by Tanith Lee
“Block 21, New River Road,” I said to the driver, who was an astoundingly humanlike robot. “Good Lord,” I said, waving my black nails at him, “you’re almost as realistic as the special E.M. formats.”
“Which?” he asked.
“Electronic Metals. Copper, Golder and Silver.”
“Never heard of ’em.”
“Have you ever been dismantled?”
“Not so you’d notice.”
“I wonder what it’s like. He looked so—he looked—”
“Could you please,” he said, “not cry like that when you get out of the cab? It might be bad for business.”
He was human of course, I’d forgotten about Jagged’s gimmick line of real drivers.
He’d been more forbearing than Egyptia.
Lights hit the windshield. We flew.
I managed to stop crying. The worst thing was not knowing why I was.
When I got up to the fifteenth gallery of Clovis’s block, his door rushed open before I even spoke to it, set for sight. Clovis stood in the middle of the rug, barefoot, in a shower robe, frowning.
“He’s dying,” I said. “They’re going to kill him.”
* * *
—
The sedative Clovis gave me wasn’t flavored. It had a bitter taste. I slept in the spare bedroom, which has black satin sheets, alternating with green or oyster satin sheets. The satin is a deliberate gesture, for you slide all night from one end of the bed to the other. Clovis usually makes his guests uncomfortable, in the hopes they’ll soon go away. Drugged, I slept. When I woke up, he gave me China tea and an apple.
“If you can find anything to eat in the servicery, you can eat it.”
Sleepwalking, drug-dazed, I found some instant toasts. Clovis stood in the doorway.
“I think I gave you too much Serenol. Do you remember what you told me last night? You were in very dramatic shock.”
I watched the instant toast rising from the hot plate, and I saw two silver eye-sockets with wheels turning.
“No, I didn’t give you enough Serenol,” said Clovis, as I wept.
I had told him everything, sitting on his couch, giving a performance Egyptia might have envied.
“I’m surprised you went as far as you did,” Clovis now said, handing me a large box of tissues, and removing the jumping toast from the floor. “Timid little Jane, confronting the might of Electronic Metals Ltd. What was the name of that prat?”
“Sw-Sw-Sw—”
“Swohnson, that’s right. I’m quite looking forward to meeting him.”
“What?”
“What?” Clovis copied my astonishment.
“Clovis, I can’t go back. I can’t do anything. I told him I was under eighteen. I haven’t enough money. And my mother wouldn’t—”
“It’s too boring to explain twice. Follow me.”
Clovis walked back across the main living area and dialed a number on the videoless phone, turning up the sound reception as he did so.
I stood where he had in the servicery doorway, and presently I heard Egyptia’s sultry, seductive, sleepy voice.
“Good morning, Egyptia.”
“Oh God. Do you know what time it is. Oh, I can’t bear it. Only an idiot would call at this hour.”
“An idiot would be unable to use the telephone. I take it you were asleep.”
“I never sleep.” She yawned voluptuously. “I can’t sleep. Oh Clovis, I’m terrified. Too terrified ever to sleep. I have a part. Theatra Concordacis are doing Ask the Peacock For My Brother’s Dust. They said only one person could play Antektra. Only I could play her. Only I had the resonance, the scope—But, Clovis, I’m not ready for it. I can’t. Clovis, what shall I—”
“I’m going to buy you a lovely, lovely present,” said Clovis.
“What?” she demanded.
“Jane tells me you’re hooked on a robot.”
“Oh! Oh, Clovis, would you? But, no. I can’t. I have to concentrate on this part. I have to be celibate. Antektra was a virgin.”
“I’m happy to reveal I don’t know the play.”
“And Silver—he’s called Silver—he is the most wonderful lover. He can—”
“Please don’t tell me,” said Clovis. “I shall feel inadequate.”
“You’d love him.”
“Everybody, apparently, loves him. I wouldn’t be surprised if he ran for Mayor next year. Meantime, they’re dismantling him at E.M. Ltd. in a hellish basement that also produces a sideline of meat pies.”
“Clovis, I can’t follow you.”
“It seems you did something to the metal-man. His clockwork has ganged agley. He’s for the chop. Or the pie.”
“I didn’t do anything. Do they expect me to pay for it?”
“I’m paying. For possession. In your eighteen-year-old name. At a reduction, if I play my cards right. Faulty goods.”
“Clovis you are wonderful, but I really can’t let myself accept.”
“Then you can loan him to Jane until you’re free. Just to keep his hand in, if you’ll excuse the expression.”
“Jane wouldn’t know one end of a man—”
“I think she might. Might you not, Jane?”
Egyptia fell silent. I had turned to glass, immovable, easily broken.
“One hour,” said Clovis. “The Arbor side of the bridge.”
“I’m not going to the Arbors. I’ll be mugged and raped.”
“Of course you will, Egyptia. Wish on a star.”
Clovis killed the line. He dialed.
“Electronic Metals? No, I don’t want the contact department. I want somebody by the avian name of Swohnson.”
He waited. I said, “Clovis, they won’t,” and stopped because Swohnson’s voice came on the line and my whole body withered like an autumn leaf. I sat on the floor and put my head on the wall, and the Serenol swam over me.
Out of the haze I heard Swohnson start to wither too.
“How do you know one of the Silver Formats is faulty?”
“My spies,” said Clovis, “are everywhere.”
“What? Er. Look here—”
“I don’t happen to use a video.”
“It’s that—ah—that darn girl. Isn’t it? And you’re another rich kid—”
“I am another very rich kid. And I advise you to calm down, my feathered friend.”
“What? Who the—”
“Swan,” said Clovis clearly, “son.”
“It’s spelled S.W.O.H.,” exclaimed Swohnson.
“I don’t care if it’s spelled S.H.I.T.,” said Clovis. “I’m calling on behalf of the lady who hired your ballsed-up, badly-made substandard rubbish the night before last.”
I got up and went into the green bathroom, and ran a tub. I couldn’t bear to listen anymore.
About fifteen minutes after, as I lay there in the water, Clovis knocked on the door and said,
“You’re a rotten audience, Jane. Are you all right? If you’ve slashed your wrists, could you hold them down in the bath and try not to mark the wall covering? Blood is very difficult to clean off.”
“I’m all right. Thank you for trying.”
“Trying? Son of the Swohn is pure cast-iron jello. I’m assuming, by the way, you’ll pay me back in hard cash as soon as you can wring Demeta’s blessing from her. Then we can edge Egyptia out of the picture, too.”
“They won’t let you,” I said. Tears ran in the water. I was a bath tap, which nobody could turn off.
“Why am I doing this?” Clovis asked someone. “Moving heaven and Earth to get her some run-down heap of nuts and bolts that will probably permanently seize up as it walks through the door? Or at some other, more poignant, crucial moment. Oh, more! More! Sorry, honey, my spring’s bust.”
He went away
and I heard the shower sizzle alive in the mahogany bathroom.
A timeless gap later, I heard him go out of the apartment, whistling. It isn’t true what they say about male M-Bs. At least, Clovis can certainly whistle.
I lay in the tub, letting the vital oils be washed from my skin, as my mother had always told me not to. (“You can put skin elements back from a jar. But nature should never be wasted, darling.”)
Clovis couldn’t mean what he said. If he did, Electronic Metals would never let a faulty robot go. Or the demonstrators would have come back. Or Egyptia, if she signed, would assert her legal claim, and keep him. Or he would already be a pile of cooling clinker.
Yet even as I wept, the tempo of my tears had abruptly changed. I was now weeping quickly, and I was hurrying suddenly to get out of the bath. Hurrying as I had on the night I went to Egyptia’s party. Because somehow I already knew.
* * *
—
When I heard the lift again, another lift went down through my insides. When the door asked me to let someone in I didn’t stop to reason. I flung the door open. And there was Austin.
“Where’s Clo?” said Austin.
I stared at Austin. I had expected anything but him.
“Well, I know I’m beautiful,” he said.
“I thought you had a key,” I stammered.
“Threw it back in his face,” said Austin. “All that crap about a seance. Did you know that table’s rigged? Bet you did, you girl.”
“Clovis isn’t here,” I said.
“Then I’ll wait.”
“He’s gone to the beach.” Another lie. Austin believed it.
“Hope someone kicks sand in his face.”
He turned, flowed straight down the corridor and banged the button for the lift to come back. I felt guilty and glad, and the lift swallowed him and he was gone.
It was one P.M., according to Clovis’s talking clock when I switched it on. I had combed my hair for the thirtieth time. I sat in my black frock and black nails and white strained face, and gazed at the New River through the window. There were bruised-looking clouds. It might rain. I had stopped raining; my tears were dry. I made some real coffee, of which Clovis has accumulated a whole cupboard. But I couldn’t drink it. There was dust on the coffee table. Obviously the block’s automatic cleaner had remained unsummoned for days.
What was I waiting for? For Clovis to call and say he’d failed? For the door to open and Clovis to come through, shrug and say—what surprisingly he hadn’t last night—you’d better forget it, Jane. After all, it’s this fear of men thing again, isn’t it, due to your lack of a physically present father?
Last night, I had known where I was, for all of one hour. I’d known that women don’t love robots. That a doll with its clockwork showing meant nothing to me. But I hadn’t been able to hang on to that truth. For me—he was alive. A man, Clovis. Real.
I heard the lift.
Wasn’t there another small apartment in an annex at the end of this gallery? It might be the people from there.
The door seemed to tremble, ripple, as if underwater, and opened. Clovis and Silver walked through it.
Silver wore blue clothes, mulberry boots. I couldn’t stop looking at them. Then I looked at Clovis’s face. Clovis was surprised. He had been surprised, one could tell, for quite a while. He came over to me and said, “Jane, Jane, Jane.” Then he handed me a plastic folder. “Papers,” said Clovis briskly. “Duplicates of reassembly order, possession rights and receipt for cash transfer with bank stamp. Two-year guaranty, with a bar sinister on it due to incomplete check being waived by customer. And Egyptia’s signed confirmation that you have right of loan. For six months it may say, or years, or something. Egyptia is vaguely aware, by the way, of having been cheated of something, so I’m taking her to lunch, and buying her a steel-grey fur cloak. For which you’ll also owe me the money.”
“I may not be able to repay you,” I said. I was numb. Silver was standing near the door, standing at the edge of my vision, blue fire burning the rest of the room to cinders.
“See you in court, then,” said Clovis.
Inanely I said, “Austin came up. I said you were at the beach.”
“I think I am,” said Clovis. “Certainly there is a distinct notion of sand underfoot. Shifting, I surmise.” His face was still surprised. He turned from me and walked back to Silver, glanced at him, walked by him, and reached the door. “You know where everything is,” Clovis said to me. “And if you don’t, now is the time to find out. Jesus screamed and ran,” added Clovis. The apartment door slammed behind him, jarring its mechanisms. And I was alone. Alone with Egyptia’s robot.
I had to force myself to look at him. From the boots to the long legs, and across—one hand, two hands, loosely at rest by his sides. Arms. Torso. Shoulders with the hair glowing against the blue shirt. Throat. Face. Intact. Whole. Tiger’s eyes. In repose. And yet, what was it? Was I inventing it? The ghost of something, some disorientation, the look on the face of someone who has been sick and is convalescing….No, imagination.
Did he know the legal position, who owned him, who was borrowing him? Did I have to tell him?
His amber eyes went into a long, slow blink. Thank God they worked. Thank God they were as beautiful as when I’d first seen them. He smiled at me. “Hallo,” he said.
“Hallo,” I said. I was so tense I scarcely felt it. “Do you remember me?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know what to say to you,” I said.
“Say whatever you want.”
“I mean, do I say: Please sit down, won’t you? Will you have some tea?”
He laughed. I loved his laugh. Always loved it. But it broke my heart. I was so sad, so sad now he was here with me. Sadder than I’d been at any time, a sadness beyond all tears.
“I’m quite relaxed,” he said. “I’m always relaxed. You don’t have to work at that one.”
I was thrown, but now I expected to be thrown. I had to say something to him, which I kept biting back. He saw my hesitation. He raised one eyebrow at me.
“What?” he said. Human. Human.
“Do you know what happened? What they did to you?”
“They?”
“Electronic Metals.”
“Yes,” he said. No change.
“I saw you then,” I said. It came out raw and harsh.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “That can’t have been very nice for you.”
“But you,” I said. “You.”
“What about me?”
“Were you unconscious?” I said.
“Unconscious isn’t really a term you can apply to me,” he said. “Switched off, if you mean that, then partially. To perform the check, at least half of my brain had to be functioning.”
My stomach knotted together.
“You mean you were aware?”
“In a way.”
“Did it—was it painful?”
“No. I don’t feel pain. My nerve centers react by a method of alarm reflex rather than a pain reflex. Pain isn’t necessary to my body as a warning signal, as it would be in a human. Therefore, no pain.”
“You heard what he said. What I said.”
“I think so.”
“Are you incapable of dislike?”
“Yes.”
“Of hate?”
“Yes.”
“Of fear?”
“Maybe not,” he said. “I don’t analyze myself the way a human does. My preoccupations are outward.”
“You’re owned,” I said. “You belong to Egyptia. You’ve been lent to me.”
“So?”
“So, are you angry?”
“Do I look angry?”
“You use the ego-mode: ‘I’ you say.”
“Yes. Rather ridiculous if I spoke a
ny other way, not to mention confusing.”
“Do I irritate you?”
“No,” he laughed again, very softly. “Ask whatever you want.”
“Do you like me?” I said.
“I don’t know you.”
“But you think, as a robot, you can still get to know me?”
“Better than most of the humans you spend time with, if you’ll let me.”
“Do you want to?”
“Of course.”
“Do you want to make love to me?” I cried, my heart a hurt, myself angry and in pain and in sorrow, and in fear—all those things he was spared.
“I want to do whatever you need me to do,” he said.
“Without any feeling.”
“With a feeling of great pleasure, if you’re happy.”
“You’re beautiful,” I said. “Do you know you’re beautiful?”
“Yes. Obviously.”
“And you draw people like a magnet. You know that, too?”
“You mean metaphorically? Yes, I know.”
“What’s it like?” I said. I meant to sound cynical. I sounded like a child asking about the sun. “What’s it like, Silver?”
“You know,” he said, “the easiest way to react to me is just to accept me, as I am. You can’t become what I am, any more than I can become what you are.”
“You wish you were human.”
“No.”
I went to the window, and looked at the New River, and at the faint sapphire and silver reflection of him on the glass.
I said to it, forming the words, not even whispering them: I love you. I love you.
Aloud, I said: “You’re much older than me.”
“I doubt it,” he said. “I’m only three years old.”
I turned and stared at him. It was probably true. He grinned at me.
“All right,” he said. “I’m supposed to appear between twenty and twenty-three. But counting time from when I was activated, I’m just a kid.”
“This is Clovis’s apartment,” I found myself saying then. “What did you say to him to startle him like that?”
“Like you, he had trouble remembering I’m a robot.”
“Did he…want to make love to you?”