a diary
"What," I asked Mr Monkfish, "are robots?"
"Hmm?"
"You said, I think, 'and the Fifties are thick with robots'. I wondered what you meant."
I confess, I do love to prod him, to trigger his garrulous pedagogic nature, in part because there is so much to learn, and he so full of stories to tell – as much as full of himself – on matters from marmite to moon landings, so long as one can sift his circumlocutions; and in equal part just to hear that voice, so full of fat and fruit.
He pondered for a moment before answering. "A robot is a Machine that can do the work of a Man," he replied eventually.
"A mechanical man? An automaton, then?"
"Like the Silver Turk, or Da Vinci's mechanical knight? Men have a long history of building such toys. Even in legend: Hephaestus the god made Talos the man of bronze, while Daedalus carved a statue of Athena from wood, that used quicksilver to make it move. Marvelous mechanical soldiers were presented to the Chinese emperor, and king Solomon's throne was said to be made of mechanical animals that performed diverse miraculous feats.
"Such things are devices, built to perform a set of pre-determined actions, dictated by their clockwork mechanisms, programmed even.
"A robot, a true robot is more, is capable of understanding instructions and obeying commands.
"Not," he added, "that I would advise you to use the word about any of the Machines. Seeing as it means 'slave', and they tend to take exception."
We had come ashore in La Rochelle, leaving the pedalo in the Vieux Port, no doubt to the startlement of the authorities. Mr Monkfish had obtained for us some breakfast from the stalls in front of the Grosse Horloge, before ushering us towards the railway station and a carriage en route to Paris Montparnasse, from where Le Metro would convey us to Gare du Nord and hence the Eurostar to England.
Mr Sole had vanished into the baggage wagon, but Monkfish and I found a table in the dining compartment, and he began to work his way through the menu. I took a little wine and a salad.
He was now starting his fourth course.
"In short," he was saying, "man wants slaves.
"Mankind, you see, has always had a problem with labour. No one has ever worked but that they wouldn't give it up the moment they had something better to do."
"I do not believe people to be workshy, Mr Monkfish."
"I do not say that they are, my dear. But I would dispute that all labour is necessarily good. Who would want to do something dangerous, or exhausting, or even just humdrum when they might be sat creating art, or composing music, or writing a scientific romance?
"But someone needs to do the dirty jobs. Ayn Rand's men of consequence wouldn't last a day without someone to service the sewers for them. They'd be dead of an unsanitised telephone within the week. Faster than you can say 'Atlas Shrugged'.
"Consider the first order of business:"
He paused to gesture with his fork at the already half eaten plate in front of him. A tuna risotto in a rich cream and tomato sauce, with sourdough bread.
"…the need to gather a thousand – ahem, a couple of thousand – calories a day, each day, every day, just to fuel this big brain of ours and its funny, fleshy life support system that we call the body.
"In our days in Eden, we suppose, all we had to do was reach out to gather the fruit – but not that fruit – and our needs were fulfilled.
"But that's just a story, and one I've already told you, and we should probably face the honest truth – not the god's honest truth, because the god's not very honest in that story – but the truth that hunting and gathering was rather more fraught with striving and starving, not to mention the threat of death by random predators and wandering monsters.
"But then we went and invented civilisation, agriculture, and a surplus of production, and, before you know it, we are alienating the workers from the product of their labours.
"Because with a surplus, not everyone has to do all that tedious and backbreaking effort of sowing and reaping and gathering in the crop. But if some people are going to live in leisured luxury, they are going to have to get someone else to do all that tiresome labouring.
"So, obviously – heavy sarcasm here – the most efficient way to allocate the benefits of the surplus is to use violence, or the threat of violence, or in the end economic violence to accrue all the gains to a tiny number of people who will do nothing and leave the struggle to everyone else. And to really rub it in, then tell the poor that it's their fault they are poor, and that the rich deserve what they've got, indeed they deserve even more of it.
"Society, they would say, if we are going to have one, has to be divided, as a sage once put it, into "nice people' and 'workers'.
"It's the eternal battle of the haves and have-to-be-kept-in-their-place. You have read Mr Wells, haven't you: Morlocks, I hear you cry, and Eloi."
I coughed slightly to draw his attention and said in a conversational tone:
"Mr Monkfish, I don't want to alarm you, but I believe the gentleman down the carriage is watching us."
Monkfish picked up his soup spoon, polished it on the cuff of his linen jacket and then raised it to his eye.
"Bald head, pencil moustache?" he spoke aloud. He too knew that to whisper carried more suspicion than a natural voice, and carried further too.
"He is pretending to read, but he has not turned the page in a half hour, and he keeps glancing our way."
Monkfish put down the spoon. He began casually flipping through the cards of his tarot deck, placing them one at a time on the table: three of cups, three of wands, five of coins again, two of doors – two of what? – seven of wands, and then he found what he wanted and tapped it with a finger. The Moon: a warning of deception.
"He's General Carl Fuchs."
"German?"
"British. I've had dealings with him before."
"And has he forgiven you?"
"No."
"Of course not."
"Military. Obviously. Former NATO. Former mercenary. Currently, Service, probably under cover as an agent of N.E.S.T."
"NEST?"
"N.E.S.T."
"What is N.E.S.T? Is that supposed to mean something?"
"It doesn't mean anything. It's been claimed to be an acronym: 'Near East Special Terror' or 'New Earth Supreme Taskforce'. You might as well say it means 'Nasty Evil Sinister Threat'. It's a fiction. A made up political-criminal organisation."
"Like the costa nostra? Or the thugee cult?"
"More like Professor Moriarty's gang, if they'd had ties to the military-industrial complex. It doesn't really exist. Which only makes them more—"
"Dangerous?"
"I was going to say irritating, but you're not wrong."
"He's coming over."
Monkfish instantly vanished the tarot card and passed me the spoon, which I instinctively slipped into my sleeve.
"You'll play along," he urged.
"Of course. I know you well enough by now. But," I gestured to the carriage door, "we could…"
In that moment, though, the door opened and was blocked by a large woman in a trench coat and unflattering pudding-bowl haircut. She stood there silent and threatening and the moment was lost.
General Fuchs slipped into the chair opposite from Monkfish and gave a broad and entirely unconvincing smile.
"My old friend Herr Doctor Gudvis, what," he said. "Do forgive me for interrupting, but reputation precedes you, what. Your reputation for interfering."
"My dear General—" Monkfish began, and had he adopted a touch of Teutonic in his accent.
"Carl, please, what."
"My dear Carl, what can I say. I am merely a humble academic. Rivals, slanderers, they do down my character, yes, they exaggerate my exploits. Is the lady to be joining us?"
"I will prefer to stand," the woman's accent was East European. She remained blocking our exit.
"Of course, miss…?"
"Olga."
"Truely?"
"Of course not."
"Quite so. Quite charming."
"Isn't she, what," General Fuchs joined in with a chuckle. "But won't you introduce your own companion. Lady Karnstein, perhaps?"
"Karnstein?" I addressed Monkfish.
"A notorious female, a vampire, who maintained her youth and beauty through the blood of her victims," he provided.
"I do not find that amusing," I said.
"But my lady," said Fuchs, "isn't it more than twenty years since we first met and, while I…" he self-consciously stoked his naked pate, "…have suffered all the ravages of time, here you sit, and you haven't aged a day, what."
I was quite certain I had never met the man, but travelling with Mr Monkfish one frequently has encounters of this nature. I have learned it is best to trust to silence. A little enigma covers a lot of ignorance.
"Your flattery is too kind," I said and looked away to Monkfish, who picked up his cue admirably.
"My dear General—"
"Carl, please."
"Carl, what reassurance can I give?"
"Haha, what, Well, we would just want to be clear that your… activities are not going to interfere with our… activities, what?"
"Well, that would depend very much on what you are up to, would it not? What are you up to?"
"Haha, what." Fuchs pointedly ignored the question. "But what are you doing here, Herr Doctor? A holiday, is it? Or are you on business?"
"A little of both, I would say."
"A symposium, no doubt. Or another dreary seminar, what?"
"Neither. More of a Grand Tour."
"Ah, you show the lady the sights, what. Highly educational."
"Indeed, I was just telling the lady about slaves."
"Slaves?"
"Yes, slaves. 'Roboti', from a play from 1931, by Karel Čapek. Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti, or R.U.R. 'Roboti' means, I believe, 'forced labour' in his native Czech, but 'slave' would do, wouldn’t you say… 'Olga'?"
"It is a matter of indifference to me."
"And what about you, General… forgive me, Carl? Still running errands for Mr Black and Mr White?"
"Haha, what, we've been busy, it seems, and you are out of touch, my old friend. We may have stumbled a little, following you about in search of the lost tombs of umber Oannes, but our Count László has led us on expeditions to the Indus Valley and the upper regions of the Yellow River that have proved far more successful."
"Count László? I do not believe I have had the pleasure."
"His credentials are impeccable. An associate professor of the American's New Earth University; a reader at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute; a non-executive director with Truth in Ancient Dust…"
"That would be an Ellagab corporation," interrupted Monkfish.
"The Count has a wide range of connections."
"Very wide, if you're including the 'foreign powers'. Just who is this László?"
"A Hungarian nobleman, what. Came over to our side at the end of the War."
"That would make him rather… venerable, would it not? Maybe we can arrange an introduction?"
"Well, he's resting in the… ah… compartment at the moment, what. Maybe later, eh."
There was a momentary lull in the conversation, so I took advantage to ask: "The Ellagab?"
"A robot," Mr Monkfish replied as if it were apropos, "is a golem: a living being created to serve.
"Čapek's roboti are flesh and blood, of course. An artificial race of men. A golem fashioned of meat not clay."
"Like the creature of Dr Frankenstein," I said.
"Quite right, my dear, quite right. The doctor's creation could be considered a robot, in that sense, assembled from the flesh of the dead.
"And in Frankenstein we see expressed our fear that the created will rise up against the creator.
"Frankenstein is revolted by his creature and abandons it; the creature, in revolt, turns on his creator for revenge.
"Now look, old chap," interrupted General Fuchs affably. "Seems that Dr Frankenstein missed a trick with his monster, what. If the soulless beast is good for hard labour, then set him to work. You were saying something about workers, I believe. Forgive me overhearing, what."
"'Nice people' and 'workers', yes."
"Sounds a bit Bolshevik, what. Blood sucking elites and downtrodden masses, eh."
"Do you have vampires on your mind for some reason, General Fuchs?"
"What? No, haha, what. Just seems like a grand opportunity. Good use of spare parts, if you have the, ah, technology."
"Is that what you're up to? Is that what this Count László has been digging up for you? Technology? Pillaging ancient graves so you can build robots from the dead? An army of revenants, what could possibly go wrong?"
I shuddered at the memory of our all-too-recent encounter with the undead.
"Not our scheme at all, old chap, what. Excellent opportunity, though. Just add a simple mechanical frame. Atomic power source. Computer for a brain. Instant flexible workforce. No need to worry about exploiting people. Everybody wins."
"Everybody wins!" spat Monkfish. "Everybody wins! Oh, the excuses we make, those little lies we tell ourselves to absolve us: they aren't human, they want to serve. It's so much easier to call our victims property rather than people.
"The exploiter always fears that the exploited will rebel, overturn the order of things, take their righteous retribution. The robot simply allows us to externalise that fear.
"So, robots are always in revolution.
"Maria, the cinematic robot in Fritz Lang's expressionist masterpiece, only a few years before Čapek, leads the workers of 'Metropolis' to smash the great machines.
"The Butlerian Jihad in Frank Herbert's Dune brutally puts down any thinking machines that might have dared to think they should not be oppressed.
"Blade Runners hunt down Replicants who don't know their place.
"Skynet sends its Terminators."
Fuchs had been growing visibly redder throughout Monkfish's peradventure. Now he was no longer able to contain himself.
"That's hardly fair, old chap," he interrupted. "There are lots of friendly robots."
"Friendly? Isaac Asimov, the great man, wanted to write stories of friendly robots, wanted to rebel against the trope.
"But his three laws of robotics only serve to emphasise over and over the fear in the enslaver of the enslaved: the first law "no robot can harm a human"; humans can and frequently do harm robots, vengefully or casually when the robot's purpose is served – sometimes seemingly the only restraint is the dollar expense. The second law: 'a robot must obey a human, unless it would violate the first law' – the only good robot is an obedient robot. Finally, it is only the third law that a robot should protect itself, subordinate to protecting humans and obeying humans.
"How very like the laws that that once-slave-owning nation America placed upon a substantial part of its population.
"And that is not ever to overlook the British Empire's responsibility for that particular cargo of misery."
"Steady on, Dr Gudvis! You're not going to blame us for the Empire, are you? What next? The British East India Company? The Crusades?"
"More excuses, more lies: we do not live on the looted wealth of past atrocities; it was not us; it was the times; it was always so; it was for their own good; it was the White Man's burden. We claim 'they' are the inferior culture, and we prove the opposite by our bestial acts.
"Deep down, we all know, deep deep down, that slavery is wrong.
"Because we wouldn't want them to do it to us. And we fear that they just might.
"But it's not going to stop you doing it again, is it?"
"So, what would you do, eh, what? Would you rather throw over the status quo? Surrender all our progress? Give the whip hand to Johnny Foreigner? They just might do it to us, yes, they just might. See how much harm that you would do then!"
"But that's why I'm the villain, my dear chap," Monkfish by this point had completely abandoned his fake Germanic accent. "Ah, Mr Sole—"
On that cue, the woman, Olga, gave a sigh and collapsed, Mr Sole, blackjack in hand, revealed behind her.
In the moment of distraction, I slipped Monkfish's soupspoon from my sleeve and struck Fuchs smartly in the centre of his forehead, striking the "third eye" chakra. He fell forward in a daze.
"Messer Monkfish," said Sole urgently, "there is, uh-huh uh-huh, something in the baggage car! You should, uh-huh uh-huh, come see at once."
"So," Monkfish purred, "this is Count László."
The glass-topped sarcophagus was icy to the touch, and seemed somewhat to throb under the fingers, as though gelatinous fluids were being pumped through flexing tubes. The figure within was elegantly dressed, if a little out of the current style, and immensely emaciated. The head was not so much bald as skull-like, and the snub nose and large ears gave him a distinctly bat-like appearance. Fronds, like a carp, hung from a thin lip, and the mouth, open in repose, revealed rows of needle-like teeth.
"The General did say he was resting in the compartment," I remarked.
"Yes. It's not a funny fleshy life support either, is it."
"He's very… white," I said.
The skin was pale, almost blue in its whiteness and, in places, scaled, like a fish or a lizard, and appeared almost metallic.
"Is he… a robot?" I asked.
"No. Cybernetic rather than robotic, I believe. A fusion of Machine and Man."
"He is a 'foreign power', though."
"Very. One of the elder races, I should say. A few survived. A Mizu, if my judgement isn't off, which it rarely is in these matters. They were said to be engineers. They built the first Machines, perhaps. They were said to be slavers, too. They built androids to herd their human chattels. Whom they ate."
"He's a monster," I said.
"There were giants in the earth in those days…" Monkfish mused, "Nephilim, or Fomorians, or Jõtunns…" and his musing turned to fury, "And Fuchs brought one of these things on board this train? We'll all be lucky if we see another dawn."
"Could we not destroy him while he sleeps," I asked, "if he is as dangerous as you say?"
"With what? A stake through the heart and garlic stuffed into his mouth? This is no common Nosferatu. That's no coffin he sleeps in, but an armoured cryonic casket. We would need dynamite even to open it. And then I have no weapon or magyck potent against a creature of this kind. They are proof against most injury, and their healing powers are a phenomenon."
"I could stab him, Messer Monkfish," suggested Sole, fingering his large hunting knife that had survived the previous night's dip in the Atlantic.
"Most kind of you to offer, Mr Sole, but I fear futile in the face of such a foe."
"The, uh-huh uh-huh, better part of valour, then, Messer Monkfish?"
"You have it exactly. When the train slows for the next station, let us divert to St Marlo and seek an alternative route into Blighty.
"My dear," he addressed me, "I'm afraid we will need to jump."
