by Tanith Lee
Egyptia, I’m sorry, but if I get the chance to get away from these creatures, I don’t care about you—Oh, God, give me the chance—
“We’ll go over to South Arbor and take the flyer,” said Jason.
The Asteroid rose over the broken buildings. In the icy air, it seemed larger than ever, and touched the faces of my escort with a green-blue glaze, but probably it was an optical illusion.
We walked. They didn’t speak to me any more. Now and then they said things to each other, sometimes about me.
“Actors are awfully stupid.”
“Yes, it will be a revolting night. But if Jane wants to.”
“Isn’t she thin now? Not right for her bone structure.”
“Wonder what Mother would say.”
They knew they were my jailers. But they’d still failed, so far. They hadn’t been led to my home. I’d provided a legitimate excuse for not going there, and so they couldn’t be certain I was shielding anyone, or anything, from them. Not certain.
We got to the flyer platform in time to catch the four-thirty P.M. As they clambered and clambered me into the lighted pumpkin, I tried halfheartedly to fall back, but they wouldn’t let me.
“Come on, Jane.”
“I just remembered, I haven’t got the fare.”
Jason hesitated. They’re very mean, despite their riches and their thievery, and I wondered for a second if they’d abandon me after all. But then he said to Medea, “You can pay for her, can’t you?”
And Medea, expressionless and hateful, said: “Yes, I’ll pay. I’ll pay for her on the ferry, too. Jane’s one of the poor, now.”
“Do you remember,” said Jason, “when she offered to pay our bill in Jagged’s, and then didn’t, and they got on to Daddy and asked him for it? That was ever so funny.”
We sat down. The flyer, a golden champagne bubble, drifted forward into the city sky, and I could have wept, from the pain of my thawing fingers, and from despair.
Silver would be expecting me. The streets were dangerous. I had no policode. Would he, even though he couldn’t seem to be afraid for himself, be afraid for me? Silver.
“Don’t the buildings look interesting from here?” said Jason. “Just imagine, if we had some little bombs we could drop on them. Bang. Bang.”
“They’d look more interesting then,” said Medea complacently. “On fire.”
Damn the pair of them. I wish there were a hell, and they could be there forever, screaming and screaming—
No, I don’t wish that either. That wouldn’t make any difference, now.
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 c
an 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?”
“I—”
“For one thing, how did you know to come here tonight? Did you see the horrendous Ask My Brother To Dust The Peacock advertised somewhere? On a police-wanted placard, for example. Not that I’m arguing with your arrival. Egyptia has been driving herself and everyone else mad for the past three weeks. None of her fellow Thespians will talk to her anymore. I’m wondering if they’ll even consent to talk the lines to her on stage tonight. But at least her wails of ‘Oh why isn’t Jane with me?’ will be appeased.”
“Clovis.”
“Yes, Jane?”
I looked at him, at this handsome face I’d grown up seeing grow up, Clovis, the last remnant of my past. Was he my enemy? I thought so when he called me and took Silver away from me. I thought so when he blushed, and sneered at me, and I slapped his face. But not anymore. Could I trust him and would he help me? As, originally, he already had.
“Clovis, I have to leave at once.”
“If you do, Egyptia’s death may well be on your conscience. Not to mention mine.”
“I have to leave, and I need you to stop the twins from coming after me.”
“Are they likely to?”
“They hunted me down, somehow, and they’ve been following me all afternoon, and I couldn’t get rid of them. I couldn’t go home.” Not crying, I nevertheless was crying, tearlessly again, and desperately, and waving my hands at him because I knew he didn’t like to be handled and some part of me kept physically reaching out to him for support.
“Jane, obviously I’m being unforgivably obtuse. But why couldn’t you go home?”
“Clovis, don’t you know?”
“Let me see. You split with Demeta. You’re living in a hovel somewhere. Or you’re a professional damisella della nuita. Why should any of that—”
“Did you see the Electronic Metals newscast?”
“I never watch newscasts. If you mean, do I know, by a process of imperceptible osmosis, that E.M. is out of business, yes I do. And if ever I saw a senatorial blindfold, that was it. Anything to keep the masses from revolution, I suppose.”
I was calmer. I watched him closely.
“How,” I said, “did Egyptia make out, as legal owner of one of their discontinued robots?”
“How steely-eyed and measuring you’ve become suddenly. Quite unlike the dear little Jane I used to know. Egyptia? Oh, they called her. They said would she care to return her robot as it was faulty and might set fire to the rugs. They’d refund her the cash, plus a bonus as compensation.”
There was a long silence, and I began to wonder if he was playing with me.
“And what,” I prompted, “did Egyptia reply?”
“Egyptia replied: ‘Which robot?’ and, when they’d told her, announced that the robot had been in storage for weeks, and she was too busy to be bothered with fishing it out. As for the bonus, money didn’t concern her anymore. Self-knowledge through art was what concerned her. She would be happy to eat wild figs in the desert wilderness, etc., etc.—And Electronic Metals backed away and switched off the phone. Since then no further calls, apparently. No doubt they concluded that one unused, forgotten robot in the cupboard of an eccentric, amnesiac and very rich actress was nothing to lose sleep over. Or else they didn’t want to increase the wrong kind of public tension by making a scene.”
My eyes were helplessly wide.
“That was what she said?”
“That was exactly what she said. I know, because I had the misfortune of being with her when she took the call and said it.” Clovis nodded. “When she turned from the video, of course,” he murmured, “I said, with some astonishment, ‘But didn’t Jane ever come and demand the robot from you on the grounds of hard cash and true love?’ And Egyptia widened her topaz eyes, just as you’re doing with your jade green ones. ‘Oh! Yes!’ she exclaimed. ‘I’d forgotten about that. Jane’s got him.’ Interesting, isn’t it.”
“She’d forgotten—”
“You know what she’s like. Completely and enduringly self-centered. Nothing is real to Egyptia, except for herself, and the savage gods who may either uplift or destroy her. You were in love with him, Jane. But Egyptia’s only in love with Egyptia.”
“And did you call E.M., Clovis, and tell them the mistake?”
“Why the hell should I?”
“Malevolence,” I said.
Astonishing me somewhat, he grinned, and lowered his eyes.
“Hmm. You’ll never let me off that one, will you?”
“You haven’t let yourself off. Your hair—”
“Jane. I had him. I’ll admit, a special experience. Shakespeare would have flung off a couple of sonnets. But it just made me aware, for the eighty millionth time, what a pile of gormless garbage most of humanity is. What you really want to know is, did I or will I tell E.M. Ltd. that you and he—Silver—still cohabit. Which is what I astoundedly presume you are still doing. And what I also presume our own little arsonists in the servicery have found out. J. and M. Investigators Inc.”
I drew in a long trembling breath. My voice came out sure and steady and clear.
“Yes, Clovis.”
“The answer is No. Ah, what a relief.”
“Yes. E.M. means business. If they think he’s still walking about—”
“He’d be back to cogs and clockwork status.”
To hear him say it, even though I knew it to be so, stunned me, filled me with fresh sickness and horror. And at any moment, the two monsters would be back.
“You know,” Clovis began to say, “I have an awful theory about how Jason tracked you down.”
But I broke in: “Clovis, can you lend me some money. Or give me some? I don’t know if I can ever repay it. But if we could get away from the city, go upstate….”
“That could be a good idea. You can have the money. But just suppose, melodramatic as it sounds, that E.M., or the Senate, have a secret check going on the highways or out-of-state flyer terminals.”
I stared at him and through him.
“Oh, God. I didn’t think of that.”
“Don’t go to pieces. I’m inventing an alternative plan. You’ll have to stay around a while. I’ll need to make a call.”
“Clovis.”
“Yes. That’s my name. Not Judas Iscariot, so relax.”
“What plan?”
“Well, just like your appalling mother—”
A voice shattered like glass against my ears, staggering me.
“Jane! Jane!”
I turned as if through treacle. Egyptia stood on the little stair that led down from the bedroom half-floor above. I had an impression of flashing lights and foaming darkness, a kind of storm, as she launched herself at me. She fell against me lightly, but with a passionate, almost-violence. She clung to me, pent, intense, not letting go. “Jane, Jane, Jane. I knew you’d come. I knew you’d understand and come, because I needed you. Oh Jane—I’m so afraid.”
I felt I was drowning and my impulse was very nearly to thrust her off. But she was familiar as a lover, and her terror communicated itself, a strange, high inaudible singing and sizzling, like tension in wires.
“We’ll go on later,” said Clovis.
“Clovis—”
“Later, trust me. You know you do.” He walked away toward the servicery. “I’ll go and see how the Slaumot’s coming.”
Egyptia clung to me like a serpent. Her perfume flooded over me, and despite everything, my own panic began to leave me.
My lover was not a hysteric, as I was. He would wait for me, without fear, thinking I’d stopped to talk to people w
e knew, perhaps to eat with them. And Clovis would help us. Help us leave our beautiful home, our friend the white cat.
“Egyptia,” I said, and the tears tried to come again. “Don’t be afraid. It’s going to be fine. It is, it is.”
Then she drew away from me, smiling bravely, and I burst into bubbling laughter, as I’d burst into dry tears.
Egyptia was stricken.
“Why are you laughing at me?”
“Because, in the middle of utter chaos—you’re so beautiful!”
She stood there, her skin like a warm peach with an overall theatrical makeup, her eyelids terracotta and golden spangles, gold spangles also massed thickly on her breasts, which otherwise appeared to be bare. Her hair had been streaked with pale blue, and tortured into long elaborate ringlets, and she had a little gold crown on it. She had a skirt of alternating gold and silver scales, and on her flexible arms were dark blue clockwork snakes with ruby eyes, that continuously coiled round and round.
What was most laughable of all was that, as she stood facing me in her costume, facing me through her terror and her ridiculous egomania, and her vulnerability, I sensed again the greatness in her that she sensed in herself. And I laughed more wildly and harder, until she, with offended puzzlement, began to laugh too.
Impatience, scorn and fondness, and love. Struck together like matches, igniting. Giggling helplessly, we fell onto a couch, and her layered scaled skirt made the noise of tin cans rolling down stairs, and we shrieked, our arms flailing, and her oriental slippers flying off across the salon.
There were three bottles of Slaumot and Clovis, Egyptia and I sat and drank them in the fire and candlelight. Jason and Medea drank coffipop, which, when I was fifteen, always gave me instant hiccups. The twins sat on the floor across the big room from us, playing a macabre version of chess Jason had invented. They might steal some of the pieces, but Egyptia wouldn’t care. She knew she wouldn’t live beyond this night. She had two visions of her death. One was when she first entered on the stage. Her heart would burst. Or she might die at the end, the strain having been too much for her. It wasn’t at all funny. She meant it, and she was scared. But, more than all else, she was scared of the fact that she was to dramatize Antektra before an audience. It wasn’t an enormous theatre, and it might not fill. A couple of critics might be there, and a visual crew would film a shot or so, as a matter of course, and then probably not show it. But to Egyptia, it was more than all this—which, if it had been me, would have terrified me sufficiently—although, far less than it would have done before my debut in the streets. It was her fear of failing herself that gnawed on Egyptia. Or, as she put it, of failing Antektra. She would say portions of her lines, pace about the salon, sink on the couch, laugh madly, weep—her dramatic makeup was genuinely tear-proof, fortunately. She sipped the Slaumot, and left butterfly wings of gilt from her lips on the glass.
