Bradley and Oman shared a look, and then resumed the packing.
Mistress entered the courtyard as if onto the stage of the Metropolitan Opera, pronouncing,
‘Such drama. It’s what they built me for, you know. My old country, when I was a girl. The German Democratic Republic.’ (She almost spat out the words.) ‘They wanted me to show the world that their state could liberate the spirit. Yet, if I became an artist at all it was in spite of their “liberation”.’
‘Oh, ma’am,’ gushed George with the bags, ‘how can you doubt you are an artist?’
‘“Was,” George, “was.” I gave up art for love, for I could only do one and give my all to it.’
And then there was a smashing sound – a window of the car had been shot out. All four of the travelling party were stunned, stood rigid. Bradley quickly took Ingrid’s arms and pulled her back into the shadows of the porch; the other two followed.
And then a voice, like something from a spaghetti western, though not offered in a comic-Mexican accent,
‘You come out now, we know you’re in there.’
Across the end of the drive was swung a rope laced with metal spikes, designed to shred a car’s tyres. Their exit was barred.
‘You come out now, Mr Robot.’
From within the cloaking shadow, Ingrid was agog,
‘What is this...?’ she stammered. ‘They can’t just do this!’
‘It look as though they are,’ answered Bradley. With an arm around her midriff, he encouraged her further back toward the door that led into the main building. George and Oman were right in front of them, as though to deflect bullets.
‘The game is up, ma’am,’ whispered her oldest servant.
‘But what a good game, George, what a lovely game,’ and she kissed him on the forehead.
George, though, was beating himself up. He turned to Bradley, ‘“Not in daylight,” I said. “They won’t attack in daylight.” I got it wrong, sir.’
To which Bradley answered, ‘No, George. You only had too much faith in humanity. And I can’t fail you for that.’
Another shot sounded, this time deflecting off the car’s bodywork. And then that same voice,
‘You come out here. Or we’re coming in.’
And then overhead were helicopters.
A whirling dervish was suddenly alive in the lodge grounds, with anything not tied down being lifted up and blown to the four winds. Everywhere was dust and grit and light. A suitcase was blown open, releasing Ingrid's dresses which spun in the air like gypsy dancers.
Aside from this distraction though, at the sight of real military hardware, the local bullies were scattering. One final weekend renegade fired a rifle in the air, before scurrying for cover. Whatever happened next, Bradley breathed a sigh of relief.
One of the aircraft landed, its side-door opened, and a man in army greens with a moustache beckoned the four in with his arm.
‘You’re nearly too late!’ shouted Ingrid over the sound of the propellers.
The man lifted her aboard, and answered with a glinting smile,
‘If we’d come any earlier, would you have greeted us as warmly?’
Oman followed her in, knowing a good thing when he saw it. In the shadows of the building, Bradley was all set, but was held back by George, lost and asking,
‘Sir? What’s happening, sir?’
Bradley smiled, ‘George, I think we’re going home.’
Day 6, Part 2 – The Quickening
Chapter 105 – The Fooling of Eris
Despite the hopes of Professor Schmidt, of course Eris’s people had already deciphered the latest damage signal, and were already loading the Jaguar and their tech truck for the journey north to the Lake District.
She didn’t get very far though, before an even more amazing transmission cropped up – in fact two of them. Firstly, a classified cable, for her eyes only. It was from the Philosopher General’s office, and bore the verbal hallmarks of having been dictated by the man himself. It spoke of an ‘Anglo-American military operation in North Africa, our aircraft, their carrier. Unsanctioned and over sovereign land.’ It had ‘necessitated a change of international policy,’ but she would ‘like the results, details to follow...’
And then moments later, a cordless phone was dashed through the office to her by a receptionist, with several other staff in tow. She pressed it into Eris’s hand with the hushed revelation,
‘It’s him. It’s Doctor Beck.’
She grabbed at the phone and covered the mouthpiece, asking in whispers,
‘It’s being recorded?’ To which those attending nodded eagerly.
Eris looked to Forrest; who was standing stock still just like she was, and who gave a ‘Why not?’ shrug.
She placed the phone to her ear, and offered,
‘This is Eris.’
‘Eris, it’s Beck. I want to come back in.’
‘Okay.’
‘I want to see my family.’
‘Your family?’ she said out loud for the room, as there was no loud speaker set up.
‘His family are in France,’ mouthed Nell the technician, to which Eris nodded furiously to show that she already knew.
In the silence this created, Beck burbled,
‘I want assurances that they won’t be harmed, and that I’ll be treated fairly.’
With a dozen listeners, Eris became self-conscious at her end of the line. She murmured platitudes to reassure him – this was no time for recriminations,
‘Your family are fine. Though I can’t promise we can get them to you right away. And you’ll be treated well. We will pick you up...’
‘Just you,’ he interrupted. ‘I mean just those in your car, I know you can’t travel alone.’
‘Don’t worry, don’t worry,’ she answered. ‘It will be just me and people you’ve met before. Okay?’
‘Yes,’ he answered, before spinning off a place and time and street name... and he was gone. Leaving Eris stunned.
She handed the phone back, and repeated the main points to the room, and suddenly had a gallery of listeners eagerly awaiting their instructions.
‘Well, how the hell do I know what to do?’ she shouted.
‘I’m coming with you,’ said Forrest.
‘No,’ she answered. ‘Danny’s signal’s too important. You lead the search team. I’ll fetch Beck with Charlie in the Jag.’
‘But boss,’ pleaded Forrest. ‘I’m your shadow. I’m not authorised to leave you.’
‘Well, take it to HR,’ which seemed to quieten Forrest. She added, ‘And the rest of you, back to your posts!’
Although, before she left, she did ask Forrest more privately,
‘And I’ll have my gun back now.’ Without any of the others being aware, he had held on to it since picking it up in the street after the disastrous shooting at Marsham.
‘No,’ he answered. ‘Not if I’m not there to stop you.’
And she knew that she had no choice, and went to meet her car, which was already revving.
‘Trace the number,’ she instructed loudly from the window as the Jaguar left the garage, ‘and keep a tab on his phone.’
However, Beck’s handset would soon go dead, and would not be used again – it was already in a bin a long way away.
Beck did still hold a piece of paper though. It had been shoved into his pocket at some point by Chris, and Beck would retain it as a keepsake. It had only two lines of writing: the first was a telephone number (which had proven to be right) beside the words ‘Government Internal Directory’ – Beck didn’t even ask.
And below these, the curt advice, ‘Call from another town.’ Which Beck knew would leave him connecting though a different telephone exchange to the one which served The Universalist, and so might buy the remainder of the group a few more hours as the authorities scoured the region for them.
Now he sat in a car, as grey afternoon became black evening. The engine and lights were off, and the road outsi
de was lit only by one far-off street lamp. It was a lone street on the outskirts of a small town, lined on one side by a factory’s locked gates, and on the other by a doorless wall – it was as if he had subconsciously chosen this road to have no escape route, which of course backed up his conscious objective – to be caught.
He thought back to the Tech Island conversations at The Universalist, the way that the group’s suggestion of a ‘distraction’ had been made, and how quickly his resistance had petered out. All had already been decided, and there was nothing useful Beck could have said. At one point toward the end he had blurted,
‘I’ll be under watch every day. I’ll never be able to visit you.’
To which Chris had answered,
‘Then that will be your final sacrifice, for those who you’ve already done so much for.’
Chapter 106 – On a Lonely Road
Chris had acquired the car that Beck now sat in, and the number-plates of another. Therefore, he was not only in a stolen car, but also a rung one – he was committing multiple crimes merely by remaining there. If Eris and her masters did choose to hang him out to dry, then they could send him down for years. He now had no phone, nor any of the others’ numbers, as anything he carried was sure to be confiscated. He could offer no link back to The Universalist. The act of separation had occurred.
‘Some days can change a lifetime,’ he muttered. As a pair of headlights appeared at the other end of the road. They neared him, then stopped a few car lengths away – it looked like the Jaguar.
Beck slowly opened his door, at the same time as a rear-door of the Jaguar was also opened, opened for him. Beck recognised Charlie the driver through the windscreen as the car’s reading lights went on. To Beck, he looked extra-burly in his front seat. Though Beck knew that this was an illusion, created by fear.
Eris looked out from the open door at the empty tarmac. The door of the Jaguar stayed ajar. No one got out or came toward Beck’s car. She felt the chill of the air and listened to the silent night. The road was deserted, as Beck had wished. And as she had wished, her own security was absent, even Forrest. There was no need for them – Beck had no reason to harm her. And if this gesture brought him back into the fold then so much the better. She had had a long time to think on the journey down, and already in her mind a picture was forming of the recent days Beck might have had, whispering,
‘He must have had an awful time. Scared and on the run and knowing that he needed his real family, that he wouldn’t be able to stay with his robots. And also that they would leave him,’ for she knew intuitively that that was what had happened. She murmured further,
‘He understood it was hopeless. And all the time knowing he was only delaying the inevitable fall back into our hands, and fearing how we’d treat him when he did.
‘That’s why he wanted it to be somewhere quiet where he could reshow himself, and it only being me.’ And she felt a flush of pride that Beck trusted her enough, that she had evidently been kind enough to him during their recent morning of difficult discussions.
And then another mental picture formed for Eris: of herself, left alone in that awful storeroom, with the cat’s head. How cruel Beck had been to play that trick, this man she was now pitying. But she had to put that memory out of her mind, she had to be professional. And just as governments the world over had to get into bed with terrorists, so she now had to get into bed with Beck... and then she caught that mental image, and tried to shake it from her mind also, though for quite different reasons.
‘Miss Eris?’ The voice sounded along that quiet lane.
‘Doctor?’ she called from inside her car.
And then she and Charlie heard the clunk of another car’s door being closed, and saw the outline of Beck emerging from the shadows, closer than she might have credited.
‘Doctor Beck,’ greeted Charlie through his opened window and through gritted teeth. Beck walked past him to the open door. He asked, ‘You’re alone?’
‘Yes,’ she nodded. ‘Doctor, please,’ and she gestured with her arm for him to join her inside.
And then, as he closed the door behind him, she had another thought, one prompted by the latest information she’d received from her staff: Does he know about Danny? Do I tell him Danny’s dead?
Chapter 107 – Artifs Leaving
‘Now we are five,’ whispered Christopher to himself. In his mind, he placed the party in order of age: Schmidt, Victor, Anna, himself and Ellie, age span Seventies to Tens. And even his logical mind was defeated by the visual illusion of Anna, two years older than Ellie, but in the younger frame.
Around and about the two cottages, the party were collecting carryable belongings and equipping cars. And it wasn’t only Chris who was in a reflective mood brought on by the move. While looking across the rose garden to their youngest in actual years, Chris saw the Professor approach her, and say, seemingly apropos to nothing,
‘Ellie. You were our last, our youngest, our baby. We gave you a chance to be, and you took it.’
Chris felt a pang of tears like he hadn’t since his incident with the bus, albeit under very different circumstances. To shake this off, he approached the Professor himself, carrying a batch of batteries. Faced with the apparent fact of leaving his safe haven of several years, Chris asked him,
‘You’ll be giving up a lot.’
‘I’d be giving up more by staying.’
‘We have no option,’ agreed Chris.
‘It’s a matter of time before Eris tracks us here.’
Chris reassured him though,
‘If it doesn’t work out with Silicon Sands, then I’ll find you a flat, and a workshop. We’ll risk that much. We’ll get repaired.’
Victor was lost in the activity of carrying and loaded. He said to Ellie,
‘You’re all moving so efficiently, like ants carrying a leaf. You’re not in contact, are you? Co-ordinating?’
She giggled, ‘There’s only one person who knows my mind,’ and she kissed him on the cheek.
‘But why so many cars?’ he asked. ‘How many did Chris take?’
‘New plates for Doctor Beck’s, one to replace the estate, and one for the Professor. He’d have found a new one for us too, but he was taking too many risks as it was.’
‘Oh God, it makes sense now. The Professor’s not coming with us?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘He’s got his appointment in London, with the contact for Tech Island.’
Victor looked at her quizzically. She explained,
‘Well, even if we find Danny, we still need to leave Britain.’ She suddenly looked sad, asking, ‘What, Victor, did you think because of Danny we weren’t still going to escape? Did you think that all was lost? Oh, poor boy.’
He paused a moment, before explaining, ‘But you say this as though the world and its dog should have known it. Am I going to be quick enough for you?’
She smiled at him, ‘When all this is over, we can relax. And then we can go as slow as you want.’
Soon the cars were revving and moving. All said goodbye to the Professor in turn, Chris checking he had the unused phone he had given him, instructing,
‘Switch it on for twelve o’clock noon and twelve o’clock midnight only. Don’t use it except to call mine.’
Then it only remained for the final four to get in their cars. Chris thought he’d let the lovebirds have some time, and was glad to share the journey with Anna. He only worried for her once they got to the co-ordinates Danny had left them with – what would she see? How would she respond? Once under way, Anna asked him,
‘We might not go back to The Uni, might we, Chris?’
‘No, Anna.’
‘I’ll miss it.’
‘You’ve been there a long time. It’s sad to leave somewhere.’
Chris was in the passenger seat, thinking it good to let her have some practice driving; which as an artif she could do in her sleep. Ellie had found her a hat and shades which made her look ten years older. Anna
pondered,
‘We all leave somewhere, I suppose. Where did you leave, Chris?’
‘A flat in town.’
‘Do you miss it?’
‘In its own way. I called it home – it might still be, if it hasn’t been traced. And don’t be sad about Danny’s signal, for it’s a forewarning that in our final moments we will be felt by those we love, even at a distance.’
‘I just want to be together with him, one last time.’
‘Me too.’
And as Anna drove them out of the town, passing the café and the estate agent’s office, Chris gave a sigh of relief, whispering to the air passing the window,
‘It was only a matter of time before they trailed us here.’
In fact, it was within the hour that a local policeman, under the edict issued by Eris’s office after tracing the stolen estate car to the area, happened to ask the holiday lettings agent in the town if she had had any out-of-towners at the office in the past few days? She answering, ‘Well, not many, it being out of season. But there was that couple who asked about the holiday home. It was owned by an actress, you know...’
Chapter 108 – Sitting in Cars with Women
The Jaguar was as comfortable as Beck remembered it. Once under way – where to, he couldn’t guess – Eris avoided the topic of Danny, with,
‘You’re lucky – if Forrest were here I’d have given him a minute with you on that empty street.’
‘I was prepared for it.’
Though she didn’t follow this up. Instead she digressed, ‘I’ve been reading your academic files. Who knew you minored in Philosophy.’
‘Youthful speculations,’ he offered, dismissively.
‘But very telling. Do you remember writing that, “The brain is only one of our great mysteries, the other being God”?’
‘Did I? How pretentious of me. I was probably trying to impress someone.’
‘Your wife?’
He smiled for the first time since breakfast, recalling, ‘No, I’ve never had to impress her.’
And Eris wondered at the lack of such a partner in her life.