The Silver Metal Lover

“Greensleeves is my delight, in her dress like summer leaves. Greensleeves, truly, I never bite—unless so requested, my Greensleeves.”

This produced mild uproar. Egyptia smiled and pouted in her sleeveless gown. Then he struck the last chord and looked straight at me. And I remembered the color of my dress.

I think I was petrified. I couldn’t move, even to flinch, but my cheeks and my eyes burned. Nor could I immediately look away. His eyes on me had no expression. None of the coldness, the potential cruelty I had seen before—or had I imagined it? Was a robot permitted to be cruel to a human?—and no kindness, and no smile.

In desperation, frantic, my eyes slid away to Egyptia.

Pretending to see me for the first time, acting friendship now where she had acted Cleopatra-in-lust a second before, she rose and swam toward me.

(We spend our lives acting.)

“Darling Jane. You came after all.”

She threw her arms around me. I felt comforted in the midst of fear, and I clutched her, being careful not to spoil her clothes, a trick I sort of mastered with my mother. Over her shoulder, the silver robot looked away and began to tune the guitar. People were sitting down by him, asking him things, and he was answering, making them laugh over and over. I hadn’t seen him before because he was surrounded by people. Built-in wit. If only I had some.

“Jane, you look adorable. Have some champagne.”

I had some champagne.

I kept hoping the leaden feeling would go away, or the other feeling of burning up inside would go, but neither did. Later he played again, and I sat alone, far away amid the bushes, forcing back the stupid uncontrollable tears. In the end, the nasty Lord took me to a grove in the gardens, and seated under the vines there, which were heavy with grapes, he fondled me and kissed me and I let him, but I kept thinking: I can’t bear this. How can I make him stop?

About one in the morning, as he was telling me to come along, we’d go to his apartment, I thought of a way.

“I—I haven’t had my contraception shot this month. I’m overdue for it.”

“Well, I’ve had mine. And I’ll be careful.”

“No, I’m a Venus Media, very fertile. I can’t risk it.”

“Why didn’t you bloody well tell me before?”

Acutely self-conscious and ashamed, I stared at the grapes. If I cried again, my mascara would run and he would hate me and go. So of course, I couldn’t cry. I thought of the robot. I thought of the robot kissing Egyptia, and all the women who would ask to be kissed. If I asked, he would kiss me. Or bite me. Or—do anything I said, providing someone paid Electronic Metals Ltd.

“I feel sick,” I said to Lord. “Nauseous. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t vomit over me,” he said, got up, and fled.

There was some wine left, so I sat in the grove and drank it, though it had no taste. I tried to make believe I was in Italy, long ago, the grapes around me, the heavy autumn night pressed close as a lover to the city. But I heard gusts of a band somewhere, or a rhythm tape elsewhere.

Catching the lights in the leaves, his silver skin glowed, though his hair only fired up when he was ten feet from me. I thought he was coming toward me and my heart stopped. Then I realized I was close to the non-moving stair going down to the street, and he was simply leaving the gardens, the guitar on its cord over one shoulder, and a blood-red cloak from the old Italy I’d been trying to go back to slung over the other.

He went by me and down the steps. He ran down them lightly. A eucalyptus tree screened him and he was gone.

My heart restarted with a bang that shook me to my feet.

Holding up my long skirt, I ran down the steps after him.

There were bright lights, and quite a few people out on the sidewalk, and cars hurtling by. All the shops and theatres and bars which stayed open flared their signs and their windows. And he passed through the lights and the neons and the people and the fumes of the traffic, now a slim dark silhouette, now a crimson and white one. He walked with a beautiful swagger. When a flyer went over like a prism, he put back his head to look at it. He was human, only his skin gave him away—and the skin might be makeup. He moved like an actor, why not paint himself like one? People on the street looked at him, looked after him. How many guessed? If they hadn’t heard Electronic Metals’ advertising, no one.

I followed him. Where was he going? I supposed he was pre-programmed to go back to—to what? A store? A factory? A warehouse? Did they put him away in a box? Turn off his eyes. Turn out the smile and the music.

A man snatched my arm. I snarled at him, surprising him, and myself. I broke into a run in my high-heeled shoes.

I caught up with the robot at the corner of Pane and Beech.

“I’m sorry,” I said. I was out of breath, but not from running or balancing on my high heels. “I’m sorry.”

He stopped, looking ahead of him. Then he turned slowly, and looked down at me.

“I’m sorry,” I repeated quickly, blinded by the nearness of him, of his face. “I was rude to you. I shouldn’t have said what I did.”

“What,” he asked me, “did you say?”

“You know what I said.”

“Am I supposed to remember you?”

A verbal slap in the face. I should be clever and scornful. I couldn’t be.

“You sang that song to embarrass me.”

“Which song?”

“Greensleeves.”

“No,” he said, “I simply sang it.”

“You stared at me.”

“I apologize. I wasn’t aware of you. I was concentrating on the last chord, which required complicated fingering.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I can’t lie,” he said.

Something jerked inside me, like a piece of machinery disengaging. My eyes refused to blink, had set in my face, felt huge, as if they had swallowed my face. I couldn’t swallow at all.

“You—” I said. “You can’t be allowed to act this way. I was scared and I said something awful to you. And you froze me out and you walked away, and now—”

He watched me gravely. When I broke off, he waited, and then he said, “I think I must explain an aspect of myself to you. When something occurs that is sufficiently unlike what I’m programmed to expect, my thought process switches over. I may then, for a moment, appear blank, or distant. If you did something unusual, then that was what happened. It’s nothing personal.”

“I said,” I said, my hands clenched together, “you’re horrible. How dare you talk to me?”

“Yes,” he said. His gaze unfocused, re-focused. “I remember you now. I didn’t before. You started to cry.”

“You’re trying to upset me. You resent what I said. I don’t blame you, but I’m sorry—”

“Please,” he said quietly, “you don’t seem to understand. You’re attributing human reactions to me.”

I backed a step away from him and my heel caught in a crack in the pavement. I seemed to unbalance very slowly, and in the middle of it, his hand took my elbow and steadied me. And having steadied me, the hand slipped down my arm, moving over my own hand before it left me. It was a caress, a tactful, unpushy, friendly caress. Preprogrammed. And the hand was cool and strong, but not cold, not metallic. Not unhuman, and not human, either.

He was correct. Not playing cruelly with me, as Clovis might have done. I had misunderstood everything. I had thought of him as a man. But he didn’t care what I thought or did. It was impossible to insult or hurt him. He was a toy.

The heat in my face was white now. I stared at the ground.