“I’ll pay you triple your usual rate. I’ve got plenty of money. I’m the richest man that’s ever sat in this fucking cab.”
“Isn’t this my lucky day,” said the driver. The ignorant country moron had no idea Saunders had just almost been torn apart. “So what happened to your regular chauffeur?”
“What?”
Saunders didn’t understand the question; in truth, he hardly registered it, was distracted. They had stopped at a light, and Saunders happened to look out the window. Two teenagers stood necking on the corner. They had a couple dogs with them, who stood at their sides, whisking their tails nervously back and forth, waiting for the kids to get done kissing and start walking again. Only there was something wrong with those two kids. The taxi was moving again before Saunders figured out what it was. Those tails, fretfully whisking from side to side—Saunders hadn’t actually spotted the dogs attached to them. He wasn’t sure there had been any dogs there at all.
“Where is this?” Saunders asked. “Where am I? Is this Foxham?”
“We isn’t anywheres near Foxham, sir. Upper Wolverton, this is,” said the driver. “Which is what they call it because ‘The Middle of Nowhere’ don’t sound as good. Edge of the known world, really.”
He eased the cab to the end of the next block and swung in at the curb. There was a pub on the corner, big plate-glass windows, bright squares of gold in the darkness, steamed over with condensation on the inside. Even shut into the backseat of the cab, Saunders could hear the noise from within. It sounded like an animal shelter.
A small knot of people loitered outside the front door. A carved and painted wooden sign, bolted to the stone beside the door, showed a crowd of wolves standing on their hind legs gathered around a table. In the center of the table was a great silver platter, with an assortment of pale human arms laid upon it.
“Here you go,” said the cabdriver, turning his head to look into the rear. His snout moved close to the glass that separated the front seat from the back and breathed a filmy white mist on it. “You can make your call here, I ’spect. Have to fight your way through a bit of a crowd, I’m afraid.” He made a low chuckling sound that Saunders supposed was meant to be laughter, although it sounded more like a dog trying to cough up a hairball.
Saunders did not reply. He sat in the black leather seat, staring at the crowd outside the door of the Family Arms. They were staring back. Some of them were walking toward the cab. Saunders decided not to make any sound when they pulled him out. He had learned in Kashmir how to hold on to silence, and if he was strong, he would only need to hold on to it for about a minute and a half, and then it would be holding on to him.
“Good little mum-and-pop place, this is,” his driver told him. “They serve up a right fine dinner in here, they do. And you know what, mate? I think you’re just in time for it.”
By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain
THE ROBOT SHUFFLED CLANK-CLANK INTO the pitch-dark of the bedroom, then stood staring down at the humans.
The female human groaned and rolled away and folded a pillow over her head.
“Gail, honey,” said the male, licking dry lips. “Mother has a headache. Can you take that noise out of here?”
“I CAN PROVIDE A STIMULATING CUP OF COFFEE,” boomed the robot in an emotionless voice.
“Tell her to get out, Raymond,” said the female. “My head is exploding.”
“Go on, Gail. You can hear Mother isn’t herself,” said the male.
“YOU ARE INCORRECT. I HAVE SCANNED HER VITALS,” said the robot. “I HAVE IDENTIFIED HER AS SYLVIA LONDON. SHE IS HERSELF.”
The robot tilted her head to one side, inquisitively, waiting for more data. The pot on her head fell off and hit the floor with a great steely crash.
Mother sat up screaming. It was a wretched, anguished, inhuman sound, with no words in it, and it frightened the robot so much that for a moment she forgot she was a robot and she was just Gail again. She snatched her pot off the floor and hurried clangedy-clang-clang to the relative safety of the hall.
She peeked back into the room. Mother was already lying down, holding the pillow over her head again.