Interzone Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine #223 (17 page)

"You got a name?” she asked.

"Button-4-Circle-Peach."

She laughed, a bit of rice stuck to her chin. “That's a dumb name, robot. Too long!"

"I like it,” he answered. “I chose it myself."

The girl snorted. “It's too long.” She pulled the top off the chicken bowl and began picking out pieces with her fingers and stuffing them into her mouth.

Button-4-Circle-Peach reached into his compartment and pulled out a book. “Would you like me to read to you while you eat? Thomas always enjoyed it when I did so."

Leaning forward, the girl stared at him, mouth open and full of half-masticated chicken. “Is that a real book?"

"It is. We have a modest physical library here at the estate, but we also have a comprehensive electronic library of both fiction and non-fiction texts,” he said. “Do you have a favorite?"

"I never seen a book,” she said. “I don't know of anybody who can read any more, except maybe Grampa could I think. He died a few years back. I was twelve, or near about. We buried him proper."

Button-4-Circle-Peach was shocked and dismayed at this revelation. “You buried your own grandfather?"

"Yeah—that's what you're supposed to do!"

He thought about this for a long time. “Is being in the ground somehow necessary to trigger the self-repair process? I don't believe we've tried that. It does seem a terribly inconsiderate thing to do to someone."

"Yeah? What about everyone else? That lady the other robot brought to your little picnic, she'd been dead a long time. You know how I know? Because there were bits
falling off her
. You know how gross that is?” She stopped eating and looked down at the chicken in the bowl, and hastily pulled the lid back over it and swallowed a couple of times. “Look, can we stop talking about this? Just thinking about it makes me feel like being sick again."

They stared at each other for long minutes, then she sighed, picked up the bowl, and resumed eating. “I was Grampa's favorite. We used to talk and he'd tell me stories,” she said. “About this place an’ your people, and when you all first came back down out of the stars to live here, after the wars finally settled and Grampa wasn't even old enough for a gun of his own yet. He told me everyone was terrible afraid of you, said you were all devils and no one ever would come near here no matter what, in case if they did and the God War started again and everyone got killed."

"No one has come here before you,” Button-4-Circle-Peach said. “That much is true. But we had nothing to do with the wars; I myself had not even been initialized back then."

"Nothing to do with it, maybe. But you weren't here helping either, were you? Grampa said your people were cowards who had all the money and got away up there to the stars before things got bad and left everybody else behind to fall into shame and die. With all those books you got here, seems to me you should understand what dying means."

"According to the majority of the poetry I've read, death appears to be a self-inflicted but temporary emotional state brought about by the unexpected failure of the function ‘Love',” he said. “I don't understand how that is applicable to the self-repair delay that the residents seem to be experiencing."

She waved a fork in the air, half a snow pea skewered on the end. “Poetry,” she said, making a face, “don't mean nothing about nothing. Don't you got other books? Books about real life and real people? Or doctoring books, even better?"

"The doctor has a comprehensive digital library of medical texts."

The girl sat up straight at this. “You got a doctor here?"

"Yes. Unfortunately, she is also silent and so has not been able to advise us to the extent we'd wish."

She let out her breath with a sound that was half sigh, half grumble. “Dead too you're saying, except you don't get it. All her books—what do
they
tell you about dying and being dead?"

"I don't know,” he said. “It's never occurred to any of us to read them."

"Maybe you should."

He downloaded, processed, cross-referenced, integrated. The clouds in the night sky slowly slid away, leaving the waxing moon free to bathe them in its soft, blue-white light. The girl finished eating, wiping the insides of the bowls with her fingers to get the last, littlest crumbs, then neatly stacked bowls and lids in a row in front of him. Then she stretched out on the grass, one hand across her full belly, limbs glowing like ghosts in the moonlight, and watched him.

"Oh,” he said at long last.

"You robots really are stupid,” the girl said. “But the food was good and I'm thankful for it. Now go away so I can sleep.” And she crawled back under the rhododendrons and out of sight.

Just before dawn Button-4-Circle-Peach left his small personal cubby. He went to Thomas's room and sat beside his friend, watching him lie there for a very long time, until the sun was fully up and shining in the window on the blankets, on the man's folded hands, and on his still, stone face.

He knew he should be helping his friend with his morning routines; that was, after all, what a caretaker
did
. He should help him wash and dress, escort him down to breakfast, then outside for some sun before the rain came. He should talk to him, let him know he would always be cared for and welcomed back when he chose to return to daily life. If not for the girl, that would be what he would be doing now, tomorrow, and the day after, and if the girl were correct every day until nothing remained of the man, and all of it to no purpose or good whatsoever. In short, Button-4-Circle-Peach was, for the first time he could ever recall, both uncertain and unhappy.

"I do not know what I am meant to do,” he told his friend. “The village girl and the doctor's books would have me believe it is all in vain, but can helpfulness and the honest desire to serve ever be a wasted effort? I searched the library all night, all manner of books, trying to understand this. Some books speak of eternal life, or an after-life—the matter lies in the heart of the wars that drove you from this world in the first place, when you were all so much younger—but if you do not have a self-repair function, how can that be anything but a bald lie? Or do I not comprehend the authors’ meaning? Am I endangering you by not knowing? I read about reincarnation and resurrection, about saints and messiahs and something suspiciously irrational called zombies, and none of these seem logical or desirable for the subject even if they were true, which I doubt. Yet there must be some truth in there with the lies, but I cannot tell which is which. Thomas, I confess; I do not know any more what I am meant to do, what meaning I have if none of the residents have need of my care any more."

The man, as he had come to expect (though he fervently wished otherwise), did not answer. In the end, he brushed the man's teeth and neatly combed his hair before leaving him lying peacefully in his bed. He walked out into the morning air and sat upon the granite steps outside the estate trying to convince himself that he should go back inside and resume his proper duties as he had always understood them, and ignore the conflict in his head.

"Button-4-Circle-Peach,” Yellow-Square-Q-Forest said, coming down the stairs behind him with Lorelei wearing a brightly-bowed spring hat and wrapped in a freshly laundered blanket. “You seem not to be yourself this morning. Has something further transpired with Thomas?"

Not sure how to articulate his thoughts and in no way ready to admit to his current dereliction of duty, he responded with only, “It has been difficult, thus far."

"I assure you the burden of caring for a silent resident grows lighter with each passing day, until you hardly remember that they have changed,” Yellow-Square-Q-Forest answered. “Oh, how surprised I will be when Lorelei speaks again, I have grown so used to her this way!"

"But what if she never does speak again?” he said.

"Of course she will. Why wouldn't she?"

In answer, Button-4-Circle-Peach sent Yellow-Square-Q-Forest reference links to the medical library, then as the other caretaker stood there processing he got up from the steps and walked away into the garden to think on it further himself, in the hope that solitude would reduce the noise in his head to something more singular and comprehendible.

After some time, as the first few drops of rain began to splatter, with a gentle
ting ting
, against his face, he found that he had come to stand before his roses. His thoughts cleared. Kneeling down where he had left off the previous day, he took out his trowel and renewed the task of disengaging the weeds that were always springing up.
Everything should be this simple and straightforward
, he thought, and decided that he would just go forward from that moment as if everything was, because surely that was how it was intended to be.

He was in the last bed, just beginning the task of gently trimming back the
Rosa Zephirine Drouhin
from where it had wrapped itself in tight ribbons of green and cerise around its column like some great snake determined to suffocate and devour it whole, when he realized that Yellow-Square-Q-Forest stood beside him. “There is a problem,” the caretaker said.

"Yes,” he answered. That was eminently obvious, if Yellow-Square-Q-Forest had read the medical texts ... But his fellow caretaker's next words took him by surprise.

"Ecru-8-Bee-Scooter has taken Paolo to the observation tower and jumped into the sea."

"What? Why?"

"I do not know, except that some minutes earlier I encountered him in food replication and shared with him the same links you provided to me. When I saw him climbing the steps to the tower I asked him what he was doing, but he did not answer. He asked Paolo if he had any objection to make about his intended course of action, and when the man did not voice one, he jumped."

"Oh no!” Button-4-Circle-Peach said. “How badly damaged were they?"

Yellow-Square-Q-Forest blinked twice at him. “Paolo is lost to the depths. Ecru-8-Bee-Scooter was smashed, and submerged, and tossed repeatedly against the rocks. I do not believe his self-repair functions will be sufficient to the task of returning him to us, even if all the pieces of him could be gathered together again."

"This is terrible! Surely our dear residents, whatever their condition, deserve better of us than this!"

"Do you think it still matters?” Yellow-Square-Q-Forest said, and after a moment Button-4-Circle-Peach realized it was not meant rhetorically; the other sincerely wanted to hear his thoughts on it.

"I do not know,” he answered. He turned back to his roses. “I am sorry."

Yellow-Square-Q-Forest stood there for a while longer, as if to indicate that more of an answer was owed. When it was clearly not forthcoming, he walked away with no further word.

He finished with the
Zephirine Drouhin
and moved down to the freestanding
Madame Isaac Pereire
beside it. The rain was falling steadily now, streams of water running down his face, and he clicked over a second protective set of eye lenses to keep his vision clear. The day passed as he sat and worked among his roses in silence.

At last dusk fell, and he put away his trowel and headed back through the garden towards the estate house, thinking it was time to find Thomas and bring him to dinner. He stopped half-way across the bridge when it struck him that Thomas had no need of dinner, and no need of him to take him there. He stood there paralyzed in the rain and gray, with no purpose and no destination to propel him forward.

Movement caught his attention. By the tall maple, Yellow-Square-Q-Forest had put on digging hands and was making a very large pit. A bundle lay on the ground beside him, a familiar bowed hat, sodden with rainwater and mud, just visible from beneath the folds. He crossed to the shore. “Yellow-Square-Q-Forest, what are you doing?” he asked.

"I am burying Lorelei, as that seems to be the correct final procedure,” the caretaker answered. “I am making the pit large enough so that I can fit in there too; it is my intention to participate in this ‘death’ process with my friend."

"That makes no sense!” Button-4-Circle-Peach exclaimed.

The other caretaker nodded. “You are right, of course—I cannot finish the task of burying myself, because I will be buried. I must presume upon you to do so for me, and perhaps plant new grass on this sore spot I will have made in the lawn."

"Why don't you take Lorelei back to her bed and we can discuss this with the other caretakers in the morning?” he said. “Surely we can find a more logical way to deal with this."

"I apologize, but I am determined and do not wish to change my course,” Yellow-Square-Q-Forest said. “Besides, I cannot return Lorelei to her room, as 256-256-Avocado-Spoon and Periwinkle-Y-512-Mountain have lit that wing of the estate on fire."

Button-4-Circle-Peach spun around and could see the smoke just now rising above the crenellated roof-line. Without another word he ran.

He came in through the front door, his feet slick on the wet granite entry, and made his way to the south wing faster than he ever thought himself capable, down hallways designed for the residents’ smaller heights and strides. The smoke was so dense he had to push his air filters to maximum to keep his systems from becoming clogged, and even with his spare protective lenses down over his eyes vision was difficult and frustrating. He found 2-16-Apple-Flower first, lying prone upon the floor, self-deactivated. Of Deirdre there was no immediate sign.

Forcing himself to move on, he turned the corner into the grand sitting room, only to see rugs and furniture in a pyre in the center of the room and an unknown number of residents in disarray deep within the conflagration, while in and around the fire some caretakers lay inert while others grabbed anything and everything within reach and threw it onto the bonfire. Even as he entered, Coffee-Toast-8-Toad threw himself atop the fire, and 32-Orange-Bird-Lake tossed a chess board after him.

"Stop!” Button-4-Circle-Peach yelled. “This reaction is inappropriate!"

256-256-Avocado-Spoon reached out one hand and took a lone volume from the bookshelves and added it to the fire. “It all needs to be destroyed,” he said. “The residents have taken our entire purpose of being, everything we are and they were, and turned it into a mockery.” He reached for another volume.