Read Online Less Than Human by Maxine McArthur - Free Book Online Page A

since then, Grandpa hasn’t let him do anything creative. And he never lets Kazu forget it. Not deliberately, of course.”
    Eleanor winced at the casual way she’d dismissed Kazu’s veiled invitation and her careless comment about small companies going
     bankrupt.
    “You could have told me about this before,” she said.
    “You never asked. Besides, I didn’t think it was fair to Kazu.”
    “I never saw Kazu as angry as he was today. He said Grandpa wasn’t moving with the times.”
    Masao slid his arm under her shoulders and pulled her close to his side. His warmth dissolved some of her tension. “Grandpa
     is a stubborn old man. He doesn’t want to change the way he’s always done things.”
    “I suppose if I changed my name or produced a batch of grandchildren, he’d be friendlier.”
    Masao stayed cautiously silent. She didn’t want to do the former and couldn’t do the latter, after a miscarriage, before she
     met him, which left her unable to conceive. They had talked this over years ago.
    After a moment she relaxed into him. “Do you know what Kazu asked me today?”
    “To look at the machine, yes.”
    “Not just that.” She twisted her head back so she could see Masao’s face in the filtered moonlight. “He asked me if I’d ever
     thought about leaving Tomita.”
    Masao’s face didn’t change.
    “Don’t you think that’s strange? He practically asked me if I’d work with them.”
    “Bet Grandpa doesn’t know.”
    “Do you think Kazu was sounding me out before approaching Grandpa?”
    “Dunno.” Pause. “Yoshiko would be upset. You know about her and the shop, don’t you?
    She’s got a bit of an inferiority complex because she wasn’t much help to Kazu. Most of the wives of small business owners
     do the books. Yoshiko isn’t any good at that. She messed up a couple of orders, and Grandpa decided she’d better stay out
     of it.”
    Not only did Yoshiko worry about Eleanor’s influence on Mari, she probably also worried about Eleanor’s taking what was Yoshiko’s
     rightful place in the family business.
    “You wouldn’t leave Tomita, would you?” His disbelief was palpable.
    Of course she wouldn’t leave the challenges of research in a top company like Tomita for the claustrophobic drudge of a family
     workshop. They’d have to leave the Betta. Imagine trying to sleep beside that busy road. And she’d never find the infrastructure
     her research needed outside a large company or a university. Look at poor Akita, who had joined Tomita when Eleanor did. He
     worked for nearly four years on neurosilicon interfaces for prosthetic hands, then when the Seikai Lifestyle Reconstruction
     Plan was announced, the company put most of their funds into construction-related projects. Akita never accepted that. He
     raised a hell of a stink and left them for another company, although he didn’t mention any of this in his recent e-mails.
    “I’m worried about our project,” she said. “Izumi thinks the budget committee isn’t sympathetic.”
    “What’s the worst they can do?”
    “Cancel it”
    Masao murmured something suitably appalled.
    “It’s so shortsighted!” she burst out. “Just because we can’t give them immediate results …”
    Masao turned on his side to face her. “It sounds like they’re being practical, as management has to be. If there’s no demand
     for humanoid robots, why build them?”
    She resisted the urge to swat him. He was merely playing devil’s advocate. “But we have the technology. They’re not willing
     to invest enough to develop it properly.”
    “That reminds me of the old human clone debates. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.”
    “It’s not like that at all,” she said crossly.
    Silence for a few minutes. She wondered if he’d gone to sleep.
    “How’s Mari?” he said. “I didn’t get a chance to talk to her.”
    “She got a phone call and had to leave before I had a chance to talk