Metallic Love

My mind ticked all the time. I wished I could disconnect it, but it only kept going. My mind had a mind of its own.

How could Jane be here and not have traveled on the VLO? Had she traveled here after? How? She’d have been stopped.

Suddenly I knew.

I froze there in my bride-white garments and stared at myself in the mirror.

Then I undid the door. I threw myself outside again—but Verlis was gone. He wasn’t in the room.

I shouted into the air, then. It was all I could do.

“Shape-changers!”

I don’t recall running out, or the elevator, or crossing the garden or the bridge. The first I recall is being on the plaza, and there was Andrewest in an historic costume, a three-piece Victorian suit, complete with sky-blue cravat. “Hello, Loren-Lucy,” he said. And I looked in his eyes, and lightly said, “How good to see you.” They were full of lust, just like Verlis’s.

I didn’t sleep with him. Had I thought, even for a second, I might? I’m not sure. It’s unimportant. He isn’t even strictly human, is he? Unless all that, too, is lies.

So much is.

I sloughed him after the second drink. He said, with a nasty grin, “What the hell, I didn’t pay for these drinks, did I?”

When I was back at my apartment block by the park, something else happened.

I’ve said this place was empty of everyone save for me up at the top in my Jane-and-Silver room.

Tonight—I heard someone moving below. In the apartment below. It must be a human—or someone carefully posing as human. There’s no wildlife here to break in, unless you count the doubtless robot bats and birds. So, who is down there? I went out again. I stood out front and looked up the length of the building for another light—mine was faintly visible behind the drapes. That was all. I even walked around into the night park, to see from that side. The waterfall rustled like a million paper bags, but there weren’t any other lights.

Now I’m in again… I can’t hear a sound down there. Muted waves of quake-rock rise from the plaza. Nothing else.

Paranoia must be setting in. Am I surprised it is?

Let me go through this then, scientifically. Because after this I am going to give up my futile act of writing. For what am I writing? My journal?

When I ran out of the bathroom and yelled Shape-changers! at that empty room, it was because I’d figured out what had been happening about Jane. Jane who was—or wasn’t—down here.

All that I’d already written helped me to check through what had gone on. It was staring me in the face, and I hadn’t seen it. I haven’t a single doubt now these are the facts.

Jane was there at Verlis’s concert in Bohemia, and she walked with Verlis into some sitting room. And Tirso, too, was there, and he was uneasy and gulped his drink—and probably he is Clovis’s current lover.

But.

The two people I subsequently met in that house off the highway, before all three of us made a break for the airport, ran into META, and all the rest of this occurred—they weren’t Jane or Tirso. They weren’t people.

She was Glaya. And Tirso? Copperfield, I’d guess. What fun for him, to act a noncamp M-B male. (Of course, I could be wrong it was either. It could have been two of the others—but Glaya seems close to Verlis. And she and I have had a few dealings already. I think Sheena, Goldhawk and Kix would have been kept away—under constant surveillance by human First Unit personnel, the kind that couldn’t be foxed or blocked. After all, they were the three who’d shown upfront murderous tendancies.)

Even that vid Verlis showed me on the house wall, Jane and he talking. That could have been Glaya.

They can all look like anything. They can change their hair, their colors, their skin and clothes. In moments they can become pillars and wheels, discs and kites. To mimic a human being? Easy. Obviously, this isn’t what META ever intended—or did they? I can see uses for the skill, in espionage, commercial fraud. But Verlis and his “team” are stronger than META. They do as they want.

The house where Verlis had me taken had been the one used by Jane and Tirso. But by the time I’d gotten there, they were gone. Neither of them left anything there, did they? I hope they reached Paris, if that was where they were headed.

When I heard her come in—I thought it was a human step I heard. But what a fool—she could impersonate the human way of walking. And even when we went out and there was no light below, I hadn’t realized. She wouldn’t need light to come upstairs, would she? Not a robot.

I hadn’t ever seen Jane close. But really, Glaya must have been an exact copy in all ways, because of what came later.

What Glaya-as-Jane told me about the company, and Demeta, I’d say is definitely real. (They had stuck to my own code; when lying, always stay as near the truth as you can.) Maybe even Jane’s dreams, her preference for a certain type of drink and chocolate, were duplicated faithfully. And, of course, it would be no problem for Glaya the robot to locate or work the heating of an unknown house.

Next came Tirso’s dramatically timed appearance—remembering to turn the lights on, even. Suspicious of me, where “Jane” had been so trusting—too trusting. Naturally Glaya had known who I was. But would Jane have accepted me like that? I doubt it. (And “Tirso” gloating, unable not to, over Gee and Kix’s exploits in the city.)

Given their acting in that cab and elsewhere, yes, wretched Egyptia had been right to be threatened by the talent of such rivals.

I assume they allowed META to catch us. And the check for ID? They passed it without a glitch. Must have expected to, even though they seem to have been experimenting to see the lengths to which they could go.

I don’t know what other motives they have for all this, unless getting me into META was part of it. Verlis would have known I’d have refused to go there willingly.

“Jane” called me on the internal phone when we were at META. I couldn’t ever get through to her. Wonder why not.

How did they manage being Jane and Tirso in the suite, or wherever, and also being available as Glaya and Copperfield in META’s labs? But they can fix all that. Reasonably, any actual human watch on them would have been less. They were two of the “amenable” machines. But I don’t know how they fiddled it, I just know they could have.

Nevertheless, when they gave us that last show, The Garden of Eden—Demeta landed in the VLO and “Jane” met her. Fooled her. I recall what I said: Jane looking utterly blank, smiling at people—like one more robot.

But then “Jane” drew away into the shadows at the back of the dais. And there was a delay, wasn’t there, the show not starting on time. Glaya had had to get back into position. How had META missed that? Perhaps they didn’t explain the discrepancy, were just so relieved when Glaya was there—and by then it was too late.

Where’s Jane? I had asked Verlis. And he’d lied.

I don’t know why. How can I?

Is it all some murky little interesting game to them? How we humans react. (Like drugging me that time.) They are—he is—machines.

He said Demeta arrived because Jane was there. So that was also used as a lure. But again, why?

And now I think: Is Demeta some kind of final hostage for them? Is she, therefore, here?

Oh, who cares.

I’ve had it with this.

I’ll stop now. Finish.

Halt.

End.