Metallic Love

I was going to sling the silver shoes and the dress in the waste chute. A life of being mostly on subsistence made me aware I’d much rather sell them. So then I put on jeans and a top, and with the dress and shoes in a bag, went out to look for a fourth-owner store, of which, downtown, there were plenty.

Off Main Boulevard is an eatery called Gobbles. Someone stepped out of the lighted foyer into my path.

“Pardon me. Are you the young woman known as Loren?”

He looked official, like a plainclothes cop. He’d only need to ask for my ID, and if I couldn’t or wouldn’t produce one, arrest me.

So “Yes,” I said.

“I was headed for your flat.”

“Really.”

“Sharffe—you remember him? He’s just in that car over there.”

I glanced and saw, not the appalling Orinoco Prax, but something discreetly sleeker and more businesslike, parked at the sidewalk. Even as I looked, a polarized black window went down. Sharffe, in a cream one-piece, put out his head and arm, and waved to me like my friendliest and most trustworthy uncle.

The cop-man walked me across. It was casual and relaxed. I didn’t make any fuss.

“Bonsoir, Loren, ma chere. How are you?”

“Great, thanks. And you?”

“Couldn’t be better. Why don’t you allez in?”

At that, I hesitated. He watched me with his bright eyes. I said, “I have to meet—”

“That’s fine. I won’t keep you more than twenty minutes. Have to be back at META HQ myself.”

What did he want? To collect on his dinner? I thought he’d done that already, since I hadn’t been picked up for his delectation but a robot’s. But the door was opening and the cop-man assisted me in. What was going to happen? Everything went too fast to really panic.

I was in the car. The cop hadn’t gotten in. There was a driver, human, in the front, shut off from us by a watery dark partition.

The car smelled expensive, even more than the Orinoco with its rain-resistant fur.

We drove off slowly. There wasn’t much traffic, certainly nothing much of the caliber of this car.

“We’ll take a run or two around the block, Loren, if that’s okay? I just wanted to thank you.” I turned and looked right at him. “Yes,” he said. “I know. I wasn’t really fair to you, was I. But you’ve come out of it splendidly. You cooperated like a soldat en combat.”

“Like—what?”

“Pardonez. A real trooper, shall I say. Not everyone we selected was as reliable, or as brave. Or as sane. Oh, my, do we have a nice little batch of funks and stalkers.” He smacked his lips. “And it wasn’t quite as you may have expected?”

He knew all about it. All?

Perhaps he read my brain, perhaps the override chip in back of his eye could sometimes sift the thoughts of others; the scare-mongers say they can. He said, “Obviously, each of our team reported in to us.”

“Then you know.”

“Not quite compatible. It can happen. You prefer a human man. You’re lucky, Loren. These things—well, some people have no option but to hire a machine. You’ll have plenty of real-life choice for a long while. Nevertheless, you put him through his paces. We are impressed by the readings. What did you think of him, really?” Sharffe, though seated, advanced forward, prurient with—not voyeurism—but scientific demand. “When it came to it, forgive the indelicacy, but were you put off that he was what he actually is?”

“No.”

“Then it was something else.”

“Yes?”

“Perhaps you are a romantic.”

I smiled. Loren, the romantic. “Sure,” I said. “Maybe.”

“And anyway, you preferred Black Chess, didn’t you? Pity about that. Perhaps… but I can’t promise.”

The car was doing what he’d said it would, idling round the three blocks between Main and Correlli, reaching the beginning and idling round again.

“Listen, Loren. Whatever else, we’re very appreciative. We’d like to offer you a small reward, if you’ll allow us to.”

“You mean, META.”

“That’s it. It’s a big company, and likes to look after its own. Put it this way, you were kind of a company employee last night, albeit volunteer class.” He put a steel-colored paper packet into my lap. “You’ll find all the documents there. Only one minor thing. We want you to keep quiet for now about all this. I don’t just mean not run off and tell a vid reporter. I mean, don’t even tell your friends.”

“I haven’t.”

“I know you haven’t,” he said.

They had somehow been watching the apartment house? Even in my room? What else. Watching till I came out. Silver—Verlis—must have left something there to connect them up… or did it, with the type of hi-tech he now was, happen automatically? (Had they watched us having sex? Oh, very likely.)

I inspected the packet without opening it. Sharffe was putting something else on the seat between us, a tiny wafer of some obscure material.

“I’ve keyed the pad. If you’d just put your voice-print on that—simple to do. Lay your finger here, see, then speak.”

He had picked up my left hand, and put my index finger on the wafer.

“What do I say?”

“That’s swell, Loren.”

Saying What do I say had of course been enough.

“And I know you’ll keep your side of the bargain,” he added flirtatiously. “The print is only, well, red tape.”

Red in tooth and tape. Red in hair and claw—

“One evening,” he said, as the car drew in again to the sidewalk outside Gobbles and slowed to a halt, “maybe you and I can take another private drive. It really was such a pleasure. I was cursing I had to let you go.” The door opened at a blink of his eyes. As I was getting out, he said, “It’s just possible, Loren, we might ask you to see him again. Would that be unreasonable of us?”

Reflected neons littered over the pavement. People hurried by. The night’s aroma was gasoline (affluent, reliable pear-oil from the META car), hot food, perfume, the far away cold mountains.

“Why?” I said.

“He seems to have become interested in you.”

I said, toneless, “He’s a robot.”

“Precisely. Isn’t it fascinating? That is what it is with him. He’s not like the rest.”

I know.

I shrugged. I was shaking, as I hadn’t until now. But chilled air was blowing up from an outlet in the wall, I could pretend it was that.

“Whatever,” I said. “Yes. Okay.”

“Good girl. Take care of yourself now. I think”—the door was closing him back in like a thing in a shell —“you’ll be happy about what’s in that packet. A bientot, petite.” The car drove away.

When I looked about, the cop had gone. But anyone might be in their pay. Conspiracy was all around, wearing a million masks.

So I walked into Gobbles and ordered a mineral water I couldn’t drink, and sat at a table in the bar area, moving the unopened packet about on the tabletop.

It was only later I recalled the bag with my dress and shoes. I must have left them in his car. More evidence for them, conceivably, those pieces of plastic, lame, and silk that had recorded every crash and leap of my heart.