'DAMN THIS FUCKING suit!’ shouted Sam. His carbosteel boot had seized heel-up as he tried to raise it from the rocky path. ‘Can’t move it at all now! It was too bloody slow already. This is ridiculous.’
Well, you won’t learn how to use it properly, thought Diya, because your patience has declined to zero. But she didn’t say that.
‘Four hundred thousand euros worth of kit!’ her husband growled.
It worked perfectly when they trained you on it at Gerontotech. ‘Terrible, dear. It should respond to your muscles. Just lift your foot with a bit more oomph.’ And stop fiddling with the controls.
‘All right, fuck it!’ With an ungainly wobble, her husband succeeded in wrenching his foot off the ground, jerkily righted himself, then jabbed at the control pad on his left wrist. ‘Shit!’ The exoskeleton erupted in an electric burst and hurtled him up the steep path towards the next highpoint. ‘Shit shit shit!’
He toppled over—luckily for him, on the landward side of the path—into some bushes. On the opposite side was a sheer drop onto Cornish rocks.
The machine began a continuous distress beep.
‘Shut up!’ Sam banged his wrist against the ground. ‘How did I let you persuade me to get a gadget like this?’ he yelled at Diya, as she pushed herself up the slope on her sticks. ‘What have you fucking done to me this time? Come on, get me up, will you!’ His arm buzzed as he waved it at her menacingly.
His doctors had recommended the suit, as she recalled, not her. She had only encouraged him to take up their suggestion. But she knew better than to correct him.
She bent and rescued him from his sprawl, the mechanical suit responding perfectly when she eased him up, and the beeping stopped. He shoved her away as soon as he was on his feet, so hard she herself nearly fell. From long years’ habit, she backed further from his swinging arms, even though he was only balancing himself.
‘I was better off without it. Fuck!’ He patted his cheek where a thorn had scratched his exposed face. A wasp buzzed around his head and she found herself hoping it would sting him.
‘Maybe we should have practised with it more, after all,’ Diya said, ‘before we came on holiday.’ Which I suggested, several times.
In reply, Sam muttered under his breath. Frowning, he let her make a simple change on his wrist pad, then steer him towards a bench at a lookout spot, where they sat down. The cool sea air in her face made her sigh.
A couple of women about their age appeared over the crest of the path, both tottering on hiking sticks behind a little elf-like guide bot, which was chattering to them about the local flora and fauna.
‘Morning. Beautiful day,’ said one.
‘Yes, it certainly is,’ said Sam, nodding cheerily.
‘Glad we didn’t hire a fucking guide,’ he muttered after they’d gone. ‘I’d have thrown the thing off the cliff by now.’
Yes, you would, thought Diya. And cost us a fortune in fines.
‘Why weren’t those old biddies in fucking exoskeletons,’ he grumbled. ‘They were both at least ninety. But they were nipping along like ten-year-olds.’
‘Just the luck of the draw, dear, isn’t it?’ And taking notice of your doctors. ‘You weren’t so bad until a year ago, when you had that fall on the lawn.’
‘That fall! That was your fault! You fired the gardener, otherwise I wouldn’t have been out there at all, trying to get that bloody mower to cooperate. The blasted thing wouldn’t listen to instructions any more than the gardener did.’
She hadn’t fired the gardener. The poor young woman had left of her own accord, sick of her husband’s barked orders and red-faced insults. She didn’t remind him of that though.
‘Fuck this. That’s enough rest,’ he said. ‘Come on. This sodding tin can is not going to beat me.’
He creaked up to a standing position, which held.
‘There!’ he shouted in triumph.
‘You’re getting the hang of it,’ said Diya. As she hauled herself onto her feet using one of her sticks, her husband’s arm lifted in her direction, and without thinking she reached out to it for support.
‘Get off! What are you doing?’ He batted her hand away.
‘Sorry. I thought you were…’
‘You’ll pull me over. I was just loosening the shoulder joint. The bastard thing was sticking.’
She followed him at a distance along the path. He was wandering too near the edge, but she stopped herself warning him. When he was deep in these grizzly moods, anything she said could trigger a volley of growls, or worse. She touched her cheek, still tender from weeks ago. It was worth considering the power the exoskeleton gave him, all the more if he ever properly mastered it.
They came above a broad cove where the sea smashed and hissed white against spikes and tumbles of rocks. The distances of ocean and sky gave Diya a sense of freedom and made her heart jump—but brought tears to her eyes. The love she had given this man, compared to what she had received in return: a temper that had grown hotter with the gathering years and his declining health. It wasn’t often she felt anger herself, rarer still that she showed it, but as she thought of her long patience, it rose.
Sam huffed at the scene then tried to turn and carry on along the path. ‘Come on!’ he shouted, glaring at his feet. ‘I want to go faster than this! Why won’t it do what I want?’ He fussed at the panel on his wrist. ‘Come on!’
‘Sam. Don’t mess with the controls. I had them right. Here, let me…’
‘Oh, keep off!’
He swung his metal-braced fist at her and brushed the side of her head. She backed away from him, felt the graze and looked at her fingers—there was blood.
‘Oh, fuck. It’s your own fault. Bloody interfering, all the time! Do you think I can’t get on with gadgets? The car? The cleanerbot? The bloody entertainment system? Do I have trouble with them?’ (Yes, she thought, miserably, all the time.) ‘I don’t need your help.’
He returned to delving into his touch panel. There was a whine from the machine. He experimentally lifted his foot, and the movement was quicker, smooth now. He marched on up the next rise.
‘See?’ he shouted back at her. ‘Five years in the border force. Ten as a teacher. Fifty running my own bloody company. Three wives, two on alimony. And you think I need advice from you? What have you ever done but sit at home and moan?’
She kept a few paces behind him. How many times had she heard this before? Even though she had always tried so hard to help him—he did need help, whatever he said, with so many things, never mind the exosuit. He was always asking for it. And to hear all this again, amongst these beautiful surroundings, on their holiday—it made her shrink from it all in bitterness.
But now she noticed that, lost in his mood and not concentrating, he was veering around erratically again. A loud screech sounded from the machine and a harsh, repeated warning: ‘Danger! Cliff edge! DANGER!’
‘Oh, fuck this thing. Molly-coddling fucking…’ He stabbed at his wrist. ‘Shut up!’
‘Sam, please. Don’t.’ Seeing his peril, she struggled up to him, instinctively putting her arm out.
‘Fuck off!’ His metal arm swung and pushed her and she fell on her back, her sticks clattering to the ground. He leant over her, fists clenched, arms waving: ‘Won’t you learn your lesson? Damn you! When will you…’ He thrust his metal-gloved fist at her face—but it wove erratically in arcs before it jabbed, giving her time to move. Panting with fury, he poised to strike again, but his forearm was still zig-zagging above her. ‘Fuck! Damn! It won’t even…’
Diya rolled on her side, grabbed a stick and hauled herself to her feet, then bent for the other one. She stared at her husband, struggling with his own arm, and quelled a bitter, tearful laugh. But the suit started twitching, the old man’s limbs flicking and flexing in all directions, like the puppet of a crazed puppeteer, and she couldn’t help herself. She turned away to hide her face.
‘Warning! Warning! Malfunction!’
‘Are you sure you don’t need my help, Sam?’ She had never in her life dared mock him before, and she was enjoying it.
But she stopped. The exoskeleton had gone into wilder gyrations, spinning her husband around, yanking him all over the path. With a shocked stare and circling arms, he whirled towards the precipice. The machine let out a piercing alarm. ‘Emergency! Emergency! MALFUNCTION! EMERGENCY!’ Locked in its hood, Sam’s face stared back at her in horror, a kind of childish amazement. Then he tumbled off the cliff edge.
‘Sam!’
Shrieking after him, Diya hobbled to the verge. He hadn’t dropped all the way. With his right-hand glove, he had managed to catch the edge, the powerful fingers digging into the overhanging turf. But the left hand was flapping wildly. The metal suit jerked, boots erratically cracking against the rocks of the cliff face. ‘Emergency! EMERGENCY!’ it was yowling, its distress signal blaring, almost drowning out Sam’s own wails. ‘MALFUNCTION! MALFUNCTION!’
‘Diya! Diya! Fuck! Aaaaahhh… Help me! Help me up!’
He tried to steer his loose hand towards her, but the clad limb whirred and buzzed, fizzing and wriggling, out of control. She reached out but retracted from the flailing arm.
‘Damn you! Do something!’ His grip on the turf was slipping. He screamed, but now he managed to steady his left hand enough to hold it out to her levelly, though it still twitched and juddered.
‘Diya! The wrist pad! Aagghh! Get the suit under control. Like before. Then I can climb up. Quick!’ His right hand slipped again. ‘Aaaahhhggghh!’
Calming her own breath, Diya reached down to the metal glove—but hesitated: What if the arm went haywire again? What if it whipped away while her fingers were on the touchpad, knocked her down, or even grabbed her, pulled her? Her hand dropped.
‘No! Diya, Diya! Diya! You stupid... Help me!’ His eyes were wild, but the more he struggled and his desperation grew, the more she froze. It wasn’t just that the suit might take her down with him. There was something else: everything he had meted out to her over the years, the contempt, the fear, the blows, in return for her devotion. As she crouched above him, the memories rose in her chest and made themselves felt again. Her own thoughts surprised her, froze her: Help you, Sam? Help you? Should I? You yourself can never decide if you want me to or not.
Then came an idea that shocked her: What if you just fell? Fell, by accident? And I walked away.
She recoiled from it, but it was as if someone else had made the decision, not her. And it was exhilarating. Hesitantly, she pulled back, then straightened up, holding his stare as it flared up at her with terror and disbelief.
‘No! Diya! No! You wouldn’t…’
She pitied him but felt no doubt.
As if on a screen, with her a spectator, he writhed and twisted, uttering a strange gargling howl of panic, as his carbosteel fingers dragged through the soil and finally lost their grip. A bellowed curse and he dropped thrashing away from her. She covered her eyes, grimacing at the long scream and heavy metallic crash, then held herself, shaking. Looking around, she saw there were no other walkers nearby who might have witnessed what happened. She would think how to report it later.
For a while, she stood gazing over the sea.
