by Tanith Lee
“I suppose you’re a wonderful lover,” I shocked myself by saying.
“Yes,” he answered simply. A fact.
“I suppose you can—make love—as often as—as whoever hires you—wants.”
“Of course.”
“And sing songs while you’re doing it.”
He himself laughed. When he did, his whole person radiated a kind of joy.
“That’s an idea.”
Irony of the gentlest sort. And he hadn’t remembered me. The wicked flatness of his eyes had been a readjustment of his thought cells. Of course. Who else had been averse to him?
I raised my head and my eyes looked into his, and there was no need to shy away from him because he was only a machine.
“I was at the party you were hired for. You’re still hired, aren’t you, until tomorrow? So.” The last words didn’t come out bravely, but in a whisper. “Kiss me.”
He regarded me. He was totally still, serene. Then he moved close to me, and took my face in his silver hands, and bowed his auburn head and kissed me with his silver mouth. It was a mannered kiss, not intimate. Calm, unhurried, but not long. All he owed me as Egyptia’s guest. Then he stepped away, took up my hand and kissed that too, a bonus. And then he walked toward the subway, and left me trembling there. And so I knew what had been wrong all day.
I tell myself it’s the electric current running through the clockwork mechanisms that I felt, as if a singing tide washed through me. His skin is poreless, therefore not human. Cooler than human, too. His hair is like grass. He has no scent, being without glands or hormones or blood. Yet there was a scent, male, heady and indefinable. Something incorporated, perhaps, to “please.” And there was only him. Everything else became a backdrop, and then it went away altogether. And he went away, and nothing came back to replace him.
I’ve written this down on paper, because I just couldn’t say it aloud to the tape. Tomorrow, my mother will ask what I wanted to discuss with her. But this isn’t for my mother. It’s for some stranger—for you, whoever you are—someone who’ll never read it. Because that’s the only way I could say any of it. I can’t tell Demeta, can I?
He’s a machine, and I’m in love with him.
He’s with Egyptia, and I’m in love with him.
He’s been packed up in a crate, and I’m in love with him.
Mother, I’m in love with a robot…
CHAPTER TWO
Spoiled little rich girl. Always someone to do things for you. Always someone to rescue you. Your mother. Clovis. And always a castle in the clouds to run back to.
And now?
• 1 •
It’s so dark, I can hardly see to write this, and I’m not certain why I’m writing it. Superstitiously, I think I believe I made everything happen by writing the first part of it down. And so, if I write another part of it, another part will come after. But things may only get worse. As if they could. But no, they could.
And then, somewhere inside myself, I don’t care. I don’t care about anything, because the thing I need is something else than what I’ve lost. And then again, I go on thinking, beyond this grimy darkness and the shadows like purple rust flaking on the page. I think about tomorrow and the next day, and I wonder what will become of me.
In the morning, at seven A.M., because I couldn’t sleep, I got up and made a short tape for my mother. I said: “My problem was about Clovis and the callous way he treats his boyfriends, and about how M-Bs behave to each other anyway. But I’m over it now. I was just being silly.”
It was not exactly the first time I’d lied to my mother. But it was the first time I knew I’d have to stick to the lie. I couldn’t break down. I couldn’t tell her. I couldn’t decide if I was desperate, or only desperately ashamed. But I’d tried to cry myself out in the night, and by six A.M. the pillows were so wet I’d thrown them on the floor.
I knew there was no solution.
At eleven-thirty A.M., the video phone rang in the Vista. I knew who it was so I didn’t answer. At noon, it rang again. Somehow it sounded louder. Soon my mother would emerge from her suite, and then I’d have to answer it, so I answered it.
Egyptia reclined in the video in a white kimono.
“Jane. You look terrible.”
“I didn’t sleep well.”
“Neither did I. Oh Jane—”
She told me about Silver. She told me in enormous detail. I tried not to listen, but I listened. Beauty, acrobatics, tenderness, humor, prowess.
“Of course, the stamina, the knowledge, the artistry are built in. But I believed he was human. Oh, he’s magic, Jane. It’s ruined me for a man for weeks. But I nearly fainted this morning. So much ecstasy is destructive. I think I have a migraine attack. This awful pain in my temple. Oh, he should carry a government health warning, like the windows by the Old River.”
A wire was stretching tighter and tighter in my spine, and the end of the wire was in my head. She hadn’t said which temple had the migraine, so both my temples beat as narrow spikes ran through and through them. The room clouded. When the wire snapped in the middle I would scream.
“I checked my account to see if I could buy one, but I’ve overdrawn for this month. And then there’s the Theatra. Oh, Jane. He’s taught me so much about myself. He found such sensual nuances in me—I was a woman with him. That’s so strange. He’s a robot, but he made me feel more like a woman, more conscious of my desires, my needs, than any man ever did. But I had to beg him to stop—”
One of the spacemen entered with a breakfast tray for my mother, and I said, “My mother’s just coming, Egyptia.”
“Oh. All right. Call me back.”
“Yes.”
I turned off the phone and started to fall, but I landed on my knees in an attitude of prayer as my mother walked through the doors.
Even when she gets up, my mother is beautiful, her face empty of makeup and full of green eyes, her hair loose on her shoulders.
If only I could tell her—
“Hallo, darling.”
“Hallo, Mother.”
“Did you drop something under the couch, darling?”
“Oh—I—” I stood up. “I was speaking to Egyptia,” I added, for this might well explain any strange behavior.
“In half an hour,” said my mother, “you can tell me what it was you wanted to talk to me about.”
I must tell her, I must. No, no, no.
“I left a tape. But it doesn’t seem important now. Mother, I’m so tired. I have to go back to bed.”
Shut in my suite, I wept all over again. How I needed, how I wanted to tell her what had happened to me. She’d be able to rationalize it all. She would show me why I felt as I did, and how to get over it.
Thank God Egyptia couldn’t buy him this month.
How horrible, to sleep with—
I shut my eyes and knew his kiss again on my mouth, that silver metal kiss.
I fell asleep lying on the wet pillows on the floor, and I dreamed of all kinds of things, but not of Silver.
At two P.M., my mother called my suite on the internal phone, and asked me to have lunch with her in the Vista My mother was very concerned about my having privacy, and the feeling that I could be alone when I wished; she never simply knocked on the door. But I felt I had to go down, so I went down and we ate lunch.
“You’re very quiet, darling. Has anything else happened that you want to tell me about?”
“Nothing, really. Was the dinner interesting?”
My mother told me about the dinner, and I tried to hear what she said. Sometimes what she said was very funny and I laughed. I kept beginning to say to her, “I’ve fallen in love,” and preventing myself. I imagined saying: “I’d like to buy a special format robot.” Would my mother let me? Generally, I pay for things I want with a credit card that links into my mother’s own account, but there was a monthly one thousand I.M.U. limit on the card. This was just so I’d appreciate about not overspending, because my mother alwa
ys made it quite clear that what was hers was mine. But she wanted me to be sensible. A verisimulated robot would cost thousands. The ionized silver alone would cost thousands. A purchase like that wouldn’t seem sensible at all.
In any case, if Egyptia hadn’t bought him, someone else had. He belonged to them. To an Egyptia, or an Austin. Did he enjoy giving joy? What happened to him when he made love?
After lunch, my mother switched on the news channel of the Vista visual, and took notes. She’s a political and sociological essayist and historian, too, but mainly as a hobby. There had been another bad subsidence in the Balkans. Social collapse seemed likely again in Eastern Europe, but reports were garbled. An earthquake had rocked the top off a mountain somewhere. There were subsistence riots in five Western cities. My mother didn’t switch to the local news channel, which might have carried something about the Sophisticated Format robots, but when she switched the visual off my throat had closed together with nerves.
Then I realized she’d made a sacrifice to be with me, since generally she watches the visual in her study. She must guess something was wrong, and I didn’t really know how long I could hold out. What would she say if I told her? “Darling, this would be quite all right if you were sexually experienced. But you’re a virgin. And to make love, initially, with a nonhuman device, is by no means a good idea. For all sorts of complicated reasons. Firstly, your own psychological needs…” I could just distinguish her voice in my head. And she’d be right. How could I ever hope to have a proper relationship with a man if I began by going to bed with a robot? (He is a man. No, fool, he isn’t. He is.)
I went down to the library and took a book, and sat in the balcony-balloon watching the sky drifting out from the house and fathoming away in a luminous nothingness below me. And eventually I seemed to be hanging by a string over the nothingness, and I had to move from the balcony, and go back to my suite and lie down on the bed. It was the only time I’d ever had vertigo in Chez Stratos, though Clovis won’t visit us, saying all the while he’s in the house he can feel his groin falling farther and farther away below him.
Finally I called Clovis, not knowing what to say.
“Hallo?” said Austin invisibly. Clovis has never incorporated a video.
“Oh. Hallo. This is Jane.”
“James?”
“Jane. Can I speak to—”
“No. He’s in the shower.”
Austin sounded like a fixture, despite the seance, if a not very happy one.
“Is that a woman?” Austin demanded.
“It’s Jane.”
“I thought you said James. Well, look, Jayven, why don’t you call later. Like next year?” And he switched off.
As a matter of course, then, I dialed Chloe, but she didn’t answer. I looked at Jason and Medea’s number, but didn’t dial it.
My mother called me on the internal phone.
“I’ve run your tape, Jane. It’s rather vague. What did Clovis do?”
“He had another seance.”
“And this disturbed you.”
“Only because he plays with people like a cat.”
“Cats don’t play with people. Cats play with mice. The seance table is rigged, I seem to recall.”
“Yes, Mother.”
“The spirit world can be reached, under the correct circumstances,” said my mother.
“Oh, you mean ghosts.”
“I mean the psychic principle. A soul, Jane. You mustn’t be afraid to use the correct terminology. A released soul, unattached to the physical state, and which has lived through many lives and a diversity of bodies may sometimes wish to communicate with the world. There was a great incidence of this at the turn of the century, for example, prior to the Asteroid Disasters. A theologian notes a connection. Clovis shouldn’t be meddling with table-tappings.”
“No, Mother.”
“I’ve left you some vitamins in the dispenser. Robot three will give them to you when you come down.”
“Thank you.”
“And now, I must get ready.”
Having avoided her for hours in terror of giving away my awful secret, I was now stricken with horror.
“Are you going out?”
“Yes, Jane. You know I am. I’m going upstate for three days. The Phy-Amalgamated Conference.”
“I’d—I’d forgotten—Mother—I really must speak to you after all.”
“Darling, you’ve had all day to speak to me.”
“Only four hours.”
“I really can’t stop now.”
“It’s urgent.”
“Then tell me quickly.”
“But I can’t!”
“Then you should have spoken earlier.”
“Oh Mother!” I burst into tears. Where did so many tears come from? A lot of the human body is water. Did I have any left?
“Jane, I’m going to make an appointment for you with your private doctor.”
“I’m not ill. I’m—”
“Jane. I will take half an hour away from my schedule. I will come up to your suite now, and we’ll talk this through. Do you agree?”
Panic. Panic.
The door opened, and my mother, already burnished, pomaded, glittering, stepped through. An abyss gaped before me. And behind me. I could no longer think. I’d always, always leaned on my mother. Was anything so perverse, so precarious, so precious I couldn’t share it with her, especially now she’d wrecked her schedule for me?
“As precisely as you can, dear,” said Demeta, beckoning me into her arms, into La Verte, into bliss and anchorage. “Now, does this have anything to do with Clovis?”
“Mother, I’m in love!” I tumbled against her, but not too hard. I could tell her. I could. “Mother, I’m in love.” No, I couldn’t. “Mother, I’m in love with Clovis,” I shrieked.
“Good Lord,” said my mother.
• 2 •
It was almost six P.M. when I did what, of course, I had been bound to do virtually from the start. My mother had at last gone, and I had plunged deep in my lagoon of guilt because I’d lied to her this terribly, and—much worse—made her late. She really is so concerned to do the best for me. It’s her grail, or one of them. Luckily, I was able to plaster over my lie very swiftly. “I know Clovis is M-B and will never return my feelings,” I’d said, again and again. “It’s just a silly crush. I’ve done what you taught me, and gone through my own psychological motivations. I’m almost over it. But I had to let you know. I always feel better when I tell you things.” Oh, how could I cheat her of the facts like that? Why should I have felt so sure I mustn’t reveal the truth? Eventually she mixed me a sedative and she left me. The sedative was whipped-strawberry flavor and I was tempted to drink it, but I didn’t. Quite suddenly, about ten minutes after I heard the Baxter rumble up out of the roof-hatch, and the Vista had stopped vibrating, what I had said about loving Clovis abruptly struct me as hilarious, and I howled with laughter, rolling all over the couch. It was, possibly, the stupidest thing I could have come up with, even in sheer desperation. One day I might tell him, and Clovis would howl, too.
When I stopped laughing, I keyed the alcohol dispenser and got it to pour me one of the martinis my mother likes. I had another bath, and put on a black dress, and plugged in the hairdresser unit and let it put rollers in my hair. My face in the mirror was white, and my eyes, too dark to be properly green, were almost black I don’t like makeup, actually. It feels sticky on my skin and sometimes I forget I’m wearing it and rub my hand over my cheeks and smear my rouge. But there was a lot of mascara left on I hadn’t taken off last night or cried of this morning. It’s supposed to be runproof, and it partly is I tidied it and added some more, and crayoned my mouth Autumn Beech Leaf. I drank the salty martini, pretending I liked it, and the hairdresser took out the rollers and brushed my hair, and I painted my nails black. All of which, in a way, tells you what I was about to do.
When I dialed the robot operator, my hands and my voice were shaking.
“The number of Electronic Metals Ltd.”
“At your service.”
The video shook with me, in little lines of light, then cleared. There was a small blank area with a man projected like a cutout on it, in one of those four-piece suits jacket, pants, waistcoat and shirt of a matching pale grey silky material, and tinted glasses on a classic nose. He looked cheerfully at me, his manicured hands holding on tight to each other. A small sign lit up in front of him, which said: SWOHNSON.
“Swohnson of Electronic Metals. How can I help you?”
And he beamed and licked his lips. He was eager. For a sale?
“This is just an inquiry,” I said. I pitched my voice over its own cracks and tremors. “You are the firm that sent those robots out into the city yesterday?”
“Er, yes. Yes. Electronic Metals. That’s us.”
“The special and the Sophisticated formats?”
“The specials. Twenty-four models. Metal and reinforced plastic. Sophisticated Format line. All-metal. Nine models. What was your inquiry?”
My white face flamed, but perhaps he couldn’t see it.
“I’m interested in the cost of hire.”
“Hire not sale. Er. We’re thinking of cutting back on that.”
“I happen to know one of the Sophisticated line was hired last night.”
“Oh, yes. They all were. But that was part of the, ah, the advertising campaign. A one day, one night venture. These robots are really for exhibition only. At the present.”
“Not for sale.”
“Ah. Sale might be a different matter. Did you have purchase in mind?”
I wouldn’t let him upstage me. For some reason, he was as nervous as I was.
“No. I had hire in mind. Let me speak to the Director.”
“Ah—just wait a moment—I’m not trying to give a bad impression here.” Human employee, a good job, worried about losing it. I felt mean. “Ah. We have a few problems at this end.”