Robots vs. Fairies(60)

“I believe that qualifies as neglect,” Jonsson said, staring at the half-moons her yellowed fingernails made in his arm.

“But God saw them anyway, because God sees all that is. And for their dishonesty and foolishness, he punished Adam and Eve by hiding their children from human sight. Forever.”

“That seems a tad harsh, but then so was the flood.”

“You’ve never taken me seriously, have you?” Sigrid asked.

Jonsson pinked. He tried unsuccessfully to withdraw his arm. “I assure you, I have the greatest respect for your position in the community, and—”

“Bullshit,” Sigrid said. She didn’t let him go so much as cast his arm away in order to fold her own. “Respect. Pah. You don’t even know what that word means.”

Jonsson glanced quickly at the assistant. Not for the first time, the assistant wished that his shoulder joints had the ability to shrug. As it was, he had to remain still and wait.

“I’m sorry. I did not mean to offend you—”

“I’m not giving Erika your name, you know,” Sigrid said. “She’ll be Erika Sigridsdottir. And she’ll never have to put up with your bullshit.”

Now Jonsson’s mortification took on a different element. The assistant, like everyone on his network, had collated the various organic reactions to patients with Sigrid’s condition. Fear was not unusual. Disgust, discomfort, annoyance, frustration, anger, these were all common. They manifested in the face, in rolled eyes and huffed breath and lips that pulled back into a thing that looked like a smile but meant something different. But Jonsson handled things better than most: his years as a public servant had doubtless prepared him for some outbursts of madness and derangement among his constituents. Doubtless some of those constituents had Alzheimer’s too, just like Sigrid. His face froze, and became what for him might have been a real smile.

“That’s a good idea,” he said, apparently deciding to play along with Sigrid’s momentary lapse of memory. “I think she’ll prefer that.”

“Don’t you go taking credit for it,” Sigrid said. “It’s my idea.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Jonsson said. After a long moment, he added, “Perhaps it’s best if I got going.”

“Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”

Jonsson nodded, stood, and made his way to the door. He looked as though he might say something to the assistant, and then appeared to think better of it. The assistant rolled back to let him stand on the threshold.

“I’ll speak to them sooner rather than later,” Sigrid said. “About the elfstone. Maybe you can move it, to a location they like better. But you have to learn how to show some respect. That’s always been your problem. No respect.”

“Thank you,” Jonsson said. He shot the assistant a glance that could only be interpreted as sympathetic. “Good afternoon.”

*

That night, long after her talk with Erika (during which Erika sent the assistant several texts and pings and questions about the meeting with Jonsson), Sigrid crept out of her room. Subroutines in the house alerted the assistant to her movements; he was prepared to let her sleepwalk until she pulled a milk crate full of scarves and balaclavas down over her head.

“You can’t come with me,” Sigrid said through the balaclava she’d selected. It took an extra second to register her words for what they were. “Just help me with my boots and then find me the good oil lantern. Those damn LEDs never show me what I really need to see.” She frowned at the sudden explosion of patterned wool on the floor. “Oh, and tidy these up, please.”

“Do we have an appointment that is not on the calendar?” the assistant asked.

“No,” Sigrid said. “But the moon phase is right for treating with the elves. I don’t want any more visits from the road authority. That man has a toxic energy.”

The assistant checked the lunar calendar. Indeed, the moon was full, and that was the phase during which Sigrid had the most difficult time sleeping. In the past, before the assistant arrived, she’d frequently tried to go out for what she referred to in English as a “moonwalk.” Only the light of the full moon, she said, made it possible to see the elves as they truly were.

“I’m afraid that I cannot permit you to go out alone, without me,” the assistant said. “Your daughter made that very clear, and the three of us have spoken about it over five different times.”

“You can’t come with me,” Sigrid repeated. “The aurora. It’ll play hell with . . .” She gestured at him. “You know. You. It’ll fry your brain.”

There was a chance that the shifting waves of electromagnetic energy could disrupt the effectiveness of some of his functions. Other assistants on the network had reported similar problems. On the other hand, the chance of the aurora was only 20 percent that evening; he would have received a local alert, as all townspeople did, if there was one in the sky.

“That would make two of us,” the assistant said.

He did not joke often. Sigrid did not care for it. But they had not spoken of her slipup that afternoon, and the other assistants on the network said that jokes occasionally worked as a “way into the conversation.” So he waited. It took only a picosecond for Sigrid to react, and in that picosecond he simulated what it would mean to be sent back, returned, taken back to the shop and wiped. His contributions to the network’s collective databanks would last, of course, and whatever adaptations he’d developed as an individual would be reviewed as a potential addition to the next update and future builds. But he would not see Sigrid or her daughter or the people at the community center ever again, and he would not stir the soup, and he would not calculate the exact angle at which to align the quartz generators so they received the energy of each equinox.