Metallic Love

One thing, if I vanish, they’ll miss that half-bottle of wine every night. So I’ll have left an impression, after all.

• 2 •

“I said something might change, didn’t I?”

Her hair was twisted up and up in a plaited tower, with large silver sequins threaded through. She wore a long silver dress, and it was hard to be sure where the material finished and her skin began. But the dress had almost definitely been formed from her skin, and it wasn’t skin, anyway. Her eyes were that blue-green, emerald over lapis lazuli.

Like my dumb daydream, I’d come round a corner—and found her. Glaya. Standing there, waiting.

“What?” I said.

“Your circumstances have changed, haven’t they? Not your sexual inclinations. I’m aware they are constant. Would you like to see him?” My heart had stopped on finding her. Now it leaped forward and I couldn’t speak. “Mmm,” she said, “I see you would.”

“But—” I said.

“If you’re with me, you can go anywhere I take you. Plus they are having a meeting, the people who might want to get in your way. Today’s a drill day. They have drills here, for the humans—like the military. Emergency drills. Computer crash drills. Forget all that. Come with me.”

It was true, I hadn’t seen anyone on this sunrise walk. I’d thought the complex was still asleep. Did META really drag staff off for drills one hour after the sun was up?

Going with her remained an uneasy experience. Her grace as she moved was almost supernatural. No, what a pathetic thing to say—of course it was supernatural. The color of her hair—it’s a shade lighter than I’ve ever seen his—more flamelike, yet intense. You want to sink your teeth in that color. With him I have.

“The bare trees,” she said, as we went under a clump of them. “Do the leaves come back?”

Startled, I said, “Yes—in spring.”

“My program tells me so, but I’m not sure I credit that. How can they? They’ve all fallen out.”

She is a terrifying Olympian child, dissatisfied with the mortal Earth that drops foliage in fall and turns cold. More than that, though. She has no true memories of before. Silver, who is Verlis now, would know about autumn.

I recollected how she’d asked me questions regally, yet charmingly, when she and Irisa made me Cinderella for the concert.

Was she still trying to put me at my ease? Would this work with others?

I could not make myself demand of her, “Did Sheena kill that man Sharffe?” Or anything else. All I could think of—

This appalling thunder in my blood. Fear, distaste, confusion—irrelevant. I’d have run all the way over broken knives to reach him. I was his slave. We are all their slaves. Why fight it?

“What happened to Jane?” I managed, as Glaya led me through a kind of gulley between two of the taller blocks.

“Jane’s fine. Don’t worry. She isn’t with him.”

I felt shame and anger. Glaya assumed that was my sole priority in asking. Was it?

“You see,” said Glaya, “I’m puzzled by the pine trees. They don’t shed, do they?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“But they still have their needles.”

“Yes.”

We stepped on a ramp. It started to move, noiseless and quite fast, and took us down under the ground.

“Poor little Loren,” said Glaya. She smiled back at me. “Everything’s going to be nice for you.”

We were in a hygienic underpass with mild clear lighting, and lined by elevators.

“Here,” she said.

In the elevator I was only two feet from her. I could smell her perfume, and her faked yet convincingly clean human scent of pheromones and physical allure.

Once she reached out and stroked my hair—maternally. I shied away before I could prevent it.

“Don’t be nervous,” she said, a princess reassuring a jittery dog. “He really wants to see you.”

“Why do you always say he? Do you mean Verlis? So why not Verlis?”

“There’s only one Verlis,” she said.

He’s their leader. I’ve understood that. If from nothing else, from the dream-that-wasn’t that morning, when he told Goldhawk to back off. Verlis is their lord. There is no lord but Verlis.

The elevator had reached somewhere and we got out. A well-lighted corridor. I didn’t need to question her about this. No one could get so far into this block unless they had a chip of the highest order, or one of the machines brought them.

And she’s a machine. They all are. But only he is the twice-born. That’s why he’s king.

“Glaya,” I said.

She halted and looked sidelong at me. She had changed her eyeshadow as we walked, gold to plum. Aside from demonstration or crime, their bodily changes might be their hobbies, what they did when they got bored.

“Yes, Loren.”

“What is it you want? I mean, the eight of you?”

“Not out here,” she said. She smiled her beautiful smile. “He’ll tell you. Do you see that wall? Touch it and it will open. No, I shan’t do it. It’s only for you.”

I stared. “I’m not chipped.”

“Aren’t you?” Sly and coquettish, she turned again and slunk mellifluously away.

My mind somersaulted, but I knew he would be behind the wall, and in that moment I felt a burning violence, not all of it sex, and very little of it love. Then I put my hand on the wall. META had gotten something into my clothing. A chip.

The wall unwove. Beyond, it was dark night and open air—I could see the sky, and it was a sky of night, the stars glitter-powdered all over, and even the Asteroid high up, dim as a bluish steam. There were summery trees in full leaf. You could smell the fragrance of shrubs as a cool breeze fluttered through the artificial night.

It seemed to go on for miles. I could make out hills in the distance, blacker on starry sky.

“Do you like it?” someone said.

“A robot garden.”

“You disapprove.”

“What do you expect,” I said, “after all this mess.”

“Come here,” he softly said. “That’s what I expect.”

I couldn’t even see where he was, but I went forward into the shadows. He was by a tree; it seemed real, but then, so did he. His arms folded round me and drew me in, and I wasn’t alarmed, I didn’t struggle, not with him. As my body met his, I became healed and whole, and nothing else in the entire universe mattered.

“I’ve missed you,” he said presently, lifting his head. “My lioness, claws and suppleness.”

“Yes,” I mumbled, “your pet.”

“My lover,” he said. “Ssh.” He put his mouth again on mine. The stars cascaded, the world turned over. But I was held delirious and soaring against him. And only in my brain’s back, the ticking time bomb of thought.

I’ve made love in the open air, of course. Now it was in an enclosure that seemed to be open air. I couldn’t even see him, not fully. Was this union what it had been before? How could it be? It was ecstasy, but not that act I can only write as——. Nevertheless.