Futuretrack 5 by Robert Westall Read Free Book Online

display screen on the other. Where the head should have been was a woman’s face, sculpted in stainless steel, the mouth slightly open on darkness, but the hollows of the eyes full of little points of steel that caught the light, so the expression of the eyes seemed to change.
    “Why does she look like an angel?”
    “Because that’s the way I made her. Why shouldn’t she look beautiful?”
    “I like the face.”
    “Should bloody well hope so—cost me a thousand credits. Say hello.”
    “On voice transmission,” I said, twisting my voice into the whine of computerspeak.
    The 78 record broke in pieces over my head. “That’s no way to talk to a lady. Say hello nicely.”
    “Whom am I addressing?” asked Laura. The voice was low, rich, and infinitely sad. Unlike any computer I’d heard.
    The analyst pulled me to him confidentially; I nearly fainted from the smell of his armpit. “I made her voice myself. From just this. Listen.”
    He pressed a button; there was the click of a tape recorder coming on; then the crackling noise that telephones made before I was born.
    “Hampstead 76112. Oh, it’s you, Idris. You shouldn’t be phoning me. You’ll get in terrible trouble if they find out. I can’t talk—here’s Mummy coming. Good-bye, Idris. I love you.” It ended with a sigh, and another click.
    “That’s the last words she ever said to me,” said Idris. “She married an Est and had four kids. Died seven years ago… Laura.”
    “You built the whole voice, just from that?”
    “Took me twenty years. That steel face I had made— that’s like her, too.”
    “How did you… lose her?”
    “I scored a hundred percent in my E-levels, just like you. Est-ladies don’t marry Techs. Tell her your name and rank.”
    Repressing a shudder, I did so.
    “Good evening, Kitson, Henry.” The voice carried only its eternal note of sadness.
    “She likes you,” said Idris. “I think we’ll keep you, for a bit. Shall we, Laura?”
    “I have recorded acceptance of his voice.”
    “Smart computer, that. I made her smart. Taught her to ask for context.”
    “Context?”
    “If any of them wants to ask her something, they have to put their question into context. Tell her everything about the project they’re working on. So she keeps on knowing more and more. She knows everything—that’s why she’s still the national computer.”
    “Everything?”
    Idris laughed bitterly. “Not everything. She doesn’t know about human decency—ethics. Never heard of Buddha, or Bertrand Russell. Can you imagine a Buddhist computer running a lobo-farm? That’s my trump card, boy. I’ve made a last tape for her—full of ethics. Kind of truth bomb. Feed her that, she’d blow up, poor old thing. Course, they know I’ve got something up my sleeve, in case they try getting rid of me. They’ve tried searching for it, while I’m asleep. But they’ve no idea where it is. Could be inside her already, couldn’t it? Just waiting for one tap on a button. Still, I never leave her alone for a second, even to go to the loo.” He pointed to a long row of toilet bowls, spaced along one wall of the great room. “This used to be an unused gent’s cloakroom, till I made them rip all the partitions out.”
    “Why’d you keep her here?”
    “I built her here, in secret. And I like the view.” He restlessly snatched up a photocopy of The Times dated 1933 and turned to the crossroad. “Word of nine letters— why Charles James does not leave fingerprints?”
    “Fox gloves?” I suggested.
    “Digitalis, idiot. Which gives us ‘pachyderm’ which gives us ‘upstart’, a disgusting clue.” He flung down the crossword, finished, and pulled out an ancient gilt pocket watch. “Took me ten minutes this morning. Mind’s going to pieces. Must be the weather.”
    “Can’t be. Temperature and humidity are kept constant throughout the Centre.”
    “Soulless Tech brat.” He grabbed me by the coat and blasted me with his breath.