Metallic Love

some air.”

He wants me damaged, and also to collect, finally, on his investment that first night. That’s why I’m here: for Sharffe. Only a moron would think now I’d been brought here for Verlis.

No way out of this, then. Come on, Lor, you’re a grown-up. You knew you’d have to pay.

Verlis is with Jane. That’s all over. So back to the garbage-tip of the world.

Outside, there it was, too, the Orinoco Prax, and into the white fur seat I sank.

We drove to downtown Bohemia, to some bar. In memory it’s somber brown in color, and the lights are smeared and old like rancid oil lamps in a visual. It couldn’t have been like that, could it?

He kept talking. I attempted to talk back to him. What did we say? Nothing. It was again all about Sharffe, his early, useless life. I didn’t believe he’d had one. Though clearly he wasn’t a robot, he seemed to have sprung, fully formed in his limited entirety, out of some peculiar egg. He drank, and I tried to. The alcohol didn’t help. Part of me was dying, painfully, inside. The part that wanted Verlis.

From the miasma Sharffe says, “Shall we do dinner?”

I say, knowing food will choke me, “I’m not really…”

“Well, then. Why don’t we go back to your place.”

And there it is, gaping up at me from the gloom. “Why not?” I lightly reply.

We drive to my place, 22-31 Ace Avenue, which isn’t. When we’re about to go in, I almost race off up the street. But that’s silly. There isn’t any way out.

He had another bottle of champagne, which he opened with dire expertise in the kitchenettery. He brought me the booze in one of the water glasses, which were all I had. And put his mouth instead at once on mine, and his hand on my breast. I slid my arms round him and gave up.

After about a minute, Sharffe drew back. He was grinning, and he wagged his finger at me. “Let me guess,” he said, “you don’t want to do that.”

“It’s okay.”

“No, it ain’t. You don’t want to, mon ange.”

He didn’t look threatening, only avuncular again, amused.

So I said, “It’s just I’m—”

“It’s just you don’t want to, at least, not with me. Right?”

“Oh, if you think it’s because—”

“Of Verlis. That’s exactly what I think.”

“Come on, don’t be—”

“Hey, I think it’s time we were straight with each other, maybe? Yes?” He poised, less avuncular, on the carpet of my META apartment, taking his champagne in small medicinal sips. He said, “You read the darn Book, yes? Own up. We know you read the fucking Book.”

“Yes.”

“Can’t hear you, ma chere.”

“Yes.”

“And you’ve been crazy on him—Silver, Verlis—ever since. And now he’s laid you, and it’s worse. You’ll probably never be able to stomach flesh and blood again. That’s possible. Though, of course, our Jane turned up with her boyfriend. Intrigues me, that. But then, you all do, in your own little ways. N’importe, I understand. Tell you what, go and look out your front window there.”

I did as he said. Down on the street, incongruous as a tyrannosaurus rex, the Orinoco hulked at the curb. Next to it, leaning there weightlessly, was a slim, flawlessly proportioned feminine figure. She wore a short white dress, and down her back gushed wheat-yellow hair. In the dark, her copper skin seemed only like one more fake tan.

“That’s right,” said Sharffe, at the window with me. He waved, and the graceful figure below waved gracefully back. “Sheena,” he added, in case I hadn’t worked it out. “You see, I, too, have acquired a taste for them. The females, that is. Sheena and Irisa, they’re my favorites. And I get to play about with them sometimes. So you see, Loren, I don’t take it sorely, being rejected by a skinny little weasel-faced poubelle like you. No, ma chere, you really don’t compare to any robot.”

I moved away from him. He went and collected the champagne and opened the apartment door. He said, “But META stays grateful, Loren. Lots of info; you’ve been very helpful. We’ve learned a whole lot. So the apartment is still yours for the year, and all the other benefits. Like that gown you have on that we gave you. Bit better than the last piece of tat I saw you wearing, hah? And if you were going to ask me, no, baby, you won’t see him again, at least not in your life or bed. Now he’s gotten himself other more important dates to keep.”

I sat down under the window, and soon heard the big car drive away. I didn’t cry. I don’t. It doesn’t do any good. After another short or long time, the window grew light, and it was morning.

• 4 •

Second City, like most cities, had its crime scene. There had been five persons found dead that night. One of them was Sharffe.

I found out when I randomly turned on the VS and the local news. The other four didn’t register. But when I saw the wreck of the huge golden car half-down a rocky ravine among broken pines, my vision and hearing clicked back into focus.

I heard the voice say, “… employee of the META Corporation, who’ve recently been causing such a stir with their new deluxe-formula robots. A spokesman has told us that, though a valued member of META’s Second Unit Team, the victim had been taking counseling for a slight alcohol problem, and had admitted to not always using the auto-mechanism of his car when over the safe limit for self-drive. The police have as yet provided no details, except that only the man himself occupied the car at the time of the accident, which occurred at approximately six A.M. META have extended their sympathies to any members of their employee’s family or friends, and are picking up the tab for road clearance of the vehicle. They may also face a fine for failing to report unsafe driving. And now to other news…”

In the quake garden the leaves were falling thick and fast. The two magpies flew about, as if trying to locate a preferred tree now unidentifiably bare. The sky was dull.

He had been alone in the car. The accident had occurred at six this morning—the mechanical clock in the car would have registered that accurately, the instant it hit the pines. (Why hadn’t the air-cushion saved him? A car like that couldn’t not have had one. Maybe it was faulty. It must have been. Again, surely unlikely in such a car?) And six A.M.? He had left me here after five…. He had gotten into the Orinoco with copper Sheena, all set to play about. He had driven really fast to get out on that mountain road with her—

What had happened to Sheena? Had she been in the car when it tipped down the rocks into the trees? Metalically impervious, had she simply survived, got out, and walked away?

Why hadn’t Sharffe switched to auto? Sure, he’d been drinking a lot. That time with me he had, too, and he’d turned the auto-drive straight on after the restaurant.

Did he forget? So aroused at her—no. He wouldn’t forget. A self-preserver, that was Sharffe. Only, somehow, this time it hadn’t worked.

As I paced round the rooms, I thought of Sheena and Sharffe on the furry seats in the moving car, and Sharffe switching to auto and putting his hands on her, and Sheena saying, “Too much for you—” and…

In imagination, a blur inside the vehicle. Copper and wheat, and what he’d stipulated, human flesh and blood. A kind of explosion.

And Sheena, who was a robot, connecting to the robot auto-drive and changing it and swerving the car so it tilted sideways, off the road, bounding through trunks and over rocks until it hit home on the bigger pines. Bones and branches breaking.

Then the door was quietly undone, and one silky, immaculate figure climbed out and moved away, into the night.