The Silver Metal Lover(6)

Clovis took his finger off the glass. The glass, with Austin and me still adhering, went on.

“She’s doing it,” sneered Austin. “I might have known.”

“Take your finger off the glass, Jane,” said Clovis.

I did. The glass went on twirling with Austin still attached.

“Ah!” screamed Austin. He let go as if it had bitten him. Undeterred, the glass swirled about the table.

“Oh God,” said Austin.

“I don’t think it’s actually God. You could ask.”

“I’m not speaking to it.”

“Everyone,” said Clovis, as if addressing a crowd of thirty people, “put your fingers back on. First Jane, then Austin. Then I will.”

I did as Clovis said, and Austin anxiously followed suit, yelping as he touched the glass. Clovis put his finger on the glass and Austin said, “Has someone died in this room?”

“Not yet,” said Clovis.

“Then how can it get anything?”

“People have died everywhere. And don’t forget, twenty years before this block went up, there was a condominium on the site. It fell down with a massive loss of life. And we are sitting, as it were, on the rubble and the bones.”

“You do have a horrible turn of phrase. Why did it fall down anyway?”

“Did you not,” said Clovis patiently, “ever hear of the earthquakes, tsunamis and geological collapses that occurred when we captured the Haemeroid?” (The Haemeroid is Clovis’s name for the Asteroid.) “When a third of Eastern Europe sank and North America gained seventy-two Pacific islands it hadn’t had before. Little, easily overlooked things like that.”

“Oh,” said Austin. “Is this a history lesson?”

The glass jumped up from the table and came down again with a noisy crack.

I thought of all the people dying in the earthquakes, and swept away, shrieking, in the seas, and tried not to sob aloud. I had seen lots of ruins, lots of swamps, but I had been too young and didn’t remember them. I saw Chez Stratos falling out of the sky. I saw the city tilt into the purple river and the clean river, and Silver lying trapped under the water, not dead because water couldn’t kill him, but rusting away, and my tears joined together in the lap of my dress, making the map of a weird new continent.

“What do we do now?” said Austin, as the glass made bullfrog leaps all over the table.

“Ask it something.”

“Um. Is there anyone there?”

“Obviously there isn’t,” said Clovis.

“Oh. Er, well. Who are you?”

The glass rushed to the letter N, and then to the letter O.

“In other words,” said Clovis sternly, “mind your own damn business. Do you have,” Clovis demanded of the energetic glass, “a message for someone here?”

The glass flew to the letter A, letter U, letter S, letter T—

“Ooh!”

“Sit down, Austin.”

“But it’s—”

“Yes, Austin. Austin would like to know what the message is.”

“No,” cried Austin, alarmed. “I don’t want to know.”

“Too late,” said Clovis with great satisfaction.

Swiftly the glass spelled out, Clovis reading off the letters and then the words: There is a negative influence about you. You must take a risk. Excitement is waiting for you, but not here. Be warned.

“Well, thanks,” said Clovis.

The glass shuddered to a halt.

“You’ve frightened it off,” complained Austin.

“Well, you saw what it said. I’m supposed to be a negative influence. Bloody thing. Comes into my home and insults me. Where are you going?”

Austin had risen and sauntered to the apartment door.

“I need some cigarines,” said Austin.

“I thought you gave them up.”

“Oh, that was yesterday.”

The door let him out, the closet handing him his three-tone jacket as he passed. The door buzzed shut, and presently we heard the lift.

“If only it could be so quick,” mourned Clovis, clearing the seance table. “But he’ll come back. He’ll come back and he’ll brood for at least another day before he takes the message to heart and goes.”

The table is rigged. Jason, who’s very clever with electrical stuff, did it for Clovis, and put the electronic magnet, the size of a pinhead, in the glass—you can just see it, if you know. Clovis memorized the sequence of letters and the message is always nearly the same. Clovis is really very cruel. He prefers to play with his lovers and watch them react to just telling them to get out. Of course, this probably works better, in the long run.

“Hallo, Jane,” said Clovis, after the sound of the lift had faded. “If you were trying to water the plants, your aim is a little out.”

“I didn’t think you saw me.”

“Weeping so bitterly? Since when have I been blind?”

I stopped crying, and Clovis brought me a glass of applewine. His comfort is limited to words and gestures at a distance. I don’t think he’s ever touched me, and I never saw him touch one of his lovers, though they constantly touch him. To be hugged by Clovis would, now, be embarrassing.

I told him about S.I.L.V.E.R., rather fast, not really explaining it properly, partly because I didn’t understand myself, and partly in case Austin came back quickly.