Chapter 14

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1794 words

14

WHAT TO WEAR

They landed back in the Spaceport that Elijah had left only yesterday.  Before they left the ship though, careful consideration was given as to how they should appear.  It was Elijah who first said, “I suppose we’d better go in looking like two thoroughly boring conventional people.  After all that’s how everyone else in the City is appearing now.” And Daneel, looking down at his batik-ed old denim cropped jacket and jeans worn with a light red vest-top in the short-over-long layering style that was undoubtedly a twen-cen fashion classic now, said, “You’re right of course”, and almost sounded quite rueful: a fashionista deprived of an opportunity to see-and-be-seen?

“Sorry”, Elijah said, also rueful for he thorougly enjoyed seeing how fantastic Daneel looked in all this figure-hugging gear.  “And not as if you could ever look boring”, to which Daneel smiled modestly, not giving away any indication as to whether he comprehended the concept of what Elijah had just said.  What he did comprehend though was the existance of human irrationality. Which could manifest itself in such petty irrelevances as discriminating against the way somebody dressed.  Daneel well understood the concept of snobbery and prejudice that brought about discrimination and ultimately hate-crime, often in the form of unprovoked assault apon the so-called perpetrator – who was committing no crime except that of daring to be not like everybody else.  Actually the mere notion of it was enough to make Daneel’s pozzies feel quite fizzy – with simulated annoyance!  Which, in Daneel’s myriad data-banks, was classed as ‘annoyance as experienced by a human’ and sub-classed ‘reasonable annoyance at unreasonableness’. 

“So”, he now summed up. “I must therefore look like a conventional person just so as not to get attacked by unreasonably prejudiced humans.  To ask an age-old rhetoric:   What does that say for the human race I wonder”.

“Not a lot”, Elijah sighed. And then, “Couldn’t you go as female…?  Yunno, just sprout your assets and that.  We could cut quite a bit of crap that way”.

“True”, Daneel agreed.  “Cheating maybe – but we’ve gotta get a move on, so, as the human would say, push has come to shove”.

Elijah suddenly chuckled.  “That is if your top isn’t too tight to – um, fit everything in!”, and Daneel grinned and said, “Hey, didn’t I say push has come to shove”.

And soon they were ready.  Elijah had on a long trenchcoat, a khaki lightweight one as they would be, in effect, indoors in the City.  Daneel swapped his usual hunky-but-chic leather biker jacket for a similar trenchcoat in mauvy-grey that mostly concealed the skin-tight denims and, now, appropriately-filled low-necked top.  He left his bright flowing mane tucked inside its high collar. Catwalk male model or chic warrior-babe?  Take your pick.  Elijah stood close before Daneel and peered in. “Hmm, very nice. 37C would you say…?”.   

Daneel briefly yet tenderly kissed him. “Think it’s only about 35 with this top.  But enough to give ‘em a shock if the worst happens and they refuse to mind their own business – or their fists”.  Elijah didn’t need to ask who the ‘they’ to which Daneel referred were.

And, now as they walked hand-in-hand across terra firma and into the Arrivals lounge the enormity of what they had to do suddenly hit Elijah, and he couldn’t even crack a sombre joke about how he felt he’d never been away.

“We”, he now said, “now have to find a boy who has been missing for two days and could be in any one of the City parks”.  He was tempted to slump with sudden weariness against Daneel’s shoulder.  Daneel said gently,  “I remember him mentioning a ‘castle park’ over the phone to you”, and Elijah said, “Josaphat yes!  So he did.  ‘Castle park’ – that could be that park with the phoney castle in it.  Nice place…used to go there with – my son…also Ben”.

They went through the usual rigmarole of customs and immigration before exiting the Spaceport a few minutes later. Within ten minutes they were on the southbound Ex where they were lucky to find seats at all. How dingy, cramped, noisy and crowded it was – and that smell!  How could one forget that smell, that Daneel, most graphically, had once said was compounded of human excretions. Ugh! Elijah now felt as sick as when he'd first ventured Outside. He hardly wanted to breathe.  How could he have lived here so indifferently before? Daneel, sensing this, grinned. “Pooh! Pretty damn awful isn’t it. Human molecules ain’t pretty – present company excepted of course”.

Elijah said, “Daneel!” but, for the first time since entering the City, he laughed.  Just in time he remembered not to turn to kiss Daneel. They sat back, as closely as they dared but not actually touching, and carefully looked around.

The place hadn’t changed in two hundred years; if anything it was more poker-faced and thoroughly no-fun as ever.  Only the noise and the smell remained.  The Ex felt poorly-maintained as it juddered and clattered along.  After a particularly large annoying judder Elijah, with a surge of anger, suddenly remembered poor Ben’s tearful mention of the horrible teacher who ‘hated long hair on boys’ and now, glancing at most of the males around, he noticed an ominous majority sported the most unattractive short-back-and-sides. Even in some cases a near skinhead cut.  Their clothes too were, in the main, traditional masculine: colourless and completely lacking any style.  Worser and worser.  The women looked passably okay, if not quite so colourful maybe, and still quite varied in their dress and hair.  “Josaphat shat!”, Elijah muttered, “it looks bloody medieval! As if – oh crap – as if the hardline Medievalists have won the day here.”

“That’s just it” Daneel agreed.  “Afraid that lot look to be the ruling elite here. Fundamentaly yours, so to speak”.

With every show of reluctance he shifted position slightly so that now not even their shoulders touched.  Elijah, discomfited, looked round aggrievedly as if daring any so-styled Medievalist to start telling them how they should behave!  Unfortunately he caught the eye of a particularly sour looking bloke who glowered unremittingly at them.  Makes me look almost angelic! Elijah wryly thought.  And then they found they had company in the shape of four dourly-clad blokes with close-cropped hair. Not quite militant  skinhead but just – medieval!

“Say, they really are queerdos”, came a derisive voice.  “Just look at their dandy togs”.

Daneel, without directly looking at them, allowed his coat to fall open just a bit.  Just enough for them to see what was under the low-cut red top.  Nicely boosted by the fitted jacket that he’d buttoned up as far as it would go; deliberately he had allowed ‘the assets’ to be just a little too big for the jacket to fit over them, so there they were, framed and unmistakable. 

“Coo”, came another lewd voice. “It’s a dame!  A big big dame.  And nicely stacked too”.  Elijah had to hide a smile. He assumed his ‘streetwise’ bored look: idly looking first to one side and then up, as if taking in his surroundings and finding them pretty boring.   Daneel, hands in pockets,  unconcernedly looked to the other side at nothing in particular. “Lady, you don’t want to go flashing those about.  Or you might attract unwanted attention”.

Daneel, in leisurely fashion, sat back and crossed his legs.  “Maybe she’d like a bit of attention”, guffawed a third.  “Sure is acting like it”.

Neither Elijah or Daneel responded and this went on for a bit. It was hoped the blokes would get bored now, once they’d seen what appeared to not now be two ‘longhaired’  males sitting close together and dressed in such stylish gear, far more stylish than it had any right to be on Earth. Indeed the blokes sort of carried on just to keep the show up and Daneel reckoned he could sense they were a bit embarrassed at mistaking Daneel’s gender but couldn’t back down now.  That was how some human males were for you: always in competition, never displaying any ‘weakness’ such as backing down or admitting they were wrong.  As a human Daneel imagined rolling his eyes in boredom at such hackneyed – medieval – behaviour.   Such illogical behaviour.

When their disembarkation sign came the pair simply got up as if the blokes weren't there and walked right through them unhindered, Daneel leading the way.   Even the bloke who made some attempt to block their way found himself stepping back when it was evident Daneel-as-Daneele wasn't going to stop.

“There”, Elijah said, satisfiedly.  They cuddled close for a moment, uncaring of where they were as they crossed the strips,  “Knew that you as female would cut any crap.”

“Which it did”. By now the Expressway cars were whirling ahead of them as they stepped onto slower and slower strips. Daneel drolly stuck up his middle finger and Elijah quickly did so before pulling Daneel’s hand down. “Josaphat, Daneel, we’ll get had up!  It’s just all so po here”.  But he didn’t immediately let go of Daneel.

B-MOVIE IN A FUG

The Castle Park was in the southeast of the City, its biggest green area with real trees and lakes and its most famous landmark the imitation castle.  They reached it by various moving walkways.

“I wonder”, Elijah said, “if Ben has hidden himself in the rhododendron dell – that’s what my – the other – Ben liked to do when we came for day trips here.  It’s quite a jungle there”.

They passed the park café, still quite busy, and shortly came to the great dell in which a forest of gorgeous rhododendrons had been planted. With the constant temperature there was always some in bloom.  Underfoot it was all terribly clean: a thick layer of cellulose ‘wood’ chips covering any ‘dirty’ soil and serverbots to clear away any fallen leaves so that the surface always stayed clean.  It would make a nice secret den for a runaway boy.  Only thing was, where?   The dell was a good quarter mile long.  Hand in hand the pair started down along the central path off which other tracks turned.  It all looked very idyllic and beautifully cared-for.  But it was, all said and done, Inside: a stage-set, hygienically underground and sealed off from any real nature or sunshine and the air was filtered and canned and full of human excretions. Elijah felt himself gag.

“Poowh! Josaphat, how I long for some real air!”

“I know”, Daneel sympathized.  “I feel my poor olefactorics are getting clogged with nasty little sticky biomolecules. Furgh!”.

“Shite, Daneel, you do put it poetically!”

“I have great poetic circuits”, Daneel grinned.  “I can appreciate these wonderful rhododendron flowers but I know they are just in a polystyrene B-movie setting in a fug”.

Link to next Chapter 15:  http://nanowrimo2011ataleoftworobots.blogspot.com/2011/08/chapter-15.html