‘Okay.’
‘You just have to have faith in your creation.’
To which Beck offered,
‘I suppose you’ve been made libertarian by the state being so cruel to you?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Perhaps America would suit you? They think that way more over there.’
‘Well, they’re able to, aren’t they?’ mused Chris. He clearly enjoyed the theme, as he continued, ‘Land is cheaper and the weather warmer, so there’s less basic need or ill-health. Add to that the freedom of movement that comes from having more space and cheaper fuel, and so there’s less expense involved in following a dream, and so less unhappiness and mental health issues – and we all know where they can lead in the land of the gun...’
He went on, ‘Over here in Britain, though, on our rocky outcrop then we might need the state a bit more – we have damp in our bones and in our souls. Doctor, do you ever wonder if the Mayflower was the best thing to come out of England?
‘But to return to my original point: yes, your Philosopher General dreams of freedom; but to the absolute degree that the law demands? I expect that all this chasing impossible rabbits down their holes leaves your leader lying awake at night tortured by a vision of absolute harmony that muddled old life is never going to allow him. Yet, if he could just bring himself to leave us a little wriggle-room, then how much easier we all could breathe! And the sheer relief he’d feel in letting go.’
And ‘letting go’ was precisely what Beck had done some minutes earlier in the conversation.
Chapter 60 – The Rendezvous
Using out-of-town roads and dodging local rush-hours, the pair had made good progress and attracted no suspicion – not that Beck felt the fear of it any less.
He was still full of questions though, more than Chris might have ever had the time to answer,
‘So, eight years without a license?’
‘Drive careful, flee an accident. It works for me.’
‘That can’t sustain though, you’ll be caught one day.’
‘Doctor Beck, how many times? I am a refugee, built to be a spy. This is how I live, day-to-day.’
‘For eight years?’
‘Are you telling me that you’ve made long-term plans in that time?’
Beck realised he hadn’t. He asked another question,
‘And where we’re heading – you’re sure that you and Ellie are thinking of the same place?’
‘I’m certain,’ answered his remarkable, composed driver.
A mile before the rendezvous, Christopher pulled the car off the road and onto a farmer’s track, and drove far enough along it for the car to not be seen from the road.
‘I think we can walk from here.’
Beck followed in single file, back along the track and then down the narrow road. As they moved along the quiet thoroughfare with its overhanging trees, for the first time in a while Beck could watch one of his creations move in daylight: could see a hundred muscles (reduced from the many more of the human body) all working in elegant harmony, to create a walking motion that would arouse nobody’s suspicion. Such admiration he felt; and of a robot injured, and without repair in eight years!
Beck’s approval was increased when the artif skipped effortlessly up the bank that edged the road, to enter a fallow field through a gap between two trees, and then to walk parallel to the final stretch of road.
Beck, out of shape and with his bones aching after the exertions of the previous day, huffed and puffed his way behind, checking his watch,
‘It’s five-to,’ confirmed Christopher before Beck could speak. This was without reference to Chris’s own watch, that Beck assumed he must have worn solely for effect.
At that moment they heard two beeps of a car’s horn.
‘Someone’s early,’ said Christopher, hurrying to the end of the field. Beck joined him to look down and see the parking place with its food stall, and beyond it the beauty spot of rolling meadow. A small red car was sat down there, with a restless-looking man stood beside it.
‘Down,’ urged Beck; though to no response from Christopher, whose eyes had seen her even before she opened the door, and stepped out of the car to stand beside the man. The slight blonde form he recognised as his sister.
‘Ellie,’ he called, jogging down the bank.
‘Chris!’ She ran up and hugged him, in a scene that would have dispelled any doubt in even the hardest heart that feeling could exist outside of flesh.
Beck followed up more warily though, both to avoid the scene of waiting in line for the hug he hoped was coming his way, and too because there was still that other presence there; a presence of which Chris seemed entirely unaware – impossible – and so was therefore utterly untroubled by.
‘Doctor Beck, oh my, how I’ve longed to see you again.’ Ellie transferred her embrace to him.
‘You too, my dear,’ he said through a mouth muffled with close-pressed hair, still as fresh as the day it had been set. Yet no sooner had her grip loosened, than Beck cast his eye over her shoulder and remarked,
‘I don’t think we’ve had the pleasure.’
Chris whispered in his ear, already way ahead of him, ‘There’s no need to fear, Doctor Beck.’
‘Oh?’
Still whispering, and talking very quickly though perfectly audibly, Chris explained, ‘He’s here of his own volition clearly, and by the look of it more scared of us than we are of him.’
‘This is Victor,’ explained Ellie. ‘I hope you don’t mind me bringing him. He’s my friend. He knows everything.’
‘Everything?’
She lifted up her jumper to expose the strip of lights and sockets, to huge smiles from the pair of them.
‘My God,’ said Beck, ‘you're in love, and giddy with it!’ His nervousness turned to laughter, Ellie’s echoing his, as the new couple embraced, and she turned to her two old friends,
‘We are, Doctor Beck. Can you believe it’s possible?’
‘I’d always hoped so. I mean, there was no reason why not.’
‘And it doesn’t it matter, does it, that I love a human and not another of my kind?’
‘We hadn’t built enough of you for that to be possible. We had visions of different groups, ones you hadn’t grown up with and so who you might not think of as your brothers and sisters.’
Beck was so bamboozled by all that was happening that he could barely stammer out another word before Ellie resumed in her urgent monologue,
‘I mean, I’d hate for people to think of us as those other awful people did, who once reviled a human just for going outside of their own race.’
‘No, no, never.’
‘I promise you, these feelings: it’s like everything I’ve ever felt at once.’
‘Yes, that’s about right.’
‘And every time he was kind,’ she returned her eyes to the lucky man, ‘the feelings got stronger. And when I showed him what I was, and he accepted me...’ At this Ellie collapsed into tears. At last this bought a pause for response; and it came from Beck,
‘My dear, do not confuse my English reticence with any resistance to a thing you’re doing. I’ve never been more proud, even with my own children.’
And with this it was he who felt a tear on his own cheek. Ellie asking him,
‘Oh, but Doctor Beck, your family?’
‘They’ll be at the coast, I hope, if not abroad already.’
Chris chimed in, ‘And with as fine and resourceful a woman as Mrs Beck in charge, I’m sure they are.’
And here Beck surprised himself with a question that was more sad than angry,
‘And how did you learn that she was “fine and resourceful”? From your visits to the house?’
This came out harder than Beck had expected, and made him instantly ashamed. Though Christopher only smiled, in a way that even Beck at that moment could recognise as warmth, answering,
‘No, just because you wouldn’t have bared to be married to anyo
ne who wasn’t.’
Chapter 61 – The Circle Re-un-broken
The group calmed down and found a table at the roadside rest-stop, and those who needed it bought coffee. For differing reasons all were unable to take their eyes off each other and often simply smiled. Yet the sense began to fall of needing to move on to practicalities.
Beck asked Ellie, as he had with Christopher,
‘How have you been?’
‘Very well,’ she answered. ‘No major breakages. My battery life is falling though.’
‘Yes, Christopher’s too. He has batteries in the car. So nothing “major”, but any “minor” breakages?’
‘Only this.’ She rolled up her jumper sleeve to show the fraying vinyl.
To Beck the skin at the crook of her elbow looked like the fringe of a cushion,
‘Extraordinary. And anywhere else on you? Not your neck, or legs?’
She shook her head, thus showing off that fine neck. Testing the feel of the skin he noted he was stroking her and, looking to Victor, removed his hand.
‘It’s okay,’ that man said. ‘You’re like her doctor, I guess. I ought to think of you that way.’
‘My good man,’ returned Beck. ‘That you are here among our group, and in a position to mind me in this way, is as remarkable a thing as I can remember.’
Yet Beck’s feelings weren’t all as magnanimous. He had felt it only polite to leave the others at the table to fetch the coffees; and so it wasn’t until Victor rose for the men’s facilities that he had a chance to ask,
‘Ellie, forgive me, but are you pair new together?’
‘Can you tell? Are we so enraptured? But of course you don’t mean that.’
‘No, I want to mean that, I just want to check.’
‘It’s okay.’ She put her hand on Beck’s arm, saying,
‘You think I’ve only known him these few days, and that it’s all too much of a coincidence. But I’ve worked with him for years, he wasn’t “planted” by anyone. It was just the current sense of urgency that brought us together at last, made me trust him, made us trust each other. He gave up everything for me. He’s lost his job.’
‘Then I must remember to thank him.’
When Victor returned Beck didn’t need to worry about changing the subject, as Victor already had a question forming,
‘I was just thinking while I was away,’ he began. ‘Doctor Beck, now I have a chance to ask you. How long will she live?’
All were stunned by this, including the subject of the question. Victor went on,
‘Sorry if that’s blunt, but I need to know. Is she like Rutger Hauer’s replicant? Has she limited span?’
Beck was bamboozled into silence.
‘He only asks because he loves me, don’t you Victor.’ Again Ellie hugged him. ‘Though you could have used the example of Roald Dahl’s mouse instead of “Rutger Hauer’s replicant,”’ she suggested, a little peeved.
Still the question needed answering. Beck began,
‘Well, that is answerable, but...’
‘Don’t flinch to help my feelings, sir,’ said Victor in his new seriousness. ‘I’d take a year with this girl and live a life within it, if that is what we have.’
Beck scrambled for the words,
‘No, nothing like that, don’t even think that. No one’s going to die here. That’s not the reason I delay, rather it’s... Christopher?’
‘I think what Doctor Beck is saying,’ added that most outwardly placid of creatures, ‘is that he doesn’t know regarding Ellie, perhaps any more than he does about himself. It is, rather I suspect, a matter of our separate components.’
Victor responded, looking between the two artifs, ‘But you don’t seem scared. Is that because of how you’re made?’
Chris answered, ‘No, I do fear extinction, I fear not being here.’
‘So you’re not expecting to die soon then?’
Chris was preparing to answer. But something had clicked in the mind of Beck. And it was he who interjected,
‘I wonder, Victor, would you accept our answers while we’re moving? They may take longer than I’d like to wait.’
‘Quite right,’ said Christopher, also rising.
‘So where are we going?’ asked Ellie, as the group were suddenly walking toward the cars.
‘Well,’ pondered Beck, ‘you’ve had time to think, Victor, and so have I. You might not know it, but I haven’t seen either of my friends here for eight years. Not even had a sign they were alive...’
‘You never write, you never call,’ muttered Chris.
‘...before last night, when I answered an email and there was Christopher. I didn’t know what I was hoping when I sent it – a dream beyond belief that one of you were behind the random messages I’d been getting – I’d been doing my best not to think about them before yesterday. But it was one of you, and since then so much has happened.
‘And furthermore, two things have become apparent: one, that I needn’t have been worried all this time, for things have been so well-organised outside of my involvement.
‘And two, that neither of my old friends have shown the slightest concern for those of our extended family whose present circumstances are apparently unknown. Even the one of us who was most vulnerable, Anna.
‘Ellie,’ Beck turned to face her, ‘you haven’t asked me once of your sister’s whereabouts. Which suggests that you know those whereabouts full well. Neither does Chris seem to have the slightest worry for her. Now, she wasn’t down the mine with Danny. And I think we can safely assume that she’s not with Bradley and Ingrid Pitt in North Africa.’
‘Ingrid Pitt?’ asked Victor. ‘The actress?’
Beck turned back from Anna to answer him, ‘Oh yes, this story gets complicated. So, Mister Victor, yes I will answer your questions in the car, right after I explain to Christopher why it’s so important that he drives me to see Professor Schmidt.’
Chapter 62 – The Four Concerns
There had been no anger in his words, and nor had any been inferred by those he was addressing. Beck had simply had a lot to get out in a short time, and wasn’t sure that, had he not got to his conclusion first, that Christopher wouldn’t have stopped him.
Now they were back on the road, although Chris was not with them. Instead, he had asked Victor as they reached their vehicles,
‘Are you attached to your car?’
‘Not particularly,’ answered Victor.
‘Good, because it will be on fire within the hour. It’s the last connection we have to where we’ve come from, and I’m amazed that you haven’t been pulled over in it already.’
Ellie answered, ‘We’d thought that ourselves, but didn’t know where to get another.’
‘Well, leave that to me.’
So Chris had left separately to dispose of the errant vehicle, leaving the others travelling in Chris’s car. They were going Beck knew-not-where, with Ellie left to do the driving and explaining,
‘Doctor Beck, don’t be sore,’ she counselled. ‘And for the record, we haven’t known exactly where Anna and the Professor have been all these years; or even that they were together. But it wasn’t hard to guess.’
‘The same guess I just made?’
‘Yes, although perhaps we had a little more background – you’d been at your family home that last weekend at Springfields, but they had been away since the Thursday.’
‘Just the pair of them?’
‘Yes. They’d been going off on trips for a while. Don’t you remember?’
‘No. There’s a lot I’ve forgotten.’
‘Well, anyway, the police came for us on the Friday. None of us were there, only Mrs Winters. Poor Mrs Winters.’
‘I heard they gave her a hard time,’ said Beck.
‘I don’t know,’ answered Ellie. ‘I never saw her again.’ And to Beck, Ellie’s words sounded laced with regret. She continued, ‘But I was working at the University, and so was Danny.’
‘At
the jobs Schmidt found you in the Faculty Office?’
‘Yes, with Mr Green.’
Beck remembered him, a career administrator, an innocent abroad, brought into the scheme just in time to be destroyed by it,
‘He had a tough time too.’
‘Well,’ said Ellie, ‘he knew the secret didn’t he? The only other one Schmidt told, so he could keep an eye on us, and see how we fitted in with the staff and students.’ She smiled at the memory. ‘Dear Mr Green, he loved every minute of it, as though it was a great game. And I suppose it was good, for a while.’
She paused again, and Beck left her the space when she needed it. Eventually she said,
‘And Chris was off researching something that afternoon – you know he always had his projects. If the police had come on the Saturday, we’d all have been there. But all they found on Friday was our lovely house to tear down to the ground.’
Beck looked out of the car window, and asked the birds who flew overhead, ‘So why wait until the Monday to pounce on me?’
She speculated, ‘Perhaps when the rest of us weren’t where the authorities thought we would be, then they thought there’d been foreknowledge somewhere, and we’d made a plan made to evade them? Perhaps they thought that you were in on it too, Doctor, and so to watch you would lead them right to us? But then, when you simply pitched up at work on Monday morning...’
‘That is a theory,’ he admitted.
‘We’ve all had a lot of nights to think,’ she answered.
Beck thought to himself: So even Eris’s predecessor thought I would be included in the escape. Not even they imagined I would be left out of it.
Though all he said was,
‘I didn’t know any of this, in all my interviews they never told me.’
‘Well, they wanted you to give yourself away.’
‘Then it must have been frustrating for them – was that why they gave me such a hard time?’
He pondered a while, then mentioned, ‘These trips of Anna and Schmidt’s – I don’t remember them.’