Metallic Love

It was, even traveling fast, about an hour and a half, the drive. META, it seemed, lay well out of town.

The mountains got nearer and more enormous, luminously pale even in the dark from their snow in starlight. We passed a couple of small towns, a farm or two, with tall silos and mechanized gates, saying K——UT, which was all you could see at that speed. We didn’t talk, except twice, when Tirso asked Jane if she was all right. The first time she replied, “I’m okay.” The second she snapped, “What do you bloody think?” And then, Jane-ishly, said she was sorry. But even Jane has her short fuse.

In the end there was a dirt road again, heavily graveled and with the great coiled roots of the pines lurching up in it. But the car had special treads, and we simply bundled over them all.

The gates were higher than any of the farm gates, but they also said, in garish neon, readable now: KEEP OUT: Property of the M.E.T.A. Corporation. And then, of all things, a motto: Making the Future Shine Bright.

Wow. Bright with fucking fire, bright with wrecked trains, blackouts, and death.

The gates opened smoothly at our approach, and the car slipped through and up a better road. The pines were now cleared right back, apart from one or two gracious groves, left for appearances, or to demonstrate ecological awareness—or to conceal something.

There wasn’t any neon, like on the gate. Soft lamps lined the concourse as we drove between mathematical ranks of buildings, where a few aesthetically pleasing, warmly lighted windows beamed high up. You couldn’t see in, only the lights. I thought of the visual news I’d watched, that first time I saw him again, the curving, low-glowing corridors snaking through a steel and polarized glass complex. That was here, then: META.

We went through an archway and were in a small park, nestled between the buildings. Ancient Rome was good at that. Blank buildings with delicious courtyard gardens held inside. Trees, mostly bare now, raised graceful limbs in the artistic light of lamp-holding statues. The lamps had robot colors—red, gold, copper…

The car became motionless.

Jane, Tirso, and I sat for about ten minutes in a comfortable, subtly lit lobby, like that of an expensive dental practice, which I’ve only seen in magazines. There was a lovely clean smell of cloves and new synthetics. Then a woman came out of an elevator, and for a moment I was petrified it was going to be her, Demeta, only Jane’s face told me it wasn’t. This woman was only about thirty, and had a helmet of glossy black hair. She wore the feminine version of the male one-piece, in deep chartreuse.

“Jane! How nice to meet you. And your friend.” She meant Tirso; she never glanced at me. “I’m Keithena. Sorry for the wait. Would you come with me?”

“Where?” said Tirso, sounding tired enough to be bravely awkward.

“Oh, to your suite.”

“Suite?” Jane now. “Is this a hotel?”

Keithena laughed with her ruby-plated lips. “No, no. This is the Admin Building of META. But, of course, we keep hospitality lodging for our guests.”

“I take it the suite has three bedrooms,” said Jane.

“Well, no.”

“We’ll need three. The man and lady here, and I—we don’t, any of us, sleep together.”

“No problem at all. Two suites. Adjacent. Loren, naturally, won’t be staying in either suite.”

“Why not?” said Jane. She was very partisan for me. I couldn’t see why she should be. But I supposed we were now comrades under alien fire.

Keithena said, “Loren is an employee of META. So she’ll be rooming in the employee lodging.” She was bright as a gilt button, bright as META was going to make the future shine.

“Loren,” said Jane, turning to me.

I said, “It’s fine, Jane.” The truth, the real truth was, I was exhausted to my very bones, and I couldn’t stand anymore of it, or of being with her. She was Jane, for God’s sake. I couldn’t take another instant.

Tirso said, “We might as well do what they say. Ye-es?” And his eyes on hers were all code for “Play along, we’ll talk about this when we’re alone.”

Jane put her hand on my arm. “I’ll see you in the morning. All right?”

“Yes. Sure.”

“If they mess you about,” she added, standing there between me and the might of Keithena, “I can sort it out with Demeta. I think I can. No, I can.”

“Yes. Thanks.”

Her eyes were candid but perceptive. She turned after a second and said to Keithena, “Very well,” as I could imagine Demeta doing it.

After they’d gone into the lift, another woman appeared, walking brusquely. She; unlike Keithena, was in a one-piece of prison-warden gray.

“Ready, Loren?”

I thought of saying, For what? But I didn’t. I just followed her back across the lobby and down more low-glowing corridors, and up a stair, and out into another open-air section of the complex, across which lay the block of rooms I now inhabit, built around the fountain yard.

“Everything you need,” she said, showing me the closet, which even had clothes in it, the sort I often wore, and the bathroom, which had the sort of toiletries I might dream of. “The hatch will give you hot Prittea or coffine, and up to three alcoholic drinks of your choice per twenty-four-hour period. Also sandwiches. Menu inside the hatch-door screen. For full meals you need to go to the Commissary Building. See, the map—press here—will show you. Anything else, or any emergency, the phone relays to the central switchboard, which is robotic and can connect you to any point of META.”

“How about calling outside?” I tried, without much interest.

“No. At the moment some of the lines are down. The blackout in the city. And out-of-state or international calls can only be made from the appropriate kiosks in Hatfield Block.”

“It’s just like a college, isn’t it,” I said.

She never smiled, but she nodded. “If you like.”

I’d never been to any college, of course. And don’t ever let them tell you life is the best school.

“You can come and go as you want here,” she added. “Merely remember you must remain inside META. The compound is mechanized and stays locked.”

Ah, it was a prison.

“For how long?”

“Till things outside settle down. It’s for your own protection, Loren. You’re lucky to be here.”

“Are they—?” I asked suddenly.

At the door, she paused. “Who do you mean?”

“META’s robots,” I said.

“Which—?”

“Black Chess and Irisa. Copperfield and Sheena. Goldhawk and Kix. Glaya. Verlis.”

“The team?” She used that irritating and ludicrous jargon, as I recollected dead Sharffe using it. “Oh, the team are here. But I doubt if you’ll see any of them.”

“Undergoing maintenance of some type?” I inquired.

“There’s always maintenance.”

The door shut with a satiny hoosh behind her.

I tried the VS after that, but could only get other state or foreign stations. Local news had a Temporary Unfunction signal.

Jane called me later on the internal phone. She has a beautiful voice, too, which I hadn’t noticed before. Even more beautiful than through the relayed scene Verlis played me on the wall. Perhaps, then, it hadn’t been her in that scene… only some clever concoction to fool me.

“Are you all right?” Where did she get these maternal tendancies? Not from her mother.

“I think so, thanks. Yes.”

“Keep in touch. The call number for my suite over here is X07.”

“Yes. Tomorrow.”