The Silver Metal Lover (6 page)

It would have been nice to say something razor-sharp and succinct. Clovis would have. But it was my mouth, not my wit, that was dry.

“I called you. You spoke to me on the video, earlier.”

“Threats won’t do you any good.”

In a moment he would press his silly code button.

I blurted rapidly: “I decided I’d buy one of the formats.”

“Uh—oh,” said Swohnson. “Oh,” he said, shifting so he could see the candy neon on my face. “Madam, I do apologize. But I never thought you’d come here, after the operator cut us off.”

His indiscretion with me before had caused a row, perhaps, and now he might redeem himself with a sale. Or was he just feeling unorthodox?

“I came back to lock up,” said Swohnson. “Dogsbody, that’s me.” He palmed the door panel. He had been drinking. “Director’s daughter’s lover,” he said, “that’s me, too. My qualifications. How I got the job. Liaison, public relations, locker-up of doors. But I mustn’t put all this onto you, madam.” The door recognized him and opened with a sullen hiss. “Please walk inside.”

He thought I was a rich eccentric. The rich part was easy. It’s awful, the way we have this look to us, of being rich. Eccentric because I waited in doorways in East Arbor, alone, on the off chance people like Swohnson would come by to shut the gate.

In the foyer, which was also glass-sprayed and dismal, he hit some switches and saw to the gate, and summoned a lift. Then he took me up to the shop floor.

The place we came into was a tepid office in leather, and by now my bluff was already turning cold inside me, congealing. I told myself I could back out, so long as I didn’t handprint or sign anything, or as long as I didn’t record my assent verbally on tape. He’d need my permission for any of those. Or, if I did, maybe Demeta would have to honor the transaction? Maybe it would be clever to do just that. But basically I hate lying, big lies. It’s so complicated.

He sat in a chair and a drinks tray came out of the wall. We had a drink. His hands trembled, and my hands trembled. But both our hands still trembled on our second drinks, his around the rye whisky, mine around the lemon juice. I guess we had both, in our different ways, had a rough day. He told me all about Electronic Metals, but I don’t remember what he said. I had to pretend I was alert, or thought I did, the prospective buyer making sure everything was in order, and all my concentration went into that. I think I heard one word in twenty. I still couldn’t quite believe I’d gotten into the building.

“There’s an exhibition formula we have here,” he said, and I heard that because instinctively I knew it was a prelude to the display of E.M.’s wares. “I dreamed it up myself, actually, to show off the three types to full advantage. If you’ll step through?” He drained his glass, took another, and held my arm as one of the walls folded back. “Excuse me, madam, but you’re ver-ry young.”

“I’m eighteen.” Should I have tried for twenty?

“Gorgeous age, eighteen. Can just remember it, I think.” (It occurs to me now, writing it out, that he may have been making a halfhearted pass at me. He was attractive in a stereotyped way, and knew he was attractive and not that he was stereotyped, merely in the mode. And he’d made it with a rich girl before. Perhaps he thought I’d be useful, somehow, if I fell for him and poured cash over him. How embarrassing. I never even thought of this at the time.) “Actually, um, I think I know which of the Formats you’ll choose. It’s proficient in pre-Ast. oriental dance—one of the female Golder range. But wait till you see.”

He knew I wasn’t even eighteen. He thought me an innocent, even if he made a pass, unless he thought I was M-B. How would I be able to tell him now, past the barriers in my throat and soul, that my chosen robot was masculine?

Riven with my shyness, I moved away from his guiding hand, and into the area beyond the reception office. It was a large room we entered, windowless, with a soft suffused light all over the ceiling. The floor was polished.

“Don’t step beyond the red line,” said Swohnson. “Let’s just sit here and see what happens.” Proud of his innovation in the boss’s workshop, he waved us into tubular chairs. Obviously that activated a control somewhere. A slot opened in the far wall, and a woman came through.

She was tall and slender and beautiful. Hair blond as cereal haloed her head and shoulders. Her tawny-yellow cat’s eyes fastened on mine and she smiled. She was pleased to see me, you could tell. A dress like a tulip flame swathed her, and she held a purple rose. Her skin was a pale creamy copper.

“Hallo,” she said. “I’m one of Electronic Metals’ experimental range. My registration is Copper. That is C.O.P.P.E.R.: Copper Optimum Pre-Programmed Electronic Robot.” She half closed her eyes. A stillness seemed to enfold her. The music of her voice grew hushed, hypnotic. “Gallop apace,” she said, “you fiery footed steeds, to Phoebus’ lodging…” She spoke Juliet’s lines in a way I never heard before. The air scintillated, my eyes filled with tears. She spoke of love, knew love,
was
love. “… If he should die, take him and cut him out in little stars, and he will make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night—” Two men stepped through the wall. They were Copper’s brothers. One wore a jacket of yellow velvet with medieval sleeves, and white denim jeans. The other wore damson jeans, a sauterne-colored shirt, and a magenta sash from the Arabian Nights. Each smiled at me. Each told me he, too, was registration Copper. They acted a scene together from a drama I’d sat through the month before. It far outshone the original performance. The three copper robots linked arms, bowed smiling to me, and went back through the wall, which closed.

The left hand wall opened.

A man strode through. Hair like smooth black ink, splashing over his head to his shoulders. Black silk eyes. Skin like molten gold. He wore black, his cloak lined with the green of sour apples. His registration, he told me, was Golden G.O.L.D.E.R.: Gold Optimum Locomotive Dermatized Electronic Robot. His eyes smoldered at me, burning through to my deepest awareness. He flung himself suddenly into an aerial cartwheel that flowed and sliced, and landed in strange graceful menacing ripplings and contortions of his frame. It was a dance, but a dance capable of dealing death.

“Based on Japanese martial arts,” Swohnson muttered to me. “Not only elegant, but will make an excellent bodyguard for someone who likes that kind of show. And particularly good skinlinings in this type.” Having started to talk, Swohnson didn’t stop. As the golden midnight figure swirled and leapt, Swohnson said, “the Copper line are the actors, the Silvers the musicians, the Golds are dancers.” He went on, and I forgot to listen. Two women, the golden robot’s sisters, came into the room, their hands lightly connected, and repeated who they were. Their long fingers had long nails, one set jade green, one set jade white. Their trousers were Asian, cream silk, green silk. Above the trousers one wore a bolero and gold-embroidered shirt. The other a waistcoat of emerald spangles, fastened with three malachite butterflies. The dance was slow, incredible, balletic, impossible. Human muscles would have evaporated and human bones dislocated. Their black hair mopped the floor and
furled over the ceiling. “Jetté, lift measured at seven feet from the ground. But they make good teachers. Charming teachers. Wonderful exercise for the human body, even if you can never be as good. My God, they
are
good, aren’t they?” Swohnson drank his rye and sighed. His attitude to the Golder female robots was not innocent, as mine was expected to be.

They went away, and my heart burst, disintegrated, as it had begun to do when the Coppers went out. I was waiting for the third door to open. This time, it would have to be—

It opened. Silver’s sister came through. Her auburn hair was dressed with blue carnations. She wore snow fringed with blood. A keyboard glided after her on runners. She stood before it, and played something I didn’t know, like a shower of sparks shooting from a volcano. Then she looked at me, smiling. I knew what she’d say. “I’m Silver…”

A man walked through the opening, and I stopped breathing. Because it wasn’t him. Alike, but not like. The same hair, but different. The same amber eyes; different, different. The movements, the voice, the same, the same, yet different. Different, different. Utterly, wholly different. Not like at all. I forget what he wore. I couldn’t seem to see him properly.

“I’m Silver. S.I.L…”

The features of the face weren’t even similar. I was so glad, I could have wept. The silver woman played Vivaldi on the electric piano and the silver man sang a futuristic melody against it, in a beautiful, unrecognized voice. The words were about a star, a girl in love with the star, and the star saying to the girl, “I am too old for you.”

“Dammit,” said Swohnson. “Where’s the other one?”

My eyes blurred. The silver robots were walking into the wall.

“There’s another of the bloody things. I beg your pardon, er, madam. It’s been a helluva day. These exhibition models are in blocks of three. There’s a third one with the silvers. A guy. Damn. Wrecks the whole display. He’s supposed to come in with a guitar. God. You spend days and nights dreaming up these gimmicks, and then the relay screws it. Excuse me.” He went to a wall phone and hit buttons unsteadily. He’d forgotten I would want the Golder format. He was angry because his artistic interpretation had been spoiled.

My eyes were filming over. The lemon juice had a smoky taste. Where is the third silver robot? Where? Where? Oh, he’s in bits, taken apart. Piece of wiring fouled, cog busted. Have to scrap it. Put it in the dustbin. Melt it down. Make it into objets d’art for rich bitches like this fourteen-year-old I’ve got in here right now.

Don’t be stupid. Why are you so obsessed with the idea that he has been… taken to bits.

How could I have—

Swohnson was spluttering at the phone.

“What? Why wasn’t I told? When? Um. Um? I didn’t see it.”

Then he came back from the phone. He looked at me.

“Well, you can judge anyway, bright, er, lady like you. You don’t need to see that other one. He’s just like the other male silver. Of course, some customers would want to see the full physique. Stripped. But really, madam—do I have to keep calling you that?—I don’t think that’s your problem. Is it?”

I gripped the tube arms of the chair, and refused to think about what he’d just said.

“The other robot,” I said.

“Oh, some damn machine left me a memo. Never got it. Something they’re checking for. Er—nothing wrong with the model, you understand.” Even drunk, he recalled his valuable-employee’s lines just in time. “It’s a routine check E.M. runs when we put any display mechanism out. We’re very thorough. The slightest thing—we’ve been testing, perfecting these models for years. How else could we let them roam the city without escort? (Which, actually, I thought was taking a bit of a risk, but, ah, who the hell listens to me around here?) Still. Looks good. Then, um, of course, one comes back and doesn’t check out.”

“What—” I said. I didn’t know what to say. How do you ask after a robot’s health? I was shaking, shaking. I tried to be my mother. “What’s wrong with this one?”

“Nothing. Nothing the E.M. computer can pin down. Just some of the readings are altered. Nothing that affects any of the other, er, models, I can assure you, ah, of that. You know computers. An eyelash out of place… I don’t understand a word of that side of it. Jargon. Nothing for
you
to worry about. There’s a makeshift check they’ll run here. Then tomorrow it’ll go down to the production center.”

“Where?”

“The production center? The basement. Curious little thing, aren’t you, madam? Can’t take you there, I’m afraid. Big hush-hush. Lose me my wonderful enviable job as doorman.”

“The robot,” I said, “this one, the one that doesn’t check out, is the—one I wanted to buy.” Oh God, how did I ever get it out? His eyes goggled. I swallowed. I couldn’t tell if I was red or white, but cold heat was all over my face, my body. I tried to be self-assured in the middle of the raging of the cold heat and the shaking, and in my breathless, stilted voice: “He was recommended to me by a friend. He’s the one I wanted. The only one.” And then, while Swohnson went on standing there gaping, “If the format is still up here, I’d like to see him. It. I’d like to see it now.”

“Ah,” said Swohnson. Suddenly he smiled, remembering about whisky, and drinking some. And getting some more. “Er, how old did you say you were?”

“Eighteen. Almost nineteen.”

“You see why I’m asking? To buy an item of goods like this, not just a servant but a companion, a performer… in all sorts of ways, you have to be over eighteen. Or we need your mother’s signature. What’s your name?”

“My name isn’t any of your business,” I said, amazing myself. “Not until I agree to buy. And I haven’t, because the one robot I want you can’t give me.”

“Didn’t say that, did I?”

“Then let me see him.”

“Keep calling it ‘him,’ don’t you. Must make a note of that. Most of the callers we’ve had do. Him, her. Really got you all fooled, ain’t we. Good old E.M. Good old my lover’s daddy.”

I shrank, but somehow I kept hold.

“Are you going to let me see him?”

“Visiting the sick,” said Swohnson, viciously hitting on the exact horrid sensation I had, and hadn’t been able to explain to myself. “Okay. Come on. Madam. Let’s go and see the patient.”

Rye in hand, he led me, no longer opening doors for me which were not automatic, so they almost banged in my face each time. I couldn’t go back now and find the way—I didn’t see it. We came into a corridor with unlit cubicles. Then into a cubicle that made a humming noise, and, as Swohnson’s white suede shoes went over the threshold, switched a light on. A cold light, very stark and pale, like in a hospital theatre in a visual.

There was a thing like a closed upright coffin, with wires coming out of holes and into a box that was ticking and whirring to itself.

“There you are,” said Swohnson. “Just press that knob there, and you can see it. In all its glory.”

I was afraid to, and I didn’t move for a long time.