“There’s a flyer in ten minutes,” he said.
“How will you—”
“By running a lot faster than any human man you’ll ever see.”
“Money.”
“Robots travel free. Tap the slot and it registers like coins. Electronic wavelengths.”
“I hate your cheerfulness. When you leave me, there’s nothing.”
“There’s all the world,” he said. “And Jane,” he stood in the doorway of the suite, “don’t forget. You are,” he stopped speaking, and framed the word with his lips only: “beautiful.”
Then he was gone, and all the colors and the light of the day crumbled and went out.
• 5 •
I don’t have to describe that day, do I? I thought a lot about him. I saw him arriving at Clovis’s apartment. The conversation, the innuendo, saw him playing along with the repartee, giving better than he got, and the wonderful smile like sheer sunlight. I saw them in bed. Almost. Like a faulty visual—the swimmers’ movement of arms, a glint of flesh. My mind wouldn’t let me see. And yet my mind wouldn’t leave it alone. I wanted to kill Clovis, take a knife and kill him. And Egyptia. And I wanted to run away. Out into the gathering darkness. Out into another country, another world.
About seven P.M., something happened like a page turning over. I sat bolt upright in the welter of the stricken bed, and the plan began to come. The insane plan, the stupid plan. It was as if he’d taught me how to think. Think in new, logical, extraordinary ways.
I couldn’t remember where the Phy-Amalgamated Conference was, and had to get the information operator. All the while I waited, I waited too for the conviction to go, but it didn’t.
Then I got the Conference and held the line for the twenty minutes the pager needed to find my mother. And the conviction was still there.
“What’s wrong, darling?” said my mother.
“Mother, I’ve bought something terribly expensive I couldn’t get on my card.”
“Jane. There’s a meeting I’m chairing in five minutes. Could this perhaps have waited?”
“No, Mother. Sorry, but no. You see, Clovis paid for it.”
“You’ve been seeing Clovis after what you told me. Should you have been more cautious?”
“I’m over all that,” I said tersely.
“Darling,” said my mother, “switch on the video, please.”
I switched it on, defiantly, and saw her see me, naked in my bed, my love bed, with my cream skin and my cowrie shell eyes I’d never known I had. And somehow, she seemed to realize it was someone new she was dealing with, somebody she’d not really met before.
“That’s better,” said my mother, but I knew it wasn’t. “I’m glad you’ve been resting.”
She had always told me to get to know my body. To be at ease with it. She now seemed to think it faintly unnecessary that I had, I was.
“Mother, Clovis paid for this thing, and now I can’t get to use it. Can you wire a cash order through to him tonight?”
“How much does this item cost?”
I opened out the receipt and read the figure off cold.
My mother became cold, too.
“That’s rather a lot of money, darling.”
“Yes, I’m afraid so.” (But we can pay it, can’t we? We’re rolling about in riches, aren’t we?)
“You’ve never done anything like this before, Jane. What exactly is this thing? Is it a car?”
“It’s a Sophisticated Special Format Robot.”
Mother, I’m in love with—
“A robot. I see.”
“It can play the piano.”
“At the price you quoted, one would hope so.”
“The point is, Mother, I’ve been thinking about this a long time, but I rather want, sort of would like—” Don’t blow it, Jane, Jaen, Jain. “I think it would do me good to get an apartment of my own. Just for a few months, in the city.”
“An apartment.”
“I’m such a baby, Mother. All my friends have their own places.”
“You have your own suite.”
“It’s not the same.”
“Your suite belongs to you, Jane, and everything in it, just the same as it would in an apartment. You can do there and with exactly as you choose. You have total freedom. More so than in an apartment, where you would be governed by certain domiciliary regulations.”
“Oh—I—”
“I agree, you are rather immature. How would you propose to cope with the everyday chores of life on your own? Do you even understand what they are? Even an automatic apartment needs cohesion. And you are not—Jane, I really think we must discuss this when I get home.”
“I bought the robot to help me run the apartment.”
“Yes. Your priorities are quite original.”
“But will you please pay Clovis?”
“Darling, you sound as if you’re trying to give me a command, and I’m sure you realize that would be very foolish of you.”
“Please, Mother.”
“I have to go now, darling. I’ll see you tomorrow evening, and we’ll talk this through. Why not put your views on tape? You’re always so much better at expressing yourself unspontaneously and with consideration. Good night, sleep tight, dear.”
The line and the video blanked out.
I was shivering and swearing and gnawing the sheet.
I’d have to go through all this again with her tomorrow, and she’d win. That was silly. I wasn’t in a battle with my mother. Was I? Egyptia had had full access to her mother’s fortune since she was fifteen, the limit being on a monthly basis only because otherwise she tended to overdraw on funds that hadn’t yet built up. But the terms of the limit were a monthly twenty thousand I.M.U. And Clovis had no limit I knew of. And Chloe and Davideed didn’t, though they were habitually frugal. And Jason and Medea, who still lived at home, had their own beach house at Cape Angel, a Rolls Amada car with push-button dash, and spent money by forging their father’s signature, which he never noticed, or by use of one of their six credit cards each with a two-week thousand limit, and they still shoplifted.
And I. I had a thousand I.M.U. a month. Which had always been more than enough until now.
More than enough, frankly, because half the time my mother bought my clothes. Even my sheets, my soap… I looked round the rooms of my suite wildly. I had everything I could possibly need, and more. I should be grateful. My eye was caught by a gorgeously vulgar (“The worst vulgarity is to avoid vulgarity solely on the grounds that it is vulgar.”) antique oriental lamp, by a jade panther. My mother lavished money on me. The carpets alone would be worth thousands—
My skin crawled. Something clicked in my head.
“No,” I said aloud. “No, no—”
I saw Silver, who I’d wanted to give another name to, and hadn’t, walking along the sidewalk, putting back his head to watch the flyer go over. I saw his face against the dark sky in the balcony just before he kissed me the second time. I felt him hold me, and a spear divided me. I remembered the cubicle, the clockwork nerves of his body exposed. I visualized Clovis and Egyptia squabbling over him.
Like a sleepwalker, I got off the bed. I thought of my mother, and I could smell La Verte, but the scent of him had lingered on my own skin, blotting out my mother’s psychologically conjured perfume.
“All right,” I said. “Why not? If it’s supposed to be mine.”
You should make the decision yourself, my mother would say. Once I’d asked her what to do, and she’d told me.
“Yes, Mother. I’m going to make a decision.”
The auto-chill had refilled with wine, and I drank some, however, before I called Casa Bianca, the largest and most expensive second owner store in the city.