The glass jumped up from the table and came down again with a noisy crack.
I thought of all the people dying in the earthquakes, and swept away, shrieking, in the seas, and tried not to sob aloud. I had seen lots of ruins, lots of swamps, but I had been too young and didn’t remember them. I saw Chez Stratos falling out of the sky. I saw the city tilt into the purple river and the clean river, and Silver lying trapped under the water, not dead because water couldn’t kill him, but rusting away, and my tears joined together in the lap of my dress, making the map of a weird new continent.
“What do we do now?” said Austin, as the glass made bullfrog leaps all over the table.
“Ask it something.”
“Um. Is there anyone there?”
“Obviously there isn’t,” said Clovis.
“Oh. Er, well. Who are you?”
The glass rushed to the letter N, and then to the letter O.
“In other words,” said Clovis sternly, “mind your own damn business. Do you have,” Clovis demanded of the energetic glass, “a message for someone here?”
The glass flew to the letter A, letter U, letter S, letter T—
“Ooh!”
“Sit down, Austin.”
“But it’s—”
“Yes, Austin. Austin would like to know what the message is.”
“No,” cried Austin, alarmed. “I don’t want to know.”
“Too late,” said Clovis with great satisfaction.
Swiftly the glass spelled out, Clovis reading off the letters and then the words: There is a negative influence about you. You must take a risk. Excitement is waiting for you, but not here. Be warned.
“Well, thanks,” said Clovis.
The glass shuddered to a halt.
“You’ve frightened it off,” complained Austin.
“Well, you saw what it said. I’m supposed to be a negative influence. Bloody thing. Comes into my home and insults me. Where are you going?”
Austin had risen and sauntered to the apartment door.
“I need some cigarines,” said Austin.
“I thought you gave them up.”
“Oh, that was yesterday.”
The door let him out, the closet handing him his three-tone jacket as he passed. The door buzzed shut, and presently we heard the lift.
“If only it could be so quick,” mourned Clovis, clearing the seance table. “But he’ll come back. He’ll come back and he’ll brood for at least another day before he takes the message to heart and goes.”
The table is rigged. Jason, who’s very clever with electrical stuff, did it for Clovis, and put the electronic magnet, the size of a pinhead, in the glass—you can just see it, if you know. Clovis memorized the sequence of letters and the message is always nearly the same. Clovis is really very cruel. He prefers to play with his lovers and watch them react to just telling them to get out. Of course, this probably works better, in the long run.
“Hallo, Jane,” said Clovis, after the sound of the lift had faded. “If you were trying to water the plants, your aim is a little out.”
“I didn’t think you saw me.”
“Weeping so bitterly? Since when have I been blind?”
I stopped crying, and Clovis brought me a glass of applewine. His comfort is limited to words and gestures at a distance. I don’t think he’s ever touched me, and I never saw him touch one of his lovers, though they constantly touch him. To be hugged by Clovis would, now, be embarrassing.
I told him about S.I.L.V.E.R., rather fast, not really explaining it properly, partly because I didn’t understand myself, and partly in case Austin came back quickly.
Clovis listened, detached and elegant, and beyond the window, the New River quivered in the late afternoon sunlight.
“What a nasty idea,” Clovis said when I stopped. “A metal man. Sounds like a comic strip. Decidedly kinky.”
“No, no, it wasn’t like that—he—he was—”
“He was beautiful. Well, he sounds beautiful.”
“It’s simply that—how can he be a robot and a—”
“He can’t. He isn’t. He’s just a bit of metal. Worked metal that can move fluidly, like a sort of skin. They’ve been easing up to it for years, you know. Someone had to make one. Clockwork and machinery designed to look like musculature from the outside. A wonderful sort of super male doll. Take off the skin and you find cogs and wheels—what’s the matter? Oh, Jane, you’re not going to throw up on my rug, are you?”
“N-no. I’m all right.”
“If he—it—has this effect on everyone else, Electronic Metals Ltd. are going to regret their advertising campaign.”
“Everyone else was fascinated.”
“And you were allergic.”
“I was—” My eyes spilled water again.
“Poor Jane,” said Clovis. “What a gargantuan emotional reaction. I wonder if,” said Clovis, “he’d go with the furnishings? I could buy a model and install it in the wardrobe. Then, when I wanted to get rid of an Austin, I’d just trundle out the robot. They’re fully equipped, I suppose.”
“What?”
“Jane, your innocence can only be assumed.”
“Oh. I suppose they are.”
“I do believe you’ve missed the point of the Sophisticated Formats altogether. They’re sex toys. Nine models, the flyer robot said? Nine Sophisticated Formats—”
“No, Clovis.”
“Yes.”
“But he sang. He was playing a guitar.”
“All extras built in. A robot can do anything. Pretty soulless music, I’d say.”
“No, it was—”
“And pretty soulless in bed. Still, buggers can’t be choosers.”
When Clovis says things like that he is disturbed in some way. Perhaps my own disturbance was affecting him. Most of the time I forget that he’s only a year older than I am. Much of the time, he seems a great deal older, twenty, maybe. The robot had looked about twenty.
“And,” elaborated Clovis, “he could march out and play Austin a tune—you are going to be sick.”
“Yes.”
“You know where the bathrooms are.”