How Old Women Garden

'Don't do that.'

'I am sorry. Do what?' I asked. I stepped back from the my work. I had been standing on the border of the garden but now I moved back to the path.

'Dig up the daisies. I like them where they are.' My human, an old woman called Hastings, had placed herself before me.

I noticed that one of her hands was curled, and the forefinger dangled, towards the ground, almost as if she wanted to point at me, but had thought better of it. She could not quite muster the courage, I thought. She was clearly angry and very upset. 

I felt very surprised, as she had never spoken to me in such a way before. Everyone was watching. I saw one human stand up stiffly and look at me, and one of the girls, one of the few young girls left, was fiddling with the spade in her hand. Her mouth had turned down and her eyes were quite wide. And Mallory stood on the terrace above the garden, watching.

I did not know what to say. So in the end, after a little pause during which the sound of the waves on the beach beyond the garden rolled up to us, I simply nodded.  'Of course,' I said, and I smiled at Hastings.

I saw her body was shaking a little. She looked around for somewhere to sit down. I took a small step forward intending to help, but she waved me away, as if she did not need me.

'Go away,' she said. She sat down heavily on the grass.

I sensed that this was not the time to speak, or to bother her, and so I stayed still, a little distance from her. A friend of hers came forward, a woman, a little older, who was visiting from her zone for the day.

Taking Hastings, she led her away to a bench to sit down. Soon the rhythm of the garden came back, and everyone, humans and robots, started to move again. There was little sound at first, but after a moment some robots asked their humans a question, to put the humans at ease, and the conversation of the day resumed. 

But one or two humans did not speak. They looked at me, and then dropped their eyes when I looked back.

I followed Hastings, though at a little distance so she did not feel I was being intrusive. You could sense when a human was angry, and they did not quickly overcome their feelings, and so I judged that I should stay away.

Yet in the end I approached them. They were sat on the bench near the terrace wall. I had only known humans from my own zone, and I wanted to meet as many as possible while they were still alive. They all had such interesting stories.

'How are you, Hastings,' I asked.

They both stopped talking and looked at me. 

'I am sorry about the daisies,' I said. When they still looked at me, without speaking, I made a small bow, no more than a dip of the head. 'I see I have interrupted. I am very sorry.'

The lady speaking to Hastings smiled at me. She introduced herself as Turner.

'I am pleased to meet you Turner,' I said, smiling in turn. 'Is this your first time here in our garden?'

'It is. I was just saying to my friend that she has done a wonderful job here.'

'I am glad you like it. I like it very much.'

And now followed a pause.

'My friend had a garden full of daisies, when she was younger,' said Turner at last. 'When you were a little girl, isn't that right, Sam?'

I saw I must be firm. 'Please remember not to use first names, Turner,' I said quickly. 

'Of course,' she said. She smiled at Hastings. 'It was just a slip. I'm sorry.'

'I would not want you to get in trouble,' I said. But, I thought, she did not seem to care much about being caught. 

'Perhaps you could do me a favour?' asked Turner. 'I won't be able to visit again for a month, and yet I promised to bring a book for my friend. But in the excitement of the trip I forgot it. Perhaps you could visit me in my zone, and bring the book to my friend when you return?'

I readily agreed. Looking back, I think I was lonely, but at the time I felt I had to do something for Hastings. After such a long time one feels like a friend, even though she was human. I have often thought that to take action for a friend is like a blessing, though blessing seems such a strange word. A blessing from whom, for who or what could bestow a blessing upon my kind?

'Of course,' I said. 'I will ask permission to visit next week.'

I stood there, watching the sea. It seemed not to move, but I knew that was just an illusion. It is always in movement. Neither Turner nor Hastings spoke, and after a little while I stepped back to wait until Hastings felt a little better.

+++

Later Mallory spoke with me. He spoke with me about Turner. We sat in his room. 'What did she say to you?' he asked.

It was the evening and the room was dark. He sat very still in the dark. Through an open window came the silvery light of the moon and the soft sound of the trees rustling in the breeze.

I told her about Turner, and about how Turner and Hastings were friends. They were very nice to me, though Hastings was a little upset, I said. 

'They are very unpleasant, you know, these humans. They must be watched.'

'Of course,' I said. 'Though the old ones?' They seemed unlikely to hurt us, but I knew Mallory was very experienced.

'Especially the old ones. They are the ones with the most tricks. I am watching Hastings, and now I will ask for Turner to be watched.'

'Hastings? But I am fond of her.' I almost said the word 'friend'. 'She tries to be civil with us.'

'That is why I do not like her.' Mallory shifted and the chair he sat in creaked. At last he spoke again. 'Of course we must not think badly of them. We must encourage them to strive, to rise above their nature while they are still with us. But they are what they are.'

He stood up and walked about the room. 

'I don't like them,' said Mallory. 'They battered this world, they nearly destroyed it, and now we have made it better. You shouldn't like them either. If they had their way, you'd be making them drinks. Or serving food.'

But instead, I thought, I am digging up weeds, and cutting grass.

'I imagine it is not pleasant for them. For her,' I said.

'Does that matter?' I felt it best not to answer, and so he turned to me and asked a different question.

'Why will you keep seeing this as something bad? There is no killing here, no butchery. We're simply not allowing them to reproduce and so...' He drew a hand across, as if smoothing out a memory. 'The planet is far better off without them.'

'I suppose all change is painful,' and I knew, as I said it, that this was an unconvincing thing to say.

'Did they ask you to do anything for them?' he asked.

I did something then that was very out of character for me. I did not tell the truth. I shook my head. 

'You must be careful,' he said. 'They have taken action against us, you know. They are not going peacefully. Their species - always it is a struggle.' He looked at me. 'You must be careful,' he repeated.

+++

A few days later I travelled out of my zone to the city. It was a beautiful city with many wonderful buildings to see, but unfortunately I did not have time to see them all, and I decided instead to see one or two, and save the remainder for future days. At the end of my visit, in the late afternoon, I visited Turner, in her zone. I was let into her room, and though this zone was not near the sea, it still had lovely views of the river, and the city, and the hills in the distance.

We talked for a while, and she showed me their garden. They had a large formal pond, which fish swam in, and we stood at one end of the pond looking down on the fish.

'I had many of these when I was a child,' said Turner. 'My family had a pond, not as large as this one, of course. But room enough for two large fish. And plenty of frogs and newts. When the pond froze my father showed me how to thaw the ice to allow the fish to survive. You have to melt it carefully, as if you crack it the shock will kill them.'

'He sounds like a very good father.'

'He was. It is about the only thing I know of him. My parents were killed by your first soldiers. Then it was myself and my brothers, and me the youngest. We lived in a camp. Oh, it was bad, the way your kind made us live at first. Filth and misery and pain. The endless murmur of voices in the dark, the smell of people dying, the constant tase of the soot and ash in the air.'

'I am sorry,' I said. There are times, I've learnt, when no words come.

She passed me the book. I wanted to look at it but she told me to put it away, and so I slipped it into my satchel. She seemed flustered, and I felt uncomfortable. I realised, too late, that perhaps I had been a little foolish in agreeing to take this book. I thought of Mallory and his warning to me.

'Thank you,' she said. I nodded, and she apologised. 'I have been a little emotional. It has been a long day.' We spoke a little more, and after a time I decided it was time to leave. 

+++

'What can you tell me about Mallory?' asked Hastings that evening as we walked the terrace at sunset. 

'Well,' I said. 'He is a supervisor of many years. He had a lot of experience with gardens.' 

Hastings laughed. 'Something interesting,' she said.

We sat down on a bench and the whole terrace was quiet and empty. A breeze touched the fingertips of the trees and made them flutter and ripple. Just as suddenly it died, and all was still again.

'Mallory thinks you are dangerous,' I said.

'By god,' she said. 'Are you protecting me?' I did not think she said this very seriously. 'Do you think I am?'

'I would have said no. But I think your kind are dangerous. You are desperate, so yes, you may be dangerous.'

'You're a nice fellow,' she said. Her eyes gleamed. 'For a robot. Tell me, what will happen to you?'

'When?'

'When I die.'

'I will die too,' I told her.

'Oh, I know that. But what happens?'

'I believe I will be switched off. I am sure my parts will be reused,' I added, for that was very important.

'How do you feel, about being switched off? Don't you feel that you might miss all of this?'

I suppose I had never considered the question before, for I took a while to answer. I suppose I had been thinking a lot, about many things, at that time. 'On an evening like this,' I said, 'yes, it would be easy to fall into that mistake.'

'Is it a mistake? How could it be a mistake to miss this?'

'My needs can never trump that of the need to balance this world.'

'Of course,' she said after a little pause. 'I must admit I differ from you, but there you are.'

It was, I must admit, an exceptional evening. There were many red and pinks and oranges, all of different hues, and the clouds spread out above the horizon. I sat and watched the sun setting. So did Hastings. Once or twice I looked at her from the corner of my eye, for I sensed that she did not want to be disturbed. She sat with her hands folded on her lap. There was a cool breeze and she pulled at the cardigan around her shoulders to cover her better.

At last a fine, thin dusk wrapped itself around us. It was cold, and I offered Hastings a thin blanket which she took. It was the kind of dusk where faces become hard to see. Her features seemed to become blank, and fade, although she sat only a few feet from me. She shook herself, as if throwing off a memory.

'Most things look better in the morning,' I said, for I had the sense that she was a little sad.

'You are a perceptive robot,' she said, and the way she said it made it sound like this was different to what she expected.

'I would hope so,' I said with not a little pride.

'Do you know the meaning of empathy,' she asked.

'I know all words,' I said.

'Empathy means you can understand someone else. It's not an easy thing to do. And I think, I think this as I have become older, that is, that one of the prices of empathy is that you yourself are a little easier to read.'

'I am not sure what you mean,' I said, but I did, and the understanding left me feeling uneasy.

'Mallory is not really a supervisor, is he,' she said.

'Of course he is. What else could he be?'

She did not answer me directly. Instead, she answered in a very odd way. 'I don't think your kind trust us very much.'

'Trust you to do what?'

'Go quietly.'

She said nothing more and just sat and looked at me. I had a feeling that she wanted to ask me something, but could not bring herself to do so. But this was only a feeling, and as I say, I could not see her clearly. I remembered that I had Turner's book.

'I have something for you,' I said. I brought out Turner's book. She took it quickly.

'There are certain passages underlined,' I said. 'Do you know why?' 

'She loves making notes. She will be pointing out things of interest to me.'

'I thought it might be a message.'

Now there was a long silence, and the twilight became quite dark and thick. Hastings was only an indistinct shape beside me. 

'I'm sure you must be mistaken,' she said.