A comfit tray on a nearby cabinet was knocked to the floor with a dull clang.
Egyptia stood on the little stair that went up to the bedroom half-floor above. Her face was so white I feared for her life. Then I realized she had painted herself for her part. She leaned forward slightly. Her eyes were holes through into space, with golden centers. She was living the scene in a depth none of the others even knew about. She was flawless and unreal. It was true. In some indescribable luscious way, she was like a robot. Did he respond to that? Her sheer unblemished skin like that of a smooth and succulent fruit, her oceanic hair?
The last actor fell.
Egyptia’s lips parted. She was going to speak her lines, and, despite everything, love, trauma, the chaos of my life, my fear and doubt at not finding him, I was mesmerized, waiting for what would come out. And in that second Lord shouted across the room at her: “Egypt. Your little blond friend’s here. Can you come out to play?”
I could have killed him. I was abashed, the focus of all eyes, blamed for his fault. Egyptia’s robotic optic lenses flickered as if she were coming to after losing consciousness. She looked at me, not knowing me. Who was I? No one from Antektra’s tortured world.
I went over to her.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“That’s… all right. What is it?”
“I need to talk to you. Not now. When you’ve finished.”
“Oh.” Her eyes closed. I thought she’d collapse. My head spun. “Oh, Jane,” she said.
“Where is he?” I said. “Just tell me. Please. Please, Egyptia.”
“Who?”
Suddenly, both in our separate agonies, our wires touched.
“Silver.”
“Somewhere—the bedroom—or the roof—”
“Not with you. Why not with you?”
“Darling, he’s a robot.”
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.”