The Actuality Read online

  She quickly goes outside via the kitchen and tiptoes back along the exterior wall until she reaches the library window where she stops behind the thick trunk of the Empress palm.

  ‘What interest do these people possibly have in us?’ she hears Matthew ask, standing with his stomach against the sill, staring out. ‘I just don’t get it.’ He is perplexed and indignant and she thinks even a little shaken too. He is not used to being invaded.

  ‘They’re suspicious of Evie,’ Daniels replies.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘How she fits in. Her relationship to you. Who she is . . . and maybe even . . . what she is.’

  Evie is listening hard, but still not understanding. Why should it matter ‘what’ she is?

  ‘I told them that she is my niece, didn’t I?’

  ‘Yep,’ Daniels replies. ‘But it’s an explanation that’ll fall apart quicker than a cardboard shoe in a puddle of acid rain if checked out.’

  ‘And will they? Check it out?’

  ‘I don’t trust them. You may not have seen it from where you sat but while the woman plied her with all her fool questions, the man watched from the corner of his eye, cool as a cucumber, assessing her every move.’

  Evie breathes in quickly; she had sensed that too but taken it to be her paranoia. Ostensibly, the man had sat there uncouthly scraping his nails.

  ‘You make it sound like she was conducting some sort of Turing test.’ He seems to find this old-fashioned notion amusing. ‘But even if they do discover the truth, what really is the problem?’

  ‘Apart from the fact that you’ve been breaking the law!’

  Evie isn’t used to hearing Daniels talk to her husband in anything other than deferential terms and his words and tone now shock her. Intrigued and increasingly scared, she slowly parts the stiff shrivelled fronds, to improve her view. She’d hoped with the police’s departure all this was going to be over.

  ‘Then it is the law that is wrong,’ Matthew mutters.

  ‘But it doesn’t stop it from being the law and having been so since twenty-one-ten.’

  ‘Well what can they do about it?’

  ‘They can confiscate her – she was never registered, not even during the amnesty. They could be back here this very afternoon and take her with them.’

  ‘Ridiculous. And even if they did, I’d make it so hot for them with their superiors, they’d return her before the day was out, I can assure you . . .’

  ‘But who knows what would have happened in the intervening hours? Returned, yes, perhaps, but with systems wiped and memories scrubbed cleaned. Maybe she wouldn’t even want to return.’

  A burst of static stutters across her cortex and she shudders and grips the wall.

  ‘They can’t do that,’ Matthew says, but he is now less certain of himself. ‘She belongs to me – property rights would prevail.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Daniels replies, clearly unconvinced that the niceties of ownership will make much difference. ‘You should also know that she’s worried.’

  ‘What on earth has she got to be worried about?’ Her husband’s frustration is morphing into exasperation. She too is surprised by Daniels’s statement. What has she revealed? Sure, she has asked him things, but nothing he took notice of.

  ‘What will happen to her?’

  ‘Happen to her when?’

  ‘If something . . . were to happen to you.’

  ‘I really don’t know what you have in mind that is going to “happen to me”. Is this all about the last few days? You think because I get a chill I’m at death’s door!’

  ‘Not at all, Sir,’ Daniels replies hurriedly.

  Matthew continues, ‘The real revelation is that she confides such nonsense in you.’

  The room grows silent. ‘Not exactly confides,’ Daniels replies, choosing his answer carefully, ‘but the poor thing is troubled.’

  ‘Then I think you’re the one with too much imagination! Evie is an amazing and subtle thing, able to imitate the most complex human behaviour, but that is it, it is imitation only – mimicry – and Daniels my man, you are letting that cleverness take you in. Poor thing indeed! I think you need to be getting out more.’ He laughs lightly. ‘Evie is not sentient. She is blessed to be oblivious to the misery of unhappiness. She is a device, no more capable of worrying about what will happen tomorrow than this book is worrying about whether it will hurt the leather if I drop it.’

  He has lifted the large atlas she left on the table and releases it from a couple of feet. It lands awkwardly on its spine and flips with a crash to the floor.

  Daniels bends to pick it up. He smooths the bent pages and lays it flat on the table. His tone deepens into a growl. ‘That’s as maybe, Sir.’ She’s never heard him more than mildly raise his voice, and not even as much as that with her husband, but he now sounds like he is getting angry. ‘Since we are unable to open her up and peep inside, we really cannot say what she’s capable of feeling.’

  Matthew huffs.

  ‘But you must accept,’ Daniels continues, ‘that since the prohibition, nothing the like of her has been attempted. The only one I’ve heard of being able to shine a light is the one they’re now busy showing off in that new Hawking Museum in Cambridge.’ Adding after a pause, ‘Sir.’

  ‘I see you’ve been making a study of this,’ Matthew says irritably.

  Evie fixes on what Daniels has said about her rarity. She has never considered herself in this way before. Never been able to get these sort of answers. It is a lonely and shocking thought that there is only one other like her, at least in this country, and he is housed in a museum. Is that what could happen to her?

  ‘Yeah, well, when I read that there is lobbying to repeal the Protective Acts and allow industry a fresh go, it makes me wonder how many corporations there are who’d kill to get their hands on a working example for their R&D departments to pull apart.’

  She reels giddily and sits on the ground before she falls. The wet mud soaks into her skirt.

  ‘They’ll never repeal the Acts!’ Matthew snaps. ‘The production of Artificial Autonomous Beings is history. The lesson of AABs was learned the painful way. What they got right with Evie, they got spectacularly wrong nearly everywhere else.’

  ‘But the media is full of how the government is prepared to do almost anything to break the depression before it reaches a second decade. The promise of unlimited free labour would be a massive thing at the next election – folk are desperate.’

  ‘Pah! The papers! Or whatever that fancy device you are so addicted to is called. I tell you, I’d be amazed if “folk” vote for yet more clever machines, ones even cleverer than those that have taken their jobs already.’

  Daniels sighs and shakes his head.

  ‘Also, are you implying,’ her husband continues, his tone growing defensive, ‘that I don’t appreciate her? She wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for me.’

  ‘Of course,’ Daniels says, seeking to mollify. ‘But sometimes, Sir, I think you view her as no more than a sort of luxury collectable.’ He is speaking more quietly, his voice courteous once again.

  ‘However much you’d have me believe otherwise, that is indeed what she is – a rich man’s toy – I should know! A long time ago when feeling weak, I indulged a whim. I was broken in the aftermath of what happened to poor Evelyn and Evie was a crutch that helped me through.’ He smiles and, reaching over, pats Daniels on the shoulder. ‘You remember what it was like for me – I was in a terrible state – if there had been a Daniels in the catalogue, I would have probably bought one of him too.’

  Daniels smiles weakly. ‘All I’m saying, Sir, is that you’ve sensibly kept her a secret all these years and we must hope that nothing has happened in the past twenty-four hours to prevent that continuing to be the case.’

  There is silence, the tension palpable even outside.

  Daniels walks away from him across the room. ‘Now, Sir, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve luncheon to prepare.
It’ll be a cut of something cold I’m afraid, events this morning have put me right behind.’ He sounds annoyed and as if this is an excuse to end the conversation. Normally he would wait to be dismissed.

  Evie’s head is spinning. Finding out that she could be at risk from scientists wanting to pull her to pieces, or if not them, from police vacuuming out her mind, is a terrifying reward for her harmless eavesdropping.

  Then there was what her husband said about her – that she is incapable of feeling. She knows he doesn’t really believe that – but then why did he say it?

  Don’t claim I didn’t warn you, Simon interrupts with maximum superiority. What was it he called you? Oh yeah, ‘a rich man’s toy’.

  He didn’t mean it like that.

  I think he did!

  She wants to run away but it won’t help her evade Simon’s vindictiveness, so she turns inwardly, replying in the very fiercest tone she can muster, Oh, why don’t you just leave me alone!

  6

  The day after the police visit, it begins to snow. The temperature overnight has dropped steeply and Evie watches from the library cupola as the first flakes fall on the shrubbery and drift against the glass. They cling briefly and slide down.

  It is mid-morning. Daniels is outside, despite the turn in the weather, with a rope around the shoulders of the mermaid, attempting to straighten her. The tendons in his neck stand out as he tugs. The mermaid’s metal hips groan and whine, but she refuses to oblige. She is a small thing but surprisingly stubborn.

  Evie watches them struggle. If only I was as resilient, she thinks. This morning, she’s not been able to concentrate on anything, half-expecting the police to return unannounced and take her away.

  The library is the largest room in the apartment and the only one to have a second level. The glow from the domed skylight creates a wintery pool on the floor below, across which the shadows of snowflakes drift like feathers.

  From her early years, she recalls milder seasons when it didn’t snow every winter and the summers were moist and changeable. Now the same stale heat hangs around from May to September, drying gulley-like cracks into the soil and turning the leaves a premature brown. It was all down to the failure of the Gulf Stream, the flow of which abruptly slowed over the course of her first decade – now thirty years ago.

  Up here she keeps her precious copy of Jane Eyre, an early edition signed ‘yours faithfully, C. Brontë’. Matthew presented it to her bound with tinsel on her fifth Christmas, the silver wrapping winking under the lights on the fir tree Daniels had erected and shown her how to decorate. As she fingered through it, as clueless and gummy as an overgrown child, he told her it was not only rare but possibly the only one in existence. A nervous warning. Like her, she was being led to understand, it has a skin that needs to be looked after. If he really considers her a mere mechanical, insensitive to kindness, why would he have taken the trouble to source such a special gift? Maybe back then, he was wanting to let himself believe.

  Between its pages, she keeps one of her few secrets – a letter found between the cushions of one of the library chairs. It is from Evelyn’s father to Matthew, describing his daughter’s health and how her treatment is touch-and-go. There are barely enough lines to cover a single side but still room for the underscored words ‘it is best if you do not come’ to appear in both opening and closing sentences.

  Needing company to distract her, she descends the steep spiral steps, crossing the polished parquet in her stockings – one of the few pairs which Daniels hasn’t had to darn – and exits through the French windows.

  Outside, she crosses the icy paving of the terrace, placing her feet with care. She has excellent balance – as good as any prima ballerina – but in conditions like this, anyone could have an upset.

  Daniels is taking a break from his attempts to put right the poor mermaid and is sitting smoking on the wall of the pond; snow piling on the peak of his cloth cap.

  ‘How’s it you can always make me feel colder than I am already?’ he asks as she approaches. She hasn’t thought to put on any extra layers and now that he has drawn her attention to it, is aware of the prickle of the tiny flakes of snow on her bare shoulders. She has also forgotten shoes. Her stockings, her rare good ones, will be ruined like all the rest.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she replies, looking across to the corner of the garden, where the police hova skimmed the wall and brought down a wedge of brickwork, crushing the roses and brittle lavender.

  ‘Of course you are,’ he grunts, finishing his cigarette and grinding it under his toe. ‘Advantage of youth.’ Although of course he knows the real reason is that she is not restricted by the narrow temperature range a human can only tolerate. He gazes down at the bent statue. ‘Hardly what I’d call driving with due care and attention – hitting both the wall and our friend here. Anyone else do that and they’d be banged up.’

  ‘Do you think they’ll be back?’ she asks.

  ‘Hard to tell. They’ve only really got one purpose these days and that’s stopping the property of rich people getting into the hands of the poor ones. Not sure how bothering us helps.’ He prods the statue’s arm with his toe, as if after all his efforts, that is all that’ll be needed. ‘By rights we should be entitled to claim for the damage, but if it’ll mean we’ve seen the back of them, I think it’s best to let it pass.’

  ‘Are you going to be able to get her upright again?’

  ‘I’m not sure. It ain’t just her, it’s also the pipe which feeds the spout inside the shell for the water to flow out of – the lead’s bent. Unfortunately, unless your husband is prepared to get in help – and we’ve had quite enough in the way of strangers poking their noses around in the last twenty-four hours – she’s probably going to have to remain where she is for now.’

  ‘We need the king to bring all his horses and men,’ she says with a grin.

  ‘Yeah, sure.’ He looks at her as if she is being serious rather than whimsical. Although she does have form in this regard. Her lack of basic knowledge has always seemed to her ironic, given that Evelyn was an accomplished academic. Evie’s onboard cyclopedia was designed to access remote proprietary information banks, but these relied on an uninterrupted connection not maintained for the last twenty years, and anyway never lived up to their promise, even in the beginning.

  Daniels has a TV in his room which even he doesn’t watch because of ‘the endless government propaganda’. Evie has had to acquire knowledge the old-fashioned way, through conversation and books. As a result, in the early days she made frequent basic errors, Matthew leading her along in her misconceptions for the sheer comedy of seeing her redden as her confusion and embarrassment mounted. In contrast, Daniels’s gentle correcting of her mistakes was how they had first bonded. Not that she was ever allowed to learn anything that really mattered.

  ‘Let me help,’ she says.

  Daniels huffs, glancing at her thin shoulders. A little mound of snow has collected within the delicate sculpting of her clavicles which on a human would have instantly melted. He likes to believe the pretence that she is as puny as she appears.

  ‘He doesn’t like you to get involved in such things, and it’s not just his old-fashionedness – it may escape your attention,’ nodding at her fragile clothes, ‘that I’m the only laundry service in town.’

  He’s right, we don’t need to get involved, Simon murmurs. Inside the apartment he had been quiet but it is as if the cold air has woken him. She misses him when he is absent but then invariably wishes him away when he is back. She really should start to learn.

  She stands over the statue. The mermaid is clothed in scales to the waist but above that her narrow waist and girlish chest are naked to sun, rain and snow. She lies face down in the dark water, as if diving, her tail flipped upwards in the frigid air.

  ‘I feel sorry for her to be just left like this,’ she says. ‘She’s been here longer than I have.’

  Ridiculous, Simon replies, his ill humour again on d
isplay.

  Evie reaches her hand into the water – it is close to freezing – and grips the mermaid under her chin. She lifts the metal face a couple of inches until her nose breaks the surface. The movement is accompanied by a complaining squeal.

  She lets the mermaid drop back.

  ‘Well that’s more than I managed,’ Daniels says, returning his cigarettes to the pocket of his coat. ‘Must have loosened things up more than I realised.’

  Evie examines the pit marks across the underside of her fingers. The rough surface of the corroded metal is a risk to her skin. If skin is what it can be called. She certainly thinks of it as skin. It looks like skin, moves like skin and feels like skin. Close up it is correct in every detail, the tiny pores and hair follicles arrayed with multifarious perfection. But actually, far from being natural, it comprises a fusion of 3D-printed genetically human cellular matter and extruded bio-material cultivated in a factory. She may find such details indelicate, but like anyone obliged to care for themselves, she needs to be aware of the strengths and weaknesses of what she is made. It is just that the illusion is so brilliantly successful, it makes it easy to believe that she is something else. The real thing. She breathes, has lungs, has a heart that beats. Her body may be a hybrid of electronically activated and living tissue stretched over cutting-edge fibres, but her flesh is as soft to the touch as any young woman’s.

  ‘You think we’ve seen the last of them?’ she asks.

  ‘The last of who?’

  ‘The police people.’

  ‘Oh, them. Good reason to hope I’d say. I think the three of us put up quite a convincing show!’

  His manner is casual and she glances over at him to make sure he is not hiding anything from her. After all, he hadn’t given such a relaxed impression after they left yesterday. Perhaps the intervening time has changed his opinion.

  ‘I’m going inside,’ he says. ‘I’ll have another shot in the spring. It was foolish to attempt anything today. Thought I might just be able to do something before the weather hardens.’