The Silver Metal Lover(64)
There was a crowd waiting for the reservoir ferry, and Jason held my arm. He’s scarcely taller than me. I thought of trying to push him in the water off the pier. But he’d only swim back.
The ferry came and we got on it. It curved through the water and around the trees to The Island.
“The play doesn’t start until midnight,” lamented Jason. “But Jane knows that. Over six hours of listening to Egyptia carrying on.”
“Do you think,” said Medea, “we could do something to make Egyptia amused? Like putting some small creepy insects in her makeup boxes?”
“Ssh,” said Jason. “If you tell Jane, Jane will tell Egyptia. And that would ruin the surprise.”
“Or we could put glue into her stockings.”
“What an intimate idea. I wonder what it’s like to be intimate with Egyptia?”
“Oh, Jason,” moaned Medea, “please kiss my little toe—it’s ecstasy, and it makes me feel like a woman.”
I stood by the rail, the water coiling by, not really listening. Somehow I recollect all they said. But it’s irrelevant. And presently we reached The Island pier, the landscaped gardens, and got off and walked up to the lift, and rose in it to Egyptia’s apartment.
It was deadlock until then.
By the time Jason spoke to Egyptia’s door, saying he and Medea were there, and not mentioning me, I was feeling violently nauseated and no longer really cared.
All around the dead pot-plants pointed at us with their petrified claws. The night was strange and glistening and terrible. I recalled how I’d come here last and bit my tongue, the only way I could keep any control over myself. It seemed to me that if Lord came to the door again, it would be the end.
When the door opened, no one was there but ourselves reflected in the mirrors as we trooped inside. It was also very silent, though I could smell incense and cigarines and the warm resinous scent of Egyptia’s entirely convincing pine-cone fire.
No one seemed to be in the vast salon, either, though yellow candles were burning everywhere. It looked so cozy, so beautiful, so sumptuously welcoming, my illness began inadvertently to lift. Then I almost screamed.
The fire had been put in the middle of the floor, and in one of the big shadowy chairs, three-quarters onto it, a head turned, and the flames outlined a crimson halo along dark red hair. It was Silver. It was— “If you stole anything from the hall on your way in,” said Clovis, “please replace it. This advice is for your own sakes. Egyptia, who is putting the finishing touches to her makeup this very minute, is liable to return in the person of Antektra, or—worse—in hysterics yet again. And much as I’d love to see someone murder the two of you—Good God Almighty!”
I swallowed.
“Hallo, Clovis.”
Having turned elegantly and slowly, caught sight of me and leapt to his feet, he was now transfixed, and I could see why I’d made the mistake. Clovis’s curling hair had been grown to shoulder length and lightly tinted red. To copy Silver? Mirror-Bias in reverse? The room shimmered. We’d parted in unfriendship, yet seeing him again I felt such a shock of relief I was ready to collapse on the floor.
“Jane. That is you? I mean, under that blond wig and the silver skin?”
“It isn’t a wig. It’s my natural unmolecularized color. Yes, it’s me.” I felt blazingly hot now, and unfastened the cloak and held it drooping away from me.
“My God. Let me look at you.”
He came across the room, stopped about a yard from me, gazed at me and said, “Jane, you’ve lost about thirty pounds. I always knew it. You’re really a beautiful boy, circa fifteen hundred. With breasts.”
At which I burst into uncontrollable tears.
Jason tittered, and Clovis said, “You two can go through into the servicery and dial the cellar for some wine. A dry, full-bodied red—Slaumot, if there’s any left.”
“Are we supposed to do what you tell us?” asked Medea.
“I think you are,” said Clovis. “Unless you’d like me to let your daddy know what you did last week. Again.”
“Daddy doesn’t care,” said Medea.
“There you are wrong. Daddy does care,” said Clovis. “Your daddy was talking to my daddy the other day, and both daddies agreed you would profit by instruction. Your daddy was brooding on the notion of sending both of you off on a study course similar to Davideed’s undertaking. Silt. Or something of a reminiscent color and consistency, though a rather nastier odor.”
“You’re lying,” said Jason.
“About the subject for study, possibly. Not about anything else. Don’t get the wine and prove it.”
Like a lizard, Medea slithered abruptly away through the salon. Jason, impelled by the invisible bit of string which connected them, peering back at Clovis, went after her.
My crying, to my surprise, had been tearless, and almost immediately stopped. To see the terrible twins reduced to such an unimportant role dumbfounded me.
“What on earth did they do, to give you that hold on them?” I said.
“Shoplifting and minor arson. I happen to have paid the fine before it got round to their father, who really is thinking of sending them into exile.”
“Why?”
“Why not? I felt generous. And now I can blackmail them. I shall need a new seance arrangement, post darling Austin, who, by the way, is a homicidal maniac. I’m trusting Jason will fix it, and not booby-trap the rest of the furniture at the same time, which is the price I had to pay before. And now. What about you?”