My feet were stumbling over the grass as Lord led me, with his limp hand on my waist, toward the savage music. And the guitar played up through my feet and my legs and my stomach and my heart, and filled my skull. All my blood seemed to have run into the ground in exchange. I dropped the glass of green wine. I couldn’t breathe. I thought I would die.
My guide went on telling me things. I heard, but didn’t hear, how Egyptia had informed the Theatra group, in scorn and despair, how the man had mistaken her for a robot. Three of her new friends had gone to look for the original. Egyptia flashed her money like a sequined scarf, flaunting it, drunk on the prospect of being generous to those who loved her and could give her the means to explore her own genius. They took the real robot’s registration, called Electronic Metals Ltd., and hired him for the party. Hired him as they had hired the canopy, the tapes, the machinery that kept the bottles coming up onto the lawn in little crates.
We were on the periphery of the crowd. He sang. The robot sang. He sang into my veins where my blood had been and where instead the notes and throbbing of the guitar now flowed. I could feel his song vibrating in my throat, as if I sang it too. I couldn’t see him. If the crowd parted and I saw him, I would die.
Why had I come here? Why had I hurried here, almost as if I had known? But if I had known, I should never have come.
Someone moved, and I saw a white muslin shirt sleeve with a silver pattern sewn on it, and a silver hand and flecks of light on steely strings. I shut my eyes, and I began to push my way viciously through the crowd toward him. I was cursed and shoved, but they moved away for me. I only told from the feeling of space across the front of my body that I had come through the crowd. Only he was in front of me now.
The earth shook with the beat of the rhythm and the race of the guitar following it. Sheer runs of notes. It was very clever but not facile. It didn’t sound like a robot, though it was too brilliant for a human musician. No man could play as quickly and clearly. Yet, it had the depth, the color-tones—as if he felt, expressed what he played. There had been a brief interlude, without voice, but then he sang again. I could hear all the words. They didn’t make sense, but I wanted to keep them, and only a phrase was left here and there, snagged on the edges of me as the song flung past—fire-snow, scarlet horses, a winged merry-go-round, windshields spattered with city lights, a car in flight and worlds flying like birds—
I opened my eyes and bit my tongue so I couldn’t scream.
His head was bowed. His hair fell over his face and his broad shoulders and the muslin shirt sewn with silver. Clovis has a pair of jeans like that, the color of a storm cloud, and Clovis might like the boots the color of dragon’s blood, or he might not. The robot’s hair looked like somber red velvet, like a sort of plush. His eyebrows and eyelashes were dark cinnamon. There were hairs on his chest, too, a fine rain of auburn hair on the silver skin. This frightened me. All the blood that had run away came crashing back, like a tsunami, against my heart so I nearly choked.
“Shut up,” someone said to Lord, who I suppose was still talking or trying to talk to me. I hadn’t heard him at all anymore.
The song ended, and the rhythm section ended. Of course, he would be able, computerlike, to judge where the section would end, and so end the song at the right place to coordinate. No human could do that, unless he knew the section backwards.
Someone switched the tape right off. Then there was silence, and then a detonation of applause that tailed off in self-conscious swearing and giggling. Did one applaud a performing machine?
He looked up then. S.I.L.V.E.R. looked up. He looked at them, smiling. The smile was friendly; it was kind. He had wanted to give them pleasure, to carry them with him, and if he had carried them and pleased them, he was glad, so glad.
I was afraid his eyes would meet mine, and my whole face began to flinch. But they didn’t. What did it matter anyway? If he saw me with his clockwork amber eyes.
Egyptia and her partner came through the crowd. Egyptia dropped like a swath of silk at the robot’s feet. She offered him a glass of champagne.
“Can you drink?”
“If you want me to, I can,” he said. He conveyed amusement and gentleness.
“Then,” said Egyptia, “drink!”
The robot drank the champagne. He drank it like someone who has no interest in drink, yet is willing to be gracious and is gracious, and as though it were lemonade.
“Oh God what a waste,” someone said loudly.
“I’m afraid it is,” said Silver, grinning at them. The grin was gorgeous, and his teeth were white, just as he had whites to his eyes. There was that faint hint of mortal color, too, in his mouth and in his nails.
“You are so beautiful,” said Egyptia to the robot.
“Thank you.”
People laughed. Egyptia took the robot’s hand.
“Sing me a love song.”
“Let go of my hand and I will.”
“Kiss me first.”
The robot bowed his head and kissed her. It was a long, long kiss, as long a kiss as Egyptia indicated she wanted, presumably. People began to clap and cheer. I felt sick again. Then they drew apart and Egyptia stared at the robot in deliberate theatrical amazement. Then she looked at the crowd, her hired crowd, and she said: “I have news for you. Men could become redundant.”
“Oh, come on,” muttered Lord, “there are female formats, too, you know.”
Egyptia sat at the robot’s feet and told him again to sing her a love song. He touched the guitar, and then he sang. The song was about five centuries old, and he was changing the words, but it was “Greensleeves.”
“Alas, my love, you do me wrong, to cast me off discourteously. If passion’s limit is a song, the lack will work hell with my circuitry.”
Laughter burst out again. Egyptia laughed too.
“Greensleeves is my delight, in her dress like summer leaves. Greensleeves, truly, I never bite—unless so requested, my Greensleeves.”