I picked up the glass and peered into it, rubbing the tears out of my eyes. There was no magnet. There wasn’t even the chip missing—it was another glass.
“Austin,” said Clovis, “burst in here one evening, picked up the table and hurled it at me. I ducked and the table hit the wall. As for the glass, I thought he’d try to eat it. We had a lovely uninhibited time as he ranted about fake seances and liars (both of which he’d known about for days; clearly he is a fermenter rather than a creature of impulse), and sobbed and threatened to throw me or himself out of the window. I told him which of these two alternatives I’d prefer, whereupon he decided I’d make an interesting pattern on the street. He left hurriedly when I reminded him about my policode and suggested I might just have pressed it already. The rigged wiring in the table was torn out, and the glass was in twenty-eight separate pieces… or was it twenty-nine? It isn’t likely I’d have asked Jason for a replacement after we all went off him in such a big way. I planned to work the glass myself, this time. But I didn’t get a look-in. I don’t think this drink is helping me at all.”
“Then it was real.”
“Disgustingly so. Unless you did it by willpower and telekinesis.”
“Cogito ergo oops,” said Leo ironically.
Clovis half turned to him. “Leo. It’s been great fun, but I’d really be happier if you packed your bag and left.”
“You what?” Leo asked, surprised.
“Get out,” said Clovis. “We are through.”
“Charming,” said Leo. “Decided to go straight, darling?”
“Only straight to the bathroom,” said Clovis with the utmost elegance, “where I am about to be as sick as a dog. Unless you want to come along and hold my head, I suggest you seek the exit.”
And Clovis strode out and the door of the mahogany bathroom banged and there came the dim plash of aesthetic aquatic concealment.
Leo and I stared at each other.
“Does he mean it?” Leo said. And hastily, accustomed to Clovis: “About leaving.”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
Leo swore violently, downed his drink and went toward the main bedroom for his things.
“I suppose,” he called, hurling shirts, “that was the ghost of a lover.”
“Yes, Leo.”
“Bloody hell,” said Leo.
Something dissolved inside me. I managed to wait until he left before I began, very gently, very calmly, to giggle.
Live my life for me, my lover said. Not easy. No, it won’t be easy. It’s difficult, even so soon, to keep hold of that event, that instant when it seemed he was there and he spoke to me. A spirit. How can a robot have a soul? I never asked him that, or at least, he didn’t answer. Or did he answer? We’ve met before, we’ll meet again. If the soul exists, why shouldn’t it evolve inside a metal body? Just as it does inside a body made of flesh. And if souls do come back and back, maybe one day we’ll all be so full of spare parts and Rejuvinex, and whatever else, metallic or chemical, they’ve invented, that we’ll all be kindred to robots, and a metallic body will be the only place a soul can choose to go.
Small wonder he didn’t check out on E.M.’s vile machines.
Oh, my love, my love with a soul, my love who’s alive, and out there—somewhere—my love who isn’t and never will be dead. So death for me, in the end, will be like catching a flyer. Floating away, and when I reach the platform, he’ll… be there?
But if it’s true, how extra hard it will be to live this silly life all the way through.
Yet I have to, don’t I? His life in mine.
I already went back to the slum. I went into a few places we’d been, and people asked me where he was, and I didn’t know what to say anymore, and from my face, many of them guessed. And they pressed my arm, or their eyes grew big with tears for me, for him. He wasn’t a robot, after all, so I don’t have to tell them that. Let them mourn him properly. Until the book comes out and they learn the truth in a flash of paper lightning. And then they’ll laugh at me, or hate me, or perhaps something else. And there may be riots in the streets. Or someone may assassinate me. But I’m not doing it to earn my death.
I met one of the street musicians Silver had played with, guitar and piano, in a loft. When he had my version of the news—I say, truthfully, Someone killed him—the young man took both my hands and said: “Do you need money?” And I said: “I’d rather earn it than take it.” And he said he remembered I sang, and come and sing with them at their pitches, and if we got any coins, they’d share. So I did, and we did, and they did.
Odd to sing with others, and not with him. Odd to try out my new songs with them, and not with him. Odd to come home to these grey rooms on Pine, and lie alone and unsleeping. Grey rooms, one day soon I may paint your ceilings blue and crimson, and carpet your floors with rainbows. And I may buy a cat, and train it to walk with me on a lead like a little fur dog. But not quite yet. Not till my heart settles like the broken girders, the tremor-shifted bricks, into the new slots of my days and nights.
Clovis argued one whole night with me, trying to stop me from doing this. When the day broke, we had cut each other to bits with our tongues, our eyes were red and mad, our faces white, and we laughed feebly. In all the argument and the personal remarks, we managed not to mention Silver, or our reactions to him. So I suppose we are still friends. A few days ago a hundred mauve roses were delivered here with a note: “I realized only something useless would be acceptable. Clovis.”
His thoughts on Silver remain obscured. Silver. I wonder what name, what names I knew you by before.
Oh, my love.
When I finally called my mother, she accepted my voice regally, and she invited me to lunch with her at Chez Stratos up in the clouds. She guesses I want to use her. I might even eventually interest her by attempting to do that. She might even agree. She has no basic respect for the law or the poor, being above them both in all the silliest and most obvious ways.
I feel curious about seeing the house again, about being there. And very nervous. I’ll wear my most astonishing clothes. Tight-fitting slender greens and violets, bell’s, embroidery, beads. And my boots with the four-inch heels.
I wonder if the lift in the support will still say: “Hallo, Jane.”
I wonder if my mother will embrace me, or remain very cool, or if she’ll help me, or refuse to help. Maybe I shall find out at last if she does like me in any way.
It’s more an exercise than anything else. My abstract course is set. Possibly for all of one hundred and thirty-odd years, I have to go on. To learn, to grow, to gain experiences and sights and sounds and truths and friendships, all to take with me like presents when I catch the flyer to meet him again. If I still feel like that when I’m old. If I still feel like that in another year.
And yet, I do believe what happened. There’s a logic to it, after all. To lose him, that was the impossible, unbelievable thing. It really is so much easier to say, quietly aloud in the grey soft-roaring of the city night: My love, my love. I will see you again.