‘You can’t believe everything that appears in the papers, sir.’
‘And it mentions other messages, “sent on the same frequency” and “decoded by boffins...”’
‘But, sir, what can they know?’
‘No, George. I know what you’re doing, and I love you for it. But I have to face something here. However, the papers like to build a story up, there needs to be a seed of truth in it. We do send signals when damaged. I’m too far away to receive them; but if it’s true, then it means that someone has been injured, or has even died.’
‘But, sir.’
‘George, it must be obvious to you that something has happened. This business of the shooting at the airfield has been in the British papers since yesterday, even in our locals today, under International News. They have no press restrictions over here, and you know how people love “The Funny English”.’ He smiled then for a moment, but the moment soon passed. He looked again at the papers, concluding,
‘And this is only what the public know. Agents and agencies around the world will have been alive to it all week.’
George was silent, but keen to speak,
‘Sir, with your permission...’
‘Just spit it out.’
‘But, sir. If this is all about you being a... robot, then hasn’t that been known for years, hinted and sneered at in every European photo journal?’
The issue of Bradley’s robothood was treated by the lodge a little like an unwanted pregnancy. Everyone knew why the niece from the city had come to stay with her country cousins, and all could see her getting fat, but no one liked to mention the bump. Life went on around it. Sometimes the silence wasn’t noticed, sometimes it was everywhere. So had it been for Bradley on occasion. But since the Juju Men, the lodge had suffocated on it.
He answered carefully,
‘I may have been an open secret, but those can last for years.’
He paused before making a short speech,
‘At the risk of mixing my metaphors, George, the gloves are off. Someone’s injured and the sharks scent blood. People weren’t sure when to run; but here’s the starting gun. On Tuesday we saw our first man at the perimeter, the day after the warning signal that has since been reported in the papers. That was one man. Today is Friday, and I count five.’
As the cat was out of the emotional bag, so Bradley could share his own feelings. How stupid, as if he couldn’t have trusted George with them at any time,
‘And I am sorry, George.’
‘What in heaven for?’
‘For bringing this upon you all.’
‘Sir, there is no master I would more proudly serve.’ And with that George clicked his heels and turned and walked away; as for him to have remained would have been too much for either of them to bear.
Later, occupied in different rooms, both men awaited the Mercedes. And again it appeared like a mirage, shimmering, with its train of dust. And again the news was bad,
‘The company won’t take us,’ declared Ingrid, hot and irritated, brushing the veil up over her hat.
‘You mean “take me”?’ asked Bradley. In any less serious a circumstance, his words might have sounded like self pity. Though this was very bad news. They had used the company in question before, and they were very discreet for the right paying customer.
Ingrid came up to Bradley, taking his hand, her troubles temporarily forgotten,
‘I’m sorry, Dear. I had one task today and that was to find the agent in town and book our passage. It’s not that they distrust you, it’s that they’re worried for their staff. There are strange men in town, others on the roads.’
‘You say that like it’s news,’ replied Bradley, distracted.
George sensed the need for reassuring words, it sometimes being a part of his job to offer them,
‘It is no problem, sir. Mistress can rest, I’ll go out and find another courier. There are more in town, even the next town. Someone who hasn’t heard of you.’
‘Everyone has heard of me,’ said Bradley.
Ingrid was similarly adamant,
‘George is right. I’ll go with him; I know the town best. I’ll just wash up, and I’ll be ready. Oman can stay with you for security, B.’
But Bradley was defiant, ‘No, I won’t have it, Ingrid. It’s bad enough having you out there at all, let alone without Oman. No offence, George, I know you’d be handy in a situation, but...’
‘No explanation needed, sir,’ answered George. ‘I’m well aware of the physical impression cast by my colleague.’
Then something clicked in Bradley, he turning to Oman,
‘My good man, Mistress has never once bid you to stay at my side instead of hers. Something new has happened to worry her.’
‘Of course we’re all worried!’ called Ingrid. But Bradley pressed Oman,
‘What did you see?’
Oman looked to his Mistress, who gave him a look back that must have signified that what the Master wanted he should have. And so Oman answered,
‘A man.’
‘He was right on the road, B,’ blurted Ingrid. ‘He must have known our car from watching the lodge. But he didn’t even hide, just kept on walking. And he looked over his shoulder, and smiled, B. Smiled, just like that, without breaking his stride. Not even a pretence at being worried or cautious.’
‘As if he meant, “I’m coming for you”,’ added Oman, ‘“I will bide my time.”’
No one in the room really needed this mental suggestion, delivered in Oman’s deep tones and with a face like fury at a funeral. Yet it perhaps brought home the true situation – time to take stock.
Bradley said to Ingrid, ‘And you were going to give up your best protection,’ Bradley looked to Oman, ‘and still go out there again, among such cutthroats, just for me?’
She smiled in answer, and Bradley smiled back. Before George returned them to seriousness,
‘So where does that leave you?’ asked George. By which he meant ‘us’.
‘It leaves us having to leave, A-SAP,’ said Bradley.
‘But how?’ asked George. ‘If we cannot find another courier?’
Bradley answered, ‘I don’t mean finding passage to another house in another town or another country.’
‘So where?’
The ‘golden couple’ of popular myth, ‘the famous actress and her handsome toy boy lover’, shared a look. She shaking her head, and he nodding, and she saying,
‘The British Embassy, I think my lover means? I really think he does.’
All knew the game was up.
Chapter 92 – Automatic
Danny reached the Foreman’s cottage by dusk. There he lay low, on the moors and under the sky, waiting for the darkness to deepen, as he sensed it would assist his cause. What he was going to ask the Foreman to accept would be hard enough in the light of day – yet maybe moonlight and night-time would make the scene more dreamlike? And it didn’t matter what the man thought of it all afterwards, only that he submit to Danny’s reality for the duration of their encounter, and that Danny get what he needed from it.
It would be theft, which didn’t sit easily with Danny. He was an honest man, and even felt bad enough maintaining the lie of being human, even though it was a lie enforced by his predicament. It wasn’t even a lie of morals, merely of materials. But still, he had accepted it for too long. At least now, if something, anything, came of the current crisis, then the lies may be over.
And the first one to bear the truth would be his Foreman, however fantastical that truth might seem. Danny liked the man, and it wouldn’t be too bad for him, he told himself; and Chris would reward him after, as Danny knew his brother would.
So, Danny waited until dark. He also hoped that the other two cars outside the cottage would soon leave, along with their occupants. These were probably his former colleagues, paying their respects for Tim and Charlie, the two who had died, and saving the Foreman from too much time alone. What a shame it all was, thought D
anny. He had had a lot of time to mourn his two friends.
Eventually a group of men came out onto the porch. They parted in a series of solemn handshakes – Danny felt their grief from a distance, but could be no part of it. The men left in their trucks. They drove off with their headlights picking out clumps of grass feet from where Danny lay. This left just the one man at the porch, the man Danny had long-known, but who looked somehow reduced now, shrunken by loss.
It had been four days already – Danny realised with a shock. Four days, and his former co-workers still looked that bad? Grief did bad things to humans. Danny realised though that this was only as bad as he felt inside for those two men, the lives he had seen end.
Four days though... pre-rockfall, Danny would have made the journey from the mine to the cottage on foot in half a day. Instead he had been moving when he could, charging for whole days or nights on charger packs now entirely drained (if nothing else, he needed the vehicle only for its battery).
As Danny watched, the Foreman too left the porch and re-entered the house. There Danny knew he would spend the night alone, as he had done every night since his wife had gone. There was no other house for a mile. Only someone dedicated to the hills and lakes and geology would bear it; and she hadn’t. This had been before Danny’s time, but he had heard the story and seen the photos. The Foreman letting him into his life like that had been proof that Danny had been a much-loved employee, which made his next task all the harder.
He stole up to the door, opening it silently – this was a scene best taking place inside. Danny knew the porch, knew where not to step and cause the boards to creak. He also knew the door would not be locked until lights-out. He pushed it gently, looking to the kitchen where he knew the Foreman would be standing. The man turned, as Danny said,
‘Boss.’
‘D...’
‘Yes, Boss. It’s me,’
‘Danny. Where’ve you been?’
‘Getting here, Boss.’
‘But it’s miles away. You’ve been gone for days.’
‘Well, add the one of those statements to the other...’ But Danny’s attempt at humour fell flat.
‘Are you a ghost?’
‘God, no. I’m here, as real as anything.’
Danny had hoped to bamboozle his boss just enough, but not to have him lose his mind. The man’s face hardened,
‘No man got out of that mine.’
‘No, no man did.’
The man didn’t tie up Danny’s meaning though. How could he? Instead he noted in more common fashion,
‘You were nowhere to be found.’
Danny answered in just the same spirit,
‘I fled the scene, I didn’t know what I was doing, I had to get away.’
‘But the police... Why didn’t you...?’
Danny could have bluffed his way, said something like, ‘I knocked my head, I’ve been confused.’ But he didn’t, he didn’t want to lie. But the issue was taken out of his control, as the Foreman said,
‘Jesus, your arm!’
Danny looked down at the bundle of rags he was holding in his good hand. By now the dust of the rockfall and the dirt of the grass and leaves he had been lying on while recharging had left the once-unsullied threads of spun vinyl looking like a tarnished rag. Tight and fixed, he could have smoothed it, wiped it. But simply hanging, it was fading fast.
That it had taken his boss so many seconds to see the damage was a testament to something – startlement, confusion... friendship?
‘You didn’t leave a drop of blood.’
Danny had to move in now.
‘It’s a false arm, Boss. I have a false arm.’
‘You have a false arm?’
‘Yes.’
‘You moved rocks with a false arm?’
‘Yes.’
At that same moment both men’s eyes fell to the newspaper resting on the back of the nearest chair. On the front of it, beneath a frankly daft headline of ‘I SAID I’D BE BACK!’ was an unhelpful image of James Cameron’s Terminator, red eyes shining and metal jaw evil-grinning.
Both men knew that something special was happening. But the Foreman didn’t fall into panic or mirth, the way the writer of that piece might have hoped. Instead he lamented,
‘You were always the best of them, Danny. You loved the job like I did. You loved the Lakes, the rock and stone. You never tired, no matter the work, and were always the first to want to start again after a rest break.’
‘I did, Boss.’
‘That time Murray fell from the back of the trailer.’
‘Yes.’ The memory had always been an embarrassment to Danny.
‘You grabbed him back up with one arm – I’d never seen anything like it. And you said, “It was just reflexes, Boss. Anyone could have done it.” Well, anyone couldn’t have done it, Danny. I knew that even then. But we... hide things from ourselves, don’t we? We don’t think about them.’
Danny felt awkward, and returned to the earlier theme, ‘It was the best job ever. I loved it, Boss.’
The Foreman caught the past tense,
‘“Loved”? You’re going away?’
‘I have to, don’t I. To get my arm fixed.’
‘Of course,’ the man accepted this abstractly, as though it were a self-evident truth.
‘And I was hoping for your help with that.’
‘Oh?’
‘I need the truck; the automatic,’ as everyone in the mining team had called it. Each of them had taken a turn to see the technology for real, and Danny had taken to it in seconds, as he did any vehicle. ‘Those are the keys right there, aren’t they?’
Danny half-leant toward the hook on the wall, beneath the plaque of an idealised woodland cottage, much prettier than the reality, and with old wood-fire smoke coming from a stone chimney. But the man was not convinced. Danny pushed, with the last shot he had,
‘You know I need it, Bill...’ He had never before used the man’s given name. ‘...what with the arm...’ Danny held the tatters out again. The Foreman flinched and grimaced at the damage. Now was the moment, ‘I’ll get it back to you, in a few days.’ Danny reached to the hook and took the key. ‘It’s filled?’ (The man nodded. It always was.) ‘And I’ll pay for the petrol. And something extra, for the inconvenience.’
‘Danny...’ But the Forman couldn’t form the question.
‘And give me till the morning, won’t you, before you tell anyone?’
He nodded.
‘And I thank you for everything, Boss. For the life I had here. You get that, don’t you.’
He nodded a second time... and Danny was away.
Chapter 93 – Africa – Not in Daylight, Sir
No sooner had the group at the hunting lodge come to their collective acceptance of turning themselves in, than they had fallen into a collective sigh.
‘It’s over,’ said Ingrid, who had had a life of drama on and off the stage, and was perhaps enjoying the feeling of this current bout of it being over, even as the future threatened to douse her in it afresh.
There was also a mood of thoughtfulness. With surrender accepted, then they could at least think on that with clear minds.
Ingrid spoke first, as if jumping to action,
‘So we go right away?’
‘No, perhaps not today,’ said Bradley. ‘The Embassy’s three hour’s drive away, yes?’ (It was in the capital city, all knew.) ‘It’s half-three already. And after packing up the car, I don’t think we’d make the outskirts by dusk. I don’t fancy our chances on unlit roads.’
‘If only we’d decided earlier,’ said Ingrid.
Though Bradley continued in a more positive vein,
‘But don’t forget, I’ve been watching these men.’ (And how could they have forgotten? It was all he’d done for days.) ‘I haven’t said this, so as not to scare you, but I see more of them at night, they move more freely. But still none come nearer, even under darkness.’
‘But why?’ asked Ingrid.<
br />
Here Bradley smiled, and from a wicker and glass table picked up one of a pile of British, French and Italian glossy magazines, explaining,
‘The writers of these have had their tongue in their cheek for years when talking of my “taut and lean physique”, while never quite acknowledging the rumours on the Internet of my origin and abilities – rumours of which they and their readership are well aware.
‘And as we know from the Robot blogs, it seems that what the world’s readership learn of “Bradley the Robot” they take to be literally true.’
‘“Taut and lean”,’ repeated Ingrid admiringly.
Bradley put down the magazine and reached for a paper at random, continuing,
‘Read any of these “Robot” editorials and they’re full of nonsense-talk of “tall, bronzed figures” with “extra capabilities”. And the physical characteristics I may possess; but little else of what the writers suppose. So maybe the men outside aren’t quite the experts I’d supposed either? Maybe they’ve been conned by glossy magazines too? Maybe they believe I do have night-vision, or could kill with a handshake?
‘Either way, I think it buys us one more night.’
‘We go by daylight then,’ pronounced Ingrid. ‘As soon as... Oman, is the car set?’
The broad man gave a solemn nod, but would go out that evening to check.
George asked, ‘So, their fear of your “extra capabilities” will keep us safe tonight?’
‘I believe so, George.’
‘Then, I would suggest, sir, that if they’re still not strong enough in numbers to attack us today, then they’re hardly likely to be by first light tomorrow either.’ George offered this in cut-glass English, with all the certainty of a pronouncement at the Dispatch Box of the Houses of Parliament.
He then added, ‘However, if we are agreed that we are going to the Embassy, then maybe they could get here sooner?’
All gasped at the obviousness of it. It hadn’t been thought of before only because involving the British Government had always been the very last thing they would have wanted – how in only a few words a situation could turn on its head...
Bradley agreed, ‘One call, and they’d have people here in a flash.’
‘Enough to get past the men?’ asked Ingrid.
‘For me? They’d send the fleet!’
‘Are you all right, sir?’ asked George; as Oman pulled the phone on its long cable into the room.