“Maybe the robot can formulate an antidote for martini poisoning,” he whispered, and winked.
The robot winked back.
For a while the robot worked on her prime directive, formulating the antidote that would drive the poison out of Sylvia London’s system. The robot stirred orange juice and lemon juice and ice cubes and butter and sugar and dish soap in a coffee mug. The resulting solution foamed and turned a lurid sci-fi green, suggestive of Venusian slime and radiation.
Gail thought the antidote might go down better with some toast and marmalade. Only there was a programming error; the toast burned. Or maybe it was her own crossed wires beginning to smoke, shorting out the subroutines that required her to follow Asimov’s laws. With her circuit boards sizzling inside her, Gail began to malfunction. She tipped over chairs with great crashes and pushed books off the kitchen counter onto the floor. It was a terrible thing, but she couldn’t help herself.
Gail didn’t hear her mother rushing across the room behind her, didn’t know she was there until Sylvia jerked the pot off her head and flung it into the enamel sink.
“What are you doing?” she screamed. “What in the name of sweet Mary God? If I hear one more thing crash over, I’ll take a hatchet to someone. My own self, maybe.”
Gail said nothing, felt silence was safest.
“Get out of here before you burn the house down. My God, the whole kitchen stinks. This toast is ruined. And what did you pour in this goddamn mug?”
“It will cure you,” Gail said.
“There isn’t no cure for me,” her mother said, which was a double negative, but Gail didn’t think it wise to correct her. “I wish I had one boy. Boys are quiet. You four girls are like a tree full of sparrows, the shrill way you carry on.”
“Ben Quarrel isn’t quiet. He never stops talking.”
“You ought to go outside. All of you ought to go outside. I don’t want to hear any of you again until I have breakfast made.”
Gail shuffled toward the living room.
“Take those pots off your feet,” her mother said, reaching for the pack of cigarettes on the windowsill.
Gail daintily removed one foot, then the other, from the pots she’d been using for robot boots.
Heather sat at the dining room table, bent over her drawing pad. The twins, Miriam and Mindy, were playing wheelbarrow. Mindy would hoist Miriam up by the ankles and walk her across the room, Miriam clambering along on her hands.
Gail stared over Heather’s shoulder at what her older sister was drawing. Then Gail got her kaleidoscope and peered at the drawing through that. It didn’t look any better.
She lowered her kaleidoscope and said, “Do you want me to help you with your drawing? I can show you how to draw a cat’s nose.”
“It isn’t a cat.”
“Oh. What is it?”
“It’s a pony.”
“Why is it pink?”
“I like them pink. There should be some that are pink. That’s a better color than most of the regular horse colors.”
“I’ve never seen a horse with ears like that. It would be better if you drew whiskers on it and let it be a cat.”
Heather crushed her drawing in one hand and stood up so quickly she knocked over her chair.
In the exact same moment, Mindy wheelbarrowed Miriam into the edge of the coffee table with a great bang. Miriam shrieked and grabbed her head, and Mindy dropped her ankles and Miriam hit the floor so hard the whole house shook.
“GODDAMN IT, WILL YOU STOP THROWING THE GODDAMN CHAIRS AROUND?” screamed their mother, reeling in from the kitchen. “WHY DO YOU ALL HAVE TO THROW THE GODDAMN CHAIRS? WHAT DO I HAVE TO SAY TO MAKE YOU STOP?”
“Heather did it,” Gail said.
“I did not!” Heather said. “It was Gail!” She did not view this as a lie. It seemed to her that somehow Gail had done it, just by standing there and being ignorant.
Miriam sobbed, clutching her head. Mindy picked up the book about Peter Rabbit and stood there staring into it, idly turning the pages, the young scholar bent to her studies.
Their mother grabbed Heather by the shoulders, squeezing them until her knuckles went white.
“I want you to go outside. All of you. Take your sisters and go away. Go far away. Go down to the lake. Don’t come back until you hear me calling.”
They spilled into the yard, Heather and Gail and Mindy and Miriam. Miriam wasn’t crying anymore. She had stopped crying the moment their mother went back into