The ultimate leaves blew and crunched beneath our feet. The streets close to the Old River were shut off again, unless you bought those smelly throwaway oxy-masks at the cheek gate. We went over Patience Maidel Bridge though the center end had the Walk Fast notices up, and there were no buskers. When we got past the halfway mark, it was apparently clear, though empty. For some reason he and I started to sing, idiotic songs we made up as we walked, no longer fast, about the snarling fish in the purple water. Catch one for the cat—Oh hell—the fish has ate my cat—Oh well—dress the fish in fur—teach the fish to purr—kid me it’s the cat—Cat-fish can be swell.
The green light was on as we came off the bridge, and just as we moved down toward East Arbor, I saw there were two buskers. They weren’t performing, but seated on a rug, a boy and a girl, eating french fries out of a paper over a guitar with three broken strings.
Despite my thoughts of earlier, I hesitated. For they were Jason and Medea.
Once, a year ago, they’d done this before. It was a basic idea. Jason sang, rather badly, and Medea went around the crowd, if one was tone-deaf enough to gather, or if not, through the passersby with a plate. As she did so, she picked pockets. Usually she was caught out, or had been last time. Both were minors, but their father had had to pay a considerable fine.
“What’s wrong?” Silver asked, sensing how I held back.
“Some people I know, and don’t like.”
As we spoke, Jason looked up and right at me. An expression of astonishment went over his face. Very slowly, he nudged Medea. Their thin still eyes seemed to congeal identically. There was no other way but to walk on and meet them. Did they know about Silver? About me? About me and Silver? Or not?
“Hallo, Jane,” said Medea.
“Hallo, Jane,” said Jason.
I looked at them, pausing, my hand in Silver’s. The strength in his hand comforted me, though it seemed a long way off.
“Hallo,” I said. And then, rashly, coolly, “Do I know you?”
Jason laughed.
“Oh, I think so.”
“I think so,” said Medea. “Your name is Jane, isn’t it?”
“The bleached hair’s not bad,” said Jason. “And the diet. Does Mother know?”
Then they hadn’t been told I’d absconded from Chez Stratos. Or had they…
“Did you have a nice evening?” I inquired politely.
“Pickings were quite good,” said Medea flatly.
Jason smirked. He smirked beyond me, at Silver. Suddenly Jason’s smirk faltered.
I glanced at Silver. There was that look I’d seen before, like a metal mask, the eyes burning, impenetrable, fearsome. Circuits switching?
“Who’s your gorgeous actor friend?” said Jason. His voice didn’t quite sound as sure as it usually did. “Or is it a big seekwit?”
“Does your mother know?” repeated Medea.
I stood there, my skull quite empty, and Silver said to them in the most gentle and reasonable and truly deadly of voices, as if it were an analogy for their lives: “You have just dropped a chip inside the sound-box of your guitar, which won’t do either of them much good.”
“Oh, thanks for caring,” said Jason.
“Personally, I don’t like silver makeup,” said Medea. “What drama are you in? Or are you out of work? It must be nice for you that you met Jane.”
“Yes, Jane’s very rich, isn’t she,” said Jason. “We’re rich too, of course. But we don’t make friends with out-of-work actors.”
“But Jane’s such a softy,” said Medea.
“Luckily for you,” said Jason.
They stopped. They’d said all they could think of for the moment.
I knew none of this mattered, but it was still awful. I didn’t look at Silver anymore. I could feel the roughness of the embroidered cuff of his shirt, which we’d bought in the market three nights ago, against my wrist. I supposed it was up to me to make the move to get away. To Silver, this was irrelevant.
Then I began to see what was happening to Jason and Medea, and I started to be fascinated. They were wriggling, actually and definitely physically wriggling, their little hard eyes glaring at him and slithering off him. And Medea had gone a dreadful yellow color, while Jason’s tanned ears were turning red—I’d never seen anything like this happen to them before, even when they were children. And now their hands were plucking feebly at the french fries, they were gazing at the ground, their backs were stiffening as if in the grip of a horrible paralysis. I didn’t turn to Silver anymore. I realized that cruel annihilating look of his, which he said meant nothing, was still trained on them like a radioactive ray, mercilessly letting them shrivel beneath it.
It was Medea who finally managed to say, in a shrill, wobbly wire of a voice: “Why won’t he stop staring? Doesn’t he know it’s rude. Make him stop it.”
But it was Jason who scrambled suddenly to his feet. Not waiting to pick up the guitar, the ill-gotten gains, the chips, or even for Medea, he thrust by me and jumped hastily away onto the escalator up to the bridge. Medea, in a speechless frenzy, snatched the money and the guitar and bolted after him. I felt Silver turn to watch them go, as I had turned. Medea turned too, just once, though Jason didn’t. She was at the top of the escalator. Her face was a yellow bone triangle and her mouth hissed, or looked as if it did. Then she ran after Jason.
I was shaken too. I didn’t move until Silver slipped his other arm round me.
I knew his face had changed then, so I looked up at him.
“I thought,” I said, “you wanted everyone to be happy.”
“Don’t I?” he said.
“Your circuits were just switching over,” I said.
“Not exactly.”
“You meant to frighten them.”
“I meant to shut them up.”
“But why did it matter to you?”
“The temperature of your hand changed. It went very cold.”
“And I bought you, so your loyalty was to me. Like the Golder robot being a personal bodyguard,” I said, with amazing stiltedness.
His eyes, unblinking and jewellike, looked back at me. There was a long pause.
“Jane,” he said. But nothing else.
And I was suddenly afraid. At the meeting with the twins, at the uncanny thing he’d been able to do to them. Afraid of being here with him, afraid for him, and for myself.
“What is it?” I whispered.
“I think it’s time we walked on,” he said.
And he let go of me, even my hand, and we walked on. Like two lovers who’d quarreled. And the night was cold as knives.