he said in his foghorn, mono-tone voice as I stepped into the corridor outside Gillian’s office. The robot staggering uncertainly towards me was the absolute bane of my life – a clattering, clanking, insufferable relic that had been ready for the knacker’s yard for decades. Now he looked up to me like a father, though he also looked down at me from his height of around eight feet. His limbs were gangly and thin, his legs little more than coils of wire around metal bars that looked like leftovers from a Meccano set. His bulky mid-section was like a household boiler and his head was an upturned metal bucket with an approximation of a face, two small blue dots for eyes and a thin, unmoving slit for his mouth.
‘Back so soon?’ I asked miserably.
‘YES, I AM BACK,’ he replied amiably. ‘I WAS SUFFERING FROM A CLOGGED OIL FILTER, A COMMON COMPLAINT ASSOCIATED WITH THIS BARRINGTON MODEL. THIS BLOCKAGE HAS BEEN REMOVED SO I WILL NOW FUNCTION AT NORMAL CAPACITY.’
‘No more of your filthy talk, then?’ I asked, eyebrows raised. In the week or so before he was finally shipped over to maintenance, Barrington12 had been acting peculiarly, ending every sentence, irrespective of the subject matter or the person to whom he was speaking, with the phrase ‘I’D LIKE TO ALSO REMIND YOU THAT I AM FREE OF ERECTILE DYSFUNCTION.’ It got rather wearying after a while but Gillian didn’t seem minded to approve the cost of a once-over from maintenance – not until we had that class of youngsters from the Compound school over for a sports day. I haven’t had to apologise so profusely on someone else’s behalf since I had dinner in that posh restaurant with Al Hansen and he ordered ‘a dry white wine’. I had to hurry after the waiter and say, ‘I’m so sorry about that – he means “wet”.’
‘ALL SUCH PHRASES HAVE NOW BEEN ERADICATED FROM MY VOCABULARY,’ Barrington12 reassured me.
‘Well, let’s hope so,’ I said haughtily. ‘Come on, let’s get down to Giuseppe’s. We’ve probably missed pizza now, but we should make it in time for ice cream.’
Gillian’s office door opened and she poked her head out.
‘Oh, good, you’re still here,’ she said. ‘I meant to say – the thrice-weekly pizza and ice cream trips have also been cut from the budget.’
PIZZA AND ICE CREAM
With the loud buzzing of Barrington12’s mechanised legs clattering along behind me, I headed out of the John Rudge Memorial Stadium through the wrought-iron gates and down the paved streets towards the bustling Compound Square, the hub of the human Palangonian community. Given that it’d been barely more than a year since humans had arrived here, it was difficult not to just stop and marvel at all that had been achieved in so small a timeframe.
At the entrance to the square was the imposing Council building. Gillian had one of the five seats on the Council, from where she could undermine me at every turn, as did that oaf, General Leigh. I realise that supposedly there’s a war on but the amount of sway the General holds over Compound life is outrageous. Next door to the Council building was a large Tesco and adjacent was Flix, the cinema. There were dozens of restaurants, a library, a leisure centre, a car park (bit of a misjudgement, that – with the exception of the little buggies that big cheeses like Leigh use to ferry themselves about, there are no cars in the Compound), the infirmary and a big TV studio. It was like being back on Earth, except for the twin suns burning in the sky and the frequent sirens going off to warn of an impending attack by Winged Terrors, flying ape-like beasts that swooped over the walls, picking off anyone unfortunate enough to be out in the open. I’d lost three good full-backs to them (well, two good ones and one who worked hard but, with respect, was never going to make the grade).
‘Keep up, son,’ I scolded Barrington12 as he slowed to stare into the window of the library.
‘SORRY, KEVIN KEEGAN,’ he replied with a strangely wistful air. ‘I JUST LOVE KNOWLEDGE.’
‘No harm in that,’ I told him, ‘but you’re a Barrington model – you already have everything there is to know about everything stored in your data banks. You’d never know it to look at you, but you’re probably the smartest guy in this Compound. You won’t learn anything new in the library.’
‘ALL LIFE IS THERE,’ he replied sadly.
A robot in the midst of an existential crisis. Just what I bloody needed.
‘Come on,’ I said, ‘we need to stop Gerry going mad with the ice cream; I’m not made of money. If he’s given them double scoops, I’m going to absolutely kick off.’
As we hurried towards Giuseppe’s, the pleasant Italian restaurant beside the post office, a low rumbling sound could be heard.
‘PLEASE BE AWARE – I DETECT A SIZEABLE VEHICLE HEADING IN THIS DIRECTION.’
‘A what? There’s nothing like that here; the Compound’s pedestrianised,’ I said. ‘Are you quite sure they cleaned all the gunk out of your system?’
‘BARRINGTON12 ADVISES IMMEDIATE REMOVAL OF OUR PERSONS FROM THE CENTRE OF THE PATH,’ he went on. ‘OR IMMINENT DEATH IS PREDICTED WITH AN 83% CHANCE.’
The rumbling got louder and I couldn’t deny that it sounded like the engine of a large vehicle. We hurried over to huddle in the doorway of Flix as other Compound residents also scattered, looking equally confused as to what was happening.
I watched in dismay as it came round the corner – a large, black hulking mass on six wheels, each one taller than I was. A member of the Compound Guard was behind the wheel, eyes obscured by his intimidating black visor, and I had no doubt there were other guards packed into the back of the tank-like monstrosity. On the roof was mounted an enormous machine gun with another visored figure sitting behind it, his thick-gloved hands resting keenly by the trigger. I’d heard of the Harbingers before but had never seen one of the behemoths up close – they were the most disturbing sight I had ever seen (and I once rode a tandem bike with Arsène Wenger sitting in front of me while his shorts snagged under the seat and got pulled all the way down). In a small jeep following behind sat the members of the Compound Council, no doubt being provided with a demonstration by Leigh, their fellow Council member, of precisely how their finances were being spent. Bloody show-off. The jeep passed quickly, a glass-eyed guard behind the wheel, but I glimpsed them all huddled in the back, some deep in conversation – miserable Doreen McNab from the education board; Sir Michael Bowes-Davies, the eccentric philanthropist; Dr Andre Pebble-Mill, the Compound chief of medicine; and then Gillian herself, gazing forlornly out of the window – they must have picked her up very shortly after I left her office.
‘That’s… not good,’ I said in a quiet voice as the Harbinger rumbled past. I glanced up and there in the passenger seat on the near side to us, wearing a guard uniform decorated with medals but sans helmet, was the man himself – General Lawrence Leigh, head of the Compound military. He looked deep in thought, a grave expression on his craggy grey face. Our eyes met briefly and I could feel his disdain burning right into me. I gave as good as I got – I’m not scared of that arsehole. If he thinks I’m going to be intimidated by someone driving around with a machine gun attached to his vehicle then he hasn’t seen me deal with Steve McManaman after he’s swigged nine bottles of Sunny Delight and customised his Mercedes. I’m no pushover.
Moments later the vehicle was beyond us, turning a corner and vanishing from sight.
‘THAT
