
It didn’t seem real to Beck. Here he was, sitting down as instructed, and before him was Christopher Robot.
‘So, you liked my little ruse with the concert hall? Your sitting here is proof that it worked, at least. Forgive me basking, but there is so little I’m able to take pride in.’
‘You’re still here after eight years,’ stammered Beck.
‘Well, that’s rather something you should take pride in, Doctor. That’s down to how you built me. Would you have expected a Rolls Royce to have broken down so soon?’
The chef emerged with a glass of iced water and a small plate of food. He went to place it down in front of Christopher, who had ordered it.
‘For him,’ instructed Chris, who needed nothing for himself.
‘Thank you,’ offered Beck, before looking at his meal. Though Chris as quickly described it to him,
‘The water for hydration, the ice for stimulation, and the chicken for comfort. I remember you liking it.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Beck.
‘A light repast. “Repast and repose” – a meal and sleep – you told me once that they were your two favourite words in the English language.’
‘Yes,’ recalled Beck. ‘And I remember getting embarrassed then when I remembered they were both things that you couldn’t experience.’
Chris countered, ‘Even though it was no different to asking you how you felt about not having bat sonar. But yes, for one so clever you could quite forget yourself when consumed in the project. And for your dedication, Doctor, I salute you now with this smallest token.’
Chris gestured to the marinated chicken. Beck had already swigged half the water, and had picked up the knife and fork. As he ate Chris continued,
‘I have missed talking to you, Doctor. You appreciate how you occupy a special place for me. You are my parent, in the sense of my not being here without you. Though that doesn’t feel quite the right metaphor.’
‘No, it doesn’t,’ agreed Beck between bites.
‘Perhaps then more like a surgeon who saved my life, but who gave me that life to begin with. I know that isn’t quite logical, but it’s the best I can do.’
‘You need a creation myth,’ suggested Beck, wiping his mouth with a serviette as he put his cutlery down. The food seemed to normalise the situation, and he didn’t want it normalised. He wanted it to be special forever. Chris surmised,
‘Like the Greeks had their Mount Olympus?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Then perhaps I should look further to the ancient past. For there is no Bible verse for me. Perhaps I am denuded of mythology? The atheist’s poster boy?’
The Doctor sat facing his protégé, then saying,
‘The concerts were Schmidt’s favourites, but he couldn’t have pulled off that trick in the crowd.’
Chris answered, ‘Easy as pie, when you have my reflexes and amongst such hubbub.’
‘And you hacked the venue’s system to start with, created my account? And a “valued customer” account at that?’
‘That way it earned you an electronic billing facility, so you wouldn’t even need your own cash to see the show if you were in trouble. You’d simply have to book a ticket, turn up, and I’d find you.’
Beck shook his head in amazement, ‘You’re lucky that I remembered. I know you couldn’t have made them too obvious, but I’ve been ignoring those emails for years.’
But Christopher only shook his own head, with a knowingness that Beck would have found infuriating in a person that he didn’t think the world of, the artif explaining,
‘You always knew what they were, you also knew you couldn’t touch them, what with the UK Government watching your every move. Still I left it there, the tiniest release-cord. And when you needed it, your mind had always known where it was.’
‘Well, thank you anyway,’ conceded Beck. ‘Literally with all of my heart.’
‘I’m only glad it worked.’
‘And how are you?’
Chris seemed to look himself over, ‘Workmanship wise? As you can see, I’m not quite seized yet.’
‘Hardly at all, in fact. I’d be glad to check you over though.’
‘There are some issues I’d be glad to have looked at. But more to the point, Doctor, how are you?’
Beck harrumphed, ‘As bad as I’ve been in eight years. How much do you know?’
‘Only that the trigger I put in place in the concert hall’s booking system, all those years ago, was only needed to be activated by yourself at half-past-two this afternoon; that a subsequent telephone call to your botanical gardens told me that you were in meetings all day; and that a visit to your house with a parcel...’
‘You went to my house? They could have been watching.’
‘And give themselves away over a parcel boy? ...that a visit to your house revealed your home was shut up, and with your neighbour saying how the family had gone on holiday and that the phone wasn’t working anyway if I’d tried to call. Well, it was quite clear that a change in your circumstances had occurred.’
‘You don’t seem particularly surprised?’ asked Beck.
But Chris answered with another question, spoken in a low voice,
‘You’ve been in interrogations today, Doctor Beck?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you got away? Well done.’
Beck didn’t like to take the praise; but Chris now asked,
‘And in the course of those interrogations, did you learn why they were interviewing you, today especially?’
Beck knew where Chris was going and nodded, adding,
‘An alarm from the Lake District. Danny?’
Chris nodded.
<
br /> ‘And a recent one in London – yourself?’
At this Chris nodded again, but sheepishly, as if less eager to follow the train of thought. Beck had to know though,
‘You were filmed stealing cycle repair kits.’
‘Yes, I saw the cameras in the shop.’
‘And still you did it – so you must have been bad?’
‘Doctor. You’ve praised my keeping-going all these years. Please don’t dwell on my one mistake.’
And so Beck didn’t, leaving the table silent; until Chris spoke again, more calmly,
‘I feel safe here for now, if you wanted to continue your meal. But it’s been so long, Doctor. And we have so little time. So when you’ve finished your food, then there are things I’d like to show you.’
Chapter 44 – Mystery Tour
‘The car’s only five minutes away.’
Beck decided that Christopher seemed to have the measure of things. After finishing his food and tipping for the table, they left the bright bulb of the Greek cafe for the street it served to illuminate.
And as they did so, Chris raised a hand to the chef at the counter.
‘Do you know him?’ asked Beck, once they had left the light and found the shadows.
‘I know all sorts of people. It helps me keep a tab on things.’
‘And how do you know that they’re not keeping a tab on you?’
Beck followed the tall, thin figure walking quickly along dark pavements. He seemed to slice through the darkness, moving with a minimum of fuss. In answer to the question, Chris gave a look, and explained,
‘I could be very high and mighty, and say something like, “Paranoia is the fear that others know more than we know ourselves.” Yet I enjoy the rare certainty of knowing that I know more.
‘But I’d be more comfortable in saying that I’ve picked up certain little tricks over the years, and one of those is to look out for people with one foot already outside of the law. That cafe owner, for instance, has a brother keeping illegally imported televisions in the back-room of his premises.’
‘How the hell do you know that?’ asked Beck, but Chris waved the question away, continuing,
‘Now, semi-lawlessness, this state of “already committing a crime”, makes it very difficult for the criminal when someone commits a crime against him. For instance, how could he call the police to a break-in at his cafe when he doesn’t want them poking around the premises? He has already placed himself outside of law and justice.