Suddenly as the touch of the wires, I heard the vague intransigent brutality in her voice. Instead of recoiling, I took her by the arms, and her huge eyes swam on me, so sensitive to everything, and nothing.
“Egyptia, I sold every scrap I own. I left my mother’s house. I paid Clovis the money for—him.”
I’d reached her, over the gliding honeyed slope of her inward-turned concentration.
“All of it?” She breathed. “But you—”
“I know. I could only afford it by selling everything. Even my clothes, Egyptia. But you, you of all people, understand why.”
Behind and around us the actors sighed with boredom, unable to overhear, drinking Egyptia’s minerals and spirits, popping her vitamins and pills. I ceased to believe in them, but I held her fast.
“Listen, Egyptia. You’re so aware, so sensitive. You have so much love in you—He’s a robot, but I’m in love with him. However silly that would sound to anyone else, I know I can tell you, I know you’ll understand. I love him, Egyptia.”
I had her measure. Her eyes filled voluptuously with tears, just as I realized mine must have.
“Jane…”
“Egyptia, he’s my life.”
“Yes, Jane, yes—”
“Egyptia, let me take him. Away from you. You have so much. You have your genius—” I meant it, I’d glimpsed it, like a smell of fire, and it was so useful to lie with the truth—“You have your genius, but I—I need him, Egyptia. Egyptia!”
She held me rigidly to her, then away. She stared at me, imperiously. She was Antektra. She was God.
“Take him,” she said. And let me go.
I went by her up the stair, turned into the bedroom foyer. A door led out on to the roof-garden, and I took it randomly, for I was reeling. I walked to the pool and sank down beside it, and I laughed, laughed as if I had really gone mad, holding myself in my arms, rocking, crowing for breath, shaking my hair around myself like a faded golden shawl.
I had handled her. But, the stupid thing was, I’d believed every word.
Presently I stood up.
Fleets of immaterial sponge-cake-color clouds were blowing slowly sideways over the blue sky. The little potted palm trees rattled. The pool was green as a fruit acid. With the guitar across his body and resting in his arms, he was sitting not ten feet from me at the brink of the water. He wore dark blue and the shadows tangled over him, hid his face. His expression was serious and still, and the eyes were expressionless and flat—circuits switching over. His face cleared very gradually, and he didn’t smile. And I was afraid.
He said to me: “What’s happened to you?”
“Why?” I said. I didn’t know what to say. “Aren’t you pleased to see me? I thought you were always pleased to see anyone. Did you have a lovely time with Clovis? And a lovely, lovely time with Egyptia?”
He didn’t answer. He set the guitar aside. (The guitar, the extra clothes, these must be in Egyptia’s keeping. He hadn’t brought them with him when he had gone with me.) He got up and walked over to me, and stood close to me looking down into my face.
I couldn’t look at him. I said, again: “I’ve left my mother’s house. I’ve paid Clovis all the money. I’ve told Egyptia I need you, and she’s agreed to let you go.” I frowned, puzzled. How could she bear to let him go? “I’m living in a place like a rat-hole, in a slum. You’ll have to pretend to be human, and my lover. I don’t know how I’ll survive and probably in the end I shan’t, and you’ll come back to Egyptia. Did you sleep with her last night?”
“I don’t sleep,” he said.
“You know what I mean. Did you?”
“No,” he said. “I slept in her robot storage compartment. She was with a man last night.”
I raised my eyes to his contemplative, noncommittal, beautiful face.
“She—you—”
“You look incredibly perturbed.”
“Blast her!” I cried. A puerile oath, but I meant it literally. I knew a fury like no other fury I had ever known and my eyes grew blind.
He took my hands very lightly.
“Jane. It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters.”
“I am a machine.”
“And Clovis—I suppose Clovis—”
“Clovis didn’t put me in the robot storage.”
“I bet. Oh God. Oh God.”
“Be more gentle with yourself.”
“Oh God. Oh God,” I said in despair, and he took me in his arms, and we leaned together, our reflection perfect and still in the acidulous pool.
At last, I said,
“If you don’t want to come with me, I’d understand. It’s more artistic here.”
He said, “What perfume have you got on? It has a beautiful smell.”
“Nothing. I didn’t—nothing.”
“Then it must be you.”
“It can’t be. Human flesh must seem disgusting to you, if you can smell us.”
“Human flesh is extremely seductive. After all, it’s only another form of material.”
“With a jumble of organs underneath.”
“Just another kind of machinery. Sometimes less effective. Biologically more attractive.”
“Ugh,” I said, like the child I am. He laughed.
I looked at him then and said,
“It doesn’t matter, it’s my decision, but I think I sold my soul for you.”
“I see,” he said. “Do you want to buy it back?”
“I only want you.”
His eyes were dark, something to do with the shadows.
“Then I’ll have to try to make it worth your while.”
• 2 •
“Why is it so awful?” he said to me two hours later, as I stood cringing on the threshold of the slum apartment on Tolerance.
“I suppose I can heat it. By winter, if I’m careful and save money, I can. And I suppose there’s a way to plug up the cracks and the holes.”
“Yes, there is.”
“But it looks so awful. And it smells—”
“There isn’t any smell,” he said.
“Yes there is. Of people being miserable.”
“Be happy then, and it will go.”
I stared at him, distraught. He promptly told me a ridiculous joke and I laughed. The color of the rooms lightened. I remembered the sun coming in after the dream.
“But,” I said, touching the flaking plaster, “I don’t know where to start. Or how.”
“I can see,” he said, “I was an investment.”
We went out again into the city. He led me over walkways, along side streets, into strange cheap food-o-marts and household stores. He, who had no need of food, told me what groceries to buy, and sometimes I even thought of things myself. He found open sheds under arches in the elevated, where cans of glue and planks of wood balanced against unbevelled mirrors. He knew where everything was. The strangest places, all useful.
The day began to go, and we paused at a food stall. I’d asked him to pretend to be human, but my fears had faded. To me, he was. Or at least, for fifty minutes out of every hour he was. But at the stall, hunger surprising me as I devoured the inexpensive greasy tasty food, I ate alone, and began to be concerned about this and other matters.
“The money is low,” he said. “It would be crazy to waste it on fake meals for me.”
“At least, drink some coffine. And it’s cold now. Everyone else has a coat on.” (Even I. I’d rolled my fur jacket all over the couch, and even rubbed loose plaster into it, to be camouflaged.) “Oh, I should have got your clothes from Egyptia.”
He was amused. “We could still get them. Or I could.”
“No!”
“Afraid she’ll drug and abduct me.”
“Yes. Well, can you try to look cold?”