The Silver Metal Lover s-1

by Tanith Lee

  Some days we still don’t eat. Sometimes we dine in expensive places. Performing, no store has ever told us to move on; occasionally they ask us to sing inside.

  So many years of days since I saw Clovis, Egyptia, Chloe. My mother, Demeta. The temptation to call her is often very strong, but I resist it. I don’t need to crow. She doesn’t know where I am, but she knows I’ve won. Sometimes I dream about her, and I wake up sobbing. He comforts me. I apologize for being a bore. We argue about my paranoia, the fight ends in sex, the bed creaks and the white cat, if present, yowls.

  There are things I try not to think about. When I’m sixty and he’s just the same as now. There’s Rejuvinex—we might be rich by then. He stresses that there’s metallic decay and creeps round the room making sinister clonking noises. And a comet could always hit the earth. To hell with all that.

  The subsidence is white with ice and snow. The rooms glow, and we in our colors.

  I love him. He loves me. It isn’t a boast. I can hardly believe it myself. But he does. Oh God, he does.

  And I’m happy.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Look, everyone,” said the star, “I’m burning so bright.” And then it went nova. And when the light faded, the star was nowhere to be seen. The moral of this story is obvious.

  • 1 •

  My whole arm hurts too much for me to write this. I don’t know why I’m trying to. Is there any point? Is it a sort of therapy? I’m not writing it for a record, anymore. How childish. But then, if I’m not writing it, childishly, for anyone else, I must be writing it for me. And it won’t help me, so that’s that.

  No. I have to write it.

  It will be easier if I just start. Just go on. From those words—I’m happy. But I can’t.

  I’m happy. I’m burning so bright.

  Ohgodiwishiwasdeadandthewholebloodyworldwasdeadwithme.

  No. I have to write it, so I will. And I don’t wish the world were dead. But I won’t even cross that out, or tear it up. I’ll just go on. Please help me, someone. Jain, please help me.

  The snow became porcelain under a pane of blue sky. The weather was exquisite, the cold like diamond. After a couple of days, the wine and the raisins ran out, and we emerged again. We opted for most of the indoor pitches, particularly Musicord-Ectrica, on the corner of Green and Grande. If you don’t know, Musicord is the biggest all-day, all-night instrumental store that side of the city, and caters to the rich from the center as well as the starving dreams of the poor from the Arbors. There are so many anti-vandal and anti-thief devices in the shop, the decor mostly consists of them, and they hire their own robot poliguard. Silver was welcome because he could play any instrument in the store and make it sound its full worth and something extra, a wonderful inducement to customers to buy. Rather than take coins here, Musicord offered us a fee, and now and then a free late dinner in the lush restaurant above.

  At first, I thought we’d keep meeting people I knew in the store, and wondered uneasily how I’d deal with them in my new persona. But my friends aren’t musical, knowing little except for the most recent songs and the odd snob-value bit of Mozart.

  There were a couple of meetings, though, with musicians who came in and fell in love with Silver’s musicianship. Jealous and elated and intrigued, I’d listen to the oddest conversations, as they tried to find out what band he’d been with, why he wasn’t professional, and so on. As a liar, this creature who’d told me he couldn’t lie, proved most accomplished. I watched him languish esoterically over his escape from the rat race of the professional stage in some far-off city, I heard him invent curious debilities of the wrist or spinal cord that would let him down and so prohibited full-time public playing. Of course I came to realize these weren’t actually lies. He improvised, just as he did with songs. But a handful of musical evenings followed, extraordinary firework displays of talent, invention and good humor, in damp basement rooms or craning attics or quasi-derelict lofts. They played and he played. The excitement generated was insane and wonderful. Only his brilliance made them wary, and occasionally stumble. But I used to sit through these sessions and think: I like this. This is so good. And then I’d think, quite consciously, just as I wrote it down: I’m happy.

  We came out of Musicord-Ectrica about two in the morning, then, and stood in the golden snow where the glow of the store lights was falling. We looked, from the outside, back in at the scarlet pianos, one of which Silver had been playing most of the afternoon and evening. A large visual screen, with a loudspeaker wired out to the street, blared in the adjoining window, and I glanced and saw reports of an earth tremor somewhere, and looked away.

  “Are you tired?” I asked him.

  “You always ask me that, mad lady.”

  “Sorry. You’re not tired. You don’t get tired.”

  “Are you?”

  “No.”

  “We could walk over to the Parlor, then, and you could make yourself sick on lemon fudge ice cream again.”

  “Or go home and see if the cat’s eaten any more candles.”

  “I told you, if you bought the cat a bone, it would stop.”

  We stood in the snow. I wished I could buy him a scarlet piano.

  “Did you write out the words of the new song you were working on in there?” he asked me.

  “Not yet. But I told you and you’ll remember it. I do, too. White fire—God—it’s a weird song. The ideas keep coming. Maybe it won’t last. I’ll dry up. What would you do if I dried up?”

  “Water you.”

  The visual screen switched channels automatically, and the sound stepped up. We’d have to move. But my eye slid back to it involuntarily. I saw a rainbow neon in front of a drab glass-sprayed frontage, and the neon read ELECTRONIC METALS LTD. For a second it meant absolutely nothing. And then the sign went out, the letters became just a black skeleton, and I heard the news reader’s voice over the loudspeaker say: “Tonight, E.M. switches off its lights for the last time. The firm that wanted to make robot dolls as good as men finally admitted there’s no substitute for a human after all.”

  “Silver,” I said.

  “I know,” he said.

  We waited there, watching, and the snow drummed slowly under my feet with the pulse of my blood.

  Now the screen showed a small blank room with leather chairs. Someone was facing out at me. He had tinted glasses, and this time, a five-piece suit, trousers, jacket, waistcoat, shirt and cravat, all of cream wool. Swohnson. The front man. I recognized the stance. His easy affable charm, his relaxed willingness to give information, and the two manicured hands holding on tight to each other.

  “It was a great idea we had,” he said. “Ultimate service to the customer. Robots, not only aesthetically pleasing, but a source of constant domestic entertainment. Singers, dancers, conversationalists. Companions. But it’s a fact, there’s only so much you can program into a chunk of metal.”

  The screen flicked. Swohnson was gone, and there was a line of yellow metal boxes with smiling humanoid faces. “Good day,” they sang out like canaries. “Good day. Welcome aboard. May I take your fare?”

  The screen flicked. Swohnson was back.

  “That line isn’t, er, too bad,” he said. “More welcoming than just a slot. They’ve caught on quite well. The Flyer Company is considering installation. We, ah, we recognized our limitations, there…”

  Flick. A grey metal box with a friendly head, and two pretty girl’s hands. “Good morning, madam. How would you like your hair styled today?”

  Flick. “Where we came unstuck,” said Swohnson, “was in trying to create a thing which could rival the human artist. The creative individual. Our Sophisticated Formats. Of course, computers have been fooling with that for years. And we all know, it just doesn’t work. Man is inspirational. Unpredictable. He, ah, he has the genius a machine can never have.”

  Flick. A young woman was standing on a stage a long way off. The camera glided toward her slowly, and as it did so, highlights gl
eamed and flowed across her white-wine-colored gown, her copper skin, her wheat yellow hair. Her sweet and musical voice said effortlessly and surely: “Gallop apace, you fiery footed steeds—” And said again: “Gallop apace, you fiery footed steeds—” and again and again and again. And every time with the same inflexion.

  “A perfect performance,” Swohnson said, as the camera glided about her, “and the same every time. No variation. No—um—no ingenuity.”

  Flick. Swohnson sat, beaming, holding his hand.

  “But very lifelike,” said an invisible interviewer, subtle and insinuating. He was accusing Swohnson of something. Swohnson knew it.

  Swohnson beamed, broader and broader, as if exercising his facial muscles.

  “Verisimulated,” said Swohnson.

  “Could be mistaken for human,” accused the newsman.

  “Well, yes, ah, from a distance.”

  Flick. A golden man in black oriental garb sewn with greengage daggers swung a curved sword into the air, and was transfixed. The camera raced to him. At about four feet away, he ceased being a man. You saw the impervious metal of his skin—which was hard as the veneer of a heatproof saucepan.

  “The skin is always the giveaway,” said Swohnson, as the camera slid along the canyon of a metallic eyelid, its lashes like black lacquer spikes. “And, although they looked quite real at their routines, the head movements, the walk, always let them down.”

  Flick. A copper-skinned man in yellow velvet strode across the screen. You could just see it, the stiltedness, and once having seen it, you could see nothing else.

  “The crazy thing is,” said Swohnson, “the public hysteria that got stirred up, the day we introduced these robots to the city. A publicity gimmick—but what a surprise—”

  “Yes, indeed.” (The interviewer.) “A kind of myth was created, wasn’t it? Totally autonomous robots who could find their own way about.”

  “Naturally,” (Swohnson) “every robot had a human attendant, however circumspect. They could hardly have managed otherwise. Absurd, the things people actually credited our robots with. Oh, yes, er, they were clever, the best yet—but no machine can do the things our robots were supposed to have done. Traveled on flyers alone, taken ferries, subways—”

  Flick. Old film, and I knew it. A crowd of demonstrators in East Arbor, the police lights playing over them. Someone threw a bottle. The camera followed it. It hit the facade of Electronic Metals and shattered.

  I must have made a sound. Silver took my palm between his cool fingers, which felt of human skin.

  “It’s all right.”

  “It isn’t. Don’t you see—wait,” I said.

  Swohnson was back on the screen.

  “Whatever else, the final failure of E.M. will please those people out there who got scared by what we did—or what they thought we did.”

  “E.M. has egg on its face, then?” The newsman. Pleased. Congratulatory.

  “A lot of egg. We found out the hard way. These ultra-sophisticated machines use up so much energy, they just short out.”

  Flick. A golden girl, dancing. A spray of electric static. A metal statue, poised at an unearthly angle, one leg extended, her hair in her eyes. Stupid, ungainly. Laughable. A machine that couldn’t be as good as any human, that couldn’t even finish its act.

  (“Some run-down heap,” said Clovis, “that will probably permanently seize up as it walks through the door. Or at some other, more poignant, crucial moment.”)

  As if he read my mind, the interviewer said: “And surely, how shall I put it, these things had a friendly social function as well. A stand-in for a girlfriend, perhaps. Awkward if your girlfriend seized up like that.”

  “Um. It could have happened.”

  “Oh, dear,” said the interviewer.

  Swohnson grinned. The grin said: Hit me again, I love it.

  “So I guess we remain,” said the interviewer, “the superior species, to date. Man stays at the top of the heap as artist and thinker. And lover?”

  “Um,” said Swohnson.

  “And dare I ask, what are E.M.’s plans for the future?”

  “Ah. We’re thinking of moving out of state. Somewhere east. Farm machinery for derelict agricultural areas.”

  “And will any of your tractors have a winning smile?”

  “Only if some maniac paints one on.”

  And flick, there was a cartoon filling the screen. It showed a metal tractor with a great big smile, eyelashes and long, long golden hair.

  I shut my eyes and opened them. The snow dazzled, and I turned in fear to see if anyone but us had stopped to watch the local news broadcast. A drunk rolled across the street, oblivious, slipping. In the sky high above, a distant string of jewels revealed the approach of a flyer. The city roared gently to itself on every side. But it didn’t really matter who had seen the visual here. All over the city people had seen it. Seen it, but believed it?

  “Very strange,” Silver murmured.

  “I’m scared.”

  “I know you are. Why?”

  “Don’t you see?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Let’s go home,” I said. “Please. Quickly.”

  We walked in silence, cloaks brushing the snow, like two Renaissance princes. And every time we had to pass someone, I was afraid. Will they recognize him? Will they confront us?

  But how could they? Hadn’t the news bulletin just told them that a robot can never be mistaken for a human? Go close, you’ll see the skin like a saucepan, hard, hard metal. (I had lain closer than any camera, or treated still shot designed to deceive. Skin which was poreless, yet not lifeless, smooth but not hard. Metallic, but not metal…) And the walk, disjointed, a little stiff, and the ungainly gestures which always gave them away—a puppet, slightly out of control. And the inability to find its own way about the city. To decide for itself. All those of us who saw those robots that day when they walked among us, did we all now believe that we’d made a great big silly mistake? Yes. Why not? We believe what we want to, don’t we. And no one wants to believe the machines that take the jobs away from those of us that need jobs could also take our songs away, our fantasies, our lovers.

  Someone had told Electronic Metals what it had to do and what it had to say. And Swohnson, as ever in the hot seat, had done it and said it. Lies. Logical, credible, soothing lies. How much compensation had the City Marshal been authorized to pay E.M.? A lot. They’d had to take their most exciting product off the market. They’d had to mess about with it until it gave an efficient display of being useless, for the benefit of the visual cameras. And then—and then, no doubt, they’d dismantled it. Golden torsos dismembered, golden wheels turning where black eyes had looked out, or copper wheels, where golden eyes had looked out.

  “Your teeth are chattering,” he said to me.

  “I know. Please don’t let’s stop.”

  The visual hadn’t shown any of the silver range. The silver girl at the piano, the silver man (Silver’s brother and sister), neither of these. Why was that? So as not to remind anyone there was a Silver Format? Tell the people that our robots, which they’ve seen to be exactly human, are really shambling bumbling automatons. And they’ll accept that. Tell the people, by omission, that the only robots they saw were gold or copper. And they’ll forget the silver range. The Silvers with their burgundy hair and auburn eyes. But why, Mr. City Marshal, Mr. Director of E.M., do they have to forget about the Silvers? Why? Because one of the damn things is still at large. Out there in the city. One flawless, human, better-than-human, godlike, beautiful, genius of a creative inspired robot. And if they realize, the citizens may lynch us all.

  I thought I’d been living in the real world, bravely coming to terms with the truth of life. But I hadn’t. I’d missed all the upheaval that must have been happening, somehow, all about us. The apartment on Tolerance Street, our pitches, our romantic, poetic existence. How far from life they really were. Only another cocoon. But now the axe blow of fact had broken thr
ough.

  I’d told no one where I was. No one knew. Therefore, no one knew where Silver was. Had they been looking? No, that was insane.

  We were in our block, going up the stairs. I imagined shadows looming up from the dark by the door. But no shadows loomed. We opened the door. Lights would flare, a voice would shout: Surrender yourselves! But the room was empty. Even the cat had let itself out through the flap. (Remember when he cut the flap, efficient and stylish? “I just read the instructions.”)

  He guided me over to the wall heater, switched it on, and together we watched the heat come up like dawn.

  “Silver,” I said, “we won’t go out.”

  “Jane,” he said. “This has been going on some while, and we never knew. And we never had any trouble. Did we?”

  “Luck. We were lucky.”

  “I was bought and paid for,” he said. “They’ve probably written me off.”

  “They can’t write you off. The City Senate has done a deal with them. They can’t just leave you loose.” I stared at him, his profile drawn on the dark by the heater’s soft fire. “Aren’t you afraid, too?”

  “No, I’m not. I don’t think I can get to be afraid. You’ve taught me several emotions, but not that one. Like pain, fear is defensive. I don’t feel pain, or fear. I’m not intended, perhaps, to defend myself, beyond a very basic point.”

  “Don’t,” I said. “That makes it much worse.”

  “Yes, I can see that.”

  “We won’t go out,” I said again.

  “For how long?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Food,” he said. “Rent money.”

  “Then I’ll go alone.”

  I grasped his wrists, lace and skin. Skin. The fluid movement of the strong fingers, shifting, returning my grip.