The Mysterious Case of Betty Blue Read Online Free PDF Page B

looking for one
robot. We’ll be two people together. We can travel. We can cook up
a story. What we need is a plan, Betty.”
    He fell forwards onto her upper body,
clinging to Betty Blue.
    “ Please, Betty. Please
don’t leave me.”
    There were some noises and Betty
picked up the sound of the landlady’s tread on the
stairs.
    She put a finger over Scott’s
lips.
    “ Hush, Baby.”
    Scott closed his eyes, tried to
staunch the tears and the fear and the despair.
    He had to get control over himself and
make her understand what she was doing to him.
    Weren’t there three rules of robotics
or something?
    He’d read that as a kid, before he
grew up and lost his vision.
    Betty knew the facts better than he
ever could. To her mind, it was impossible. What they had to do was
irrational.
    They had to do something irrational,
in the face of impossible odds.
    “ Betty?”
    “ Yes, Scott?” Her voice
was subdued.
    “ Do you trust
me?”
    She stroked his hair and kissed him
and he fell silent.
    The sound of Mrs. Jarvis and her
vacuum cleaner, roaring and banging in the hallway outside, was of
no great reassurance.
    Sooner or later, Betty’s luck had to
run out.
    As for Scott, it already had. Scott’s
luck had run out years before.
    Wasn’t it time he caught a real
break?
    For much of his adult life he had done
nothing but think. Time had always been the one thing he had plenty
of. Scott was a man with a little too much time to
think.
    If only he had learned what to do with
it.
    They could sure use some ideas right
about now.
     
    ***
     
    They had talked it out, and while it
was desperate, it was completely unorthodox, upon which Scott had
insisted.
    “ We have to do something
they would never anticipate.” Hopefully she could take it on faith.
“We have to do something completely unpredictable, something they
would never expect.”
    She had outlined all the methods which
they would have to avoid, or evade, or elude, methods by which she
and he could be seen, recorded and identified. They faced a
daunting prospect. Betty was monitoring hundreds of channels at all
times, but her own recent files were blocked by police and original
company protocols. Having anticipated this, she had a backup file
ready-made. It was disturbing to know they were probing not just
for her, but at her and in her.
    “ You know they’re going
right by the book, and routine, on this one.”
    The state would be relying on manpower
and technology, Scott told her. It would be relying on its very
ubiquity. The eyes were everywhere. One of the reasons the cops
weren’t swarming all over the vicinity, was because they expected
to solve the case by other means. They were counting on some data,
a sighting, a recorded image, by the all-pervasive passive means at
their disposal. Someone would find her facing into a corner in a
blind alley, feet still going. He explained to her just exactly how
they would think. Her battery must have died, her brain had a short
circuit in it, or something like that.
    Sooner or later someone would try to
flog the parts, if nothing else. Sooner or later the cops or the
waste disposal people would find a leg in a dumpster.
    She took some convincing, but Scott
could be persuasive, and he had a good mind when he focused on a
problem.
     
    ***
     
    The time had come and they were ready,
with darkness falling and the weekday commuter traffic at its
peak.
    Scott would be lost in the crowd within
two minutes, unless someone professional already had them under
surveillance—in which case why would they watch and
wait?
    Why not just march in and grab
her?
    They had the right, as Scott put
it.
    She ruffled his hair and then smoothed
it down again. She put his hat on for him.
    “ All right. Off you go. I
love you, Scott.”
    They stood in the centre of the living
room.
    Scott was all outfitted, with his long
cane and his dark glasses. He was wearing a white trench-coat to
make him more visible. Scott was going to stand out like a