The Silver Metal Lover(5)

“Am I?”

“Are you—the—are you a robot?”

“Yes. Registration Silver. That is S.I.L.V.E.R. which stands for Silver Ionized Locomotive Verisimulated Electronic Robot. Neat, isn’t it?”

“No,” I said. “No.” Again without warning, I began once more to cry.

His smile faded. He looked concerned, his eyes were like pools of fulvous lead. His reactions were superb. I hated him. I wished he were a box on wheels, or I wished he were human.

“What’s the matter?” he said eventually, and very gently, making it much worse. “The idea is for me to amuse you. I seem to be failing. Am I intruding on some sort of personal grief?”

“You horrible thing,” I whispered. “How dare you stand there and talk to me?”

The reactions were astounding. His eyes went flat and wicked. He gave me the coldest smile I ever saw, and bowed to me. He really did turn on his heel, and he walked directly away from me.

I wished the concrete would open and swallow me. I truly wished it. I wanted to be ten years old and run home to my mother, who might comfort or lecture me, but who would be omnipotent. Or I wanted to be a hundred and twenty, and wise, and not care.

Anyway, I raced off the terrace, and to Clovis.





* * *




Clovis’s apartment overlooks a stretch of the New River, which is clean and sparkling. People who live along the banks can open their windows on it, unlike the people who live along the banks of the polluted Old River, who have to use the filtered air-conditioning even in winter. Every apartment there has a warning notice cut into the window frame, which says: The Surgeon General has established that to open this window for more than ten minutes every day can seriously damage your health. Clovis has friends on the Old River who leave their windows open all the time. “Will you look at the muck on the buildings,” they say. “Why don’t the Godawful Surgeon General and the Goddamn City Marshal clean up the air and the traffic fumes before going dippy over the Godball river?” Clovis also asserts that he never opens his own windows as the view of the New River is too hygienic and bores him. But so far he hasn’t moved.

When I arrived on the fifteenth gallery and spoke to Clovis’s door, it wouldn’t let me in for a long time. When it did, I found Clovis was in the process of trying to get rid of a live-in lover by holding a seance.

Clovis doesn’t like relationships, except sometimes with women, and they are non-sexual. He once shared his apartment with Chloe for ten months, but his boyfriends come and go like days of the week. Actually, the term Mirror-Biased really applies to Clovis. He doesn’t just sleep with his own sex, his lovers always look like him. This one was no exception. Tall and slim, with dark curly hair, the young man lay on the couch among the jet black cushions, eyeing me solemnly.

“This is Austin,” said Clovis.

“Hallo,” said Austin.

I remembered the robot saying “Hallo” to me in his smiling, musical voice. I wished I hadn’t come here.

“And this is Jane,” said Clovis to Austin. “Jane is really a boy in drag. Awfully effective, isn’t it?”

Austin blinked. He looked rather slow-witted, and I felt sorry for him, trying to cope with Clovis.

Clovis finished arranging the plastic cards with letters, basic punctuation and numbers one to ten around the seance table.

“Get up and come and sit down, Austin. And Jane, since you’re there, come here.”

This playful phraseology showed Clovis was in a deadly mood. He seated himself cross-legged on the rug before the table.

“Oh, Clo,” said Austin in a whine, “what ever do you think you can pick up in a modern building like this?”

“You’d be surprised what I’ve picked up here,” said Clovis.

Austin didn’t get this. But he slunk over to the table.

“But the apartment is so new,” whined Austin.

“Siddown,” barked Clovis.

“Oh all right. If you’re going to go all brutal. I’ll sit down. But it’s infantile.”

He folded himself on the rug like a rope. I went over and sat on the other side. A cut-glass goblet, that had been chipped a year ago when one of Clovis’s lovers had thrown it at him, rested in the table’s center. We each put a finger on it.

“This is so childish,” said Austin. “If it does move, it’s just pressure. Your hand trembling.”

“My hand doesn’t tremble,” said Clovis.

“Oh, I know, dear,” said Austin.

I felt very alone, and I began to cry again, but neither of them noticed me. By lowering my head, I could let the tears just fall straight out of my eyes onto my lap, where they made a strange abstract pattern of dark polka dots. It became quite interesting, wondering where the next tear would land.

“Oh, dear,” said Austin. “This is dull.”

“I do it all the time,” said Clovis.

“How dull of you.”

“I am dull.”

“I just hate dull men.”

The glass began quite suddenly to move. It glided across the table and back again, and started a liquid circling motion around the fringe of letters and numbers.

“Ooh,” said Austin. “You’re doing it.”