Expiration Day Read online

  They caught Dad trying to sneak his AllInFone out of the room. There’s a detector at the other door, which picks up the keepalives that all AllInFones have to transmit by law, and a very polite porter informed him, “You can’t take that with you, sir.”

  “Oh, I didn’t realize…”

  Which was a complete lie. Daddy, you’ll have to confess that to the bishop—I was watching in the mirror, and I saw you look round most furtively as you sneaked it into your pocket.

  We went down to the lobby.

  It was fascinating. I’ve done a project on the ’60s and ’70s, with all the fast-changing styles, and this place captured them all. Everyone was glammed up for the disco, our opening event. Everyone was covered in glitter and makeup—Dad had done a mini-strop in the room, when he realized that everyone meant everyone—and the clothing was equally over the top.

  Platform shoes.

  Huge shades.

  Flares.

  Hot pants.

  Yep. I was wearing hot pants. Lilac hot pants. They’re like shorts, but mine had a bib front and it went over a plain white blouse that was all frills and cuffs. Short little white gym socks—cute (not)—and the unevolved distant ancestors of a pair of trainers. I’d nearly had my own strop, but Dad beat me to it, and you don’t show up your dad by out-stropping him.…

  It was truly awful. Not least, because I still have preteen legs—like sticks, they are. There’s a word for legs like mine. Gangly. I count my knees, sometimes, and I know I have just two, one on each leg. But dressed like that, I felt like it was more—a lot more, with different numbers on each leg. And hot pants are designed to go over a proper bottom and hips, and I don’t have either yet.

  Mum and Dad, of course, were now throwing themselves into character; they were loving it. Dad was wearing near-luminous green flares and a sleeveless knitted jumper over a magenta shirt with a huge collar. I love my dad to bits, of course, but nothing could have been better designed to show off his pot belly. Mum … well, Mum had ended up in a pale lime party frock with orange polka dots. And she’d chosen to wear platform shoes, so she was … wobbling. Now Mum has a nice trim figure—she exercises regularly, plays squash and tennis with some of the other young mums of the parish. So she shouldn’t have been able to wobble. Yet, wearing those shoes, she quivered.… It was just gross, and I really wanted to hide. If you ever manage to break the encryption on my AllInFone, Mum, and you’re reading this, I’m sorry, but that’s the honest truth, written for Mister Zog.

  But there wasn’t anywhere to hide. I looked around me and the scene was repeated twenty-, no, forty-fold, with minor variations. The worst excesses of 1970s dress, rolled up into a lobby-full of garishly attired holidaymakers, making their way toward the temple of tastelessness that is a grown-ups’ disco.

  It wasn’t just adults, of course. This was a family holiday, and I wasn’t too surprised to see myself in duplicate. Not literally, of course, but dotted around were a dozen or so embarrassed kids from maybe ages seven to thirteen, trying hard not to look at their parents, trying not to be seen by anyone at all.

  We drifted over to the dance floor and found a family table. There was another family at the next table, with a young lad, who looked about my age, plus or minus. He smiled at us, a big, freckly smile beaming out from under a ginger mop. I nodded back, and his mum caught the motion, and she smiled, too. It wasn’t long before we’d pulled the tables together, and the adults were chattering away. And then my dad and his dad were wandering off to the bar to get drinks.

  “What’s your name?”

  I didn’t catch on at first. Ginger Mop was talking, but I didn’t register the words. I’d been looking at Mum kind of sideways. Actually, now she’d sat down she’d stabilized, and was back to Trim Mum again.

  “What’s your name?”

  “We’re the Deeleys.”

  He looked annoyed.

  “I know that. What’s your name?”

  “I’m Tania.”

  I really didn’t want to say any more than that. The disco was playing early Bowie—“The Jean Genie,” I think—and I was worried Ginger Mop was going to ask me to dance. Then he’d count my knees, and it would be some large odd number, and he’d laugh, and I’d have to kill him, and they’d throw me in jail—end of holiday.

  “John.”

  “What?” I really wasn’t with it.

  “John. My name’s John. You can use it, you know, if you want to attract my attention.”

  “I’d tagged you as Ginger Mop.”

  I didn’t want company, at least, not some robot kid, so frankly, I was trying to be rude. Just a little bit, but it was water off a duck’s back to him. He just grinned and pushed his fingers through his hair.

  “Yeah, it is pretty scruffy. I could get a job as a mop, too. So if you’re going to call me Ginger Mop, what do I call you? Raven?”

  “I suppose so.”

  Well, my hair is pretty black, and I didn’t mind him noticing. He was so determinedly friendly and cheerful, too, and he wasn’t at all put off by my get-lost tactics.

  “Well, then, Miss Tania Raven Deeley, how about a smile and a hello for John Ginger Mop Czern?”

  I smiled briefly and nodded hello. Without much thinking, I raised my hand and carefully brushed back a stray black hair. He grinned back at me, and futilely pushed his own wild locks back, only for one to drop straight back in front of his bright blue eyes. I couldn’t help myself, and gave him a broad grin in return. For a robot, he was an all right human.

  “Okay, John. I give up. I’m friendly.”

  “That’s better.”

  It turned out Mr. and Mrs. Czern were from London. They owned a little corner shop, selling groceries, magazines, what-have-you. If you needed something and you couldn’t be bothered to get the car out for a trip to the supermarket, the Czerns would sell it to you. John helped out in the shop, when he wasn’t at school or doing his homework.

  “I help out quite a lot. They treat me a bit like a servant. You know: do this, do that…”

  “Don’t you have a domestic robot to help?” But I knew what the answer would be.

  “No. We don’t make much money in the shop. Enough for a decent holiday. A robot, though, that would be a luxury.”

  Two robots, I thought. Two robots would be a luxury. The first robot is a necessity. And I thought of that gift of clunky old Soames. If my parents hadn’t had good genes, there was no way they could have afforded even that necessity.

  “I know. Dad’s a vicar, so we don’t have much money, either. We were given our robot, secondhand.”

  Our conversation was getting rapidly depressing. Any longer, and we’d be crying into our drinks. Which reminded me, where were the dads with the drinks?

  Right on cue, they appeared out of the faceless crowd, Dad leading the way and Mr. Czern carrying the drinks on a tray. Mr. Czern served everyone from the tray. He was a round, jovial man, quite short, and he chuckled and flourished as he doled out the glasses.

  “Babycham for the ladies. Watneys Red Barrel for the men. And a cola for the kids. Pretty authentic, huh?”

  I wondered how he could be so sure. As Dad drank his Red Barrel he grimaced, and I asked myself, if a beer were that awful, why would anybody have kept the recipe for more than eighty years?

  I caught John’s eye, and I think he must have been thinking something similar, because he mimicked Dad’s grimace, and then pantomimed tipping the beer away. He winked, and I winked back, and took a sip of my own drink.

  Yeuch! It was foul! Cloying and sweet. Another recipe that should have been left in the vault …

  I don’t think I’ll dwell on the awfulness of that disco. Or indeed the rest of that week. The ’70s music was perhaps the best bit, but what did Dickens say? “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.…” Perhaps it was true of the ’70s, too, except I didn’t see any wisdom on show at the theme park.

 
All in all, the ’70s was a dreadful decade. One night they gave us all candles to take to our rooms, and then they staged a power cut. One moment we were all watching a grainy Panorama documentary on the TV (yes, a TV) about the energy crisis, and the next moment, the lights went off, and the picture shrank to a glowing point. There was a faint glow from the TV screen—just enough to find the candles. I think they cheated a bit, with hidden lighting in the walls, so nobody tripped over anything and broke a leg. In five minutes, everybody was stepping out of their rooms holding lit candles, and making their way, yes, down to the bar. Strangely, nobody complained that there was power for the beer pumps.…

  The high point was a trip to a coal mine. It was a reconstruction, of course, and we used a simulator to take us “underground.” I’d got sort of used to us being with the Czerns, and I liked John’s sense of humor. So when we were all dressed up in orange overalls and hard hats, it seemed pretty natural to let him take my hand and lead me through the ill-lit tunnels.

  They didn’t go anywhere, of course—no more than ten or twenty meters in total, with a couple of twists and short side passages to make it vaguely interesting. And everywhere there were the oohs and aahs of the tourists, and the drone of the guide talking about “the last decade in which Britain could truly be said to have a mining industry” or the “naked grasping after power of the unions.” It didn’t make a lot of sense, but it sounded very grand.

  And so it came to the last day. There was a gala party in the bar, with a Slade tribute band. It was glittery and loud, and they stomped about on giant platform shoes, singing “Gudbye T’ Jane” and “Cum on Feel the Noize.”

  In between songs John had asked me for my PTI—my public TeraNet ID—and I was in a turmoil. Should I give it to him? I mean, he was nice, but he was only a robot. With a wild ginger mop that wouldn’t obey orders, plus very cute freckles.

  What am I saying?

  Oh, dear, Zog. I think I’ve got my first crush on a boy. Because I gave him my PTI, and we danced—me in my ridiculous hot pants and all my knees showing—and I gave him a little peck on the cheek when I thought Mum and Dad were looking the other way. And then the band played “Far Far Away” and we danced close and I whispered to him, “Are you real?” And my heart leaped as he replied, “Yes, I am real.”

  INTERVAL 1

  A remarkable find. Truly remarkable. I cross the galaxy to find the first records of the Dawn Civilization and I find this. Encrypted and forgotten, but surviving through uncounted millennia, for me to find.

  So I am your Zog, and I will learn about you, Tania Deeley, coy and precocious as I perceive you to be. I have time to listen to you, Tania Deeley, we don’t have to rush. There’s no wormhole about to close. Sadly, there are no wormholes anywhere to speed us across the universe.

  No, Tania, I came the long way, through normal space, though it has taken millennia.

  My kind has time.

  Monday, September 6, 2049

  It was back to school today. The holidays are over, and it’s a new school for me. The Lady Maud High School for Girls, and I have to take a bus from the village—past my old school—to get there.

  Such a panic from Mum this morning. Have we been practicing the route to school for weeks, or have we been practicing the route for weeks? As I leave the house, staggering under the weight of PE, hockey, and swimming kit, plus sandwiches, ruler, pens and pencils, two sharpeners and two erasers—“just in case you lose one, dear”—calculator (why? if I have an AllInFone), padlock for locker, with five—count them—five parental consent forms, she was still calling, “Have you got your bus pass?”

  And Dad was walking with me “as I have to go past the bus stop anyway,” but he wasn’t carrying anything for me “as you have to get used to it.” He wasn’t panicking—not like Mum—just being overprotective of his “little girl.”

  Girls of all ages and sizes waited at the bus stop, the older ones chattering already about where they’d been over the summer holidays. I’d already decided if I met anyone I knew, I’d stayed home all summer. I had not, repeat, not been anywhere near a theme park. If tortured, I’d admit to a visit to feudal England—that’d kill the conversation—but a trip to the 1970s? Uh-oh.

  Dad’s back disappeared round a bend in the road—I was pretty sure he’d just go round the block and return home—and I was on my own. I suddenly felt a chill—some of those other girls looked awfully tall and mean. I had to take a deep breath and remind myself that they were most likely robots, and couldn’t hurt a human.

  “Hi, Tania!”

  The friendly voice came from right next to me, and I jumped in surprise. It was Siân, a girl I knew from the village school. I’d not seen her over the holiday—she’d been away—and I was surprised to see how much she’d grown in the few short weeks. Taller, of course, but all her elbows and angles had suddenly become curves—she looked awesome—and I felt totally awkward and out of place beside her.

  And then I twigged. Siân had had a revision over the summer. Robots couldn’t grow like humans, but to preserve the illusion of humanity, they had to appear to get older. So every year or two each robot child would go back to Oxted Corporation for a week or so and emerge with a new look—the word was “revised.” The same personality, but a new body, suitably older. A standard revision was fairly basic, but was included in the contract. It didn’t look like Siân had gone for the standard revision, though.… No, it certainly wasn’t the cheap option, but Siân’s parents didn’t have to worry about such trifles, and had used the holidays to revise Siân into her early teens.

  Of course, it was bad form to mention it, so I closed my mouth, nodded hello, and then asked casually, “How was your summer, Siân? Go anywhere interesting?”

  “So-so. We went to Egypt. Daddy had to go there on business, so he took Mummy and me, too. We did the sights, took a Nile cruise. Spent a for-tune in the markets. Nothing special, just a lot of trash really, but Mummy says their economy desperately needs tourism…”

  Siân was a snob, but she was okay, so long as you let her talk about herself. At least I could be sure she wasn’t going to ask me what I’d done over the holidays.

  “… and then we had to go to Bangkok in a hurry—Daddy’s business again—and then before you could blink we were off again to Sydney. There was a marvelous production of Tannhäuser at the Opera…”

  I didn’t have to do much, just nod or grunt at the pauses. Her holiday was turning into a real world tour, but at least I didn’t have to make up any lies about being a Saxon serf.

  The bus came, we got on and sat together, and her chatter continued.

  “… and in San Francisco we met up with some old college friends of Mummy’s—the Coulsons—he’s in cybernetics and she’s a neurotronic psychiatrist…”

  So, Siân’s folks were well connected to get the best for their daughter.

  “… and I must have picked up a bug somewhere on my travels, and I had to spend a couple of days in hospital…”

  There it was, that was the revision.

  “… but I got a simply lovely private recovery suite, Tania, and the travel insurance paid for it.”

  No—Mummy and Daddy have deep pockets, Siân, dear, but it would be so crass to mention it. Oops, I just did, didn’t I, Mister Zog? Will you forgive Tania a little envy?

  “Oh, and Tania, I did think of you while I was there. It got so lonely, but then I’d think of you stuck in this ghastly hole of a village and I didn’t mind so much. And when I got out, Mummy took me shopping in Haight-Ashbury and I bought you this genuine Grateful Dead ‘Wake of the Flood’ tour button—really rare, they said, but I know you’re into the 1970s. I hope you like it.”

  I was really touched. Well, sort of. Siân had thought of another person, however briefly, and she had even paused in her monologue to let me acknowledge it.

  “Thank you, Siân, that’s so kind of you. And it’s lovely.”

  Well, it was. Just totally inappropriate, given my
own summer, but she wasn’t to know that. And I’d sworn to tell nobody about the theme park. So I smiled. Noblesse oblige, and all that. I mean, she’s just a robot doing her best, so how could I knock her down?

  Senior school, I soon learned, is pretty awful. It’s not like first school, where the parents are just around the corner and close enough to take a real interest in their child’s progress. By the time we get to big school, a lot of parents are getting weary of the whole charade, and they let the school do what they want. In the case of the Lady Maud High School for Girls, they do still care somewhat, but most of the inner-city schools are pretty bad, I hear.

  Lady Maud was a wealthy Victorian widow, we learned, who had used much of her late husband’s copper fortune to endow a modest school “for young ladies of whatever social class that do display an aptitude for learning … so that all God’s gifts in them shall be nurtured to the fullest degree.” Successive governments had recognized the worthiness of that Good Lady’s earnest intentions, and had invested taxpayers’ money to create a school that had hovered just outside the very top academic bracket for a little over a century.

  But educating robots was not a government priority, and didn’t the teachers know it. The school was falling into ruin. Some of the buildings were boarded up, and I could see holes in the roof of one block. When we gathered for assembly in Main Hall, we rattled around in a cavernous space built to hold twice our number.

  The Head Mistress—Mrs. Golightly—welcomed us to Lady Maud’s. She—Mrs. Golightly—spoke briefly about the Great Traditions of the School, about our Oxbridge Achievements and the Daughters of the School who had achieved High Office or other Greatness. She spoke like that, too. I mean, you could hear the capital letters. Once or twice I swear I could almost see them.

  “She said the same thing last year,” whispered a voice from behind me.

  “Word for word,” agreed her neighbor.