by Tanith Lee
My crying, to my surprise, had been tearless, and almost immediately stopped. To see the terrible twins reduced to such an unimportant role dumbfounded me.
“What on earth did they do, to give you that hold on them?” I said.
“Shoplifting and minor arson. I happen to have paid the fine before it got round to their father, who really is thinking of sending them into exile.”
“Why?”
“Why not? I felt generous. And now I can blackmail them. I shall need a new seance arrangement, post darling Austin, who, by the way, is a homicidal maniac. I’m trusting Jason will fix it, and not booby-trap the rest of the furniture at the same time, which is the price I had to pay before. And now. What about you?”
“For one thing, how did you know to come here tonight? Did you see the horrendous Ask My Brother To Dust The Peacock advertised somewhere? On a police-wanted placard, for example. Not that I’m arguing with your arrival. Egyptia has been driving herself and everyone else mad for the past three weeks. None of her fellow Thespians will talk to her anymore. I’m wondering if they’ll even consent to talk the lines to her on stage tonight. But at least her wails of ‘Oh why isn’t Jane with me?’ will be appeased.”
“Clovis.”
“Yes, Jane?”
I looked at him, at this handsome face I’d grown up seeing grow up, Clovis, the last remnant of my past. Was he my enemy? I thought so when he called me and took Silver away from me. I thought so when he blushed, and sneered at me, and I slapped his face. But not anymore. Could I trust him and would he help me? As, originally, he already had.
“Clovis, I have to leave at once.”
“If you do, Egyptia’s death may well be on your conscience. Not to mention mine.”
“I have to leave, and I need you to stop the twins from coming after me.”
“Are they likely to?”
“They hunted me down, somehow, and they’ve been following me all afternoon, and I couldn’t get rid of them. I couldn’t go home.” Not crying, I nevertheless was crying, tearlessly again, and desperately, and waving my hands at him because I knew he didn’t like to be handled and some part of me kept physically reaching out to him for support.
“Jane, obviously I’m being unforgivably obtuse. But why couldn’t you go home?”
“Clovis, don’t you know?”
“Let me see. You split with Demeta. You’re living in a hovel somewhere. Or you’re a professional damisella della nuita. Why should any of that—”
“Did you see the Electronic Metals newscast?”
“I never watch newscasts. If you mean, do I know, by a process of imperceptible osmosis, that E.M. is out of business, yes I do. And if ever I saw a senatorial blindfold, that was it. Anything to keep the masses from revolution, I suppose.”
I was calmer. I watched him closely.
“How,” I said, “did Egyptia make out, as legal owner of one of their discontinued robots?”
“How steely-eyed and measuring you’ve become suddenly. Quite unlike the dear little Jane I used to know. Egyptia? Oh, they called her. They said would she care to return her robot as it was faulty and might set fire to the rugs. They’d refund her the cash, plus a bonus as compensation.”
There was a long silence, and I began to wonder if he was playing with me.
“And what,” I prompted, “did Egyptia reply?”
“Egyptia replied: ‘Which robot?’ and, when they’d told her, announced that the robot had been in storage for weeks, and she was too busy to be bothered with fishing it out. As for the bonus, money didn’t concern her anymore. Self-knowledge through art was what concerned her. She would be happy to eat wild figs in the desert wilderness, etc., etc.—And Electronic Metals backed away and switched off the phone. Since then no further calls, apparently. No doubt they concluded that one unused, forgotten robot in the cupboard of an eccentric, amnesiac and very rich actress was nothing to lose sleep over. Or else they didn’t want to increase the wrong kind of public tension by making a scene.”
My eyes were helplessly wide.
“That was what she said?”
“That was exactly what she said. I know, because I had the misfortune of being with her when she took the call and said it.” Clovis nodded. “When she turned from the video, of course,” he murmured, “I said, with some astonishment, ‘But didn’t Jane ever come and demand the robot from you on the grounds of hard cash and true love?’ And Egyptia widened her topaz eyes, just as you’re doing with your jade green ones. ‘Oh! Yes!’ she exclaimed. I’d forgotten about that. Jane’s got him.’ Interesting, isn’t it.”
“She’d forgotten—”
“You know what she’s like. Completely and enduringly self-centered. Nothing is real to Egyptia, except for herself, and the savage gods who may either uplift or destroy her. You were in love with him, Jane. But Egyptia’s only in love with Egyptia.”
“And did you call E.M., Clovis, and tell them the mistake?”
“Why the hell should I?”
“Malevolence,” I said.
Astonishing me somewhat, he grinned, and lowered his eyes.
“Hmm. You’ll never let me off that one, will you?”
“You haven’t let yourself off. Your hair—”
“Jane. I had him. I’ll admit, a special experience. Shakespeare would have flung off a couple of sonnets. But it just made me aware, for the eighty millionth time, what a pile of gormless garbage most of humanity is. What you really want to know is, did I or will I tell E.M. Ltd. that you and he—Silver—still cohabit. Which is what I astoundedly presume you are still doing. And what I also presume our own little arsonists in the servicery have found out. J. and M. Investigators Inc.”
I drew in a long trembling breath. My voice came out sure and steady and clear.
“Yes, Clovis.”
“The answer is No. Ah, what a relief.”
“Yes. E.M. means business. If they think he’s still walking about—”
“He’d be back to cogs and clockwork status.”
To hear him say it, even though I knew it to be so, stunned me, filled me with fresh sickness and horror. And at any moment, the two monsters would be back.
“You know,” Clovis began to say, “I have an awful theory about how Jason tracked you down.”
But I broke in: “Clovis, can you lend me some money. Or give me some? I don’t know if I can ever repay it. But if we could get away from the city, go upstate…”
“That could be a good idea. You can have the money. But just suppose, melodramatic as it sounds, that E.M., or the Senate, have a secret check going on the highways or out-of-state flyer terminals.”
I stared at him and through him.
“Oh, God. I didn’t think of that.”
“Don’t go to pieces. I’m inventing an alternative plan. You’ll have to stay around a while. I’ll need to make a call.”
“Clovis.”
“Yes. That’s my name. Not Judas Iscariot, so relax.”
“What plan?”
“Well, just like your appalling mother—”
A voice shattered like glass against my ears, staggering me.
“Jane! Jane!”
I turned as if through treacle. Egyptia stood on the little stair that led down from the bedroom half-floor above. I had an impression of flashing lights and foaming darkness, a kind of storm, as she launched herself at me. She fell against me lightly, but with a passionate, almost-violence. She clung to me, pent, intense, not letting go. “Jane, Jane, Jane. I knew you’d come. I knew you’d understand and come, because I needed you. Oh Jane—I’m so afraid.”
I felt I was drowning and my impulse was very nearly to thrust her off. But she was familiar as a lover, and her terror communicated itself, a strange, high inaudible singing and sizzling, like tension in wires.
“We’ll go on later,” said Clovis.
“Clovis—”
“Later, trust me. You know you do.” He walked away toward the servicery. “I’
ll go and see how the Slaumot’s coming.”
Egyptia clung to me like a serpent. Her perfume flooded over me, and despite everything, my own panic began to leave me.
My lover was not a hysteric, as I was. He would wait for me, without fear, thinking I’d stopped to talk to people we knew, perhaps to eat with them. And Clovis would help us. Help us leave our beautiful home, our friend the white cat.
“Egyptia,” I said, and the tears tried to come again. “Don’t be afraid. It’s going to be fine. It is, it is.”
Then she drew away from me, smiling bravely, and I burst into bubbling laughter, as I’d burst into dry tears.
Egyptia was stricken.
“Why are you laughing at me?”
“Because, in the middle of utter chaos—you’re so beautiful!”
She stood there, her skin like a warm peach with an overall theatrical makeup, her eyelids terracotta and golden spangles, gold spangles also massed thickly on her breasts, which otherwise appeared to be bare. Her hair had been streaked with pale blue, and tortured into long elaborate ringlets, and she had a little gold crown on it. She had a skirt of alternating gold and silver scales, and on her flexible arms were dark blue clockwork snakes with ruby eyes, that continuously coiled round and round.
What was most laughable of all was that, as she stood facing me in her costume, facing me through her terror and her ridiculous egomania, and her vulnerability, I sensed again the greatness in her that she sensed in herself. And I laughed more wildly and harder, until she, with offended puzzlement, began to laugh too.
Impatience, scorn and fondness, and love. Struck together like matches, igniting. Giggling helplessly, we fell onto a couch, and her layered scaled skirt made the noise of tin cans rolling down stairs, and we shrieked, our arms flailing, and her oriental slippers flying off across the salon.
• 3 •
There were three bottles of Slaumot and Clovis, Egyptia and I sat and drank them in the fire and candlelight. Jason and Medea drank coffipop, which, when I was fifteen, always gave me instant hiccups. The twins sat on the floor across the big room from us, playing a macabre version of chess Jason had invented. They might steal some of the pieces, but Egyptia wouldn’t care. She knew she wouldn’t live beyond this night. She had two visions of her death. One was when she first entered on the stage. Her heart would burst. Or she might die at the end, the strain having been too much for her. It wasn’t at all funny. She meant it, and she was scared. But, more than all else, she was scared of the fact that she was to dramatize Antektra before an audience. It wasn’t an enormous theatre, and it might not fill. A couple of critics might be there, and a visual crew would film a shot or so, as a matter of course, and then probably not show it. But to Egyptia, it was more than all this—which, if it had been me, would have terrified me sufficiently—although, far less than it would have done before my debut in the streets. It was her fear of failing herself that gnawed on Egyptia. Or, as she put it, of failing Antektra. She would say portions of her lines, pace about the salon, sink on the couch, laugh madly, weep—her dramatic makeup was genuinely tear-proof, fortunately. She sipped the Slaumot, and left butterfly wings of gilt from her lips on the glass.
“She’s a virgin. Her sexual electricity has turned in on itself. She is driven by grief, anguish and fury. She is haunted by the demons of her fury.” How odd she should sound so cognizant of these emotions which truly I don’t think she’d ever felt. And the descriptions of Antektra’s state, obviously footnotes, learnt off like her lines—“A whirlwind of passion. Am I capable of doing this? Sometimes I’ve felt that the power of this part is inside me, like a volcano. But now… Have I the strength?”
“Yes,” said Clovis.
“Yes,” I said.
“My rook tortures your rook to death,” said Jason across the room.
“The power,” said Egyptia, prowling like a leopardess between the candles, “may consume me. I don’t mind, I truly don’t mind if I die, if it kills me. So long as I can die with this task accomplished—Oh, Jane. You understand, don’t you?”
“Yes, Egyptia.”
Clovis yawned, hiding in his longer hair as he did so, and I thought of Silver. Not that I’d stopped thinking of Silver. When I was twelve, I had a psychosomatic toothache for months in one of my back teeth. I took painkillers every three hours, which dulled the pain but didn’t get rid of it. The nag of it went on and on, and so I got used to it, and only thought about it at the end of each three-hour unit when it would flare up to new violence. This was how I felt now. My awareness of danger and distress, my concern for Silver’s concern at my absence, the hopeless trap I was in and apparently couldn’t move out of—these were the dull pain. The wine, the familiarity, Egyptia’s fear were the painkillers. The pain was slight and bearable and I could almost put it from my mind. But then the light moved on Clovis’s hair—red—and the pain flared. I almost rushed, each time, from the apartment and away into the night. Clovis could surely contain the twins. But they would know they’d been right. And Clovis’s unspecified help would be lost to me.
He wore an embroidered shirt, too, under the silk and velour jacket. He was so rational about Silver, yet the copied influence was there. Could I trust Clovis? Well, I had trusted Clovis, if not with my address, with everything else.
“My queen buys her freedom by allowing your knight to cut off her left hand,” said Medea.
“I do hope,” said Clovis, “they’re not actually inflicting these injuries on your chess set, Egyptia.”
“The world’s a chess set,” said Egyptia. (A quote?) “Oh, bow your neck to the bloody dust. Kneel to the yoke, humiliated land. This is not the world. The gods are dead. Kneel, for you must. Relinquish pride, and kneel.”
“My knight castrates your knight.”
“He can’t. My knight’s in full armor.”
“Well. There’s a weak link.”
“The floor over there must be strewn with severed members,” said Clovis.
I couldn’t even call Silver. There was the phone in the foyer, which the caretaker might answer, but I couldn’t remember the number. And even if I did, to call would be, again, to reveal there was somebody at home I wanted to reach. Perhaps, if I excused myself to use the bathroom, I could call on one of Egyptia’s extensions upstairs, experimenting till I got the number right—no. A blue call-light came on in every other phone console when one was operational. Jason and Medea would see it. They’d be watching for it.
Chloe couldn’t be here tonight because Chloe had a virus. Why hadn’t I had a virus?
“Women of the palace,” said Egyptia, “my brother was a god to you. Yet to these beasts he is carrion. He is left for the kites to chew upon—”
“Oh my,” said Clovis, “now the play’s getting to sound like the chess game. Do you think my weak stomach is up to this drama?”
“Don’t mock me, Clovis,” shouted Egyptia in despair.
“It’s half past ten P.M.,” said Clovis. “I’m going to call the taxi.”
“Oh God,” cried Egyptia, “is it time to leave?”
“Getting that way. Jane, pour her another drink.”
I wasn’t sure about that, although she seemed incapable of drunkenness in her frenzy. She had dressed in her costume and put on her makeup here because of her emotional rift with the rest of the company. “They give me nothing!” she said. To Egyptia, of course, the rest of the cast were the support mechanism to carry her, and sadly they hadn’t realized it. Or else they had.
Now I fetched her grey-blue fur cape coat, on the inside of which some of the body makeup was sure to rub off. She’d bought that coat the day I took Silver with me to Chez Stratos.
“Oh, Jane. Oh—Jane—”
“I’m here.” I sounded mature and patient. Concerned, kind. Just a touch compassionately amused. I sounded like Silver.
“Ja-aaaa-nnne—”
She stared at me. The guillotine awaited her, and soon the tumbrel would be at the door.
Clovis came in again in a little while.
“Months to get through,” he said. “It’ll be by the pier in half an hour.” He looked at me, and added, sotto voce, “The cab rank was the second call.”
“Clovis—” I said, realizing he’d put his unspecified plan into action.
“Later.” He glanced at Jason and Medea, who were thoughtfully watching us. “Better kill everyone else on the board off quickly, pets, we leave in ten minutes.”
“Oh. The awful play,” said Jason.
“You don’t have to come,” Clovis said.
“We do,” said Medea. “We want to be with Jane. We haven’t seen her for so long.”
“Christ, what a strange night,” Clovis said to it, as we stepped out into the enclosure before the lift shaft.
“What’s wrong with it?” asked Jason.
“How should I know?” said Clovis.
The lift came, and Egyptia trembled in my arms. As we went down to the ferry, the night rose up the jewelry buildings. There was a great stillness, but that was only the coldness of the snow. The ferry was deserted, and the cab was waiting at the other side of the water.
We reached the Theatra about eleven-fifteen P.M., after walking up the Grand Stairway and by the tunnel foun-tain, which didn’t play in winter. But it was the exact spot where I had first seen Silver.
There were quite a lot of people about the main facade. We went around the side, and into the bleak backstage, and into Egyptia’s bleaker dressing room. When the reluctant wall heater had been activated, Egyptia stood shuddering.
“My father slain, my brother slaughtered. Death is the legacy of this House of the Peacock. Everyone go out. Everyone but Jane. Jane, don’t leave me.”
“We’ll wait outside,” said Medea. I knew they’d watch the door.
I had to stay, anyway, now, for Clovis’s news. Whatever it was. I was really past caring. Schizophrenic, as before, I existed here, and I existed in a sort of precognitive limbo of rushing home to the flat on Tolerance.