Eager, p.6
Eager, page 6
“Is this it?” cried Fleur. Her mum looked reprovingly at her. Mr. Bell stepped forward. “Grumps, get a brush and give EGR3 a proper clean. Provided that won’t harm your mechanism?” he inquired of the new robot.
“Oh, no, I am very robust.”
“It’s late,” continued Mr. Bell, “and we haven’t had supper yet. Let’s leave you with Grumps for tonight and we can meet again in the morning.”
The butler reappeared with a fine bristle brush and began to sweep away the rest of the flour.
“EGR3 has come to help you, Grumps,” said Mrs. Bell. “We want you to teach him everything you know.”
“Very well, Mrs. Bell,” said Grumps, brushing inside the folds of the new robot’s arms with great concentration. “But what I know is rather old-fashioned. I am not like these new ‘personal assistant’ robots. I don’t know about offering advice on your clothes or listening to your problems….”
“We’re not expecting you to teach any of that,” said Mrs. Bell, trying to keep a straight face.
“Let’s eat,” said her husband. “Grumps, look after EGR3 tonight. You can clear away the supper dishes tomorrow.”
He ushered the others toward the door. “Come on, it’s rude to stare,” he said to his wife and daughter. Fleur looked at her dad as if he had gone mad. It was only a robot, after all.
“Excuse me,” said a quiet voice. “I feel we haven’t been properly introduced.”
The Bells stopped in their tracks. All four of them stared at EGR3.
“Robot etiquette, lesson one,” muttered Gavin. He stepped forward. “Let me introduce you to my mum, she’s called Chloe, or rather, Mrs. Bell, and this is my sister, Fleur. My other sister, Charlotte, has gone to bed … she’s a baby. Everyone—this is EGR3. Professor Ogden says he’s the first of a new breed of robots.”
“We’re delighted to have you here,” said Mrs. Bell, smiling. EGR3 extended a hand and she shook it with a sense of bewilderment. Though she always insisted on speaking kindly to robots, it was another thing altogether to be shaking hands with one.
Fleur was looking sullenly at the new arrival. When EGR3 offered her his hand she held back. But as she met his eye, something in the robot’s eager gaze prompted her to stretch out her arm. The hand that wrapped itself around hers was surprisingly strong and pliable.
“Hello, Fleur.”
“Till tomorrow, then,” said Mr. Bell jocularly. He and the children went off to the dining room. Mrs. Bell carried some of the dirty bowls over to the dishwasher.
“Oh, dear,” she sighed. “I do hope they get on. It would be such a shame, wouldn’t it, if they fought?” Shocked, she realized she was addressing her remarks to the kettle, and hurried out of the kitchen. “You’re supposed to be the intelligent life around here!” she reminded herself.
Mr. Bell and Gavin took it in turns to recount what had happened at Professor Ogden’s house. Fleur only half listened. In her mind she was going over and over her words to Marcia: “I don’t expect we’ll have an ordinary robot.” They certainly didn’t. Of course, she was never going to speak to Marcia again, after the way she had behaved. But how could she face her, how could she face anyone, with a round-headed rubber midget in attendance?
“I said, what do you think, Fleur?” repeated her father.
“Hmm?”
“What should we call him? The new robot.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to say she couldn’t care less. Then an image came to her of the look in EGR3’s eyes as he held her hand. “Eager,” she heard herself saying.
“Eager?”
“That’s just what he’s like,” said Gavin excitedly. “Eager to meet you, eager to help, eager to learn …”
“You should have seen him on the hoverbus,” mused Mr. Bell. “He would have shaken hands with everyone if we hadn’t stopped him.”
“Eager it is, then,” said Mrs. Bell. “We’ll have to ask him if he likes it.” For once her family did not chorus: “But he’s just a machine!”
“I’ll go and ask him now,” said Gavin, who found himself feeling protective of the new robot. He was, after all, partly responsible for bringing EGR3 to the house.
Grumps was introducing EGR3 to the kitchen appliances. “This is the refrigerator. It looks after the food that needs to be kept cool. It doesn’t say anything,” he said in a confidential tone, “but it writes messages to let us know when food is running out.” They moved to the oven. “Very clever,” said the butler, still in a low voice. “Cooks the food exactly as you want it. It creates menus too.” Gavin came into the room.
“And this,” Grumps added, raising his voice dramatically, “is the kettle.” He seemed to be waiting for something.
“He wants you to say hello,” prompted Gavin.
“How do you do?” said EGR3. The kettle made no response.
Grumps looked pleased and showed EGR3 a small room off the kitchen. “Washing and drying machines. They’ll explain everything you need to know,” he said airily.
Back in the kitchen he pointed to a large cupboard. “Pantry. For the food that doesn’t go in the refrigerator.”
“We need carrots,” said the cupboard in a high fluting voice.
“The pantry and the refrigerator are connected to the local food store. They can order food directly when we run out. But Mr. and Mrs. Bell like to check the orders before they go.”
“I should think so!” said Gavin. “Once they ordered twelve dozen eggs between them.”
The robots, realizing he was still there, looked expectantly at him. “I’ve come to tell you we’ve a new name for you, EGR3. If you like it, of course. We thought we’d call you Eager.”
EGR3’s rubbery features were expressionless.
“Eager: ardent, keen and enthusiastic,” said Grumps, who had an inbuilt dictionary.
“Really?” said EGR3. “Does it really mean all those things?”
Gavin nodded.
“I like it,” said EGR3.
“Euphoric,” said Gavin.
“Would you like a cup of tea?” said a voice. “I am plumbed into the water supply and can fill myself automatically.”
Grumps hurried off to the sink. “Don’t worry,” whispered
Gavin in response to EGR3’s startled look. “I’ll explain later. “Night, Eager.”
It was very quiet in the big kitchen after the boy left. Eager looked around the walls at the shiny appliances, which seemed to stare blankly back at him. He heard a low rumble and turned to see Grumps approaching.
“Time to recharge my batteries,” said the butler. “Excuse me if I don’t show you the rest of the house. I’m sure the family will not mind if you explore it on your own.” He turned toward the far corner of the room, then paused, swiveling his head round to face Eager again.
“It is nighttime, I trust?”
Eager was taken aback. Of course it was nighttime. It was dark outside and Grumps had just prepared supper. The rubbery rings of his neck tilted to one side to send extra thinking power to his brain. Mr. Bell had explained on the hoverbus that Grumps sometimes became confused. Perhaps this was what he had meant.
“It is nighttime,” he said, copying the firm tones that Professor Ogden used for making important statements.
Grumps held his eye for a second longer as if he was suspicious. “You are a robot,” he said at last, “so you cannot lie. Therefore I must believe you. Excuse me.”
Eager reflected. Other robots, he knew, were programmed to tell the truth. But he had been designed to learn for himself and make his own decisions. If he wanted to tell a lie he could. He had no wish to lie. Yet the thought struck him that by not
telling Grumps the truth—that he could lie if he wished—he had lied, in a sort of way. He raised his eyes to the window and the darkness beyond. Living in the real world was far more complicated than he had imagined.
Meanwhile Grumps had disappeared. Eager searched him out at the opposite end of the kitchen. As soon as he saw him he cried, “Are you all right?” There was no reply. The butler stood in a corner, as blank-faced and inanimate as the kitchen appliances. A thin cable dangled from his side and fed at the other end into the wall. Eager realized that Grumps must have turned himself off while he was recharging; nonetheless he felt uncomfortable at the sight and moved away.
To all intents and purposes, Eager was alone in the kitchen. He hurried over to the door, which opened soundlessly at his approach, and peered down the hallway. It was empty and silent. The family must have gone to bed. He had no wish to venture any further, as Grumps had suggested. After his small room at the top of Professor Ogden’s house, this new home seemed huge and unwelcoming.
Eager went back into the kitchen and found a spot from which the butler was out of view. He would turn down his power, just enough to keep his thoughts ticking over, and use the dark hours to reflect on all that had happened to him. He wondered what Professor Ogden was doing, now that he no longer had to visit the small room above his laboratory in the middle of the night. An image of the professor’s slow smile drifted before him, and Eager quickly turned his mind to other things.
CHAPTER 9
The next day began well with a familiar breakfast of cereal and toast. There were even hard-boiled eggs. Eager, who was clearly taking his new name very seriously, hovered enthusiastically around the table while Grumps kept up a running commentary: “Master Gavin likes his egg softly done—he would prefer the one on the right. Pour the coffee from a height and you won’t spill it….”
Mr. Bell had soon had enough and was about to tell them to be quiet when his wife pressed his arm. “At least they’re getting on. This stage won’t last, I’m sure,” she whispered. He looked at her in despair. Just when he had thought the whole family was beginning to behave rationally, they ended up pussyfooting around two robots instead of one.
After breakfast the children and their parents went upstairs to work and Grumps was left to care for Charlotte. This was the first time Eager had met a baby. He had been expecting a smaller version of Gavin or Fleur but this child was round and
dimpled, and when Grumps sat her on the floor she looked as if she might tip over backward at any minute.
Charlotte lifted her eyes to Eager: unlike other humans, she showed no curiosity or suspicion in her gaze. He noticed that she looked at everything in the same uncritical way, except when Grumps played a game of hide-the-teddy-behind-my-back. Her eyes flew open in surprise and delight every time he made the teddy reappear.
Eager’s head tilted to one side as he watched this puzzling behavior. Once, Professor Ogden had asked him what would happen to the furniture in the house if Eager went out for a walk.
“Why, nothing,” said Eager, who thought it was a very silly question. “It would still be there when I came back. Unless someone had stolen it, for example, but then I wouldn’t know until I returned home.”
The professor, he remembered, had leant back and exchanged delighted looks with his research assistants. Eager had concluded that this understanding was somehow extremely important if you were to live in the real world. Yet here was a human baby who seemed not to know that if you hid a toy behind your back it would still be there a second later.
What astonished him even more was the number of times Grumps was prepared to play the game. At last he cried in exasperation, “Aren’t you bored?”
Grumps looked up at Eager, the teddy dangling from his
chunky fingers. “Bored?” he repeated, as if he had never heard the word before. “I am not designed to be bored. I am built to have infinite capacity for any task required of me.”
“Well, I’m not!” retorted Eager. “I’m bored just watching you. I’m designed that way so that I’ll always want to be learning something new.”
Grumps straightened up. “Like humans,” he said. Charlotte, having lost sight of the teddy altogether, turned to another toy.
“My patience makes me a good teacher,” continued the butler.
Eager hung his head while he thought a little. “If you’ll pardon my saying so, Grumps, I should give up. That baby will never understand.”
At the end of the morning, to Eager’s relief, Mrs. Bell took Charlotte away while Grumps demonstrated how to prepare a salad for lunch. He watched as Eager chopped tomatoes.
“I sprinkle a little of this on them,” he said, holding up a thin container marked SALT. “Never to be confused with that—he pointed to a larger pot marked SUGAR. “The humans get very upset if you do.”
“I’m not surprised,” said Eager. “Sweet and salty are very different.” He noticed that Grumps looked blank. “I have elementary taste buds, so I can tell.”
“I haven’t,” said Grumps. “Of course, I’m old-fashioned. I simply copy what Mrs. Bell does. No one complains … at least, not often.”
“Your cooking smells good. I have a basic sense of smell too, you see … it helps me understand the human world.”
Surprisingly, Grumps nodded. “I can smell three things. One of them is smoke.”
Before Eager could ask what the other two were, a lilting female voice said, “So, we have a new worker. I’m glad I don’t have a body if this is what robots are looking like these days.”
Eager was hunting around for the speaker. “It’s the house,” said Grumps. “I rarely reply. There is little to say, I always find.” He began to pour oil for the mayonnaise into the mixer.
“How do you do?” said Eager, in the direction of the green light beside the door.
“Hell-o. If you have any questions, I’m the person to ask.”
“Person!” muttered Grumps, turning on the mixer to full speed. It was some seconds before there was quiet again.
“Thank you,” said Eager, “I’ll remember that.”
The green light flickered and went out. Eager balanced another tomato on the chopping board. “If you don’t mind, Grumps,” he said, “I’d like to keep you as my teacher.”
The butler was spooning golden dollops into a jug. “As you wish.”
The house turned itself on in the hallway as Fleur and Mrs. Bell came downstairs, closely followed by Mr. Bell and Gavin.
“Please, Mum, it’s not fair,” Fleur was saying.
“I’ve just seen the new robot,” said the house.
“We are having a dispute, don’t interrupt,” said Gavin.
“I thought you should know,” persisted the house, “that I wouldn’t trust my children with that thing. He looks as if he couldn’t defend himself from a paper bag.”
“Exactly!” cried Fleur, leading the way into the dining room. “So he can’t possibly take us to the learning center. Ever!”
The rest of the family sat down at the table. “I agree with you, Fleur, Eager is probably not the ideal bodyguard, but he should still go with you this once,” said Mrs. Bell firmly. “He might have to take you or collect you one day in an emergency.”
Fleur groaned. “It might only be once … but I’ll never live it down.”
Mrs. Bell shot a look at her husband that said, “I’d thought we’d solved the robot problem.”
“Fleur,” said her dad, “Eager is here to help Grumps, and us, remember. Though it strikes me he’s a different kettle of fish, too clever for most of the jobs we have for him. Some of his responses are positively humanlike. Do you know, he brought me up a coffee this morning and before I knew it we were chatting about my work. I ended up recommending a book on architecture. To a robot!”
“He certainly has an inquiring mind,” agreed Mrs. Bell, who preferred a cup of Darjeeling midmorning and had struggled to answer Eager’s questions about tea production.
“But he isn’t human, Dad. He’s weird, even for a robot.” Fleur threw herself into her chair. “I can’t go out with him, I’ll look such a clone. Why can’t you or Mum be a technocrat so we can buy a proper robot like Boadicea?”
“It’s too late for that,” said her mother briskly. “If we’d wanted to become scientists we would have done so by now.” She looked at the clock on the wall. “Looks like you’ll need to leave straight after lunch.”
Fleur was at her sulkiest when she, Gavin and the two robots set off for the learning center. “It’s worse than this morning,” she grumbled, as Grumps introduced his protégé to the neighborhood.
“This is the professional quarter,” he was saying. “We live here because the Bells are professional people. Every town has one, I understand. Mrs. Bell’s parents live in a professional quarter in Scotland.”
Grumps pointed out the factories and offices, but Eager was interested in everything—the trees, the grass that poked up from the pavement, the rusty iron railing outside an office block, an old signpost saying MOTORWAY.
“It’s all real,” he kept saying. Grumps had never given any thought to such a matter but he stopped until Eager was ready to move on. The children waited resignedly.
“I can’t believe it,” sighed Fleur. “Even Charlotte walks quicker than this.”
At last they reached the learning center. “You can leave us now,” said Fleur to Grumps, as she did most days.
“I would not be doing my duty if I did not come to the steps with you,” replied Grumps, as he always did.
“We’ll leave Eager on guard at the gate, then.” She flashed a dazzling smile that reminded Gavin of Marcia. “Very clever,” he told his sister as they walked toward the entrance.
Eager watched them go. He was fascinated by the people passing, of all shapes and sizes and ages and colors. As his brain began to distinguish one human from another, he realized that there were robots too. Some reminded him of Grumps; others were faster and more flexible. One in particular was tall and very beautiful, it seemed to him, with curvy limbs and golden metal. He felt an impulse to run up to her and make friends but she walked straight by, as if she had not seen him. Perhaps she didn’t recognize him as a robot.
