Gawf

Gawf knocked on the door of Amber's sleeping chamber softly. There was no answer from inside, not unless you counted heavy breathing as an answer.
'Amber,' he called. 'Are you in there?'
It was a silly question, of course. The ship's sensors had already told Gawf that Amber was in her room, and besides, where else would she be? It wasn't as if the girl spent her time anywhere else on the mothership these days. What condition he would find her in inside the room was another question.
Gawf repeated the knock, this time a little harder.
'Amber!' he said, working a touch more authority into his voice. 'Can you answer me please?'
Again, silence. She wasn't about to make this easy for him.
'Stevens,' Gawf said, addressing the ship's computer. 'Can you open this door for me?'
'Certainly Sir,' Stevens replied in his clipped male human voice. 'Activating lock override.'
Amber should have known locking the door wasn't going to provide any hindrance to an adult with adult's privileges on board the vessel. With a soft "click" it unlocked and slid open. Rolling his eyes, Gawf picked up Amber's breakfast - recycled nutrislop from the ship's mess - and stepped into the room. What he met in there made his eyes water.
It was the smell that hit him first. Even had he not possessed the heightened sense of smell unique to his kind, Gawf still would have needed to cover his nose. A heady mixture of human body odour, unwashed bedsheets and decomposing food made up most of the atmosphere inside the tiny chamber. The next thing he noticed was the mess. The floor was strewn with underwear, books, toys and food receptacles, and what little floor was visible under it all looked like it hadn't been vacuumed for months. The child seemed to have shed most of her hair during her time in the room and Gawf was sure he could have pieced together a whole new Amber from all the skin cells and fingernails littering the rubber-carpeted floor. The walls, meanwhile, were decorated with her artworks, murals that she had scrawled using whatever materials were to hand: pens, toiletries, even foodstuffs. Nothing was wasted on board this ship.
Maker preserve us, he thought, hesitant to take another step inside this den of horrors.
'Hi Gawf, how's it going?' said a voice from the corridor. Gawf jumped. He was not usually an easy creature to sneak up on, but that was only because his extra-human attributes were so good at picking up other creatures' breathing, footsteps and odours. In order for his built-in early warning system to work, the other creature had to respire and produce sound as it moved and Peter did neither.
'Hello Peter,' Gawf growled, stepping back out of the room and glaring at his colleague. Peter was standing off a little to one side, the expression on his translucent face unreadable. The maintenance blob was holding a bucket in one hand, a mop in the other, and was accompanied by a small army of robots, similarly armed with cleaning apparatus. They were standing by with a machine's patience, waiting for Gawf to finish his job so they could move in and do theirs.
'Is there anything alive in there?' Peter asked, producing a tentacle and jabbing it towards Amber's nest. In the midst of the heaped-up duvets, pillows and cushions filched from the lounge, Gawf had spotted a pale hand. It was immobile save for a slight twitch of the pinky when he entered.
'It depends on how you define "alive",' Gawf answered. 'There's certainly something breathing in there, but don't count on any intelligent conversations with it any time soon.'

'Her father isn't going to be happy,' Peter observed. 'His instruction, as I recall, was that she was to be ejected from her bed at nine every morning before beginning her routine, and that seems to have fallen by the wayside a bit.'

'Her father's instructions were intended for a responsive child,' Gawf answered. 'Which isn't what he left me with.'

'You're her guardian,' Peter said. 'It's your job to find a way to make her respond.'

Gawf hated Peter most of the time but today most of all. Usually the clone stayed out of Gawf's way, got on with his job, and allowed the Ferian to get on with his, sensibly understanding that the less the two of them crossed paths or spoke to each other the better for his health. Today, however, he seemed determined to punch Gawf's buttons, regardless of the possible outcome.

'I'm about to do just that,' Gawf said. 'If you could - please - go away and come back once I'm done, I'd really appreciate it.'

'We've cleaned the whole ship,' Peter protested. 'This is the only part that needs doing. Well, that and the heap of rags you've stashed behind the engine room.'

The "heap of rags" was Gawf's bed. He naturally preferred sleeping on the floor in a warm place to sleeping on an elevated platform in the manner of a human, and had forbidden Peter or the robots from touching his bed on pain of dismemberment.

'Just... go away,' Gawf repeated. 'I'll call you when she's vacated the room, alright?'

Without another word, the clone turned and walked away, his footsteps soundless on the corridor's metal-tiled floor. His robot helpers tailed along behind, understanding, like their foreman, that lingering was unwise on this occasion.

'Back to the job in hand,' Gawf muttered to himself. Taking a deep breath, he padded into Amber's room and placed a furry hand on the heap on her bed.

'Amber,' he crooned, shaking the heap gently. 'It's nearly midday and I've brought your breakfast. Can you please sit up?'

The heap moaned and shrank from the Ferian's touch, retreating further inside itself. The hand that was the only visible part of Amber clenched into a fist.

'Amber,' Gawf said again, this time with a little more volume.
'G'way,' the girl moaned. 'Lee'me'lone.'
'Alright, enough,' Gawf snapped, his patience depleted. He placed Amber's breakfast on the floor just outside the door and returned to the room, cracking his knuckles. Seizing the bedclothes in both furry hands, the guardian counted to three and yanked, dragging the entire mass off the mattress and on to the floor. It took a few seconds of vigorous shaking before Amber came loose from her padded, smelly cocoon and landed bottom-first with a crash. This done, Gawf screwed the bedding into as much of a ball as he could and removed it from the room.
'Stevens,' he called. 'Kindly send some robots to take this to the laundry room or the incinerator. Whichever is more hygienic.'
'Certainly Sir,' Stevens chirped.
Gawf re-entered the room, only to find that Amber, not yet defeated, had crawled back on to her bed and resumed her foetal position, trying to cover herself with a single cushion and her bean bag. Rolling his eyes, Gawf took hold of the bean bag and tried to separate it from his young charge. She fought furiously, wide awake now despite her best efforts to stay asleep.
'Noooo,' she moaned. 'Noooooo...'
'Amber,' Gawf growled. 'Let go.'
It was the bean bag that gave first. There was a shocking 'rip' as it ruptured, showering plastic beads over bed and floor and into Gawf's fur. The guardian roared with shock. Amber landed heavily on her mattress, hands still clutching the remains of her bean bag - a companion of sixteen years - all sleep gone from her eyes, which were wide with disbelief. For a few minutes she and her guardian stared at each other, surrounded now by a snowdrift of white beads.
'It is time to get up,' Gawf panted, feeling far too old for this job and wondering where his life had gone so wrong. 'I've brought your breakfast.'
She continued not to speak. Deciding that the less said right now the better, Gawf returned to the corridor and retrieved the bowl, which was already losing its warmth. He presented to Amber, who appeared to have entered a catatonic state, her face white and her breathing shallow.
'Here you are,' Gawf said, trying very hard to be professional despite the tension. Amber didn't acknowledge the offering, but swivelled her eyes to lock on to her guardian's. Gawf briefly considered spoon-feeding the gruel to her but thought better of it. Instead, he placed the bowl on the mattress and turned to leave.
'I'll come back when you're done...' He began.
'That was my favourite thing on the SHIP!' Amber screamed. And suddenly her breakfast became a missile...

'What happened, Gawf?' Jacob asked wearily. His features were being broadcast via the camera on board his exploration pod, and the hi-rez cam was picking up every wrinkle, every grey hair in his salt-and-pepper beard, and the dark circles around his eyes in an unflatteringly honest display. Gawf had never seen his employer looking so tired. He was sorry to be troubling Jacob again so soon after their last conversation, but had reached the end of his rope.
'She threw hot porridge at me Jacob,' Gawf replied. He had spent half an hour in the ship's infirmary being seen to by the medical officer (a robot) and being treated for minor burns; Amber had managed to decorate her guardian's shoulder and arm with piping hot slop and the affected parts had needed shaving before they could be seen to, adding insult to injury.