The cleverness of the technology is undeniable and the result is as enchanting as a midnight dream. But Evie still feels disillusionment over being tricked. Right now, she just wants something she can rely on. ‘Is the view outside real?’ she asks, dubiously, crossing the cement floor to the nearest window.
‘Yes, all real,’ Yuliya answers.
Evie stares out over the broad flooded river. In the distance, the dark roofless shell of Notre Dame balances on a pinnacle of high ground.
Despite what has happened to the walls, the sofas have not changed, but nevertheless Sola gingerly touches the back of one, just to make sure she will not fall through, before throwing herself down, the plump cushions puffing out fine dust.
‘You safe here,’ Yuliya announces, ‘now you can make your questions.’
‘Where are we?’ Evie asks.
‘This where I live. This my home.’
‘Why are you helping us?’
Yuliya smiles and nods. ‘Still can’t you tell? We the same. Don’t you guess it? I know it immediately I see you.’
‘What do you mean?’ A wave of exhaustion has been catching up with Evie since they arrived and, suddenly weak, she sits heavily on the other sofa to Sola.
Yuliya takes the opposite end, crossing her legs gracefully at the ankles. Her striking corn-gold hair, pressed back from her face by the high collar of her coat, exposes pink cheeks and small, delicate ears – intricately formed shells pierced by gold pins.
‘I mean I made by humans, like you,’ she says, prompting David and Evie to look at one another in surprise. ‘I spot you at Sacré-Coeur. That place magnet for lost souls. I follow you down steps and after think I lose you, I see you again just now outside hotel. I think – lucky you.’ She flashes them a flawless smile.
‘Yes, I think I saw you up there,’ Evie says. ‘But I still don’t know why you’ve helped?’
David, who has an attention span not much longer than Sola’s, goes to sit with the child.
‘We same range. You and me, we Elektras. There not many of us made. Even less I think now left. I came across another in Putinsburg but that the only time, and she not in good shape. We made very pretty like butterfly but sad not to last. We must look out for each other, no?’
Evie is still puzzled but she is also now curious. She gazes into Yuliya’s large round eyes, as blue as a baby’s and straight from the catalogue. ‘How do you live alone?’
‘Oh, I been here long time. My owner, Boris, he once great captain of industry. He family in Moscow… wife with big bunch of big kids, all big boys like him and he like to keep me here, a treat for himself when he get weekend away from pressure of work. He grown up as boy with dirt of Steppes under his nails and as man he always demand beautiful, perfect things.
‘But work make him enemies and one day he put in prison. In Siberia, I think. He write to me once from that place, saying it very cold and that food shit, but that I not to worry. He missing his perfect things, I think. I not hear since. That ten year ago. I have to be realistic, I do not think I see him again.’
‘So, you just stay on here and no one minds.’
Yuliya nods, ‘I try not draw attention. And people not see what they don’t expect to see.’
‘Don’t you get lonely? Don’t you miss him?’ She is thinking of Matthew and her friend Daniels. She would not have been able to live on her own for very long.
‘He man. He always like stuff his way. But he kind to me and much generous and I am sorry for what happened and sad that I not seeing him again.’
The conversation has reached as far as it can run and they watch David and Sola play cards, seated on the rug with legs crossed, bonding, like infants, through play. The game is one that Sola knows from The Dolls’ House and involves a complex system of bids and lightning-fast trades followed by the theatrical slapping down of trumps. The requirement for bluff and deceit leaves David all at sea, the buttons Sola gave him at the start transferring themselves inexorably back like magic beans to form a pool in her lap.
‘He very handsome,’ Yuliya says. ‘You lucky girl.’
‘I’m not sure I really am,’ Evie replies, uncertain what Yuliya means by lucky – that maybe she is not attractive enough to deserve him? ‘He is not mine.’
‘But you friends?’
Evie shrugs. After the misunderstanding of the day before, she is not even sure of that.
‘Boris said that we robot – he not so good at political correct – are to be perfection of human form, or we not worth bloody effort.’ Yuliya smiles to herself and gazes into the distance, a self-satisfied narcissistic glaze to her eyes. Then she suddenly stands. ‘I will leave you now all to rest.’ She crosses the room, the movement of her slender legs so smooth, her walk is more of a glide.
Reaching the doorway, Yuliya hesitates, half-turning back as if she is experiencing second thoughts. Her expression becomes strained, the smile morphing into a grimace. ‘Yes, they nice,’ she murmurs irritably. Her head tilts as if she is listening hard, then she resumes in a low, angry voice. ‘Yes, and you right, risk for us too, but this gifted horse.’
‘Who are you talking to?’ Evie asks across the room, but Yuliya is already through the door, which closes crisply behind her. Only then does it dawn that she must have a ‘Simon’ of her own and, amused by the thought that she isn’t the only one to have spent her life being badgered and nagged, Evie allows the oddness of her parting words, that were not intended for her, to slip past.
Instead she thinks of their conversation. Of Yuliya’s vision of AABs which are admired rather than persecuted. The problem is that, rather than raising new gods, where AABs have been permitted to exist, such as here in Europe, humans have engineered a delta under-class. Even Yuliya’s Boris, however much she wants to believe in his adoration, was clearly using her as little more than an object of escape and gratification. At best a concubine, at worst a slave.
Evie recalls something that Matthew once told her about Ancient Greece: that even in Athens, the home of democracy and founded on the premise of all men being equal, there were many thousands of slaves. It was the only way to ensure a comfortable life for its cultured citizens. He had gone onto observe, wryly, that the love of equal rights had been the preserve of men and had not extended to women. She’d applied this last idea to her own situation, her rights not as an AAB but as the lone female in their domestic establishment. True, she had little say on anything that mattered, but however she twisted it, Matthew had never treated her as a slave. The closest thing to a slave had actually been her uncomplaining human and male friend, Daniels.
She turns again to watch David and Sola. The child is rolling her button winnings across the concrete where they wobble and fall flat in the dark undergrowth around the edges of the room.
Suddenly inspired, Sola rises to her feet and takes mincing steps around the rug, her nose tilted upwards. ‘Me perfect, me beautiful,’ she says, caressing the air with her outstretched fingers. ‘Admire me nails! Boris he love me. Me great big dolly,’ batting her lashes and making Evie and David laugh and, for the first time in a while, forget themselves.
Performance over, Sola curtsies and, lifting her skirts, plonks herself down next to David again. She leans against him and closes her eyes. From being so active a moment before, it is as though she has an on/off switch.
Evie indicates to David that her head is slipping and he scoops her up, carries her to the other sofa and lays her on the cushions. He then crouches down and lifts the whole thing up by its sturdy frame, smoothly revolving it in the air, the child sleeping undisturbed, and sets it down in reverse, facing away from them towards the wall.