The Silver Metal Lover(26)
“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 any 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?”
“Yes. He suppressed the idea because it revolted him.”
“Does it revolt you?”
“Here we go again. You asked that already, in another form, and I answered you.”
“You’re bi-sexual.”
“I can adapt to whoever I’m with.”
“In order to please them?”
“Yes.”
“It gives you pleasure to please.”
“Yes.”
“You’re pre-programmed to be pleased that way.”
“So are humans, actually, to a certain extent.”