Makers Part 102

She must have made a noise, because Lester looked up -- or maybe it was just the uncanny, semi-psychic bond between an old married couple. He grinned at her like he was ten years old and she grinned back and went around to the door.

"h.e.l.lo, boys," she said. They straightened up, both of them unconsciously cradling their low backs, and she suppressed a grin. *My little boys, all grown up*.

"Darling!" Lester said. "Come here, have a look!"

He put his arm over her shoulders and walked her to the bench, leaning on her a little.

It was in pieces, but she could see where it was going: a pair of familiar boxy shapes, two of Lester's mechanical computers, their cola-can registers spilling away in a long daisy-chain of worm-gears and rotating shafts. One figure was big and round-shouldered like a vintage refrigerator. The other was c.o.c.keyed, half its gears set higher than the other half. Each had a single, stark mechanical arm extended before it, and at the end of each arm was a familiar cracked and fragrant baseball glove.

Lester put a ball into one of the gloves and Perry hammered away at the keyboard. Very, very slowly, the slope-shouldered robot drew its mechanical arm back -- "We used one of the open-source prosthestic plans," Lester whispered in the tense moment. Then it lobbed a soft underhand toss to the lopsided one.

The ball arced through the air and the other bot repositioned its arm in a series of clattering jerks. It seemed to Suzanne that the ball would miss the glove and bounce off of the robot's carapace, and she winced. Then, at the very last second, the robot repositioned its arm with one more fast jerk, and the ball fell into the pocket.

A moment later, the lopsided bot -- Perry, it was Perry, that was easy to see -- tossed the ball to the round-shouldered one, who was clearly her Lester, as she'd first known him. Lester-bot caught the ball with a similar series of jerks and returned the volley.

It was magic to watch the robots play their game of catch. Suzanne was mesmerized, mouth open. Lester squeezed her shoulder with uncontained excitement.

The Lester-bot lobbed one to Perry-bot, but Perry-bot flubbed the toss. The ball made a resounding gong sound as it bounced off of Perry-bot's carapace, and Perry-bot wobbled.

Suzanne winced, but Lester and Perry both dissolved in gales of laughter. She watched the Perry-bot try to get itself re-oriented, aligning its torso to face Lester-bot and she saw that it *was* funny, very funny, like a particularly great cartoon.

"They do that on purpose?"

"Not exactly -- but there's no way they're going to be perfect, so we built in a bunch of stuff that would make it funnier when it happened. It is now officially a feature, not a bug." Perry glowed with pride.

"Isn't it bad for them to get beaned with a baseball?" she asked as Lester carefully handed the ball to Perry-bot, who lobbed it to Lester-bot again.

"Well, yeah. But it's kind of an artistic statement," Perry said, looking away from them both. "About the way that friends.h.i.+ps always wear you down, like upper and lower molars grinding away at each other."

Lester squeezed her again. "Over time, they'll knock each other apart."

Tears p.r.i.c.ked at Suzanne's eyes. She blinked them away. "Guys, this is great." Her voice cracked, but she didn't care. Lester squeezed her tighter.

"Come to bed soon, hon," she said to Lester. "I'm going away again tomorrow afternoon -- New York, a restaurant opening."

"I'll be right up," Lester said, and kissed the top of her head. She'd forgotten that he was that tall. He didn't stand all the way up.

She went to bed, but she couldn't sleep. She crossed to the window and drew back the curtain and looked out at the backyard -- the sc.u.mmy swimming pool she kept forgetting to do something about, the heavy grapefruit and lemon trees, the shed. Perry stood on the shed's stoop, looking up at the night sky. She pulled the curtains around herself an instant before he looked up at her.

Their eyes met and he nodded slowly.

"Thank you," she mouthed silently.

He blew her a kiss, stuck out a foot, and then bowed slightly over his outstretched leg.

She let the curtain fall back into place and went back to bed. Lester climbed into bed with her a few minutes later and spooned up against her back, his face buried in her neck.

She fell asleep almost instantly.

Acknowledgements:

Thanks to Andrew Leonard and Salon for publis.h.i.+ng this when it was *Themepunks*.

Thanks to Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Irene Gallo, Pablo Defendini, Justin Golenbock, Liz Gorinksy, Tom Doherty and the many wonderful people at Tor for their good work putting this book into the world.

Likewise thanks to Sarah Hodgson, Alice Moss and Victoria Barnsley at HarperCollins for making this book happen in the UK.

Thanks to my agents, Russell Galen, Danny Baror and Justin Manask.

Thanks to my mother, Dr Roslyn Doctorow, who remains the sharpest proofer in the business.

Thanks to my business partners at Boing Boing, the staff of MAKE: Magazine, and to all the makers who let me hold their skateboards while they welded the killer robots.

And thanks, of course, to Alice and Poesy, who are the reason for all of it.