Scared to Death--Ten Sinister Stories by the Master of the Macabre Page 6

  “You’ve wet the bed,” his father observed.

  Charles looked down. Sure enough, there was a large damp patch on his pyjamas, but there was no sign of any bite mark, no cut or tear in the fabric. As he began to recover, he had to admit that he wasn’t feeling any pain after all.

  Meanwhile, his parents had moved into the room. His mother was picking up the duvet. His father was vaguely searching around the bed. Both of them looked embarrassed. “There’s nothing here,” Rupert said.

  “Come on, darling. Let me help you change out of those pyjamas.” Noreen took a fresh pair out of the cupboard and went over to her son. She was talking to him as if he were six years old.

  “I heard music,” Charles insisted. “It was the man from the square. He was outside the room.”

  “I didn’t hear anything,” Rupert muttered.

  Noreen nodded. “You know what a light sleeper your father is,” she said. “If there had been someone playing music, he’d have heard it.” She sighed. “You must have had a bad dream,” she went on.

  “He was outside!” Charles insisted. “I heard him. And there was a snake. I saw it!”

  “I’m going back to bed,” Rupert growled. He turned and walked out of the room, leaving Charles alone with his mother.

  By now Charles was beginning to accept that his parents must be right. The music had stopped. There was no sign of any snake. He hadn’t, after all, been bitten. Now his face was bright red with embarrassment. He just wanted the night to be over so that he could forget all about it.

  “Do you want me to run a bath?” his mother asked.

  “No. I’ll do it,” Charles replied sulkily.

  “Well, I’ll stay until you’re tucked up again.” Noreen had already taken off the bottom sheet. She was examining the mattress in dismay. “We’ll have to turn this over,” she said. “Maybe I’d better call room service.”

  “Just leave me alone.”

  “Are you sure, dear?”

  “Go away!”

  She did. Charles went into the bathroom, showered and changed into clean pyjamas. Then he went back to bed, lying down on the very edge and covering himself with a spare blanket he had found in a cupboard. He still wasn’t sure what had happened. A dream? It had been too real. He was old enough to know the difference between being awake and being asleep. And yet…

  Somehow he nodded off once again. And the next time he opened his eyes, he was relieved to see daylight on the other side of the windows. Another day had begun.

  He was a little sheepish when he joined his parents for breakfast on the roof but for once they seemed to be behaving sensibly, for neither of them mentioned the events of the night before. Like everything at the Riad El Fenn, breakfast was an elaborate affair, with croissants and coffee, pancakes dipped in honey, yoghurt and fruit and delicious omelettes for those who still had room. There were at least a dozen guests still at the table; Charles ignored them all as he plumped himself down on a cushion between Noreen and Rupert.

  “We thought we’d visit the El Badi Palace,” his father said. He already had his guidebook open at the right place.

  “And there’s a wonderful garden…” his mother added.

  “I’m not staying here one minute longer,” Charles replied. “I want to go home.”

  He had made the decision as he got dressed. All he wanted was to get out of Marrakech. And his parents couldn’t keep him here. He would scream if he had to. He would run away, grab a taxi and force them to put him on a plane. He should never have come here in the first place, and from now on he wasn’t going to let anyone tell him what to do. If they wanted to go on holiday in the future, they could go without him. Otherwise it would be Disneyland and no argument! He had made up his mind.

  “Well, I don’t know…” his father began.

  Outside on the street, a pipe began to play.

  It was the same music that they had heard in the main square – and this time there could be no doubt in Charles’s mind that it really existed. The other guests heard it too and began to smile. Somehow the sound captured everything that was ancient and mysterious about a city that had been there for over a thousand years.

  Charles jerked upright in his seat.

  “Charlie…?” his mother quavered.

  He was sweating. His eyes were distant and unfocused.

  “What is it?” his father asked.

  Charles got to his feet. He didn’t want to but he couldn’t stop himself. The music continued, louder, more insistent. “No…” He whispered the word and nobody heard it except him. His teeth were locked together. The other guests were watching. The music played.

  And slowly, helplessly, Charles Atchley began to dance.

  ROBO-NANNY

  LATER ON, THEY WOULD BLAME each other. It didn’t matter which one of them you asked. They would both say that it had never been their idea to buy Robo-Nanny.

  But it had seemed sensible enough at the time. After all, they were busy people – Sanjiv Mahal, international director of the world’s second largest internet bank, and his wife, Nicole, designer and photographer, in constant demand both on earth and on the moon. Their days were crammed full of clients, meetings and reports. They were invited to dinner parties five times a week. They spent their entire lives travelling thousands of miles for meetings in Beijing, New Tokyo, Moscow and Antarctica and seldom seemed to be on the same continent – or even planet – at the same time.

  The Mahals had been married for fifteen years and had two children: Sebastian, aged eleven and Cameron who was nine. And that was the problem. Everyone agreed that the boys were delightful – good-looking, intelligent and, for the most part, well behaved. But like all boys they were noisy and demanded attention, whether it was Sebastian kicking a football around the house and playing his nano-guitar at full volume or Cameron drawing all over his bedroom wall or singing opera with a hologram of the complete London Symphony Orchestra while he was in the bath. Although there were two years between them, they could have been twins. Both were rather thin and small for their ages with brown hair that they never brushed, wide smiles and very dark eyes. Put them in the same football strip (they both supported Chelski) and it would be hard to tell them apart.

  The family lived in Kensington Fortress, one of the most exclusive areas of London and one with no drugs or knife crime … if only because it was surrounded by its own force field and nobody could get in or out without showing their ID cards to the local private police force. The Mahals had recently moved into a new home, which Nicole had designed herself. She had always wanted to live somewhere old-fashioned, with a sense of history, so she had modelled it on a twenty-first-century mews house with shutters, window-boxes and a proper staircase connecting the three floors. Of course, the red bricks and grey slate roof tiles concealed every luxury that the twenty-second century had to offer, including solar heating, a miniature hydro-electric generator in the kitchen, holo-TV in all the rooms and everything computer-controlled, right down to the bath water. Even the staircase moved, at the touch of a button. The house was amazingly large. Anyone who walked in would know at once that the Mahals had to be seriously wealthy. They didn’t have a garden – private gardens in London had long since disappeared – but they did have a small patio with a micro-BBQ and a vertical swimming fountain. They were a happy, successful family.

  All that was about to change.

  Sanjiv Mahal was spending more and more time in China. Nicole Mahal had just accepted a commission to design sixteen holiday-pods in the Sahara desert. The question was, who was going to look after Cam and Seb if both parents happened to be away at the same time? They would be at school every morning for three hours, but this didn’t even involve getting out of bed as they both went to Hill House, an exclusive virtual school that they could plug into where they lay. And what would they do after that? There were local teen centres and exercise areas. Both children could dive into one of the thousands of internet streams or turn on their PlayStation 20
7. But they still needed someone to cook and clean, to make sure they were washed and dressed, to stop them fighting, to look after them if they became sick.

  Then one day, over breakfast, they found the answer. It was beamed down to them during a news scan.

  “New – from Cyber-Life Industries,” the voice announced. In the background, hypno-music was playing quietly to make the product seem even more fantastic. “Our new line of Robo-Nannies is now ready for immediate delivery. The model T-199 is our most advanced yet, with completely lifelike appearance and full range of face and voice types (our deluxe models include Australian, Eastern European and Welsh). The T-199 is programmed to deal with infants and children up to any age, and our new Emotional Self-Learning Software means that Nanny will quickly adapt to become a treasured part of your family. Kids giving you a hard time? Won’t eat their genetically modified greens? Turn up the Severity Control and they’ll quickly learn that Nanny knows best! Firm friend or loving companion, the T-199 is the next step forward in modern child care.”

  “That’s the answer!” Sanjiv exclaimed. He was a dark, handsome man, smartly dressed even at the breakfast table, the sort who made his decisions very quickly, although in this instance he would later swear that he was only responding to what his wife had suggested. “I don’t know why we didn’t think of it before. A Robo-Nanny!” He reached into his pocket and took out his Chinese Express credit card. “I’ll call them now.”

  “I’m not so sure…” Nicole began.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I just think we ought to talk about it, that’s all,” Nicole said. “I’ve always looked after the boys myself. I’m not sure I’m ready to hand them over to some machine that you’ve seen on a news scan.”

  “It’s Cyber-Life Industries. They’ve got a terrific reputation.”

  “I’m sure they have.” Nicole was uneasy without quite knowing why. “But it is very expensive,” she blurted out. “Look at the price. Two million I¥.” The International Yen had been the world currency for half a century. “Are you sure we can afford it?”

  “Of course we can,” her husband replied. “We’ve had a good year. I got my promotion. And your new contract in the Sahara will pay at least twice that amount.”

  “But I was going to take them with me…”

  “They’d hate it out there. Too hot and too many Martian wasps. Why did they ever import Martian wasps? The boys will be happier and safer here with their new T-199. I say we go ahead and order.”

  They discussed it a little more, and perhaps they might not have gone ahead with the purchase if Seb and Cam hadn’t chosen that morning to get into a serious fist-fight. Nicole heard the screams and the crash of falling furniture coming from the upstairs bedroom and nodded at her husband. “I suppose it can’t hurt to try,” she said. “Maybe they’ll let us have a three-month trial…”

  In fact, the salesman from Cyber-Life offered them more than that. He was a small, bald-headed man with a round face and glasses – in his bright mauve suit, he looked a bit like a wind-up toy himself. He had introduced himself as Mr O’Dowd.

  “We offer a full, no-questions-asked refund if you are not one hundred per cent happy with your new purchase,” he explained over a cup of soya tea that same evening. “But I can assure you, my dear Mahals, that we have never yet received a single complaint. I thought the T-170 was advanced. The T-199 is in a different league. It’s the most reliable and human-looking robot we have yet constructed.”

  “When can we see it?” Nicole asked.

  “You mean, when can you see her,” the salesman responded, casting a slight frown in Nicole’s direction. “We encourage our clients to think of our nannies as real people rather than objects. Apart from anything, it helps the ESLS to kick in faster.”

  “Emotional Self-Learning Software…” Sanjiv muttered.

  “That’s right, sir. As a result, your nanny will bond much faster with your children – and they with her. And you can see her right away! I’ll just unpack the container…”

  There was a large crate hovering on its anti-gravity cushions in one corner of the room. Mr O’Dowd pressed a remote control on the iBand he was wearing around his wrist, and the crate slid silently across the room and opened. Nicole couldn’t help feeling that it looked a bit like an old-fashioned coffin even though it had been a hundred years since anyone was buried. These days bodies were all recycled.

  But her fears were quickly swept aside by the young woman who now sat up and gently folded back the sheets of soft fabric in which she had been wrapped. If Robo-Nanny had been human, Nicole would have guessed that she was in her early thirties. She was neither fat nor thin but somewhere pleasantly in between, with an honest, open face, reddish hair and a scattering of freckles. She was dressed very simply in a V-shirt and jeans, with her toes – brightly painted – poking through her sandals.

  “Good afternoon, Mr and Mrs Mahal,” she said. It was remarkable that she had already been data-fed with their name – or perhaps she had been listening to the conversation while she was lying in the crate. “It’s a great pleasure to meet you.” She spoke with a New Zealand accent. She had a very friendly voice.

  “Hello,” Sanjiv said. “And what’s your name?”

  “I’m Tamsin,” Robo-Nanny said.

  “All the T models have names that begin with T,” Mr O’Dowd muttered. “Tracey, Tania, Tara, Toni, Tina, Terri and so on.”

  “I’m Nicole. And this is Sanjiv.” It was clear that Nicole had quickly taken to the new arrival – but how could she have failed to? Tamsin was delightful. As she climbed out of the crate and brushed herself down, she moved like a ballet dancer. She was quite short but that only made her more child-friendly. She would be just a few centimetres taller than Sebastian. She also had the most wonderful blue eyes. Even though she had been delivered in a crate, it was already impossible to think of her as a robot. Everything about her – from her skin colour to her smile – was totally human. Perfectly human, Nicole thought.

  “Do you have an instruction book for her?” Sanjiv asked – and Nicole thought it was rather rude, talking in front of Tamsin like that.

  But Tamsin didn’t seem to mind. “I don’t need an instruction book,” she explained. “I’ve already been programmed with all my instructions and I’m quite able to look after myself.”

  “There are just a couple of things you need to know,” Mr O’Dowd added. “Could you show them your controls, please, Tamsin?”

  “With pleasure, sir.” Tamsin rolled up her sleeve to show a small panel on her arm with a few flashing lights, switches and dials. It was the only evidence that she was in fact a machine.

  “You can make adjustments here if you need to,” O’Dowd continued. “For example, Tamsin speaks nine languages.” He reached out and pressed one of the buttons.

  “Je suis ravie de faire votre connaissance,” Tamsin said.

  He switched back to English. “You can also adjust her physical strength … useful if you want her to do any heavy lifting. And you’ll find her Severity Control on her right shoulder. That’s a very useful piece of kit.”

  “I believe it’s unique to Cyber-Life,” Sanjiv said.

  “Absolutely.” O’Dowd needed no excuse to go on. “There are plenty of nannies on the market at the moment but ours are the only ones that come with five different levels of severity. If your children are delightful and well-behaved – as I am sure yours are, my dear Mr and Mrs Mahal – then you only need to set Tamsin to level one. If they are a little unruly or disobedient, then you can turn the switch to level two or three. Tamsin will then make sure that they do their homework, brush their teeth or whatever – and she’ll be a little less generous with sweets, stories and other treats.”

  “What about level five?” Nicole asked.

  “I have never yet met a child who needed level-five severity,” Mr O’Dowd said, “and I would frankly recommend that you ignore it. Level-five nannies are used mainly on the outer is
lands…”

  Nicole shuddered. The outer islands had once been oil rigs – at a time when there was still any oil. Now they were used as floating prisons for juvenile delinquents. They were in the North Sea, a mile away from the Independent Kingdom of Scotland.

  “What level do you think would be necessary?” Tamsin asked.

  From upstairs came the sound of breaking glass as a thought-controlled hover-ball smashed through a bedroom window.

  “I’d say level two,” Nicole muttered.

  “Level two,” her husband agreed.

  “I’ll just make the adjustment…” Tamsin said. She reached further up her sleeve and turned the dial. Nothing about her seemed to change. She smiled at the two parents. “Now,” she said, “When can I meet your adorable boys?”

  In fact, they waited until Mr O’Dowd had left, taking the crate and a first payment of half a million I¥ with him. As Nicole said, it didn’t seem right for the boys to see their new nanny being paid for and delivered in a box.

  Tamsin was sitting in a chair when they came into the room but she rose up at once, obviously delighted to see them. “Hello, boys!” she exclaimed. “You must be Sebastian. And you must be Cameron.” She had got their names the right way round. It was a good start. “I’m Tamsin, your new Robo-Nanny.”

  She had told them at once that she was a robot even though it would have been easy to pretend otherwise. The Law of Artificial Intelligence (2125) stated that no machine could pretend to be human when it was presented to its new owner. There had been some upsetting instances of robots pretending to be Mexican in order to get jobs in McDonald’s restaurants. The new law had made this a crime – and the penalty was instant demolition.

  At first, the boys were unsure. “Why do we have to have her?” Sebastian asked, turning to Nicole.

  Some might have considered this to be a rude question but Tamsin didn’t seem offended. “Your parents need someone to help look after you,” she explained. “They’re going to be away on business a lot and they don’t want to leave you on your own.”