Free Ruby and the Stone Age Diet by Martin Millar Page B

is beyond repair. I take the robot and go to the nearest community, looking for help.
    At the edge of the canyon I am stopped by a force field. Scientifically primitive, the inhabitants have developed powerful mental abilities.
    ‘Go away,’ says an elder.
    ‘Where?’ I say.
    ‘Anywhere but here.’
    I trudge on across the plain. The robot is able to synthesise a little food from the rubble but, insufficiently powered by the blue sun, the food it provides is thin and unsatisfying.
    On the edge of the next canyon the same thing happens. The inhabitants will not let me in.
    I walk on alone.
    ‘Make a radio,’ I instruct the robot. ‘So I can talk to Earth.’
    The robot shakes its head. It cannot make a radio. It can’t talk either.
    It is not much of a robot.
    The house that we move to is a flat on the Loughborough Estate and it is the only squat that I ever actually open myself. I borrow a jemmy and jemmy the door, ripping off the security cage the council has fixed over the door. With the jemmy it is easy and gives me a feeling of power. Ruby has obtained some fuses from a friend and she fits them into the fusebox.
    ‘A brief prayer,’ she says, lowering her head.
    ‘Great and kind Tilka, Guardian Goddess of Squatters everywhere, please make our electricity work.’
    Right away we have electricity. The whole thing has gone very smoothly, although being on the fourth floor and the lifts not working I have a lot of hard carrying to do.
    Days later me and the robot reach the next community. There the elders also refuse me entry. They are dressed in yellow robes, with long silver earrings studded with opals.
    ‘Please let me in. I have been walking for days and I’m coming down with fever.’
    They refuse. Sweating with an alien disease, I sit down on the edge of the canyon and watch them going abouttheir business, although under the poor light of the blue star I can’t really make out what their business is.
    When I rest against some of the black vegetation it crumbles into ash and settles quickly on the windless plain.
    ‘OK robot,’ I say, resigning myself to a friendless existence. ‘It looks like I’ll have to teach you to play chess.’
    But it never really gets the hang of it and after a day or so I abandon the attempt and we just sit and watch the humanoids scuttling about, doing whatever it is they do.
    The robot synthesises some medicine to cure my fever. It is not completely useless.
    Around this time Ruby is involved in a fight with Domino and he hits her on the side of the ear and bruises her. When she arrives back in the flat she is trembling with fury and she has a cut on her foot from storming across the concrete outside. I am outraged but Ruby doesn’t want to do anything about it, just not see him again. When any of her friends say that Domino deserves some violence himself, she brushes it off as an irrelevance.
    She spends days writing in her room, and paints a little. Ruby is a good artist but generally doesn’t bother doing anything when things are going well with Domino.
    Because it seems like we might starve to death, I think maybe I should find a job. Ruby, busy writing, agrees to phone up the agency for me.
    ‘How do thirteen-hour nightshifts in a private mailingwarehouse sound to you?’ she calls, covering the mouthpiece of the phone.
    ‘No, I don’t want it.’
    ‘Fine,’ says Ruby down the phone. ‘What’s the address?’
    Cynthia is happy living with Paris
    Cynthia and Paris have a wonderful time. She lives in his room and he does all the shopping. This way the werewolf detectives will not find her
.
    Except when Paris is out shopping, they fuck all the time. Werewolves can have wonderful orgasms, and so can their lovers. And she never has any desire to eat him, apart from a few small bites here and there
.

     
     
     
    Later in the day Ruby helps me make some sandwiches. I am too gloomy about the prospect of a thirteen-hour nightshift to put much energy into