‘So, you know what an artif is,’ he gathered. Then asked her, ‘And how much have you always known?’
‘Perhaps a little more than you thought I knew – Eric and I picked a lot of it up just through being vetted when we hired you – they had to ask us what we didn’t know. And of course, I’ve read all the rumours in the papers. They couldn’t say your name in print, but I always knew it was you, Gee.’
Beck became reflective,
‘It was never as bad as they said, you know.’
‘I never doubted it. But now this has happened... Gee, you’re absolutely sure you’ve not seen or heard of anyone or... anything... from those times?’
‘Absolutely, no.’
‘And yourself. You’ve not been bitten by the old bug, have you? No tinkering at home after hours?’
‘No!’
‘Of course, forgive me. A stupid suggestion. Though it must have been awful, having all those skills locked away.’
‘I found other skills.’
‘Yes, you became a marvellous grower. But this is bad, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Will you be coming back to us?’
‘I think I’ve always been on borrowed time, Marj.’
‘You couldn’t bury it forever.’ She said this as though, however awful the experience may be, it would offer some purgative qualities. Beck felt this already,
‘Lord, I’m thinking so clearly – why aren’t I flipping out?’
She counselled, ‘Your mind’s been waiting for this day. And dreading it too, maybe. Damn, my phone’s beeping at me – that will be Sonia trying to find me. I must get going to the Project Heads’ meeting. I hope we get to talk again soon.’
‘Me too.’
‘Good luck, Gawain.’
And with that, Professor Ford was off to her appointment.
Chapter 5 – Miss Eris
The City Offices were twenty minutes from the Arboretum on the Underground. At least the journey started overground, providing a sun-drenched view of the city, before plunging underneath it to deliver Beck to the centre. At no point did he think to make a dash for it – the dread remained there, quite still at the pit of his stomach.
So that was that, the end was coming quite quickly; and Beck found that he was prepared. The Professor had said goodbye, like a mother sending a son off to war.
At the office, call-centre operators were milling in the hall on their morning break. A team of bright T-shirted street fundraisers were leaving to make a thousand shoppers’ mornings that bit more awkward. Beck didn’t know these people, though they paid in part for his existence.
Beck paused at a machine to neck two plastic cups of throat-numbingly cold water, before taking the stairs up to the fifth floor. Normally for his health he might have skipped up them two steps at a time, yet he couldn’t bring himself to rush that day. Though neither could he resist – he knew that whoever waited for him would only come looking if he didn’t turn up soon. Also, that any delay could seem suspicious.
He reached his floor and burst through the door.
‘Dr Beck,’ called a smartly dressed woman in the foyer. She was standing beside the empty desk of the Directors’ secretary. ‘I was hoping we hadn’t missed you. My apologies for calling you away from your Project Heads’ meeting.’ She moved to the door of the Directors’ Boardroom, ‘Will you join us in here, please?’
‘I’ll just get a...’ he moved towards that floor’s drinks machine.
‘We have water inside. If we could get started?’
She didn’t take her eyes off him until he was in the room with the door closed behind him. Nor did she cease from smiling in a way that was neither insincere nor at odds with what was being discussed.
‘Erissa Drake,’ she stuck her hand out to shake across the middle of a large oval table. ‘Call me Eris. And this is Sergeant Forrest. If you could hand him your phone, music player, and any other devices you may have with you – just a precaution, you understand, for security.’
‘Of course.’
‘Are you comfortable?’
‘How long will I be here for?’
‘Don’t worry, Sonia is putting off your appointments. Now, I’m sure that the Professor has been in contact. I hope she hasn’t put you off with talk of an inquisition – she herself did seem rather spooked by it all. But then, unlike her, we are old hands at such things, aren’t we, Doctor Beck.’
‘Are we?’
‘You spoke to my senior eight years ago, although I was in the room... ah, I see you recognise me now. I was a very eager student back then. Had I been allowed to, then I would have been taking notes the whole time, had it not all been so “hush-hush”. I was really very privileged to be invited to sit in on your interviews; it was such a prestigious case.
‘But that was then. I have moved on and so have you: I, promoted to the senior role and so qualified to conduct our interview myself; and you, becoming Head Grower at the London Arboretum, far away from the University of Southern England, Department of Biology. The Department where, for the previous... how many years had it been?’
‘Five.’
‘Where for the previous five years you had been involved in rather different work, and with a very different boss.’
‘I’m glad you came right to the chase,’ said Beck, knowing, from the moment Sonia called him what this meeting would be about.
Beck noticed that Sergeant Forrest had moved from his standing position beside the door, to sit at a chair at the end of the table, from where he could leap up and block any attempt Beck might make to escape.
‘Doctor Beck,’ continued Eris, unruffled, smoothing her trousers over her calves, ‘Do you know why we’re here today?’
‘Not a clue.’
‘Now, you’ll remember enough from your last interviews to know that evasion only leads to more...’
‘I have no clue, take that as read.’
Ms Drake said nothing, the inference being that she was still waiting for an answer fit for her question. He gave into the silence,
‘By which I mean that, of course I know what this interview concerns, what these interviews always concern; only not what has happened to have us meet specifically today. Is that good enough?’
‘That’s fine. I sense honesty in you, I did eight years ago. You were never a deliberate troublemaker. So I take it then, on the matter we’re discussing, that you do not see this day as different to any of the last eight years?’
Beck shook his head, aware that something big was coming.
‘Then what would you say if I told you that, as of yesterday, one of your creations was confirmed as operational?’
Chapter 6 – Danny’s Escape
It had been a whole night since the rockfall. Danny now opened his eyes to the sun glinting through the foliage above him. Beneath him were the fallen leaves from the trees, and soft grass damp with dew.
He hadn’t woken up, as he didn’t sleep, he had only been on charge. However, over many years of living among humans he had perfected the appearance of sleep, along with his own methods for quietening his mind for those hours. And although he was alone there in the deep, dark wood, he had found those exercises restful since escaping from the mine the previous afternoon...
After dashing deep enough into the woods not to be found, the first thing he had done had been to silence his countless internal alarms.
To do this, he had pulled his shirt out from his workman’s jeans. There he reached under the shirt’s fabric to access the control panel just above his left hip. The console was placed for ease with the right hand; so to find the controls with his good left hand had left his elbow jutting outward like the handle of a teapot.
Once positioned though, his fingers had moved with speed and accuracy to silence each alarm, one by one. Soon he had quietened himself, and his mind could rest to match his breathing. And as he had lay there, still, trying to be calm, his only thought had been, ‘If I were a human, I’d be sc
reaming right now,’ which he whispered to himself and to the darkening trees around him.
The alarms were only audible to him, and there was no one there to hear them even if they hadn’t been. He and his siblings had long ago deduced that they weren’t quite the same as what evolutionary humans called pain. They could just about be lived-with for a while, but the purpose of them was that, though they wouldn’t inhibit an artif, they were serious enough to have to be faced up to sooner rather than later.
He hadn’t known such strong alarm sensations since a quad-bike accident in his youth while testing his vehicle-handling abilities. He had handled the quad no problem, better than many a human pilot. Yet he hadn’t foreseen the rabbit that had jumped out in front of him, and which he swerved to avoid.
Danny had needed a new arm, leg and hip after that. The experience had all been too much, and his mind had gone blue-screen, during which time he was out of consciousness for seventy-two hours. He had since been conscious of every second of the subsequent decade, right up until entering the mine. His mind had even survived the explosion, and just as well – Danny didn’t like to think about the alternative.
But quite apart from the inconvenience of trying to think with all that alarm activity going on, he also knew that when his damage became serious enough that he would begin broadcasting a radio signal to the other artifs. And this signal would distress them, and might also give his position away to others.
He had picked one of these radio signals up himself only a few months before. However, that signal had ended on a note that suggested that the robot in question – he couldn’t tell which – had ended the transmission manually. This had been a reassurance to Danny, and he wished to offer similar relief to his brothers and sisters now that he was in trouble. And so, he had quickly silenced his broadcast.
It was now morning, after his night of rest. And what had startled him from that rest was the beeping of his charger to say it was complete. Unplugging it from the three-pin socket in his hip panel, again he heard clearly the sounds of the forest: the leaves moving under him, the rustling of trees, the calls of unseen birds and animals. Flat on his back, he turned his head quickly to see a deer, only feet away.
Artifs were odd to animals. Sometimes they came closer as there was no human scent, but other times seemed to know they weren’t quite ‘real’. The deer watched Danny for a moment, then skipped away.
Alone again, Danny caught his breath – not that he had breath – rather an electronic impulse that quickened his artificial breathing response. And Danny wondered if the deer had got it right, and that there was nothing ‘real’ about him at all?
He hadn’t dared look again at his arm while he had other priorities. Yet now he knew that he could put it off no longer. Gently Danny lifted his broken limb to lay it down in his lap. It had been chilly the previous morning when he and his colleagues had set out for the mine, and so he had worn a long-sleeved shirt. He hadn’t needed to, other than to fit in with the others – he had no fear of cold beyond a remote risk of freezing in his joints. Yet he was glad he had worn it now, as the long sleeve alone was holding his arm together.
At the mine entrance he had tucked that sleeve into his trousers to hold the damaged parts inside. Now, as he lifted it, a section of carbon fibre rod fell out, to rest amid the pine needles on the forest floor. As he rolled the sleeve back, a length of thick black rubber looped out from under the crumpled sheaf of golden skin that had been his forearm. This, like the section of bone, was black with dust.
He muttered,
‘Doctor Beck said that this would happen, as the materials rubbed up against each other. He told us that the powder would lubricate them, like an elephant bathing in dust.’
He was learning about himself. How often did we see inside our bodies? Dispassionately he assessed the damage, whispering,
‘My radius and ulna are both broken, shattered, and with pieces falling loose. The electro-variable-plastic muscles have become detached, at least at one end.’
He tried to flex his broken arm, but nothing happened.
‘Auto cut-off,’ he remembered. ‘Programmed into me to stop me doing more damage to a part already malfunctioning.’
He couldn’t help but look at the mess of his arm, musing,
‘If I were human I’d be soaked in blood. I’d be in hysterics, passed-out with the shock.’
But there was no time for speculation. Packing his charging capsule back into his bag, he whispered,
‘I have to go.’
He considered the facts: the previous evening, the emergency services would have been alerted to the fact of the miners not returning home. The foreman would have told them which shaft the men were headed to. Sometime in the night, the rockfall would have been discovered.
Danny imagined the scene: bright lights, sealed off areas, words spoken into radios: ‘explosion’, ‘deaths’, ‘missing’.
They would bring out Charlie, maybe even find the last of Tim. In his half-conscious rebooting state, Danny had left his friends in there. That felt callous, but there had been nothing more he could have done.
The police might have dogs, evidently aware that a third man might be in the ruins. Yet, as Danny lay there silently in the forest above the scene, they would not have caught a whisper of a scent on the breeze.
There would be no blood trail either, and only boot-marks hidden in the long grass to lead them to his hiding-place. But as they brought more men that morning, they would begin to comb the valley – Danny didn’t have long.
Danny spoke aloud, so as to keep his mind focused,
‘I need to do my sleeve back up, tuck my shirt in. I’ll look like Nelson, “I see no ships.”’ He laughed a moment, then stopped. ‘I need to contact Christopher. I need to get back to the city.’
But to do that he would need a car.
Chapter 7 – Alive
‘Which one?’
It was a blurted question from Beck, and an instinctive response, which Eris noted, and which would bring Beck much credit with her in the future. For now, though, he could only ponder on the news. An artif alive. It was always going to have to have been something like that, to justify bringing him back for questions after all those years, but it was still a shock for Beck to hear the news. Eris noted Beck’s demeanour and demanded no more of him for the moment, instead only musing,
‘That was a jolt to you, wasn’t it? You genuinely didn’t know.’
‘I had no idea.’
‘Did you expect them to survive for so long alone?’
Back was torn between longing for someone to talk to and not wanting it to be her.
‘It’s hard to say. I mean, a shop might guarantee you an appliance only for a year, but it might last a lifetime.’
‘Quite.’
‘So, how...?’
‘How do we know one is alive? Yes, Doctor. Well, I’m afraid that to tell you that I also have to note that, for all my earlier praise of your honesty, eight years ago you lied to us. Or rather, omitted something rather staggering.
‘But let me go back a stage. Our unit handles all kinds of cases – yours is only one of them – and so the odd and unusual are often brought to our door.
‘Some months ago we received a police report of a break in at a bicycle repair shop in South London. It was a quick, clean job, with only one window broken. The frame had been forced and the glass not even shattered. This was at night, and the burglar entered the store room at the back of the property, which was deserted at the time.
‘The store had all the latest security devices – they’d been targeted before, you see. The CCTV caught a tall man, his face hidden, slide through the window. The machine captured audio; and so we also know that he worked near-silently for the few minutes that he was in the store. This despite seeming to be in discomfort, holding his chest with one arm and manoeuvring himself with only the other arm free. This tall man proceeded – without even the sound of laboured breathing – to work his wa
y methodically through the shop’s storeroom, taking only such items as he needed.’
‘Which were?’
‘Tyre-repair materials, rubber patches, the strongest glues and epoxies. And then he left as quietly as he had arrived, even closing the window behind him so that other sneak-thieves wouldn’t see the way open and try their luck before the security patrol arrived.
‘Now, in the store’s showroom were bikes worth several-hundred pounds each. These were too big to get out through that window; but once inside he could have opened other entrances to remove them. And even if he hadn’t wanted to go to that trouble, then the store held gears and lights and other smaller equipment which could have been carried away and sold on easily. So profit was not the motive.
‘And then there was the fact of him applying such stealth to a minor crime. And the unexplained injuries he seemed to be carrying – all without a drop of blood being left on the shop-floor or on the window-frame.
‘And then – listen to this – two nights later, once the locks were fixed and the police long gone, the store received an envelope hand-posted through the front door, containing three-hundred pounds in cash, which more than covered the costs of the stock and the window repairs.
‘So you can understand that the case became more of a curiosity to the police than a criminal priority. It became a pastime among the officers at the local station to come up with ever-stranger scenarios to explain such a bizarre and motiveless crime – their favourite being a bicycling MI5 officer falling off in the area, hurting his arm, and needing to patch his inner-tube to cycle to the nearest safe-house.
‘And with no more reasonable explanations than this being readily available, then the case crossed our department’s desks and went into our database. Not that my colleagues who collated it thought very much of it at the time.
‘But then, just yesterday we received a second report. I wonder, Doctor, do you know the Lake District?’
Beck was temporarily baffled.
‘Don’t worry, Doctor. It’s not a trick question.’
‘I have been there,’ he remembered. ‘A holiday, with my parents, maybe twenty-five years ago?’