Metallic Love

CHAPTER 3

Non Servian (“I will not serve”). The words spoken to God, they say, by the Angel Lucifer, before his fall.

• 1 •

About five days after I wrote those concluding words of my “Story,” I saw him again. By which I mean, saw him physically in front of me.

I was in the apartment on Ace; I didn’t often go out, except for groceries, or to walk round the quake park. It was three in the afternoon, a time I often find a negative hour, as they say it is during the night.

The voice in the door (yes, the new apartment had a door-voice adapted specifically for me) called quietly, but robotically intimately, all through the rooms, “Loren, someone is here.”

“Who?”

I thought it was Sharffe. Braced myself without either much thought or much alarm. Foolish. For there should have been some alarm, shouldn’t there?

The door said, “It is Verlis.”

I had the feeling everything in me plunged through me and vanished somewhere about the region of my (good Biblical term) loins. There was then nothing inside me. Just space.

What did I say? I knew he could get in anyhow. I’d seen him undo a locked and bolted door. Did I want him not to come in?

“Okay,” I said.

“Thank you, Loren,” said the door, ever the mistress of politeness.

I didn’t sit down. I went and stood by one of the west-facing windows of the room I’d made my living room. I wondered, as I’d been here awhile—over a month, was it?—if he would detect my personal scent in the apartment. I glanced out the window to verify the passage of time. Yes, the trees in the park were starting to change to metals, copper, and gold. Autumn was here. Then it would be winter, and the metals of the park would be asterion black and silver.

When I looked back, he had walked soundlessly into the room.

Was I prepared? Only not to be, and in that I’d been wise.

He wore a faded white shirt, a long faded black coat, and black jeans and boots. What you see fashionable, not too badly off young men wear all over these cities, here and in parts of Europe.

His hair was red as claret grapes.

His skin—what—

He read my mind again, or my body language and expression.

“Makeup,” he said. “Fake tan. META thinks it’s a good idea, for now.”

“To stop you from being recognized? Does it work?”

“Enough.”

“Did you take the— How did you get here?”

“Not by train,” he said. “The service is still out. They’re replacing all the track.”

I said nothing. Because I couldn’t say to him what I remembered and had pretended to be amnesiac about.

I said, “I’ll make some tea.” Another lie, as if he were a normal human visitor. I knew he didn’t need to drink or eat.

To go past him was odd. We’d had sex. Been far closer. But he stood aside for me, courteous as my door.

In the kitchenettery I filled the container with water and threw the switch. It would take about twenty seconds to boil. He didn’t come through—there wasn’t really room.

Despite my lies, I’d only put out one mug, and then poured the hot water on the Prittea bag.

“You drink your tea black,” he said.

“Yes. I don’t like milk.”

“Would you let me,” he said, “have a mug? I’d like to taste the tea.”

“It’s only Prittea.”

“Even so.”

“I confess,” he said, “I rather like the taste of food. Should I be ashamed, I wonder?”

But I could not let slip that I knew any of that. Somehow he hadn’t—or they hadn’t—picked up on the idea I definitely had read the Book. Hadn’t he told them what I’d said about Jane?

I put the Prittea and hot water into two mugs and handed him one. He sipped it, thoughtful, then moved back across the main room again. He sat down on the couch.

I took my tea to a chair.

“META have it on record,” he told me, “you said you’d be okay to see me again.”

Suddenly I laughed.

“What?” he asked me.

“I don’t know. This is like an arranged marriage.”

“I don’t think you are the marrying kind,” he said.

“I don’t think you are.”

He smiled. The room bloomed up as if from rays of sun.

“But,” he said, “you don’t mind my being here?”

“You were lucky to find me in. I go out a lot.”

“Then I was very lucky.”

“Why,” I said, “did you want to come back? Is it just the unfinished sexual thing—you know, the missing orgasm? I’m afraid I can’t, right now. I’m menstruating.”

“No, you’re not.” He looked straight at me. His face, even under the painted summer-tan brown, was like a flat shield.

“You can pick that up, too, can you? How foul. Even with all the modern hygienic methods.”

“No, Loren. I didn’t say that. But there are other signs I would pick up.”

“I shouldn’t have tried to fool you.”

“Why did you? I’m not here to force you to do anything. Let alone that.”

“No. I’m only— I’m— I thought this was over.”

“Didn’t I say I would see you again?”

“Yes. But the implication was that it would be just to sort out the sex.”

“I make mistakes,” he said. “Humans aren’t alone in that.”

“I don’t believe you make mistakes. Just like you don’t believe I have a period.”

“Oh, then.” He shrugged, regretfully. He said, “What I’d like to do, if you would let me, is spend some time with you. Here, or outside. Whichever is more comfortable for you. Trust me, now I’ll pass sufficiently for human. If you’re worried, I can alter the color of my hair.”

“Don’t—” I checked myself. “Leave your hair alone.”

“In fact, quite a few human men are coloring their hair red.”

“Because of you.”

He grinned. “No accounting for taste.”

He was human. How could you ever think he was anything else? The tea ran into the emptiness inside me