After lunch, my mother switched on the news channel of the Vista visual, and took notes. She’s a political and sociological essayist and historian, too, but mainly as a hobby. There had been another bad subsidence in the Balkans. Social collapse seemed likely again in Eastern Europe, but reports were garbled. An earthquake had rocked the top off a mountain somewhere. There were subsistence riots in five Western cities. My mother didn’t switch to the local news channel, which might have carried something about the Sophisticated Format robots, but when she switched the visual off my throat had closed together with nerves.
Then I realized she’d made a sacrifice to be with me, since generally she watches the visual in her study. She must guess something was wrong, and I didn’t really know how long I could hold out. What would she say if I told her? “Darling, this would be quite all right if you were sexually experienced. But you’re a virgin. And to make love, initially, with a nonhuman device, is by no means a good idea. For all sorts of complicated reasons. Firstly, your own psychological needs…” I could just distinguish her voice in my head. And she’d be right. How could I ever hope to have a proper relationship with a man if I began by going to bed with a robot? (He is a man. No, fool, he isn’t. He is.) I went down to the library and took a book, and sat in the balcony-balloon watching the sky drifting out from the house and fathoming away in a luminous nothingness below me. And eventually I seemed to be hanging by a string over the nothingness, and I had to move from the balcony, and go back to my suite and lie down on the bed. It was the only time I’d ever had vertigo in Chez Stratos, though Clovis won’t visit us, saying all the while he’s in the house he can feel his groin falling farther and farther away below him.
Finally I called Clovis, not knowing what to say.
“Hallo?” said Austin invisibly. Clovis has never incorporated a video.
“Oh. Hallo. This is Jane.”
“James?”
“Jane. Can I speak to—”
“No. He’s in the shower.”
Austin sounded like a fixture, despite the seance, if a not very happy one.
“Is that a woman?” Austin demanded.
“It’s Jane.”
“I thought you said James. Well, look, Jayven, why don’t you call later. Like next year?” And he switched off.
As a matter of course, then, I dialed Chloe, but she didn’t answer. I looked at Jason and Medea’s number, but didn’t dial it.
My mother called me on the internal phone.
“I’ve run your tape, Jane. It’s rather vague. What did Clovis do?”
“He had another seance.”
“And this disturbed you.”
“Only because he plays with people like a cat.”
“Cats don’t play with people. Cats play with mice. The seance table is rigged, I seem to recall.”
“Yes, Mother.”
“The spirit world can be reached, under the correct circumstances,” said my mother.
“Oh, you mean ghosts.”
“I mean the psychic principle. A soul, Jane. You mustn’t be afraid to use the correct terminology. A released soul, unattached to the physical state, and which has lived through many lives and a diversity of bodies may sometimes wish to communicate with the world. There was a great incidence of this at the turn of the century, for example, prior to the Asteroid Disasters. A theologian notes a connection. Clovis shouldn’t be meddling with table-tappings.”
“No, Mother.”
“I’ve left you some vitamins in the dispenser. Robot three will give them to you when you come down.”
“Thank you.”
“And now, I must get ready.”
Having avoided her for hours in terror of giving away my awful secret, I was now stricken with horror.
“Are you going out?”
“Yes, Jane. You know I am. I’m going upstate for three days. The Phy-Amalgamated Conference.”
“I’d—I’d forgotten—Mother—I really must speak to you after all.”
“Darling, you’ve had all day to speak to me.”
“Only four hours.”
“I really can’t stop now.”
“It’s urgent.”
“Then tell me quickly.”
“But I can’t!”
“Then you should have spoken earlier.”
“Oh Mother!” I burst into tears. Where did so many tears come from? A lot of the human body is water. Did I have any left?
“Jane, I’m going to make an appointment for you with your private doctor.”
“I’m not ill. I’m—”
“Jane. I will take half an hour away from my schedule. I will come up to your suite now, and we’ll talk this through. Do you agree?”
Panic. Panic.
The door opened, and my mother, already burnished, pomaded, glittering, stepped through. An abyss gaped before me. And behind me. I could no longer think. I’d always, always leaned on my mother. Was anything so perverse, so precarious, so precious I couldn’t share it with her, especially now she’d wrecked her schedule for me?
“As precisely as you can, dear,” said Demeta, beckoning me into her arms, into La Verte, into bliss and anchorage. “Now, does this have anything to do with Clovis?”
“Mother, I’m in love!” I tumbled against her, but not too hard. I could tell her. I could. “Mother, I’m in love.” No, I couldn’t. “Mother, I’m in love with Clovis,” I shrieked.
“Good Lord,” said my mother.
* * *