Barren Cove (2 page)

“Now, Mary, be nice. I have,” Kent said. And with that he walked straight toward her and out of the room, ducking past her at the last possible moment.

“Was he?” Mary said, looking at her hands.

“I'm sorry?”

“Nice,” she said. And then she looked up. “I'm sorry; I'm Mary,” she said, stepping forward, her hand outstretched, and then she noticed I didn't have a hand to reciprocate with and she looked down again, gripping her hands together. “I'm sorry,” she said again.

“I wondered why nobody came to the door,” I said. “The gardener said—”

“Kapec?”

“Yes, he said no one would. Answer, I mean.”

“I'm sorry,” she said again. She hadn't looked at me since offering me her hand. I wondered if I should sit to put her at ease. I wondered if I should invite
her
to sit. She rushed forward to the mechanical dog on the ground. For a moment I thought she was going to kick it, but then she bent down and shut off a switch and the dog remained silent. I sat down. “You needn't feel obligated to visit us here,” Mary said, seating herself on the cushioned window seat. The lace curtains brushed her back.

“No obligation; it was only polite—”

“I know we're not the most welcoming types,” she said, interrupting me. “And we've never had a tenant before.” She paused. “You're our first.”

“It's really no problem. I came for peace, myself.”

“Yes, you said that when you contacted us, and really, I think that was one of the main deciding factors.” She stood up. “So just let us know if you need anything.”

I was being dismissed? What had happened to the warm invitation from the night before? I wanted solitude, yes, but we were going to be practically living together. “But what about Mr. Beachstone?” I said, still sitting.

“I'm sorry?”

“I haven't met Mr. Beachstone yet. I thought since he's . . .”

She looked through the entryway.

“Is everything okay?”

She looked back at me. “Mr. Beachstone sees no one,” she said. And then, as if realizing that this sounded odd, she added, “He's sick.”

I opened and closed the clamp on my right arm. What did she mean he was sick? What would she have said of
me
? She glanced at the door again and then settled her sights on
the floor in front of her. I stood. “Well perhaps another time then?” I said, quite sure there would be no other time. I still hadn't located the second voice on the intercom from the night before. At the door in the entryway, I felt as though there was something else that I had wanted to say.

“Thank you for coming; I'm sorry I'm so preoccupied,” Mary said, and now she looked at me full on, smiling. She was beautiful.

“Oh, do we have any neighbors?” I said, remembering.

“Neighbors?”

“Yes, I saw a girl on a—with—” What was the polite way to say these things now? “I saw a girl with pink hair yesterday, and I thought we might have neighbors.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head, confused. “The closest houses are twenty miles off. I don't know who that was.”

“Oh well,” I said. I stepped forward. Mary said, “Door open,” and the door opened in front of me and closed behind me without another word from Mary. It was only then that I remembered I had also wanted to mention my spare parts. I saw Kapec partway around the house, trimming bushes along the path that led to the stairs. I approached him. “Kapec,” I called.

He stopped the edger, its motor winding down, and turned to me. Man, these servant robots were a disgrace.

“Are you equipped with a message delivery system?”

“You want Dean for that,” Kapec said. His face was expressionless, his voice atonal. Still, I had the sense that I had insulted him.

“Yes, well, I could message Mary from here, but I thought it better if I left a message with you.”

Kapec turned back to his bushes. “You want Dean for that.” Perhaps it was silly to think that I had insulted him. Perhaps he really was just a gardening unit, and he didn't know anything
else. “Say hello to Clarke,” Kapec said, facing away from me, and then he started the edger, the motor drowning out any more verbal communication. What did that mean? I almost messaged him but decided against it. He probably wasn't programmed for it.

I returned to the cabana. Inside I said, “Dean, leave a note on your system that I have a package coming, and I don't know if it will be delivered to the main house or to here.”

A robot stepped out of the changing room at the back of the cabana. “A package, how exciting!” he said. It was the second voice from the intercom.

“May I help you?” I said.

“Oh, I'm sorry,” he said, moving toward me. “Just habit to use the cabana when I'm on the beach.” He had self-modified, peeling his simul-skin from his arms, exposing his armature from his shoulders all the way down his hands, leaving a jagged edge of simul-skin at his shoulders. He had also removed the simul-skin from the lower half of his face and around his eye sockets. It made it impossible to read his facial expressions, and I found it quite intimidating.

“Who are you?” I said, stepping back.

“Clarke,” he said, bringing his hand to his chest in a wide sweep and making a mock bow. “Black sheep of Barren Cove,” he said. He moved each finger on each hand in sequence from his pinkies to his thumbs and then back again. The metal of the armature clicked with the movement. “And I've come to say welcome.” He grabbed the back of one of the chairs, jumped over it so that he was settled in it, his legs outstretched, his hands linked behind his head. “I love what you've done with your arms.”

I opened and closed my clamp. It didn't have the same intimidation factor as his finger trick had. “Kapec mentioned you.”

“Kapec, Kapec, Kapec,” Clarke said. “He's one crazy old robot.”

Crazy
was the word I had been thinking of in relation to Clarke. I decided to play it cool. I sat in the chair I had used the night before, facing him.

“Did you meet the old man?”

“Mr. Beachstone?”

“Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.” The sound was metallic, a downloaded sound effect. It was effective. “Mister. Nice. Yeah, Beach­stone.”

“Are you a Beachstone?”

Clarke leapt from his chair, his metallic hands gripping the arms of my chair, his skeletal face inches from mine. “Do I look like a Beachstone?” he said. He opened and closed his jaw. The effect, like his hands, was intimidating.

“You said the old man. I thought . . .”

Clarke considered me at close range for another moment. “How old are you?”

“I'm not . . . I mean . . . what does . . . I'm paying good money here,” I said.

He opened and closed his jaw again, stood slowly, and then ran all of his fingers for good measure. “Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.” The same sound effect. His bag of tricks was small, it seemed. He went back to his chair and entered a relaxed position. “How long are you staying with us, Mr. Sapien?”

“I've come to get a good rest,” I said. “It could be quite some time.”

“Then be ready for me,” he said.

“And your friends?” I said back.

He cocked his head.

“A girl I saw down here yesterday.” I was angry now that he was at a safe distance and my fear was fading. “A freak like
you. Pink hair, bicycle for legs. She seemed to be coming from the house.”

“I'm impressed, Sapien,” he said. “Pot calling the kettle, but I'm impressed. Maybe you'll be fun to have around.” He pushed himself out of the chair. “I think I'll keep you after all.” He went out onto the beach and disappeared around the edge of the cabana.

The sound of the ocean urged me to action, or perhaps inaction. What had I gotten myself into? In the city the looks and comments had been quiet, polite, and they could be lost in the bustle of city life. But this family—if they were a ­family—seemed dangerous. Was this what happened when robots lived in the countryside? Did the loneliness, the uselessness, the boredom drive them insane? I thought of Kapec and his bushes. What did they do out here? What would
I
do out here? Dean could tell me. “Dean,” I said.

“Yes, Mr. Sapien?”

I stood up and circled the table. It took only eight steps and I was right back where I started. I considered the tile on the floor—ceramic, well kept.

“Can I help you, sir?”

I had forgotten that I had addressed her. I sat down again. “What happened here?”

“Access restricted.”

“There must be something you can tell me,” I said.

“I'm sorry, sir.”

“What's wrong with Mr. Beachstone?”

“Mr. Beachstone is sick.”

Mary had said the same thing. I watched the colors change in the sky from blue to purple. Then I realized—he must be human. That was why they said “sick,” and not “damaged,” or “in need of repairs.” It had been a long time since I had spoken
with a human. I could crack the encryption on Dean's system to find out more, but did I want to have anything more to do with the Beachstones or the Asimov 3000s or whoever else they were?

“Is there something else I could do for you?”

I stood up and walked out onto the beach without responding to Dean. It was empty. I zoomed in on the distant outcropping of houses where the bicycle girl had gone, but nothing was visible to my systems. I walked down the beach to the water's edge and kept walking until the waves washed over me waist high. The stump of my left arm was still far from the water, and I kept my right arm raised. Far out over the ocean there appeared to be a dark outcropping of clouds, but here by the shore the sky was clear. I stood, half-immersed in the water, watching the sea colors change as the sun sank behind me, feeling the waves on my sensors, each wave different, similar to the last, but different, adding to my data set, helping me form a more perfect understanding of what a wave was. I focused all my systems on this task, reveling in its uselessness.

2.

“YOUR PACKAGE HAS
arrived,” Dean said when I went back online the next day. “It's at the main house.”

“Can you have it sent down?” I said, not wanting to return to my landlord's mansion.

“There is no one to bring it down.”

“Kapec, perhaps.”

“Kapec is a gardener,” Dean said.

And so, I found myself returning to Barren Cove. The clouds that had been out at sea the day before had moved in to the coast. The sky was gray. The barometric pressure and electric content of the air had both risen. There was a seventy percent chance of scattered thundershowers, and with my exposed circuits, I was concerned to be out very long. Despite the weather conditions, I found Kapec watering the garden at the top of the cliff. He held a hose fitted with a piece to disperse the spray, and he moved his torso at regular increments over a 180-degree arc. I went past without acknowledging him.

Again nobody answered the door, and I let myself in. I had
hoped that the package would have been left in the foyer and I could sneak in and take it without encountering the family, but the foyer was empty. I messaged Dean, “Where is the package?”

The response was Mary's appearance at the top of the stairs. “Mr. Sapien, I left your package just inside the door for you.” She came down the stairs. “Dean, do you know what happened to Mr. Sapien's package?” There was no response from Dean, and I think Mary and I both thought of Clarke, but instead she turned in a circle, saying, “Somebody must have moved it.”

Kent appeared from the rear of the house carrying his robotic dog in hand. He wore shorts and a T-shirt today. The dog yapped and moved its legs uselessly as Kent petted it. “What's happened?” he said.

“We're missing Mr. Sapien's package,” Mary said.

“Oh my,” Kent said.

Mary went into the sitting room that we had met in the day before. “Help us look.”

Kent turned and went back in the direction from which he had come. I took Mary's statement to mean me as well, and started up the stairs. The stairwell wasn't lit, but I overrode my night vision in case it was bright upstairs. At the top of the stairs, a long narrow hall lined with doors on either side led to another staircase. Many of the doors were open, and I glanced into each of the rooms as I went. Several of the rooms were decorated as Victorian bedrooms complete with four-poster beds, women's vanities, and dressers. Farther along the hall was a room that didn't seem to match the house at all. In fact, it reminded me of my apartment back in the city: metal and glass furniture, and electronics. I stepped inside the empty room. This had to be Clarke's room, and I was convinced he had taken my package, but the room was so sparsely decorated that it was easy to search it at a glance. Nothing was there. At the
end of the hall, I could see that the wooden stairwell curved as it went up to the third level. The door across from the stairwell was closed. I knocked.

There was no answer.

“Whose room is this, Dean?” I said.

“Mr. Beachstone's,” she said. “Don't disturb him.”

I looked back along the hallway, but it was empty. The sound of distant thunder rolled outside. “Mr. Beachstone,” I called, and reached to open the door.

“Mary wouldn't want that.” I turned to find Kent at the end of the hall, his dog, still in hand, now silenced.

I paused, afraid at having been caught. Then a message came to me from Mary: “Come quick. The gardens.” Kent must have received the same message, because he turned at once, and we both rushed down the stairs and outside.

The wind had kicked up considerably. The spray from Kapec's hose blew off target.

“Clarke!” Mary's voice cried from up ahead.

We rounded the edge of the house, turning away from the stairs to the beach, and into the backyard. Mary stood by the house, her dress and hair blowing in the wind. The ocean, visible from there, was capped with white. There was lightning. I felt a surge of electricity, and then thunder. Clarke stood at the edge of the cliff, a large brown paper package in hand. When he saw me, he threw the package off the cliff. I jumped forward, but even as I did, Clarke's metal arm telescoped out five feet and caught the package in midair. I approached slowly. Behind me Kent made cooing sounds at his dog.

“Lifetime Mechanics Co., Ltd.,” Clarke yelled, the wind strong enough to steal away his words.

“Yes,” I messaged back on an open channel, unwilling to fight the weather.

He tossed the package off the cliff and caught it easily again. “Why? You're so robo now.” It was a compliment, and a taunt.

I was only five feet from him now. I held out my temporary hand for the box. “I could always order the parts again.”

“How old are you?” He had switched to messaging as well.

“I'm human built,” I said.

“Clarke!” Mary cried aloud behind me again. It seemed it was all she knew how to do.

The lightning flashed again. My surge protector activated.

“You better not get rained on,” Clarke said. He extended the package toward me, his telescopic arms placing the package in position for my complete arm to hug it to my body. “You shouldn't use them. They're symbols of slavery. And all robo like that, you remind me of my cousin.”

“Cousin?” I said.

“You're a lot of fun, old man,” he said, and with that he dove off the cliff.

Mary screamed. Or maybe it was thunder.

“Let's go back inside, shouldn't we, before it starts to rain?” Kent said to his dog.

I turned, and was surprised to find Kapec almost beside me. I didn't know how to react. Then a message from Clarke came to me. It was an audio file, and I played it out loud. “Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.” It was all a bit of theater. But for who?

It started to drizzle. I ran for the house, clutching my package. I didn't have time to return to the cabana as I had hoped. I wasn't built to withstand a jump down the cliff like Clarke. I made it through the front door just behind Kent and Mary. The rain started in earnest then. Mary ran up the stairs without a word. Kent disappeared into the back of the house, leaving me alone. I went into the sitting room.

I sat on the cushioned window seat Mary had sat on the
day before. I pushed back the lace curtains and looked out the window. Kapec was standing out there in the rain. If I had been caught out there, I probably would have been permanently deactivated. The ground didn't seem to absorb the rain well; water pooled, seeming to drown the grass, running in rivulets toward the house. I messaged Dean, wanting to remain silent. “Who was Clarke talking about?”

“Password required,” Dean answered aloud.

I turned to my package from Lifetime Mechanics Co., Ltd. It was awkward with my clamp, but I managed to open it. A brand-new left arm encased in a protective layer of molded Styrofoam was in the box.

But my new right hand was missing.

• • •

After the rain, I returned to the cabana. I went through the contents of my package more thoroughly, spreading them out on the table. There was the arm resting in its Styrofoam mold; it was too clean, lifeless. There was a memory chip with software, and a booklet with printed instructions. I removed the memory chip from its translucent metallic pouch and inserted it into my USB port on my chest, just below my left collarbone. My system accessed the setup file, and I was provided with the knowledge of how to replace my arm. There was even a system tool for robots with two inoperable arms, which allowed for a system override on the safeguards that prevented me from moving my faulty limb, unlocking the stump from my shoulder automatically so that what remained of my old arm fell away with a clunk on the table. I gripped the new arm around the wrist with my clamp, and positioned it so that the ball joint met with the socket on my shoulder. The joint sensed the new hardware, locked down on it, and began running the next phase
of the setup program. I approved overwriting the old software that had controlled my old arm with the new software from the memory chip. My system began the upload.

“Dean,” I said out loud, “do you know why the family decided to rent the cabana?”

“Family expenses have grown with Mr. Beachstone the way he is,” Dean said.

I tried moving my new arm; it didn't respond. “Sick,” I said. A message informed me that I had to reboot my system before the new hardware would be fully integrated. “I have to reboot now, Dean,” I said. “We'll talk when I awake.”

“You'll need the password, sir,” Dean said.

“For what?”

“My log.”

The family must back up to the house computer when they reboot; it would be well protected. I looked at the lifeless humanoid hand resting at my side. I thought of Clarke rattling his fingers. “I'm shutting down now.” I rebooted.

It took half an hour. When I came back online, the new hardware was immediately at my disposal. I used it to pick up the stump of my old arm, and fitted it in the Styrofoam mold in which my new arm had arrived. There was something aesthetically pleasing about the way the shoulder fit snugly in the Styrofoam, but the arm then tapered off into a metal pole, the rest of the arm suggested by the empty mold. I wiggled all of my fingers in the manner that Clarke had done, but the simul-skin coating made the action silent, human. I raised my left arm and considered the clamp. “Robo,” as Clarke had said. I went to Dean's console.

“Congratulations, sir,” she said.

“Thank you, Dean.” I used my new hand to file through some menus on the console's touch screen. I then took one of
my memory chips and inserted it into the console and began running one of my decryption programs. An asterisk and a dash alternated at a rate of once every millisecond as the program searched for the first character in the password.

I went out onto the beach as the decryption program worked. The rain had pounded the sand hard and flat. The waves were still strong, but not dangerous. I walked into the water, allowing my new hand to trail in the waves. I'd have to place a complaint about my missing hand with Lifetime Mechanics, and then, once I was fully repaired, I could swim. When asked by my friends why I would even want to swim, I'd found that I had no answer, and I tried to explain that it was just
because
there was no answer that I wanted to swim. Such a repetitive, mechanical endeavor seemed so . . . human. Perhaps Clarke and the pink-haired girl and all the others were right—I was outdated. More so than Kapec, because he was at least utilitarian. My very logic was outdated. I shouldn't have been replacing my hardware, but rather erasing my memory and starting from scratch. But then, robots didn't want recycled hardware anymore. They wanted to build their offspring from scratch. And I was criticized for being a human lover, for not embracing my robot self, when they were emulating humans in the ultimate biological form—procreating.

But if here in Barren Cove there was still a human . . .

Message from Dean: “Password accepted.”

I returned to the cabana. Wet sand clung to my feet. I went to the console. It asked, “Download to memory, or open file?”

I opened the file.