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In the years that followed the case of the droid
child-minder, public opinion had gradually become more divided over the
droids. The Government of the time became increasingly reluctant to give
information about the number of droids in existence, and the nature of the
work they did, which fuelled people's suspicions. Generally it was the manual
and lower-paid workers that became more hostile to the droids as they had
taken many dangerous and dirty jobs in mining, industry, and agriculture.
From very early on the labour movements had fought for and obtained an agreement
that allowed a human to displace a droid in any job. In practice, however
people found it hard to work alongside droids in the same kind of occupation.
The Government's view was that people found the work demeaning and beneath
them. However there was a widespread suspicion that it was made deliberately
difficult for people to work with droids, for example by establishing long
shifts.
At some time in this period the Anti-Droid League was founded. Elements
of the Anti-Droid League were drawn from groups that came to be called the
Primitivists or Survivalists. Bored youths from the rural areas were attracted
to the League by its philosophy of violence towards the droids. The lingering
fears of droid superiority could be dispelled for these people by their
vicious and senseless attacks on them. The League maintained that the quality
of life on the Continent was being undermined by the droids. They held very
traditional views on the roles of men and women and despised the what they
called the soft and decadent life that droid-won prosperity had brought.
In the cities it had become fashionable in recent years for some of the
young to dress like droids and display a rather indiscriminate and reckless
sexuality. Worse still as far as the League was concerned were reports of
'sexual' relations between people and droids. For a long time however the
League was not outlawed, and the number of prosecutions against its members
remained small.
As the Anti-Droid League (or A.D. League, or ADL as it came to be known)
grew in strength, so also did an opposing tendency. This was a gradual dawning
of a view that the droids were more than machines. Possibly the work of
Xalatrius was an influence; cyberneticians picked up on his neglected paper
and began to work on his ideas. These ideas and their developments became
fashionable in certain intellectual circles but gained no official acceptance.
Research into droid mentality started to receive limited funding, but it
was another phenomenon that really advanced the cause of the droids. This
was the interest taken in their music and their abilities as entertainers,
which had developed steadily since the time of the trial of the child-minder.
Some enterprising club proprietors had obtained licenses to hire droids
for heavy work during the day, and persuaded them to play and sing at night.
Strictly speaking this was illegal, but the police turned a blind eye to
it; cynics later rumoured that this was on Government orders, as it certainly
improved the popularity of the droids.
Noel in his reading, was trying to piece together droid history from this
period. In particular he was interested in how the Civil War Agreement became
amended and finally brought about the establishment of the New Constitution
and the emancipation of the droids. With the New Constitution androids had
been finally officially been recognised as people, and were allowed to vote
and given the same legal rights as the rest of the population.
During the brief period between jobs his increased leisure time also allowed
Noel to reflect more upon himself. The greater time he now had for introspection
caused his dreams and odd memory lapses to intensify. Noel was concerned
about the dreams he had. It was well known that androids dreamed; early
work with intelligent machines showed that some parallel to the human facility
for dreaming greatly improved their performance. What bothered Noel was
the content of some of his dreams; there was undoubtedly a growing violence
in them. After the incident with the musical instrument at the factory and
the attack in the car park Noel dreamed several times about the supervisor.
In the dreams Noel was resisting his attacker ....
After a few weeks Noel was cleared of residual radiation and he prepared
himself for his move to the Capital. The car he had used would stay with
the hostel; he said goodbye to it and his droid friends as they left for
work as usual. Noel walked with his bag to the SkyTrain terminal from where
the overhead express system would take him to his destination. Air and sea
travel had been outlawed for centuries now, but people's fantasy of flying
still appeared in various forms; the name of the official rail system was
one. Noel boarded the train and sat down in an almost empty compartment.
One thing that he had gathered in reading about the period before the New
Constitution was that droids in those days had to travel in separate compartments
to people, a sort of 3rd class fare.
After a journey of several hours, through the varied countryside of the
middle Continent, the train approached the Capital. At the outskirts, several
stops before Noel's destination, a group of youths boarded the train, a
little way down the articulated section from Noel. They shouted and sang
coarse songs, and kicked empty cans and bottles around. Gradually they came
up the carriage to where Noel was sitting. When they spotted him they came
over and sat in a group around him.
"What's your number then?" asked one, accenting the word 'number'
in a contemptuous fashion.
"Number Eight," replied Noel.
"Rhymes with hate, don't it?" said another.
"Ha, ha, ha," they all laughed.
Talking over Noel's head one said to another:
"I've heard that droids are very obedient,"
"Yeah, so have I."
Affecting a mock-polite tone the first said:
"Please Mr. Droid, would you mind standing up a moment?"
Taken unawares by the change in tone, Noel stood up.
"You can sit down now," said the other. Noel sat down, puzzled.
"Naah, I said stand up."
Noel stood up again.
"Sit down."
Noel sat.
"Stand up."
Noel hesitated and then refused, shaking his head. They all burst out laughing.
"Aah, dear, our droid friend has got bored of our game. Ain't that
a shame."
The speaker kicked a bottle down the corridor. It clattered along the scuffed
metal surfaces. There was an awkward silence, then another of the youths
said:
"Please number Hate, would you open the window?"
Ignoring the insult, Noel shrugged his shoulders and did as requested. The
wind roared past, punctuated by the sound of the support columns whooshing
as they went by.
"Oh look over there," said one.
"Oh yeah."
"Fancy that."
Turning to Noel again, one of them said:
"Look at that." He pointed to a tall chimney in the distance.
"What is it?" said Noel leaning forward for a better view.
"Its a droid crematorium!" they all shouted, and pushed Noel violently
from behind. He only just managed to prevent himself from being thrown out
of the moving train, but as he struggled one of the support columns approached
him at breathtaking speed. At that moment an alarm sounded, and his persecutors
were distracted. Noel pulled himself back in again just in time to prevent
himself from being decapitated. It all happened so quickly; he could just
see a young woman holding on to the alarm cord, white-faced.
His attackers, seeing that the woman was spoiling their fun, forgot about
Noel and advanced on her in a menacing fashion. In a daze Noel realised
that the train was slowing down; he could hear the footsteps of the guards
running down the corridor. They reached the woman just before the youths
did, and they drifted away from her, swaggering and whistling tunelessly.
The young woman told the guards what had happened, she pointed to Noel.
"I'm fed up of clearing up bits of twitching droid remnants after you
lot have been mucking around!" shouted one of the guards angrily at
the youths. They found this highly amusing.
"Twitching droid remnants!" they screamed with laughter.
"I'm going to call my dog that!" shouted one of them, and they
doubled up.
"Be an insult to your dog though," said another.
"Yeah, I suppose so," agreed the first.
"For God's sake," muttered the guard and pushed them aside. He
came up to Noel.
"No damage then?"
"No."
"You won't be making any charges I suppose?"
Noel was too confused to think. He just shook his head mechanically.
"I thought not."
By this time the train had pulled into the next terminal and the youths
disappeared. The guards stomped off down the corridors leaving Noel alone.
The young woman came over to him. Hurriedly she handed him a piece of paper
and said:
"You are obviously new in town. Why don't you come and look us up?
I belong to a group that has been set up to encourage a better understanding
between people and androids."
Without waiting for a reply she turned and got off the train. Noel sat and
tried to gather his wits together; he absent-mindedly pushed the paper into
his pocket. A few stops later, Noel had to get out himself, and as he became
occupied with finding his new hostel, he calmed down and pushed the incident
out of his mind.
The next day Noel rose early and sought out his new place of work, the newspaper
office. He met his overseer, a man named George. George was a journalist
in his forties and wore a drooping moustache and a slightly world-weary
air. He introduced Noel to the office and to his new work. Noel's job was
to take audio recordings from George and the other journalists on the staff,
and turn them into first draft texts on their electronic machines. Noel
had learned the techniques of electronic word-manipulation a long time ago
in droid school so he did not take long to adapt to the new systems, and
soon became skilful in his new job. He was in a unique position now, for
he received stories from around the Continent, many of which were never
published. Noel gradually built up a picture of the current situation, which
he had hardly been aware of as a droid worker in a provincial factory.
Noel's new overseer was quite different to the previous one. George had
a very broad knowledge of current affairs, and also an interest in the history
of the Continent. In commenting on current affairs he would often place
recent incidents in the context of the attitudes prevalent during the Civil
War. Noel was anxious to ask him questions about droid history, but after
the events at the factory he was reluctant to demonstrate any interests
that could be viewed with suspicion. Noel knew that the gradual change in
his attitudes were dangerous for him.
In his new surrounding in the Capital, and without the company of droid
friends he had long known, his dreams began occasionally to turn into nightmares.
He would wake from these with a sense of fear that would hover around him
for days. Recurring scenes in his dreams such as sliding down a hill made
Noel anxious to pursue them in his sleep, to find some hidden meaning or
message. He began to draw a quiet satisfaction from having his own sense
of purpose, however unclear it was. For centuries he had been content to
serve his masters without question; he now felt that he was a child that
was beginning to grow up. As much as possible he would try and hide the
changes of mood that the dreams would bring about, however, and he discussed
them with nobody.
George, on his part, was quietly observing Noel. It had been quite a coup
for him to secure a droid to work in the office alongside so many people.
The rapid expansion of his news department had been George's excuse for
seeking an android; it was harder to find people at such short notice. George
had something of the instinct of a social scientist, a trained observer.
He had been an early supporter of the New Constitution, but had a fiercely
independent mind and found the current fashion for adopting and patronising
the droids a superficial and uncritical trend. He saw it as a reaction,
produced from some kind of guilt over droid exploitation, to which the brutalities
of the A.D. League contributed. So did the unacknowledged fear of society's
dependence on the droids, he thought. George tried to keep an open mind
about the droid's growing stature as sentient beings. The question fascinated
him intellectually, and partly for this reason he had manoeuvered for a
droid to work with him. In some ways, though, George didn't care whether
droids were people or not; he had a cynical streak.
For some months Noel worked in his new job, finding the people in the office
with their varying attitudes of faint hostility or patronising curiosity
rather distant. George occasionally tried to sound out Noel's attitudes
to current events, but Noel maintained his guard and just responded with
stereotypical remarks. His front was becoming harder to maintain however
as his dreams were becoming more vivid and disturbing, and their content
much more real. Noel could remember the dreams from his post-production
years as being symbolic, surreal, and without much emotional content. They
were now much closer to his daily life in imagery, but with a sombre and
often terrifying feeling. Often in the morning he would find it hard to
remember just where he was, or what he was supposed to be doing. Sometimes
he was left with the feeling of impending disaster.
One day he came into the office at his usual time, well before the other
staff. He was supposed to catch up with any reports that had been sent in
during the night. He sat down at the machine and stared at the screen, but
wave of dizziness overcame him, and he just sat there for some time feeling
very light-headed. For some reason an image of the sea came to him, he could
almost see waves spreading out around him in all directions to the horizon.
Absently he stared at the screen in front of him. Without being aware of
it he had typed in the phrase:
"The only way out is up."
Noel felt a jolt as he took in the little message. It meant nothing, yet
at the same time it seemed terribly significant. He read it again and this
time he experienced a jolt that went through his body and practically shook
him out of his seat. Frightened, Noel wiped out the screen.
"Too late," came a voice from behind him. Noel turned round to
see George, who had come in early for once.
"Reversion is often accompanied by mental lapses, forgetfulness, and
loss of control over the motor reflexes," George said, trying to provoke
Noel. George sat down and lit a cigarette. Noel said nothing, trying to
recover his composure. George raised his eyebrows at him.
"There is a theory you know that reversion was not restricted to the
early post-war period, but that every droid has an inherent tendency to
reversion. If it didn't show up early on, it would appear much later but
in more subtle forms."
George was referring to Xalatrius's ideas. Cases of reversion had by the
time of the New Constitution become rare, and new aspects in the behaviour
of the droids were generally accepted under their emancipation. The emancipation
of the droids, formalised under the New Constitution, had been brought about
by an unusual alliance of vested interests and liberal opinion. The A.D.
League had in a way proved its own worst enemy in that period. It had not
only stepped up random violence against the droids, but had also begun a
campaign against their liberal human supporters. This culminated in the
assassination of a leading intellectual, whose death outraged the liberal
community. Growing revulsion for the A.D. League was one driving force for
emancipation. The Government, on the other hand, though unwilling to adopt
the growing body of opinion that saw droids as people, saw that emancipation
was the only way of securing the future of the droids, and the economic
stability that the Government needed for popular support.
Noel still said nothing. George leaned forward.
"Look, I don't give a shit. You do your job pretty well, or I wouldn't
have kept you. I've just had this feeling all along that there was more
to you than meets the eye. In any case, as I say, it doesn't bother me what
goes on inside your head. I'm a pretty basic type. People to me are either
makeable, competition, or irrelevant, if you'll excuse the corny old expression."
Noel felt relieved. He didn't miss George's use of the term 'people'; it
was a gesture of friendship and acceptance. Noel, recovering quickly from
the unexpected turn of events, smiled mischievously.
"So, which am I, makeable or competition?" he asked.
George was taken aback. He stared at Noel and then burst out laughing.
"Damn you, that really takes the biscuit. You know perfectly well that
I was going to say irrelevant."
George chuckled.
"I don't know though," he said thoughtfully, squinting at Noel.
"I've had worse-looking secretaries in my time."
It was Noel's turn to laugh.
"By the way, if you don't mind my asking, what did that little phrase
mean?"
"I really don't know," replied Noel, shrugging his shoulders.
George accepted this with a nod and said nothing more about it.
That night Noel reflected on the incident; he was glad to have broken the
ice with George. The little phrase that he had typed on the machine stayed
in his mind as he drifted into sleep, and over the next months he found
himself absently repeating it in the texts he was working on. Luckily he
was always able to erase it again, but the recurrence of the phrase in his
subconscious troubled him.
The incident marked the beginning of a friendship between the android and
his supervisor. George learned to appreciate Noel, not just for his sense
of humour and easy-going and hard-working nature, but also as a companion.
Noel gradually told George about his own past, and grew to trust him enough
to confide in George some of his disturbing feelings and dreams. Noel also
learned from George more of the recent history of the Continent, though
George's views seemed tinged with a slight cynicism. George was particularly
critical of successive Governments and their motives for supporting droid
emancipation. He told Noel how, long before emancipation, some people had
started to enjoy the company of androids and supposedly had 'sexual' relations
with them. They had been persecuted and laws had been brought in prohibiting
such relations. Noel told George that he had never heard of these laws.
"That's the point I'm getting at. When emancipation finally came through
all the old laws were of course forgotten. The interesting thing is that
the Government of the time nearly got away without introducing the New Constitution
as we know it. They repealed the Androids (Immorality) Act, as it was then
called, and made a few other concessions to liberal opinion, and for a time
this acted as a sop to the emancipation movement. However, as we know, they
eventually had to formulate the New Constitution to protect their own interests."
George later described some of the consequences of emancipation, as he saw
them. Private companies or individual households could no longer 'lease'
droids from the Government any more; droids were theoretically free agents.
However, with few exceptions, they showed no inclination to make undertakings
of their own, and after a time the Government-controlled droid deployment
agencies were making use of them just as before. There was more paper-work
now, for example the droids had to sign to indicate that they were taking
jobs of their own volition. This was just a formality, nobody knew of a
droid refusing to sign.
George also told Noel about movements springing up within the Continent
that were not reported at all. Several groups had grown up around Survivalist
doctrines. These groups trained themselves in a military fashion and prepared
themselves for some kind of apocalypse to come. According to George there
were rumours that some groups in the sparsely populated regions of the North
were building boats in preparation to leave the Continent. Noel was beginning
to feel that the premonition of an impending disaster was not unique to
himself. The proliferation of small quasi-religious groups and the steady
increase in violence in the cities throughout the Continent bore witness
to this.
Despite the New Constitution, which gave androids most of the rights and
freedoms of the human populace, it was still hard for droids and people
to meet on equal terms. George created quite a scandal in the office when
he started taking Noel with him to the local cafes for lunch. Although from
a distance a droid was indistinguishable from a person, close up one could
easily spot the smooth artificial skin of an android's face, and with the
older droids a tell-tale reddening of the whites of the eyes. Androids also
tended to be a little larger than the average human. The local cafe proprietors
were not exactly used to serving droids, but as they all knew George from
way back they did not protest. Mostly they liked to humour George, and those
with A.D. sympathies hid their feelings. George may have been tied as an
editor to a certain viewpoint, but within that he could still print a lot
of trouble for an A.D. sympathiser. However, this tolerance of the droids
was only found in the cities, and even then only in certain parts.
One day, while at lunch, George told Noel of a trip he was proposing to
make. George had a few weeks holiday owing to him, and he was planning to
travel North to find out about some of the Survivalist groups. He would
not be there in his official capacity as a journalist, for he could not
publish stories about them. It was purely to satisfy his own curiosity.
George wanted to know whether Noel would like to travel with him.
"It would be impossible for you to travel as a droid with me in those
regions," he told Noel. "We would have to disguise you as a person."
"What makes you think that it can be done?"
"I've been around a bit you know. With the right kind of makeup and
clothes there would be no problem. If we were caught there would be plenty
of trouble, but I'm willing to take the risk myself. How about you?"
Noel thought about it. George's offer was far more than could be expected
from the admittedly cordial relationship between android and overseer. Noel
wanted to jump at the chance; the idea of passing himself off as a human
also appealed to him, and it would be interesting to see the more remote
regions of the Continent. Because of some of his recent experiences Noel
began to feel anxiety and guilt about the idea, but was determined to go
on despite this. George turned up one day and furtively showed Noel a small
case marked 'contact lenses', which had inside it two small pouches, two
small bottles of cleaning fluid, and a mirror.
"Try these on, but be careful."
Noel took them to the hostel with him and with his back to the surveillance
unit, tried the lenses on. They were much bigger than contact lenses in
fact, and, once in place, they hid the redness in the whites of Noel's eyes.
He was impressed by the chances George was taking for him, and made up his
mind to go.
A few weeks later found them staying in a small hotel in a provincial northern
town. After much discussion and laughter they had decided that Noel should
dress as a woman. For a start, the heavy makeup needed to disguise his android
skin would attract less attention in a woman, and also in the provincial
areas it would be accepted for George, as the man, to do most of the talking.
A droid could disguise its voice sufficiently to pass as a human, but the
less Noel talked the better. They would pass as a holiday couple. Luckily
George was taller than Noel, so Noel's height would not arouse suspicion,
and George had taken considerable pains over Noel's appearance. He did not
like to admit it, but Noel's innocent and youthful features, now given the
blushes, tints, and shadows of a woman's face, looked quite attractive.
Noel found himself warming to the part. He turned the natural good-humour
of a droid into a kind of frolicking coquettishness. He/she quite astonished
George in his/her performance one day as they strolled through a little
village near the Sea. (The seas had names in centuries gone by, but now
the ocean surrounding the Continent was simply and collectively referred
to as the 'Sea'.) George had been asking questions of a local man. Noel
joined in by asking some questions of his/her own in a husky voice, quite
unlike his/her usual. Mischievously, he/she asked how young couples went
about their courtship in the country, making eyes at the villager, and holding
onto George's arm. The man smiled and said jokingly that it was the women
who made all the advances.
"Ooh, I don't believe that for a minute," said Noel, pretending
to shelter behind George. Noel peered over George's shoulder and fluttered
his/her long stuck-on eyelashes at him. The country man blushed.
"I'll say this," he laughed, "you city girls have a sense
of fun. I hope he keeps a careful eye on you."
They took their leave of him and returned towards their accommodation.
"Damn you," George muttered, later in the hotel. "You really
had that fellow fooled."
"It's a strange thing," said Noel. "I find that I know what
a woman is. It is not through observation though. Somehow I just know."
Noel looked up at George. She thought she could see some passing pain in
George's eyes. Noel was in fine spirits though, and she did not want anything
to spoil the fun they were having, so she dropped the subject.
After a few days of discrete enquiries George had made contact with a Survivalist
group based near the hotel. One of them came regularly into the hotel, took
a liking to George and Noel, and invited them to visit the encampment in
a few days time. There was nothing directly illegal about operations like
this encampment, as long as they did not try to attract publicity to themselves.
The Government's main concern was the growing strength of the A.D. League,
and oddball or fringe groups could safely be ignored, provided they kept
clear of the League and the media.
Noel enjoyed the countryside, and she and George went for long walks, often
taking a little picnic with them. The moors with their little rivers pleased
Noel immensely. She had become quite absorbed in her role as a woman, though
she took care not to be too outrageous. George would tell her long stories
drawn from his fund of historical knowledge, to which Noel would listen
in rapt attention. At times they would walk for long periods in silence,
and Noel found herself absorbed in the simple act of walking: she would
observe the way her feet, as they made contact with the ground, would 'read'
the irregular terrain and make a firm contact as one leg took the weight
from the other. She wondered at the complexity and accuracy of this act,
something she had always taken for granted, and found herself glancing at
George's feet and legs, aware that they functioned in the same way. Dwelling
for a while on the mechanical delicacy of her body, she started to remember
Droid School, and memories came back to her that she had long forgotten.
Both found the countryside and the distance between them and the busy news
office refreshing and relaxing. George would look at Noel sometimes and
shake his head. He had justified Noel's presence as an opportunity to really
get to know an android at close quarters, but he was beginning to find that
his expostulation to Noel that he didn't care what she was, was closer to
the truth than he had imagined. Sometimes he felt he had initiated an experiment
that he was no longer in control of, that his masculine, human prerogative
for leadership and control was being undermined in a way that should frighten
him. Somehow it didn't matter though; Noel's good humour was infectious,
and George was coming to like the physical presence of the android's body
close to him, despite it's alien composition. After all it was warm, more
or less soft, and although George hated to admit it to himself, it was decidedly
feminine.
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