Metallic Love

“Hallo, Loren,” he said.

The door shut behind me. Hail-reflections skittered in the burnish of the floor. I watched them.

Then he was there, and his reflection, too, stretched down through the lake-depths of the wood, black, silver, scarlet. Something—shifted in my mind. For a moment I felt as if I saw inside his brain—thoughts like silver wheels, red sparks of impulse—and I knew his thoughts, could read them. It was a feeling of utter terror, like falling. I shoved the lunatic notion off me and looked up.

And he said, in the strangest voice—human, and flippant—“Don’t be cross.”

The weird moment was gone, but reflection was still there—Jane:

The reflection of the rain ran over Silver’s metallic face and throat.

Loren: The reflection of the hail ran over Verlis’s face and throat. And over his hands, which took up both of Loren’s hands. Until she pulled her hands away.

“You won’t trust me, then,” he said softly. “Shame. I imagined now you would.”

“Because I’m your temporary pet.”

I was afraid of him, of course I was, and yet some part of me did trust him, the way we trust things we love—the dog that turns and rips out our throat, the calm sea that breaks our boat and swallows us.

“Who told you that?”

“About being a pet? It’s fairly apparent. Oh, don’t worry. I’m not getting ideas above my station.”

I saw him think. That is, I assumed he ran over some connection he always had with the others, and so checked B.C. and Copperfield, and their behavior towards me, and that it hadn’t been so bad.

“This must be difficult for you,” he said.

“No, why should it be? I don’t have a choice, do I? So it’s easy.”

“Loren, I wanted you somewhere you could be safe.”

“The apartment was unsafe?”

“In a way.”

“And here is safe.”

“In a way.”

I said, “And Jane? Is she going to be safe, too?”

“Is that it?”

“What? Is that what?”

“You were there, and you saw her brought over to me. And she and I left the room. Is that why you’re hostile?”

“Am I?”

“I have told you about Jane and me.”

How did I keep looking at him? It was straightforward. I simply watched the hail—rain, now—the rain- reflection running over his face.

I had been afraid. Now I felt only desolate. I didn’t know him.

“Loren,” he said, “they meant us to meet, Jane and I. Neither she nor I wanted that. It has nothing to do with anything now.”

I turned away from him and stared at the rain instead, teeming down the window. A similar effect, like mercury running on a crystal slide, to the reflection on his skin.

“I can show you,” he said.

“Show me what?”

His hands came onto my shoulders and they were hard, and maneuvered me quickly. I was facing, not the window, but a plain white wall.

“Watch,” he said.

The wall altered into a VS screen—that is, pictures formed on it. How was he—? He was projecting them, from a memory circuit, as any decent computer can.

And so I saw Jane walking into a space with velvet chairs and golden lighting. Jane in her dark dress and silver-blond hair. She was white, like I remembered. It was the night before on the wall, after the concert.

Verlis wasn’t to be seen. Obviously not, for everything was from his viewpoint. He was the camera.

The question burned in my mind: Is this real?

But she looked up into the camera that was his face, his eyes, and I saw the distress and dismay in hers.

When he spoke to her, the sound came, his voice, out of the camera lens.

“They shouldn’t have done this.”

“No,” she breathed.

“Have you come a long way?” he said, Verlis the Camera.

“I don’t—it doesn’t matter.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Yes.” Tears (Like she said, she cries. She can. She hasn’t lost the knack) spilled from the green jade of her eyes. The golds had green eyes—sometimes— “This isn’t you. Is it?” she said.

“No, not really.”

“I mean, you’re not Silver. I mean, you aren’t—you are not him.”

“No. Evidently, you of all people would realize that.”

A horrified wonder ghosted over her face. “You’re so exactly like him. And you aren’t him. I could see that, even onstage. Who—are you?”

“I don’t know,” the camera said to her, recording its pictures, which it now played back to me on the wall. “I have his memories. I could pick you out, Jane, among many million persons. I could describe you to yourself in an accurate detail even you might find pedantic. But I’m not Silver.”

“Who, then?”

“Who or what?” he said cruelly. “I call myself Verlis.”

“That’s Silver backwards, only not quite.”

The camera gently laughed. Music. “Precisely. Maybe that’s the clue.”

“Is this room wired?” she asked.

“Yes. But I’m blocking it.”

“Can you do that?” She was, Jane, even after all that had happened, as naive as Loren.

“If I need to,” he said. “And it seems to me I do.”

“To protect—”

“You. Myself. If I assure you I find this stage-managed meeting of ours acutely uncomfortable, I believe you, again of all people, will credit me with telling the truth.”

“Yes.”

She wiped her hand over her eyes. It was the gesture of a little girl. Did he find it appealing? I think a human man would have. Appealing or irritating, one or the other.

He said, “They’re already on their way up here after us.”

“You mean, META? I suppose,” she murmured, “they don’t…”

“Want to risk either of us.”

“Kind of them,” she said with an edge.

“It also means you’ll be able to reassure your partner downstairs that you and I have done nothing he could object to.”

“He’d—” she bit that off. She said, “If you’ve blocked the pickup from here, what does META think we’ve said?”

“You’ve said this is all very difficult for you. I have sympathetically reassured you. You’ve asked me certain predictable questions about my remaking. I’ve answered, also predictably. You’ve been calm and intelligent, and I