...and in this long-remembered TV drama, an old lady spent a day leaving letters and giving children sweets, and telling everyone how much she loved them. And then the next morning, after being found still and peaceful in her bed, a fellow matriarch of the town said only, ‘She knew.’
Now Danny knew.
‘What a bloody time for it to happen,’ he said to the car. He felt the absence of a priest to take his confession or a relation to hear his last words. He lamented,
‘On the hillside, surrounded by nature, fine. Or later, in London once they’d at least tried to fix me. But now? Just after all the effort to get to the car? Really?’
But it was real. Somehow he knew it, but he couldn’t have said how.
Being the sensible and unselfish creature that he was, Danny didn’t rant or rave, or rage against the dying of the light – Dylan Thomas wouldn’t have been proud of him. Instead he thought of his family, and the message they would soon have to endure, tap, tap, tapping away.
And he wished he’d had the chance to have one last conversation with Doctor Beck, and ask him to amend the damage signal to transmit at other times – like when he saw a great mountain, or shared a campfire laugh, or felt a kiss – to transmit love not death.
Yet, like a poet that the world had never known, he would die with all these thoughts gone unrecorded.
It hadn’t been the Foreman’s newspaper that had given the game away to Danny about the media frenzy of ‘The Robots’ – earlier on his journey he had passed a roadside halt and found a previous day’s paper, overheard a car radio or two – he knew the world were talking of them. Suddenly the quite obvious idea presented itself of handing himself in at The Times once he got to London – no one could have touched him then.
But it was all too late. Too late, baby, too late. The lyrics of the song wafted through his head, a head mercifully clear still of internal alarms – he wouldn’t have wanted those to spoil these moments. Instead he had to find the most unobtrusive spot at which to spend his last minutes and not be found. And so he took the next turning, dimmed the sidelights, and, using his famous artif senses, scanned the already darkening roads to find just such a place.
Chapter 101 – Like an Epileptic Fit
Beck was all set to make his goodbyes to the group and pack a bag – if he had anything to pack. When in unison, like an epileptic fit, all three artifs pushed their chairs away from the table and fell to the floor. There they lay instantly rigid and still, except for one finger each mechanically tapping at the wooden floor. This in turn gave their rictus ironing-board bodies a horrible juddering motion.
Victor jumped up almost as quickly, and crouched down beside Ellie. He grabbed a napkin from the made-up table (a gesture by Anna, entirely for effect) and tried to place it under Ellie’s clattering finger. But each time she only moved the finger away to connect again with the hard surface.
Victor looked up, stunned and terrified. Schmidt and Beck remained seated, and he shouted at them,
‘Do something, do something!’
Schmidt explained, ‘We can do nothing. This is another signal, like the ones you’ve heard about.’
‘But they fell to the floor!’
‘A fall won’t hurt them like it would us, they don’t bruise.’
Victor was crouching by Ellie, aghast, asking,
‘They can’t stop it?’
‘They can resist it for a while to find some privacy or a better location; but there’s no need here... so they let it play out.’
‘Play out?’
‘For however long it goes on for.’
Victor tried the trick with the napkin again, and again Ellie moved her hand like a sleeper patting away an irritation.
‘Don’t interfere,’ said Schmidt.
Victor was less shocked now, just stunned, asking,
‘You couldn’t have made the process less machine-like?’
‘We hadn’t time for everything,’ the old man shot back.
‘Yet you had time to make them these fancy glasses?’ Victor grabbed one of the illusory wine glasses from the table, and threw it down on the floor. Schmidt rushed over to it and clutched it, checking for damage to the irreplaceable object. This only confirmed Victor’s beliefs, he asking,
‘You care for a glass and not for them?’
Beck had adrenaline, and who knew what else, pumping through him from the previous conversation, and had been keeping out of the matter, in the process coming across to Victor as dangerously aloof. Now he spat out,
‘There’s nothing to care for. This is natural to them.’
But Schmidt, having replaced the fake wine glass on the table and now righting the chairs the artifs had knocked over, offered a more conciliatory answer,
‘You think we don’t care? Oh no, Victor. We care very much.’
‘Really? And is this how you show it?’
‘This must be shocking for you to see for the first time. But Gawain and I are past that shock. And so we can see past the spectacle to what the signal means.’
Victor looked inside himself,
‘One of them is injured?’
‘You have maps?’ Beck asked the Professor.
‘Back at our cottage, in the dresser behind the sofa,’ he answered. And so Beck left to find them. Both men knew which artif it must be.
Schmidt and Victor were left among the tappers. The former was sitting on one of the righted chairs, the latter still useless beside the girlfriend he was sure was being damaged but who he couldn’t help.
The incessant co-ordinated tapping continued, resounding through the floor and walls, resonating in the air around them. The room was like an echo chamber. Schmidt looked toward Victor: the scene was mere seconds old, though in those few moments Victor appeared to have aged dramatically and looked close to death. Useless and helpless he could only ask again,
‘How long will they tap for?’
And this time Schmidt answered,
‘For as long as Daniel takes to die.’
Chapter 102 – A Signal Expert
The previous evening had been a washout for Eris. After travelling all the way to the South Coast, she and Forrest had met with local police officers, only to learn that the estate car stolen from by the Army base at Marsham and later caught in the area on traffic cameras had not been seen there again, and that there were no other leads.
Eris had spent the journey home in the back of the Jaguar, attempting to figure out why the outlaws had been heading that way in the first place. But she drew a blank. She deduced – correctly – that her mind was too full of artif lore and facts from files to make a clear assessment. And so they had returned home that night, and she was fast asleep before they reached London.
Now she walked quickly to the rooms of Technical Division. Such walks had previously tended to be accompanied by a queasy feeling in her stomach. She hadn’t the time to suffer fools, and generally such meetings would have involved them. At last though, she had found a team she trusted. And so Eris had had Nell and her eager assistant taken off all other duties and placed on her sole assignment.
‘Nell.’
‘Miss Eris,’ greeted the technician.
‘You got my message?’
‘Indeed. Those radio signals you asked me to interpret?’
‘Yes,’ urged Eris. ‘A third one has just started. Have you made any progress?’
With everything else that had been going on just lately, further examination of the first two radio alarm signals had been something of an oversight for Eris. After all, what had the messages themselves told her? What they transmitted was less important than them linking the injuries of Chris and Danny. Connecting the incidents had re-fired the investigation... her investigation.
The first had been transmitted from somewhere near a bicycle store break-in, the second from a very visible rockfall. But now there was a third signal, firing off in the middle of the day and from the middle of nowhere. For the first time it was importan
t to understand the contents of the message. Hence Eris had instructed her best people.
‘A lot could rest in these messages, after all,’ said Eris, imparting urgency.
To which Nell smiled, ‘Well, not to worry. I’ve interpreted the code from the first one.’
Eris was floored, ‘Already? You’re certain?’
‘Yes. And “code” is the right word,’ said Nell. ‘I’m afraid you might be annoyed with me when I admit I’ve been reading the newspapers, all the nonsense-theories of the artifs’ super senses and powers. But I also remembered what you told me, and the samples we examined; how humdrum the robots were in some regards, as if built in a home workshop.
‘So I went deliberately simple – what if these signals were not communications in the manner of a broadcast of voice or thought. But instead were simple data, as one electronic device might send to another. And this reflected the fact that these alarms had to be received through all weathers and over long distances.
‘So, I studied the first signal and, I confess, I thought it sounded more like a mechanical instruction, a cipher or code. And so I wondered: is the signal instructing some part of their body to perform a certain action? And so we started with the simplest transmitter/receiver there is. And here it is.’
Nell gestured with her arm, leading Eris’s eyes to the table before them. There, Nell’s assistant adjusted a small home-made device. It was two pieces of metal, linked by a spring in the middle and with coils of wire bound around their end. The assistant said,
‘Here’s the first signal played through an electromagnet.’
Eris jumped as the pieces of metal started clicking, springing apart, then clicking together again. Soon she began to notice a distinct pattern, shouting out,
‘Morse!’
‘Numbers in Morse,’ agreed Nell, ‘that turn out to match the international standard for longitude and latitude co-ordinates.’
The assistant pulled an atlas out in front of the women, explaining,
‘The first co-ordinates point to somewhere right here.’ He pointed at the conurbation of London. He swiftly changed pages, ‘And the second signal to here, in the Lake District.’
‘You’re sure?’
Nell answered, ‘Yes, we’ve checked with the team investigating the rockfall.’
Eris hardly dare ask, ‘And the third?’
The assistant turned only one page, ‘Exactly here, fifty-one miles from the rockfall – someone’s been on the move.’
Already there was a biro crosshair added to the map, alongside the numbers scrawled across the rural landscape beside it. Eris scooped up the atlas to take away with her. She was agog, saying to the assistant,
‘Then you are the most helpful person I’ve met all day.’
‘And does that buy me a raise? I’m only on apprenticeship rates.’
She was too happy and stunned to take offence at his impertinence, only answering,
‘Well, let’s see how right you are on this third code,’ and dashed from the room.
Chapter 103 – Elegy for Daniel
‘For as long as Daniel takes to die.’
The Professor’s words had stilled the room; but for the tapping, tapping, tapping.
Beck had memorised the numbers that were being transmitted. He had then plotted then on the maps found at Rose Cottage. And now he brought these back to The Universalist, where the alien clicking and rattling greeted him as he walked through the door.
As he returned, the Professor ushered him and other human out of the room with him.
‘Quite right,’ said Victor, once they were in the holiday home’s bright lounge. ‘It feels like something private to them.’
Though still they heard the fingers...
Beck tapped his own finger on the laminated map, explaining,
‘It’s the Lake District, around fifty miles from the rockfall site.’
Schmidt mused, ‘He had to go away to hills and trees, to the nature he loved.’ Beck allowed the Professor his moment of Romanticism. Before the older man brought himself back around to the present situation, ‘And now we need to plan our move.’
‘Which is?’ asked Beck.
‘To do what we should have done – find Daniel.’
‘To fix him?’ asked Victor
‘There is no fixing him.’
English was the Professor’s second language, his first being German. And Beck had always considered this a factor in the economy of phrase the Professor often employed. It could seem curt at times, but Beck had always liked his clean, lopped-off sentences, free of over-politeness and wordy-sprawl.
‘There is no fixing him.’ Those five short words seemed to be exactly what Victor needed. Now he looked to Beck like a child holding a dead guinea pig, hoping his father could fix it as he had the child’s Action Man the day before, unaware that even the most loving father had no such tools in his garage.
Beck found he had a new respect for Victor, brought to instant grief over a creature of a different species and whom he had never met.
Beck elucidated for Victor,
‘We’ve never had one suffer anything as cataclysmic as a rockfall. We don’t know his injuries, only that they are serious; and now reoccurring.’
‘Couldn’t something else have happened to him?’ grasped Victor. ‘Something not as serious, but which triggered an alarm?’
Beck resumed,
‘You may have noticed that the artifs are anything but accident-prone. It has taken a road accident and a geological collapse to generate even the two alarms we know about. Also, the fact that Danny appears to have gotten himself over fifty miles away from the initial rockfall is itself amazing, and proves his desperation to survive. But it also proves that he’s been fully alert and aware in the intervening days. He has been physically capable, and so little more likely to suffer an accident that he was prior to the rockfall.’
Beck closed with a line he hoped did justice to his teacher and mentor, stood head-bowed beside him,
‘We have to assume that this is a relapse. He survived his injuries the first time; but no one gets that lucky twice.’
Beck looked around him. Both other men were in a state of mourning; but he had to ask,
‘And what of me? Do you still need your “distraction”?’
Schmidt answered, ‘More than ever.’
Beck resumed his earlier walk to the door. But the Professor placed a hand on his arm to hold him back,
‘There’s also the question of whether Eris has deciphered the message format. Did she give you any sign that they had?’
Beck scanned his memories of his interview,
‘No, I don’t believe she said that. It was only her deduction that linked the two messages to the two accident locations.’
‘Well, either way – what we spoke about earlier has to happen now.’
Am I leading events anymore, thought Beck, or are they leading me? Have they been leading me the whole time?
Even such musing was time-wasting, and he knew it. He turned to go – and the tapping stopped. He and Schmidt and Victor stood frozen, until the artifs, led by Christopher, joined them in the hall.
Beck asked him, ‘How did the message end?’
‘Terminal.’
There was no need for sensitivity, as both the women had received the same message. Beck asked Christopher,
‘You’re going to find him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then honour him.’
‘Be sure that we will.’
These were the last words he heard Chris say. Beck opened the door to be faced with a sky that matched his mood, much duller than the one he had entered the house under. It was one of those days that left the impression of the sun setting at noon.
As he left, the others were already considering the perilous missions ahead of them. Schmidt gave a final burst of philosophy with,
‘Whatever happens, I’ll accept us failing for love. As that is victory. Love is victory,
even if we fail for it.’
Beck closed the door behind him.
Chapter 104 – The End of Africa
‘You two don’t have to come,’ said Ingrid to the staff.
Neither had moved.
‘Let’s go then, before the town are about.’
It was now the next day. The car was loaded and the sun was fully up. Bradley had identified late morning as the time when the men in black were at their lowest numbers, perhaps sleeping off their late nights on watch. But they would soon be back beneath the midday sun.
Ingrid had woken to find George had packed more cases than could possibly be carried. ‘What shall we take then, ma’am?’ asked George, all of a dither.
‘Essentials, George. I still have my Swiss account. Anything we leave we can buy again a dozen times over.’
Nearby, on the porch beneath the overhang, sat Bradley. The line of shadow in front of him was dramatic, cleaving the air, as though behind a certain line the floor was painted black.
Within the shadow, Bradley wondered what he’d find at the Embassy – an armed escort? A bank of technicians waiting to examine him? A crate to send him back home in? Yet all he wanted was news of his family: of who had sent the signals he had read about in the papers, of who was dead or dying.
Oman had brought the car around to the front of the lodge. George was still within the building, bringing out the final bags to place within the old but capacious Mercedes – cars lasted forever in that dry heat.
Bradley asked his man,
‘I wondered, have we packed the old charges?’
The old charges – car batteries. He had to charge at least twice a day now. In fact, he had been doing so just an hour earlier.
‘Yes, sir. Enough for three days.’
‘Good, George. Best to be cautious.’
Bradley knew that there were other men: playboys, dilettantes, toy boys, lost souls just across the water on the French Riviera, indeed all around that grand warm pool that was the Mediterranean, who disappeared to shaded rooms on afternoons for various methods of recharging. All believed that without these recharges they would die, only Bradley knew it was true.
Suddenly Oman, standing by the car, was distracted. Bradley look up, and saw who Oman had just seen: a man in black, and closer than any had come before – he walked right past the end of the driveway, saying nothing, doing nothing, simply walking in full view.