‘And he sat there thinking those sad thoughts, and then an idea occurred to him. Maybe he had been going about things the wrong way. He had tried to make himself happy by building arms and legs and painting himself. Maybe he should try a more direct method. He would build himself happy thoughts. So he took off his head…’
Axel stared at his father. ‘I don’t get it, Dad.’
Karel smiled at his son’s puzzled expression.
‘Well, if he took off his head, how was he going to make his body move? How could he put it back on again?’
‘Oh, I get it! Good one, Dad.’
Axel returned to his work. Karel watched him and felt sad. Axel was distracted for the moment, but he would ask the same question again.
The thing that every one wanted to know.
Just how does your mind work, Karel?
Susan
Masur sold only the very best paints. His little shop stood back from the main street, tucked away in the corner of a narrow arcade, built, like so much of Turing City, of cast-iron arches and plate glass. There was nothing to advertise the shop, nor to indicate the quality of its wares, save for the elegantly worked silver leaf around the doorframe.
Masur was serving another customer as Susan entered the shop. Masur was a trim, unexceptionally built robot. To the untutored eye, his body did not appear painted. Only under close observation would one notice that copper and bronze finish had been applied to raw iron.
He was an artist. And he affected an artistic temperament.
‘Thinnest gold leaf in the city?’ he was saying, incredulously. ‘Hah! There is nothing thinner on the continent of Shull! Are you suggesting to me that those nekulturny from Artemis would be able to make anything as fine as this? That they would have a use for it, even? Hey, be careful with the door! The draught!’
Susan carefully snicked the door shut.
‘It’s that thin,’ continued Masur to his customer. Gently, he opened the stone book, revealing a page that shone as yellow and smooth as sunlight.
‘Have you handled anything this fine before? It will crumple in the slightest breeze. It will stick to oil, though, so you must ensure your hands are perfectly clean. Some choose to handle it using static electricity. I say they are clumsy brutes, not worthy of the art!’
‘Then how do you apply it?’ whispered the customer.
‘I speak to it,’ murmured Masur. ‘I bring my head close to it and speak to it, and direct the vibration from my voice, and this way I guide it into place. I speak the form that I require, and it takes shape before me.’
The customer looked from Masur to Susan, not sure if he was being wound up.
‘It’s true,’ said Susan. ‘Masur is a master. That book holds the finest gold leaf, barely a few molecules thick.’
The customer turned back to Masur, still hesitant.
‘But if you are not sure,’ continued Susan, ‘perhaps you should try Kurt’s, down the street. Practise with foil first.’
‘No, I’ll buy it,’ said the customer, obviously feeling completely out of his depth.
Susan waited patiently as Masur completed the transaction. She gazed around the shop at the tiers of brushed metal drawers that lined one of the walls from floor to ceiling, each of their edges marked with a small circle of colour. A selection of wire brushes, from fine to coarse, lay on a nearby counter, with an arrangement of nibs behind them. On the far wall were shelves of various heights, stacked and lined with books of beryllium copper foil, books bound in copper and iron or in polished soapstone and slate. Susan felt the urge to take one down and to begin to paint; to open up its cover to reveal the shiny foil beneath and to splash paint over it, to create something to show the way she was feeling: scared and apprehensive and yet full of fecund promise.
The customer shut the door timidly as he left, and now Masur came to her side.
‘Susan. Good to see you again!’
‘Hello, Masur.’
‘You don’t look too good, Susan. You don’t see me as often as you used to.’
‘I’ve been busy, Masur. I’m… we’re thinking of making a mind.’
‘Making a mind?’ Masur wagged his finger. ‘And yet you come here to buy paint? You should be saving up all that creativity for your child, Susan.’
‘Not you too, Masur. Please don’t lecture me.’
Masur held Susan’s gaze for a moment. Then he went to the door and locked it.
‘We need to talk, Susan.’
‘Oh, Masur, later. Please, I just want to buy some paint.’
‘So you said.’
‘Some yellow. I feel as if the world is dark. I want to paint sunlight on my body.’
Masur relented. ‘What sort of yellow, Susan? Lead tin yellow? Cadmium yellow? Chrome yellow? Cobalt yellow?’
‘All of them, Masur. And some red lead and realgar. And some titanium dioxide.’
Masur took a slim aluminium case from one pile and then moved around the room, sliding open drawers, pulling out thin tubes and slotting them into place in the case.
‘How is Karel?’ he asked.
‘He’s fine.’
Masur paused in the act of sliding open another drawer.
‘Really, Susan?’ he chided. ‘We’ve known each other for years, yet you never really open up, do you? And yet there is something about you that people trust…’
‘What do you mean?’
Masur pulled the drawer fully open and ran his finger along the neat lines of tubes of titanium white paint it contained.
‘I wonder about Karel, Susan. We all do. And yet you trust him, and so that’s good enough for us. But do you trust him completely?’
‘Of course I do!’
‘Then why are you here in my shop, looking so unhappy, rather than at home, speaking to your husband? Maybe I wouldn’t understand. I pour my life into paints, mixing lead oxide and tin oxide or precipitating cadmium nitrate, rather than spending my time forming a relationship. But then again, that was the way I was made. My parents only had two children: one to go out into the world, and me here to tend the shop. ..’
He looked around, thinking. ‘They never thought about who it would pass to, after I died…’
He snapped out of this reverie and gazed at Susan. ‘So tell me, why aren’t you at home, telling Karel how you feel?’
Susan stared down at the marble floor. ‘I don’t know, Masur. I don’t think Karel would understand this.’
‘What makes you think I would?’
‘I don’t know. I feel so full of… something.’ She reached into the aluminium case in which Masur assembled paints, and pulled out a silver tube of realgar red. ‘Life, I suppose. I am ready to twist another child. And yet, at the same time, I am frightened. There is something out there, Masur. I feel as if our city is wide open, and that something is going to sweep into it and crush it completely.. .’
She squeezed the tube of realgar as she spoke. The thin foil casing split, and red paint oozed out, covering her delicate fingers, running around her hand, filling the mechanism in her wrist.
‘Oh! Zuse! I’m sorry, Masur.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Masur, opening a cupboard and bringing out a tin of thin oil, clean and clear as water. ‘Dip your hands in this.’
‘What do you mean, there is something about me that people trust?’ asked Susan, dipping her hands in the solvent and watching the red paint forming itself into little drops and floating away.
‘Give me your hands.’
Susan paused in the act of dipping her hands in the solvent. Masur took them. His own hands were very big compared to hers, the metal on them smooth and unpainted.
‘What?’ said Susan, nervously. Masur turned her hand over. He dipped one finger in the red paint that covered that hand and began to draw a shape on her delicate palm. A circle. He placed a dot on the top part of the circumference.