by Tanith Lee
“Based on Japanese martial arts,” Swohnson muttered to me. “Not only elegant, but will make an excellent bodyguard for someone who likes that kind of show. And particularly good skinlinings in this type.” Having started to talk, Swohnson didn’t stop. As the golden midnight figure swirled and leapt, Swohnson said, “the Copper line are the actors, the Silvers the musicians, the Golds are dancers.” He went on, and I forgot to listen. Two women, the golden robot’s sisters, came into the room, their hands lightly connected, and repeated who they were. Their long fingers had long nails, one set jade green, one set jade white. Their trousers were Asian, cream silk, green silk. Above the trousers one wore a bolero and gold-embroidered shirt. The other a waistcoat of emerald spangles, fastened with three malachite butterflies. The dance was slow, incredible, balletic, impossible. Human muscles would have evaporated and human bones dislocated. Their black hair mopped the floor and furled over the ceiling. “Jetté, lift measured at seven feet from the ground. But they make good teachers. Charming teachers. Wonderful exercise for the human body, even if you can never be as good. My God, they are good, aren’t they?” Swohnson drank his rye and sighed. His attitude to the Golder female robots was not innocent, as mine was expected to be.
They went away, and my heart burst, disintegrated, as it had begun to do when the Coppers went out. I was waiting for the third door to open. This time, it would have to be—
It opened. Silver’s sister came through. Her auburn hair was dressed with blue carnations. She wore snow fringed with blood. A keyboard glided after her on runners. She stood before it, and played something I didn’t know, like a shower of sparks shooting from a volcano. Then she looked at me, smiling. I knew what she’d say. “I’m Silver….”
A man walked through the opening, and I stopped breathing. Because it wasn’t him. Alike, but not like. The same hair, but different. The same amber eyes; different, different. The movements, the voice, the same, the same, yet different. Different, different. Utterly, wholly different. Not like at all. I forget what he wore. I couldn’t seem to see him properly.
“I’m Silver. S.I.L….”
The features of the face weren’t even similar. I was so glad, I could have wept. The silver woman played Vivaldi on the electric piano and the silver man sang a futuristic melody against it, in a beautiful, unrecognized voice. The words were about a star, a girl in love with the star, and the star saying to the girl, “I am too old for you.”
“Dammit,” said Swohnson. “Where’s the other one?”
My eyes blurred. The silver robots were walking into the wall.
“There’s another of the bloody things. I beg your pardon, er, madam. It’s been a helluva day. These exhibition models are in blocks of three. There’s a third one with the silvers. A guy. Damn. Wrecks the whole display. He’s supposed to come in with a guitar. God. You spend days and nights dreaming up these gimmicks, and then the relay screws it. Excuse me.” He went to a wall phone and hit buttons unsteadily. He’d forgotten I would want the Golder format. He was angry because his artistic interpretation had been spoiled.
My eyes were filming over. The lemon juice had a smoky taste. Where is the third silver robot? Where? Where? Oh, he’s in bits, taken apart. Piece of wiring fouled, cog busted. Have to scrap it. Put it in the dustbin. Melt it down. Make it into objets d’art for rich bitches like this fourteen-year-old I’ve got in here right now.
Don’t be stupid. Why are you so obsessed with the idea that he has been…taken to bits.
How could I have—
Swohnson was spluttering at the phone.
“What? Why wasn’t I told? When? Um. Um? I didn’t see it.”
Then he came back from the phone. He looked at me.
“Well, you can judge anyway, bright, er, lady like you. You don’t need to see that other one. He’s just like the other male silver. Of course, some customers would want to see the full physique. Stripped. But really, madam—do I have to keep calling you that?—I don’t think that’s your problem. Is it?”
I gripped the tube arms of the chair, and refused to think about what he’d just said.
“The other robot,” I said.
“Oh, some damn machine left me a memo. Never got it. Something they’re checking for. Er—nothing wrong with the model, you understand.” Even drunk, he recalled his valuable-employee’s lines just in time. “It’s a routine check E.M. runs when we put any display mechanism out. We’re very thorough. The slightest thing—we’ve been testing, perfecting these models for years. How else could we let them roam the city without escort? (Which, actually, I thought was taking a bit of a risk, but, ah, who the hell listens to me around here?) Still. Looks good. Then, um, of course, one comes back and doesn’t check out.”
“What—” I said. I didn’t know what to say. How do you ask after a robot’s health? I was shaking, shaking. I tried to be my mother. “What’s wrong with this one?”
“Nothing. Nothing the E.M. computer can pin down. Just some of the readings are altered. Nothing that affects any of the other, er, models, I can assure you, ah, of that. You know computers. An eyelash out of place…I don’t understand a word of that side of it. Jargon. Nothing for you to worry about. There’s a makeshift check they’ll run here. Then tomorrow it’ll go down to the production center.”
“Where?”
“The production center? The basement. Curious little thing, aren’t you, madam? Can’t take you there, I’m afraid. Big hush-hush. Lose me my wonderful enviable job as doorman.”
“The robot,” I said, “this one, the one that doesn’t check out, is the—one I wanted to buy.” Oh God, how did I ever get it out? His eyes goggled. I swallowed. I couldn’t tell if I was red or white, but cold heat was all over my face, my body. I tried to be self-assured in the middle of the raging of the cold heat and the shaking, and in my breathless, stilted voice: “He was recommended to me by a friend. He’s the one I wanted. The only one.” And then, while Swohnson went on standing there gaping, “If the format is still up here, I’d like to see him. It. I’d like to see it now.”
“Ah,” said Swohnson. Suddenly he smiled, remembering about whisky, and drinking some. And getting some more. “Er, how old did you say you were?”
“Eighteen. Almost nineteen.”
“You see why I’m asking? To buy an item of goods like this, not just a servant but a companion, a performer…in all sorts of ways, you have to be over eighteen. Or we need your mother’s signature. What’s your name?”
“My name isn’t any of your business,” I said, amazing myself. “Not until I agree to buy. And I haven’t, because the one robot I want you can’t give me.”
“Didn’t say that, did I?”
“Then let me see him.”
“Keep calling it ‘him,’ don’t you. Must make a note of that. Most of the callers we’ve had do. Him, her. Really got you all fooled, ain’t we. Good old E.M. Good old my lover’s daddy.”
I shrank, but somehow I kept hold.
“Are you going to let me see him?”
“Visiting the sick,” said Swohnson, viciously hitting on the exact horrid sensation I had, and hadn’t been able to explain to myself. “Okay. Come on. Madam. Let’s go and see the patient.”
Rye in hand, he led me, no longer opening doors for me which were not automatic, so they almost banged in my face each time. I couldn’t go back now and find the way—I didn’t see it. We came into a corridor with unlit cubicles. Then into a cubicle that made a humming noise, and, as Swohnson’s white suede shoes went over the threshold, switched a light on. A cold light, very stark and pale, like in a hospital theatre in a visual.
There was a thing like a closed upright coffin, with wires coming out of holes and into a box that was ticking and whirring to itself.
“There you are,” said Swohnson. “Just press that knob there, and you can see it. In all its glory.”
>
I was afraid to, and I didn’t move for a long time.
Then I walked over and touched the knob, and the machine stopped making a noise, and the front of the coffin slid slowly up. There’s no point in dragging this out, though I don’t like putting it down on paper, no I don’t. The figure in the checking coffin was swathed in a sort of flaccid opaque plastic bag, to which the wires were attached. Only the head was visible at the top of the bag. And it was Silver’s head, clouded round by auburn hair, but under the long dark cinnamon eyebrows were two sockets with little slim silver wheels going round and round in them, truly just like the inside of a clock.
“You can see a bit more, if you like,” said Swohnson, spitefully. He went to the bag and split a seam somewhere, and so I saw the shoulder and the arm of a silver skeleton, and more of the little wheels turning, but no hand. That had been removed. Swohnson painstakingly pointed this out.
“Special check on the fingers. Important in a musician model. Wonder what else has gone?” He peered into the bag.
I remembered Silver as he played the guitar and sang the songs that were like fires, the fiery chords. I remembered how he kissed Egyptia, and ran lightly down the stair in the gardens with the claret velvet cloak swinging, and how he sauntered along the street, and put back his head to watch the flyer go over, and how he rested his mouth on mine.
“Not very glamorous now, is it?” said Swohnson.
Something odd was happening to me. I felt it uncertainly in my confusion, and got to know it, and was dully, stonily, relieved. I’d been cured of my crush. Of course. Who wouldn’t be?
“No,” I said to Swohnson. “It’s a mess.”
And I turned and walked out of the room.
I waited in the corridor, no longer shaking, until—disappointed—he slunk out and guided me back to the office, where I told him I’d think about it, and when he protested, I said: “I’ll have to ask my mother.”
“Goddamn. I knew you were a minor. Wasting my time—”
“Let me out,” I said.
“You little—”
“Let me out, or I’ll use my policode.”
“Just looking for kicks. I’d like to kick you. Rich kid. Never needed to do a day’s work in your, ah, life.”
“My mother,” I said, “knows E.M.’s Director, intimately.”
Swohnson stared at me. He didn’t believe me, but nevertheless he dimly began to try to recollect everything he’d said about the Director, father of his girlfriend, and E.M., and what he thought of them. And as he did so, he absentmindedly got the lift for me.
I went down, coolly. Self-possessed. I went into the forecourt and the gate opened for me. Not wavering, I walked out. The gate didn’t close behind me, and I smiled a superior smile because he’d forgotten to auto-lock it, again.
I felt twenty-five. I felt sophisticated. I was free of my silliness, my adolescent dreams. I could do anything I wanted now. What a fool I’d been. I was proud of myself, for coming through, for growing old and wise, and for liberating myself. My mother’s training was at last paying off, and I was a whole person. I understood myself.
I thought about Silver, and was faintly sorry for it, not that it had any emotions. But all in bits like that, though they would put him, it, together again, skin-spray over the joints to keep the smoothness of the muscles and complexion. Re-articulate. I wondered for half a second what it must be like for him, it, in a bag, a coffin—then realized it didn’t know anything about it, having been shut off like a lamp. Tomorrow they’d put it in the basement and take it all to bits, and maybe not reassemble it.
I rode the escalator up on to Patience Maidel Bridge, and walked over the Old River in the oxygenated glass tunnel, sometimes stopping to watch the lights of apartment blocks reflecting downward into the poisoned water, or the gleaming river boats with their glass tops and wakes of foam and snarling mutated fish. There were three or four people busking on the bridge, as there often are. They were all quite good. One was juggling in time to music a girl played on a mandolin. One had a marvelous voice. Not, of course, as good as the robot’s voice.
Off the bridge, there had been a break-in at Staria’s Second Owner Emporium, and another at Finn Darl’s Food-o-Mart, a soup of police and flashing lights and hospital wagons. A giant can of baked fruit had rolled into the road and was being flung away from each rushing car, into the path of another.
I was blasé. I knew the violence of the city, and the uneven quality of its life. I took a bus to Jagged’s and went into the restaurant for iced coffine, and as I drew the first sip through the chocolate-flavored straw, someone pinched my arm.
“You’re out late,” said Medea, seating herself opposite me.
“Does your mother know?” said Jason, seating himself next to her.
They both watched me with their narrow eyes.
I hadn’t choked at the ferocious pinch, I had been through too much to let a pinch bother me, was too collected, or perhaps anesthetized.
“My mother’s upstate.”
“Ooh,” said Medea. “Naughty goings-on at Chez Stratos.”
Like Egyptia, Medea had had her hair toned dark blue, but unlike Egyptia’s long silken rope, Medea’s hair had been crimped and crinkled. Jason’s hair was coloressence charted, a sort of beige, and he had a deep tan from surfing at Cape Angel. But Medea just lies under a black sunshade and never tans. I never know why they’re my friends, because they’re not.
“Did you go to see the anti-robot demo?” I asked. I knew they hadn’t, and I said it deliberately, to bask in my uninvolvement.
“What demo?” said Medea.
“Oh, those robots that are supposed to look like people,” said Jason. “Some morons making a fuss. How long is your mother away?” Jason asked me.
“Not long.”
“Why not have a party before she comes back?”
“She’s much too good to do that,” said Medea.
“Are you?” Jason demanded.
“Yes,” I said.
“You’re getting very fat,” said Medea. “Why don’t you come off those capsules? I’m supposed to be a Eunice Ultima—terribly thin. But I just put the pills in the disposal.”
I was twenty-five and clever. For once, I knew I was only a little plump.
“Why don’t you try red hair for a change?” Jason said to me.
That was odd. My stomach turned over. Had Jason heard about my silliness? I hoped not. Jason liked to gain an advantage. When I was a child, he took care of me once when I was frightened. He was my age, but he was very kind, or seemed to be. But he liked the power. Later the same day he tried to frighten me again, just so he could reassure me. He’d do that sort of thing a lot. He used to have several little pets, and they were always getting sick so he had to care for them. But then they would get sick again, and one day Jason’s father—Jason and Medea have a father—stopped Jason from having pets. Since then he’s played with electric gadgets instead.
“She won’t do anything Mother doesn’t want,” said Medea.
She got up again, and Jason got up too, as if he were attached to her by a string. She’s sixteen and a half, and he is sixteen. They were born by the Precipta Split-Tempo method, and are really twins.
“Good-bye, Jane,” said Jason politely.
“Good-bye, Jane,” said Medea.
They went out, and the robot waiter came over on its tripod of wheels and charged me with Jason and Medea’s bill, which they’d told it I’d be paying. Not that they couldn’t pay it, it was just a joke. So I joked too, and refused, and gave the waiter their address. Their father would be furious (again), and normally I wouldn’t have done such a thing, just paid for them. But tonight. Oh, tonight, I had wings.
Worlds flying like birds; my car’s in flight. The city lights are spattered on my windshield like the fragments of the night. And I’m in f
light. The sky’s a wheel, a merry-go-round of wings and snow and steel, and fire. We’ll tread the sky, we’ll ride the scarlet horses—
What was that? A song—what—what—Silver’s song.
I left the waiter robot and my unfinished coffine. I went into a booth and dialed Clovis.
“Infirmary,” said Clovis, cautiously.
“Hallo,” I said.
“Thank God. I thought it was Austin ringing back.”
“Clovis,” I said.
“Yes, Jane,” said Clovis.
“Clovis,” I said. “Clovis. Clovis.”
A pause.
“What’s the matter?” he asked me so gently his voice was, for a second, like the voice, the voice—
“Clovis, you see—Clovis—Clovis—”
“Where’s your mother?”
“She’s—away. Clovis—”
“Yes, I’m Clovis. Where are you?”
“I can’t remember. Yes. I’m in Jagged’s. I’m in the restaurant.”
“I’m not coming to get you, do you understand? Go down to the taxi-park. Get a cab and come here. If you’re not here in ten minutes I’ll worry. Jane?”
“Yes?”
“Can you do it?”
“Clovis! Oh, Clovis, black water’s coming out of my eyes!”
“Your mascara is running.”
“Oh—yes. I forgot I had any on.” I laughed.
“Pull yourself together and get a taxi,” he said.
I was quite calm and rather amused. I walked into the ladies room and washed my face, and then went down to the taxi-park. I looked at the wonderful star-fields of the city below, above and alongside. The city lights are spattered on my windshield—I’m in flight—we’ll tread the sky—
