One of the spacemen entered with a breakfast tray for my mother, and I said, “My mother’s just coming, Egyptia.”
“Oh. All right. Call me back.”
“Yes.”
I turned off the phone and started to fall, but I landed on my knees in an attitude of prayer as my mother walked through the doors.
Even when she gets up, my mother is beautiful, her face empty of makeup and full of green eyes, her hair loose on her shoulders.
If only I could tell her—
“Hallo, darling.”
“Hallo, Mother.”
“Did you drop something under the couch, darling?”
“Oh—I—” I stood up. “I was speaking to Egyptia,” I added, for this might well explain any strange behavior.
“In half an hour,” said my mother, “you can tell me what it was you wanted to talk to me about.”
I must tell her, I must. No, no, no.
“I left a tape. But it doesn’t seem important now. Mother, I’m so tired. I have to go back to bed.”
Shut in my suite, I wept all over again. How I needed, how I wanted to tell her what had happened to me. She’d be able to rationalize it all. She would show me why I felt as I did, and how to get over it.
Thank God Egyptia couldn’t buy him this month.
How horrible, to sleep with—
I shut my eyes and knew his kiss again on my mouth, that silver metal kiss.
I fell asleep lying on the wet pillows on the floor, and I dreamed of all kinds of things, but not of Silver.
At two P.M., my mother called my suite on the internal phone, and asked me to have lunch with her in the Vista My mother was very concerned about my having privacy, and the feeling that I could be alone when I wished; she never simply knocked on the door. But I felt I had to go down, so I went down and we ate lunch.
“You’re very quiet, darling. Has anything else happened that you want to tell me about?”
“Nothing, really. Was the dinner interesting?”
My mother told me about the dinner, and I tried to hear what she said. Sometimes what she said was very funny and I laughed. I kept beginning to say to her, “I’ve fallen in love,” and preventing myself. I imagined saying: “I’d like to buy a special format robot.” Would my mother let me? Generally, I pay for things I want with a credit card that links into my mother’s own account, but there was a monthly one thousand I.M.U. limit on the card. This was just so I’d appreciate about not overspending, because my mother always made it quite clear that what was hers was mine. But she wanted me to be sensible. A verisimulated robot would cost thousands. The ionized silver alone would cost thousands. A purchase like that wouldn’t seem sensible at all.
In any case, if Egyptia hadn’t bought him, someone else had. He belonged to them. To an Egyptia, or an Austin. Did he enjoy giving joy? What happened to him when he made love?
After lunch, my mother switched on the news channel of the Vista visual, and took notes. She’s a political and sociological essayist and historian, too, but mainly as a hobby. There had been another bad subsidence in the Balkans. Social collapse seemed likely again in Eastern Europe, but reports were garbled. An earthquake had rocked the top off a mountain somewhere. There were subsistence riots in five Western cities. My mother didn’t switch to the local news channel, which might have carried something about the Sophisticated Format robots, but when she switched the visual off my throat had closed together with nerves.
Then I realized she’d made a sacrifice to be with me, since generally she watches the visual in her study. She must guess something was wrong, and I didn’t really know how long I could hold out. What would she say if I told her? “Darling, this would be quite all right if you were sexually experienced. But you’re a virgin. And to make love, initially, with a nonhuman device, is by no means a good idea. For all sorts of complicated reasons. Firstly, your own psychological needs…” I could just distinguish her voice in my head. And she’d be right. How could I ever hope to have a proper relationship with a man if I began by going to bed with a robot? (He is a man. No, fool, he isn’t. He is.)
I went down to the library and took a book, and sat in the balcony-balloon watching the sky drifting out from the house and fathoming away in a luminous nothingness below me. And eventually I seemed to be hanging by a string over the nothingness, and I had to move from the balcony, and go back to my suite and lie down on the bed. It was the only time I’d ever had vertigo in Chez Stratos, though Clovis won’t visit us, saying all the while he’s in the house he can feel his groin falling farther and farther away below him.
Finally I called Clovis, not knowing what to say.
“Hallo?” said Austin invisibly. Clovis has never incorporated a video.
“Oh. Hallo. This is Jane.”
“James?”
“Jane. Can I speak to—”
“No. He’s in the shower.”
Austin sounded like a fixture, despite the seance, if a not very happy one.
“Is that a woman?” Austin demanded.
“It’s Jane.”
“I thought you said James. Well, look, Jayven, why don’t you call later. Like next year?” And he switched off.
As a matter of course, then, I dialed Chloe, but she didn’t answer. I looked at Jason and Medea’s number, but didn’t dial it.
My mother called me on the internal phone.
“I’ve run your tape, Jane. It’s rather vague. What did Clovis do?”
“He had another seance.”
“And this disturbed you.”
“Only because he plays with people like a cat.”
“Cats don’t play with people. Cats play with mice. The seance table is rigged, I seem to recall.”
“Yes, Mother.”
“The spirit world can be reached, under the correct circumstances,” said my mother.
“Oh, you mean ghosts.”
“I mean the psychic principle. A soul, Jane. You mustn’t be afraid to use the correct terminology. A released soul, unattached to the physical state, and which has lived through many lives and a diversity of bodies may sometimes wish to communicate with the world. There was a great incidence of this at the turn of the century, for example, prior to the Asteroid Disasters. A theologian notes a connection. Clovis shouldn’t be meddling with table-tappings.”
“No, Mother.”
“I’ve left you some vitamins in the dispenser. Robot three will give them to you when you come down.”
“Thank you.”
“And now, I must get ready.”
Having avoided her for hours in terror of giving away my awful secret, I was now stricken with horror.
“Are you going out?”
“Yes, Jane. You know I am. I’m going upstate for three days. The Phy-Amalgamated Conference.”
“I’d—I’d forgotten—Mother—I really must speak to you after all.”
“Darling, you’ve had all day to speak to me.”
“Only four hours.”
“I really can’t stop now.”
“It’s urgent.”
“Then tell me quickly.”
“But I can’t!”
“Then you should have spoken earlier.”
“Oh Mother!” I burst into tears. Where did so many tears come from? A lot of the human body is water. Did I have any left?
“Jane, I’m going to make an appointment for you with your private doctor.”
“I’m not ill. I’m—”
“Jane. I will take half an hour away from my schedule. I will come up to your suite now, and we’ll talk this through. Do you agree?”
Panic. Panic.
The door opened, and my mother, already burnished, pomaded, glittering, stepped through. An abyss gaped before me. And behind me. I could no longer think. I’d always, always leaned on my mother. Was anything so perverse, so precarious, so precious I couldn’t share it with her, especially now she’d wrecked her schedule for me?