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—
“Block 21, New River Road,” I said to the driver, who was an astoundingly humanlike robot. “Good Lord,” I said, waving my black nails at him, “you’re almost as realistic as the special E.M. formats.”
“Which?” he asked.
“Electronic Metals. Copper, Golder and Silver.”
“Never heard of ’em.”
“Have you ever been dismantled?”
“Not so you’d notice.”
“I wonder what it’s like. He looked so—he looked—”
“Could you please,” he said, “not cry like that when you get out of the cab? It might be bad for business.”
He was human of course, I’d forgotten about Jagged’s gimmick line of real drivers.
He’d been more forbearing than Egyptia.
Lights hit the windshield. We flew.
I managed to stop crying. The worst thing was not knowing why I was.
When I got up to the fifteenth gallery of Clovis’s block, his door rushed open before I even spoke to it, set for sight. Clovis stood in the middle of the rug, barefoot, in a shower robe, frowning.
“He’s dying,” I said. “They’re going to kill him.”
The sedative Clovis gave me wasn’t flavored. It had a bitter taste. I slept in the spare bedroom, which has black satin sheets, alternating with green or oyster satin sheets. The satin is a deliberate gesture, for you slide all night from one end of the bed to the other. Clovis usually makes his guests uncomfortable, in the hopes they’ll soon go away. Drugged, I slept. When I woke up, he gave me China tea and an apple.
“If you can find anything to eat in the servicery, you can eat it.”
Sleepwalking, drug-dazed, I found some instant toasts. Clovis stood in the doorway.
“I think I gave you too much Serenol. Do you remember what you told me last night? You were in very dramatic shock.”
I watched the instant toast rising from the hot plate, and I saw two silver eye-sockets with wheels turning.
“No, I didn’t give you enough Serenol,” said Clovis, as I wept.
I had told him everything, sitting on his couch, giving a performance Egyptia might have envied.
“I’m surprised you went as far as you did,” Clovis now said, handing me a large box of tissues, and removing the jumping toast from the floor. “Timid little Jane, confronting the might of Electronic Metals Ltd. What was the name of that prat?”
“Sw-Sw-Sw—”
“Swohnson, that’s right. I’m quite looking forward to meeting him.”
“What?”
“What?” Clovis copied my astonishment.
“Clovis, I can’t go back. I can’t do anything. I told him I was under eighteen. I haven’t enough money. And my mother wouldn’t—”
“It’s too boring to explain twice. Follow me.”
Clovis walked back across the main living area and dialed a number on the videoless phone, turning up the sound reception as he did so.
I stood where he had in the servicery doorway, and presently I heard Egyptia’s sultry, seductive, sleepy voice.
“Good morning, Egyptia.”
“Oh God. Do you know what time it is. Oh, I can’t bear it. Only an idiot would call at this hour.”
“An idiot would be unable to use the telephone. I take it you were asleep.”
“I never sleep.” She yawned voluptuously. “I can’t sleep. Oh Clovis, I’m terrified. Too terrified ever to sleep. I have a part. Theatra Concordacis are doing Ask the Peacock For My Brother’s Dust. They said only one person could play Antektra. Only I could play her. Only I had the resonance, the scope—But, Clovis, I’m not ready for it. I can’t. Clovis, what shall I—”
“I’m going to buy you a lovely, lovely present,” said Clovis.
“What?” she demanded.
“Jane tells me you’re hooked on a robot.”
“Oh! Oh, Clovis, would you? But, no. I can’t. I have to concentrate on this part. I have to be celibate. Antektra was a virgin.”
“I’m happy to reveal I don’t know the play.”
“And Silver—he’s called Silver—he is the most wonderful lover. He can—”
“Please don’t tell me,” said Clovis. “I shall feel inadequate.”
“You’d love him.”
“Everybody, apparently, loves him. I wouldn’t be surprised if he ran for Mayor next year. Meantime, they’re dismantling him at E.M. Ltd. in a hellish basement that also produces a sideline of meat pies.”
“Clovis, I can’t follow you.”
“It seems you did something to the metal-man. His clockwork has ganged agley. He’s for the chop. Or the pie.”
“I didn’t do anything. Do they expect me to pay for it?”
“I’m paying. For possession. In your eighteen-year-old name. At a reduction, if I play my cards right. Faulty goods.”
“Clovis you are wonderful, but I really can’t let myself accept.”
“Then you can loan him to Jane until you’re free. Just to keep his hand in, if you’ll excuse the expression.”
“Jane wouldn’t know one end of a man—”
“I think she might. Might you not, Jane?”
Egyptia fell silent. I had turned to glass, immovable, easily broken.
“One hour,” said Clovis. “The Arbor side of the bridge.”
“I’m not going to the Arbors. I’ll be mugged and raped.”
“Of course you will, Egyptia. Wish on a star.”
Clovis killed the line. He dialed.
“Electronic Metals? No, I don’t want the contact department. I want somebody by the avian name of Swohnson.”
He waited. I said, “Clovis, they won’t,” and stopped because Swohnson’s voice came on the line and my whole body withered like an autumn leaf. I sat on the floor and put my head on the wall, and the Serenol swam over me.
Out of the haze I heard Swohnson start to wither too.
“How do you know one of the Silver Formats is faulty?”
“My spies,” said Clovis, “are everywhere.”
“What? Er. Look here—”
“I don’t happen to use a video.”
“It’s that—ah—that darn girl. Isn’t it? And you’re another rich kid—”
“I am another very rich kid. And I advise you to calm down, my feathered friend.”
“What? Who the—”
“Swan,” said Clovis clearly, “son.”
“It’s spelled S.W.O.H.,” exclaimed Swohnson.
“I don’t care if it’s spelled S.H.I.T.,” said Clovis. “I’m calling on behalf of the lady who hired your ballsed-up, badly-made substandard rubbish the night before last.”
I got up and went into the green bathroom, and ran a tub. I couldn’t bear to listen anymore.
About fifteen minutes after, as I lay there in the water, Clovis knocked on the door and said,
“You’re a rotten audience, Jane. Are you all right? If you’ve slashed your wrists, could you hold them down in the bath and try not to mark the wall covering? Blood is very difficult to clean off.”
“I’m all right. Thank you for trying.”
“Trying? Son of the Swohn is pure cast-iron jello. I’m assuming, by the way, you’ll pay me back in hard cash as soon as you can wring Demeta’s blessing from her. Then we can edge Egyptia out of the picture, too.”
“They won’t let you,” I said. Tears ran in the water. I was a bath tap, which nobody could turn off.
“Why am I doing this?” Clovis asked someone. “Moving heaven and Earth to get her some run-down heap of nuts and bolts that will probably permanently seize up as it walks through the door? Or at some other, more poignant, crucial moment. Oh, more! More! Sorry, honey, my spring’s bust.”