Barren Cove (12 page)

18.

BEACHSTONE REQUIRED EVERYONE
to be at the activation ceremony. He had moved back into the house—in fact, Kent never knew that he had lived anywhere else—but he had left his workroom in the cabana, at least until Philip was done.

And Beachstone had declared Philip done.

“He is a handsome piece of work,” Kent said from the corner. He shifted his bulk into a seat. The weight of the simul-skin belly that protruded in a globe at his waist threw him off-balance and he had to raise his legs to keep from falling over. “Beachstone, I really must say you've done a beautiful job.”

Mary tried not to look at her brother. It still shocked her to see his transformed features, to hear his transformed voice, to not really have her brother there at all.

Beachstone was in constant motion, sitting one moment, walking around the table, bending over Philip's body, coming to Mary and gripping her hand. She couldn't meet his eyes either. She was excited, she thought, but somehow she didn't feel the satisfaction that she had anticipated months before.

“Philip is a good strong name,” Kent said to no one in particular.

“You're blind, old man,” Clarke said, leaping up onto a counter. He had made the first changes to his own body, and Mary was afraid to look at him. His metal hands were now exposed, meant to be a constant reminder that he was mechanical.

But Clarke was right. Philip was not the fine piece of work Kent was praising, but rather a lopsided form. Despite his success with modifying Kent, Beachstone had not done as well working from scratch. Building a robot from spare pieces was an altogether different task from working with an already finished product, and Philip was somehow uneven, one leg thicker than the other, metal showing through in places. Mary had a suspicion that this would not be the joyous occasion that Beachstone was hoping for.

Beachstone came to her side and leaned in close to her ear. “Are you excited?” he said. “Our son!” He gripped her hand.

“Yes,” she said.

“You don't look excited.”

“I am.”

“Okay,” he said, and kissed her on the cheek.

Kent leaned toward Clarke and in a mock whisper said, “Give them some privacy.”

“I'll leave whenever I get the chance,” Clarke said.

But Beachstone clapped his hands and moved to the table. “Okay, here we go,” he said.

Mary wanted to look away. Why had Father left them? Had he known what was coming? That his son would be remodeled, that his daughter would be afflicted with love and his grandchildren freaks and radicals? But it wouldn't have happened if he had still been alive. None of it would have happened.

“Are you recording, Dean?” Beachstone said.

“I am, sir,” she said.

“Okay,” he said. He leaned forward and pushed a button that was hidden in the recess between the neck and the shoulder. He stepped back. Nothing happened at first.

“Good job, well done,” Clarke said, leaping off the counter.

“It has to boot up,” Beachstone said.

All at once the form on the table sat up, its eyes opening.

“Mary, come stand with me in front of him so he can see us,” Beachstone said, reaching for her.

Mary stepped forward and took Beachstone's hand, allowing him to draw her to him. She was excited now, despite herself. Another son. Beachstone's son! Beachstone put his arm around her, pulling her tight. I'm sorry for all my negative thoughts, she wanted to say, but instead said nothing.

“Philip,” Beachstone said. “We're . . .”

Mary could feel Beachstone's hesitancy, and she understood it. What did one say in this moment? The first words that this robot would hear would always be with him. She stepped forward and took her son's hands. “You're my son,” she said, and leaned in and kissed him.

Philip opened his mouth. “Mother,” he said. Mary stepped back. The voice was wrong. It was like a radio signal that wasn't coming in properly, filled with static, almost inaudible. But the robot kept talking. “You . . . hello . . . someday.”

Beachstone stepped forward, his head tilted to one side. When he reached for his son, the robot on the table flinched.

The voice came again. “Doing,” was all that was clear.

Mary tried to message Philip, but there was no connection.

Clarke laughed, a mechanical, prerecorded laugh: “Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.”

Mary looked at him; she had never heard that before.

Kent stood up, his expression tight. “I'm really, well, I have to see about something at the house,” he said.

Mary messaged him, “Don't go.”

“I'm very happy for you two,” he said aloud, and stepped out onto the beach.

“Where?” Philip managed to say.

Mary looked at Beachstone. He was staring at his son. His face was drawn. He was pale.

“Kent'll never know how lucky he is,” Clarke said.

Mary took a step toward Beachstone, but he turned before she could reach him and walked out of the cabana.

Philip tried pushing himself off the table. His limbs made a grinding sound as he moved. One arm seemed to catch, click, drop back again, click, and drop back again, the system not shutting the arm down, but unable to make it function. Still, Philip managed to rise to his feet.

“Where are you going?” Clarke said, standing next to Philip now.

“Clarke,” Mary said. She wanted to reboot. Perhaps her system would be better prepared if she had a fresh start. She turned and ran after Beachstone. They should just shut him down. He could be fixed. There were problems, but Beachstone hadn't known what he was doing. He hadn't wanted her help. She had contributed the knowledge centers, but she could do some of the mechanics too. They could work together the way they should have from the start. It was supposed to be their child, but really it had been Beachstone's child, hadn't it? What was a little contribution of software?

On the beach, Philip had managed to make his way halfway to the water. One of his legs had developed the same problem as his arm, and it click, click, clicked as he moved, dragging along
behind him. He seized up and then fell over. His limbs seemed to keep moving in the sand.

Clarke sat down beside him. “An imperfect creator, huh?”

Philip seized in the sand.

“Here, let me help you with that,” Clarke said, and he grabbed ahold of Philip's bad arm and ripped it off. Destroying a robot didn't have the same satisfaction that killing a human had, but it was one way to get at Beachstone. Although it seemed that Beachstone had managed to get at himself.

“Fix . . . Father.”

“What? You're just not being very clear,” Clarke said.

“Fix . . .”

“Oh, sure. Yeah, he'll fix you, I'm sure. Let's go right now, in fact,” Clarke said, standing up. He picked up Philip's body, grabbing the discarded arm. Philip no longer struggled, and Clarke felt a wave of pity for the malfunctioning form in his arms, coupled with anger at Beachstone for his incompetence. Beachstone thought he could run away from his mistake. Clarke wouldn't let him. He started up the cliff stairs to the house.

Kapec was on his hands and knees pulling weeds from one of the flower beds. He looked up as Clarke approached, Phil hanging over his shoulder. “You have no respect,” Kapec said, pointing at Clarke.

“Who do you think you are, old man?” Clarke said, not slowing down.

“You're a disgrace,” Kapec said to his back. Clarke turned to face him. Kapec had stood. “Carrying around a broken robot. You have no respect.”

“I'm just helping him,” Clarke said. Does Kapec know that I broke his arm? No, the arm was already broken. I just removed it.

“You think that you're the future, but you forget where you come from. Metal hands. Laying hands on your fellow machine. You are a disgrace.”

“Look at you, gardener-bot. You're practically plastic.” With that he turned his back on the old man. Old model. Didn't even look—Clarke didn't finish the thought. Shouldn't he be praising Kapec's fully robotic look?

“Let that robot walk his own path,” Kapec yelled behind Clarke. “Let him stand.”

Clarke almost threw Philip to the ground. How would Kapec like that? He could see how well Philip stood on his own. Instead, Clarke walked to the front of the house and carried Philip's inert form into the sitting room.

“Oh my dear,” Kent said, standing, but not moving from in front of the easy chair he had been sitting on.

Clarke eased Philip's body into one of the other chairs across the room. In an upright position, Philip said, “So this . . . like. Yes.”

Clarke turned. “What are you wearing?” he said to Kent, who had changed.

Kent looked down at himself as if he were just noticing his clothing for the first time. He was wearing a red kimono with black seams. He gripped the material, pulling it down and holding up his head, proud. “It just came today. Isn't it splendid?”

“Father . . .” Philip said. Clarke bent down to readjust Philip's body, hoping that his speech would return. Phil continued to talk as Clarke shifted him, and like tuning a radio, his voice came in stronger. “Now go and get Father,” Philip said.

Clarke was amused at the command. Did Philip think that he was serving him? Maybe Phil explained away his missing arm in the same way that he had explained it away when it was
malfunctioning at his side. It's nothing really. Father will fix it. But Kent didn't seem as blasé as his nephew. “My God, what happened to his arm?” Kent said.

“It's better than it was before,” Clarke said. The sound of footsteps came from the stairs. “Dean, you're such a tattletale,” Clarke said.

Beachstone burst into the room. Mary was just behind him. At the sight of his son in the front sitting room, one arm missing, the wires and metal of his armature on view, Beachstone had to lean all his weight on his cane. Mary stepped forward so that she was positioned to catch Beachstone should he fall.

“Hey, Ma, Phil wanted to see the place, so I helped him upstairs,” Clarke said.

Mary's face was impassive, her concern turned on Beachstone and not on the one-armed robot in the sitting room. Again Clarke found himself disappointed by his mother's reaction. He tried to turn the show up a notch.

“Well, I brought what I could of him. Beachstone, you really didn't get the arm thing too well, did you?”

Beachstone hobbled forward toward his son. He didn't react to Clarke's taunts.

“I really don't think that it's right to have him up here,” Kent said in half a whisper.

“Beachstone,” Mary said.

“Father . . .” Phil said. “Clarke . . . me. Beautiful.”

“He asked to come,” Clarke said to Mary. She looked at him, but it was as if she didn't see him.

Phil started forward, deciding somehow that he could stand now that he was in his ancestral home. But, like on the beach, his body didn't agree with his systems' intentions, and he began to fall forward.

“Huh!” Kent cried.

Beachstone stepped forward, but it was Clarke who turned in time to stop Phil's fall. As Clarke eased Phil back into the seat, Beachstone walked up to the pair, reached past Clarke, and shut his son off. Phil's already inert body lost any appearance of life as his eyes closed and the sounds of his gears wound down. “He's dead to me,” Beachstone said, and turned his back.

Clarke managed to balance Phil in the chair and step back. “Robots don't die,” Clarke said. “We can fix him.” It was suddenly important that Philip be treated with the respect that Kapec had been calling for outside.

“No,” Beachstone said, and turned to leave the room.

Mary stepped to him, putting one hand on his shoulder and another on his back, as if she were balancing him.

“Mary, he's your son too,” Clarke said.

Mary followed after Beachstone.

“He can be fixed,” Clarke said. “You can fix him, Beachstone,” Clarke called. “He told me himself.”

Kent fell into the chair behind him. “Must you leave him here?” he said. “He makes me uncomfortable.”

Clarke looked at Kent, his bulk barely contained in his kimono. Clarke wanted to say,
No,
you
make me uncomfortable
, but he didn't have it in him. Killing a human had been powerful. Killing a robot had been pathetic. He bent down and picked Philip up. He didn't know where to take him. Back to the beach? No, Philip had wanted to be in Barren Cove. He would take him upstairs, to a real workroom. He mounted the stairs.

• • •

Upstairs, instead of going to the workroom, Clarke took the lifeless robot into his own room. He laid Philip across a writing desk in the corner, his legs dangling off one side, his head
off the other, and took the straight-backed wooden desk chair and set it before one of the windows that faced the front of the house. He then moved Philip to the chair, propping him up in a sitting position. He pulled open the sheer inner curtains and rebooted his half brother. It took five minutes and thirty-eight seconds for Philip to come online.

The newborn robot looked around, taking in the spare room, which had been a sewing room in another world. A wrought-iron, foot-operated sewing machine that had been converted to electricity sat beside a cabinet with dozens of small drawers along one wall. A faded, striped armchair was in a corner beside a standing lamp. Clarke had punched into one of the walls the number one in archaic punch-card code. Philip looked up at Clarke. “Clarke,” he said. “You . . . friend.”

“Don't be so sure,” Clarke said, running through his fingers, wondering what he was doing with this thing.

Philip turned to the window and started to lean forward, but he ran into the same problem he had downstairs, and Clarke had to jerk him back lest he fall forward through the glass. “Beautiful,” Philip said, as though he hadn't registered his near accident.