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

would think her quite
mad.
    “ ButI
mean, why? Why in the blue blazes would she just up and
walk off like that?” She was positively fuming over it.
    The fact was that she had been hurt by
Betty’s leaving.
    “ Well. That really is the
question, isn’t it?”
    The manufacturers would be asking
themselves the same sort of questions, and probably not liking the
answers too much. Too much at stake—too much market share, too much
liability, too much that could go wrong in a hyper-paranoid world
that was nevertheless addicted to what people called tech as if
they knew how it worked or could actually grind out the smallest
and simplest component in their backyard machine shop.
    There were millions of lesser robots
out there, and there had been recalls in the past. There were the
inevitable horror stories making the rounds.
    The Inspector’s calm visage nodded
thoughtfully in her panorama screen, as other detectives milled
around in the background of the shot.
    “ That’s definitely one of
the questions we’re asking, Olympia. But we’re, ah, you know, a
little bit out of our depth, and that’s why we’re talking to all
the experts.” When we get a minute, it would be better not to
say.
    Hopefully she got it in the diplomatic
sense.
    “ I keep wondering if it
was something I said…” There was a tone of wonder
there.
    She really was wounded.
    He suppressed any quick changes in
expression as best he could.
    Lord, love a duck—and that time, he was
afraid he wasn’t quite fast enough in the controlling of his
demeanor.
     
    ***
     
    “ Call from Mister
Cartier.”
    Olympia looked up from the settee,
overstuffed and upholstered in lush red velvet. It carefully
replicated a piece that could have graced Versailles at the time of
Marie Antoinette.
    “ Thank you,
Darryl.”
    “ I’m Stephen.”
    “ Ah. Sorry.”
    “ That’s quite all right,
Madame.”
    The screen flickered and lit up
again.
    Her husband, looking long and lean and
all of his fifty-seven years at that moment in time, was in the
back of his car. It looked to be somewhere on the Turnpike. Any
turnpike. In any city of the world, and it probably was.
    Quite frankly, she had forgotten where
he was supposed to be, today.
    “ How are you,
dearest?”
    “ Oh, fine. And how are
you, lover?”
    “ Shit. The usual, honey.
Gump’s flying in from Rio. He says he has to see me straight away
and that it’s, and I quote: important and
confidential.”
    “ I wonder what that
means.”
    “ I wish he wouldn’t call
it a loan—it grates on me. That’s all I’m saying. Charity I can
understand. Gump just pisses me off with all of
his gyrations. So how was your day?”
    “ It’s still early here.
But so-so.” Olympia waved over a servant, pausing theatrically at
the archway, the luncheon trolley all poised to strike.
    “ It’s still early there?
In other words one of those kind of days. Okay, listen up, Honey. I
doubt very much if we’ll get back tonight.” Her husband was on a
trade delegation to Sumatra or something, she recalled.
    Somewhere like that, but she had her
own interests and so she never had to be bored if she didn't want
to. Doyle was a good husband, a good provider, and more
importantly, as she was independently wealthy in her own right, he
had never embarrassed Olympia. While he might have had the odd
fling over the years, above all, Doyle would be
discreet.
    “ Yes, not unexpectedly.
We’ll just have to do without you.” Her favourite dwarf Sylphie
crawled into her lap.
    The young robot had a fetal-alcohol
syndrome look about the eyes and forehead, and Olympia stroked her
hair as the child looked up in a kind of cheerful worship which she
would never outgrow or tire of.
    Olympia was allergic to dogs and cats,
and for some reason the artificial ones had never appealed to
her.
    The robotic boys and girls were
different, so much more satisfying.
    They were like dolls that could talk.
And you could switch them off if they