The Silver Metal Lover(60)
“Naturally,” (Swohnson) “every robot had a human attendant, however circumspect. They could hardly have managed otherwise. Absurd, the things people actually credited our robots with. Oh, yes, er, they were clever, the best yet—but no machine can do the things our robots were supposed to have done. Traveled on flyers alone, taken ferries, subways—”
Flick. Old film, and I knew it. A crowd of demonstrators in East Arbor, the police lights playing over them. Someone threw a bottle. The camera followed it. It hit the facade of Electronic Metals and shattered.
I must have made a sound. Silver took my palm between his cool fingers, which felt of human skin.
“It’s all right.”
“It isn’t. Don’t you see—wait,” I said.
Swohnson was back on the screen.
“Whatever else, the final failure of E.M. will please those people out there who got scared by what we did—or what they thought we did.”
“E.M. has egg on its face, then?” The newsman. Pleased. Congratulatory.
“A lot of egg. We found out the hard way. These ultra-sophisticated machines use up so much energy, they just short out.”
Flick. A golden girl, dancing. A spray of electric static. A metal statue, poised at an unearthly angle, one leg extended, her hair in her eyes. Stupid, ungainly. Laughable. A machine that couldn’t be as good as any human, that couldn’t even finish its act.
(“Some run-down heap,” said Clovis, “that will probably permanently seize up as it walks through the door. Or at some other, more poignant, crucial moment.”)
As if he read my mind, the interviewer said: “And surely, how shall I put it, these things had a friendly social function as well. A standin for a girlfriend, perhaps. Awkward if your girlfriend seized up like that.”
“Um. It could have happened.”
“Oh, dear,” said the interviewer.
Swohnson grinned. The grin said: Hit me again, I love it.
“So I guess we remain,” said the interviewer, “the superior species, to date. Man stays at the top of the heap as artist and thinker. And lover?”
“Um,” said Swohnson.
“And dare I ask, what are E.M.’s plans for the future?”
“Ah. We’re thinking of moving out of state. Somewhere east. Farm machinery for derelict agricultural areas.”
“And will any of your tractors have a winning smile?”
“Only if some maniac paints one on.”
And flick, there was a cartoon filling the screen. It showed a metal tractor with a great big smile, eyelashes and long, long golden hair.
I shut my eyes and opened them. The snow dazzled, and I turned in fear to see if anyone but us had stopped to watch the local news broadcast. A drunk rolled across the street, oblivious, slipping. In the sky high above, a distant string of jewels revealed the approach of a flyer. The city roared gently to itself on every side. But it didn’t really matter who had seen the visual here. All over the city people had seen it. Seen it, but believed it?
“Very strange,” Silver murmured.
“I’m scared.”
“I know you are. Why?”
“Don’t you see?”
“Maybe.”
“Let’s go home,” I said. “Please. Quickly.”
We walked in silence, cloaks brushing the snow, like two Renaissance princes. And every time we had to pass someone, I was afraid. Will they recognize him? Will they confront us?
But how could they? Hadn’t the news bulletin just told them that a robot can never be mistaken for a human? Go close, you’ll see the skin like a saucepan, hard, hard metal. (I had lain closer than any camera, or treated still shot designed to deceive. Skin which was poreless, yet not lifeless, smooth but not hard. Metallic, but not metal…) And the walk, disjointed, a little stiff, and the ungainly gestures which always gave them away—a puppet, slightly out of control. And the inability to find its own way about the city. To decide for itself. All those of us who saw those robots that day when they walked among us, did we all now believe that we’d made a great big silly mistake? Yes. Why not? We believe what we want to, don’t we. And no one wants to believe the machines that take the jobs away from those of us that need jobs could also take our songs away, our fantasies, our lovers.
Someone had told Electronic Metals what it had to do and what it had to say. And Swohnson, as ever in the hot seat, had done it and said it. Lies. Logical, credible, soothing lies. How much compensation had the City Marshal been authorized to pay E.M.? A lot. They’d had to take their most exciting product off the market. They’d had to mess about with it until it gave an efficient display of being useless, for the benefit of the visual cameras. And then—and then, no doubt, they’d dismantled it. Golden torsos dismembered, golden wheels turning where black eyes had looked out, or copper wheels, where golden eyes had looked out.
“Your teeth are chattering,” he said to me.
“I know. Please don’t let’s stop.”
The visual hadn’t shown any of the silver range. The silver girl at the piano, the silver man (Silver’s brother and sister), neither of these. Why was that? So as not to remind anyone there was a Silver Format? Tell the people that our robots, which they’ve seen to be exactly human, are really shambling bumbling automatons. And they’ll accept that. Tell the people, by omission, that the only robots they saw were gold or copper. And they’ll forget the silver range. The Silvers with their burgundy hair and auburn eyes. But why, Mr. City Marshal, Mr. Director of E.M., do they have to forget about the Silvers? Why? Because one of the damn things is still at large. Out there in the city. One flawless, human, better-than-human, godlike, beautiful, genius of a creative inspired robot. And if they realize, the citizens may lynch us all.