Free Echo Boy by Matt Haig Page B

there came a song. The Neo Maxis, of course. The one they did with Harlo 57:
Life, she said, is not a breeze / It’s seventy-seven storms at seas / But if you can keep the boat from sinking / It is always worth the pain of thinking
 . . .
    If you can keep the boat from sinking
 . . .
    ‘Help! Uncle Alex! Help!’
    The wind was a gale. I swayed in it. The wind wanted me to die. But I was not going to die.
    He was there. Uncle Alex. Standing there. Just a black rain-streaked shape. He came close, helped me.
    ‘It’s OK, Audrey. I’ve got you, I’ve got you, I’ve got you . . .’
    His words pulled me up almost as much as his arms.
    It was a struggle – he wasn’t quite as big or strong as my dad – but he did it. And we got into the car and drove away fast, before any more Cloudville gangsters or second-hand securidroids could bother us.
    I now knew three things. I was nowhere near coming to terms with my parents’ death. I was unable to solve that problem by killing myself. And the third thing? That I should really give Uncle Alex the benefit of any doubt.

14
    ‘I shouldn’t have taken you there,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’
    ‘It’s all right,’ I said. I felt a deep emptiness inside me. It was hard to describe. It was almost like guilt, a guilt caused by things happening to me while my parents were dead. But for a moment, back there on the platform, amid all that horrifying adventure, I hadn’t felt depressed at all. Maybe that was the only way to handle grief: to be in a constant state of peril. Maybe the only way to return to life was to be next to death.
    I put the neuropads back on.
    Instantly, the raging swirl of my mind settled. Uncle Alex said something about how I really should try not to wear them.
    ‘I’m not a saint,’ he said as we parked high above his house. ‘But I am determined to look after you. Listen, something untoward has come up. Tomorrow I have to go somewhere on business, just to visit a warehouse, but it will only be for the day. Other than that I’ll be here. You won’t be in the house on your own.’
    I remembered what he had told me.
I will be staying at home for the next week or so. I’m not leaving the house, I promise.
    I felt worried. ‘Where are you going?’
    ‘Paris.’
    Paris.
    I remembered my mother taking me swimming in the best pool in Europe. Saturday mornings that would never return.
    The leviboard lowered us towards the lawn. The Echos were still out gardening. Uncle Alex looked at me and said: ‘You honestly don’t have to worry about them. My vision – the Castle vision – is to make humans achieve all we can achieve, while making the world
safer
. I know you can’t imagine that Echos could make anything safer, but potentially they can . . . Sempura, well, they are run by mad people. Totally crazy. The bosses . . . all they care about is their vision. They want to create Echos that are more advanced than humans, basically, and in doing so they take all kinds of risks. All kinds. Lina Sempura herself, well, she’s crazy. Do you know what her first job was?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Designing warbots for the Koreans. That’s her background. Killing machines. She’s hardly human herself. She was raised by Echos. Parents died when she was litt—’ He stopped himself. He realized that this might be an inappropriate thing to be saying to a young person whose parents had just died. ‘Anyway, point is, they’re a bunch of Dr Frankensteins. I bet you’ve read that book, haven’t you?’
    I nodded as we walked across the grass towards the house.
    His thin lips spread into a smile. ‘Of course you have. You’re probably better read than me. In the very last conversation I had with your dad he told me that you did your Universal Exams at fourteen, three years early. You must be ready for university.’
    ‘Oxford,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a place. Starting in June.’
    We walked through the vast hallway. There were