There were four printed reinforced-paper documents in the envelope.
One was an address, and included transport information and map, with an old-fashioned set of nickel keys attached. The agent’s report, printed below, read: “Pre-Asteroid but relatively undamaged and well-maintained apartment. Comprises three living rooms, bathroom, and full kitchenettery, with water, and some power on reliable meter. Situated in the lower-middle income area of Russia, noted for its quaint allocations, and several, mostly quake-cleared parks.”
There was no rent listed. Across the bottom of the paper had been stamped, in angular purple,
The second document carried my name and a number I assume had now been given to me (like a robot’s registration?), and the declaration that I owned, through the META Corporation, the apartment described on the previous page. The third document stipulated an income I would be entitled to draw from any accredited banking station, or in goods from any large store, for one year, on production of the attached card, which bore the paramount symbol I’d only ever seen in visuals: I.M.U. The amount wasn’t high, but it represented twice the maximum I had ever earned in any one year, and I could draw on it every month.
The fourth paper confirmed the itinerary of the others. It added that, as a trusted former employee of META Corp, I would, when current funds ended, be able to apply, through the company, for a labor card. This would then entitle me to some quite lucrative jobs, such as a sales assistant in a second-owner store, or various training schemes that could lead to work in cosmetics, computer engineering, even the study of outer space.
The fourth paper also advised me to keep a note of my personal number, safeguard my I.M.U. card, and adhere to all terms agreed to with META’s representative.
That night I lay on my bed at the apartment house, not sleeping, thinking of Silver. Now and then I got up and drank some of the rusty-tasting water from the room faucet. There was doubtless better-tasting water over at the apartment in Russia.
What was I going to do? It would be more sensible to do what they wanted. Wouldn’t it?
And then, kept like the secret mistress of some deranged prince, I’d be there in Russia, waiting for my beautiful and nonhuman lover. Waiting on and on.
He was
How could he be? If Jane lied, then he wasn’t going to be interested in humans. Not like that.
They just wanted to see if I could get over my strange frigidity that had prevented orgasm. Everything was an ongoing test of robotic skills, even though, already, these beings had been unleashed on the city. We few must matter to META, the ones (unlike the funks and stalkers Sharffe mentioned) who went along then shied away, or couldn’t come. Then again, maybe I’d never see him again. I’d been paid off, after all, like the blonde on Compton Street.
These thoughts—although they flitted batlike through my skull—never lasted long. I knew I’d take advantage of the proffered apartment, and the card. Because I knew I’d go there anyway and wait. For him. Despite all of it.
Silver—Verlis—God, what am I to call you?
And what about
How to get to Russia. As already stipulated, you take the train, as I had that night a hundred years ago and a couple of evenings earlier.
The unwashed hyenas glared at me from the veranda as I went off up the street with my packed bag.
It was less crowded on the train in the late afternoon. There was to be no Show. The passengers were workers going in to their shifts, or people from that lower-middle income group—of whom
I put the coin in the box and the ticket flipped up, with the destination sculpted into it—Russia: Katerina Stop. I sat down with my bag on my knees. There were lots of spare seats.
For a time the train grunted and rattled forward, noisy like I remembered, with no stop registered or therefore halted at. Then we drew into a station called Winscop. The doors sluggishly churned open, and two figures darted on.
We were (having looked at the directional map on the agent’s report, I now know), on the outskirts of Bohemia, where Russia begins. The afternoon sky beyond the platform was darkly brazen, and pasted over with modern buildings, low spires, cones, triangles. They came from that, moving with a grace that could never be banal or weary, a panache that never needed to wonder at itself.
A young man and a young woman, in jeans and sleeveless tight shirts, walking shoes on their feet. Nothing notable there. His hair was black, length about midshoulder, drawn back into a tail wrapped round with a black band. She had short hair, spikey, like Jizzle wore it, and it was the palest verdigris green. Also nothing there, really. Even low-income people use hair colorants. So what. Even skin makeup in that gold shade. They use that. I’ve seen it, only… it doesn’t look quite the same. It’s the sheer poreless balanced miracle of them, that’s what gives them away. Twelve years ago, yes, maybe human things could still kid themselves that their own impoverished and muddy genetic pools could, once in a sky-blue moon, evolve humans this astounding. But now, perhaps we have faced up to what we are. Crap, basically. And the very best of us can’t ever be as they are.
They. Them. Those. These.
The robots. The golds, who now had names like Goldhawk and Kix.
On two spare seats they sat, serene and silent.
What had they been doing? Somebody with cash lived out this way? Or was this some further trial of their robot powers, walking among humankind…
A discrepancy, for though their garments were ordinary, they must now never be allowed to attempt to pass in ability as human. That was the law.
And people had seen them on the vispos, the news ads, all of that. If humankind didn’t know they were strictly mechanical, they knew at least these two were from a higher sphere, actors, the favored ones, and had no rights to be riding a railcar.
I’d been afraid it would happen on the flyer that other night, with him. Nothing had.
Now, to start, it wasn’t aggressive.
It was a woman who went to them first.
“Say—are you? Are you the ones from The Show in the park? Yes, you are. I saw you there.”
Heads turning in the rumbling, galloping carriage.
He turned to the woman. He looked at her, measured and long. His eyes weren’t green, but a green so filtered they were like jet. He spoke. “Yes. We were in a performad.”
“And I saw you on a vispo.” Another woman had come up, craning forward eagerly, gripping one of the straps rather than sit down. “But they said you ain’t
“No,” he said.
He—Goldhawk—looked back up at her, totally relaxed, uncaring, unflawed. There was no contempt in his face, but oh, it was there. It breathed from him, like a scented poison. No, I am not human, but you, thing, are.
She didn’t get it, yet she did. She still hung over him, her ugly poor body bouncing at the motion of the train, cheerful, but something gone out of her, like a fruit with the pith sucked away.
Nevertheless, other people were getting up and crowding over. There was quite a little audience there now, across the aisle.
A man bent right down and grinned into the face of the golden woman, Kix.
“How much it cost, one of ya, eh?”
“A lot,” she said. “Too much for you.”
The same uncaring disdain. As if they were, these two supreme beings, momentarily bothered by flies.
“Yeah,” the man said. He was obese, almost certainly not from overeating, but from a medication, perhaps. “Yeah, couldn’t afford you, could I. So how about one on the fucking house?”
She just looked up at him, Kix. Just looked up. And I, across the aisle, only seeing her green eyes rest on him,
His face went darkish, and he rocked back. “You ain’t no machine,” he said. “She ain’t no fucking machine,” he added to the rest of us. “She’s a whore, and she ain’t no good.”
