At first, I thought we’d keep meeting people I knew in the store, and wondered uneasily how I’d deal with them in my new persona. But my friends aren’t musical, knowing little except for the most recent songs and the odd snob-value bit of Mozart.
There were a couple of meetings, though, with musicians who came in and fell in love with Silver’s musicianship. Jealous and elated and intrigued, I’d listen to the oddest conversations, as they tried to find out what band he’d been with, why he wasn’t professional, and so on. As a liar, this creature who’d told me he couldn’t lie, proved most accomplished. I watched him languish esoterically over his escape from the rat race of the professional stage in some far-off city, I heard him invent curious debilities of the wrist or spinal cord that would let him down and so prohibited full-time public playing. Of course I came to realize these weren’t actually lies. He improvised, just as he did with songs. But a handful of musical evenings followed, extraordinary firework displays of talent, invention and good humor, in damp basement rooms or craning attics or quasi-derelict lofts. They played and he played. The excitement generated was insane and wonderful. Only his brilliance made them wary, and occasionally stumble. But I used to sit through these sessions and think: I like this. This is so good. And then I’d think, quite consciously, just as I wrote it down: I’m happy.
We came out of Musicord-Ectrica about two in the morning, then, and stood in the golden snow where the glow of the store lights was falling. We looked, from the outside, back in at the scarlet pianos, one of which Silver had been playing most of the afternoon and evening. A large visual screen, with a loudspeaker wired out to the street, blared in the adjoining window, and I glanced and saw reports of an earth tremor somewhere, and looked away.
“Are you tired?” I asked him.
“You always ask me that, mad lady.”
“Sorry. You’re not tired. You don’t get tired.”
“Are you?”
“No.”
“We could walk over to the Parlor, then, and you could make yourself sick on lemon fudge ice cream again.”
“Or go home and see if the cat’s eaten any more candles.”
“I told you, if you bought the cat a bone, it would stop.”
We stood in the snow. I wished I could buy him a scarlet piano.
“Did you write out the words of the new song you were working on in there?” he asked me.
“Not yet. But I told you and you’ll remember it. I do, too. White fire—God—it’s a weird song. The ideas keep coming. Maybe it won’t last. I’ll dry up. What would you do if I dried up?”
“Water you.”
The visual screen switched channels automatically, and the sound stepped up. We’d have to move. But my eye slid back to it involuntarily. I saw a rainbow neon in front of a drab glass-sprayed frontage, and the neon read ELECTRONIC METALS LTD. For a second it meant absolutely nothing. And then the sign went out, the letters became just a black skeleton, and I heard the news reader’s voice over the loudspeaker say: “Tonight, E.M. switches off its lights for the last time. The firm that wanted to make robot dolls as good as men finally admitted there’s no substitute for a human after all.”
“Silver,” I said.
“I know,” he said.
We waited there, watching, and the snow drummed slowly under my feet with the pulse of my blood.
Now the screen showed a small blank room with leather chairs. Someone was facing out at me. He had tinted glasses, and this time, a five-piece suit, trousers, jacket, waistcoat, shirt and cravat, all of cream wool. Swohnson. The front man. I recognized the stance. His easy affable charm, his relaxed willingness to give information, and the two manicured hands holding on tight to each other.
“It was a great idea we had,” he said. “Ultimate service to the customer. Robots, not only aesthetically pleasing, but a source of constant domestic entertainment. Singers, dancers, conversationalists. Companions. But it’s a fact, there’s only so much you can program into a chunk of metal.”
The screen flicked. Swohnson was gone, and there was a line of yellow metal boxes with smiling humanoid faces. “Good day,” they sang out like canaries. “Good day. Welcome aboard. May I take your fare?”
The screen flicked. Swohnson was back.
“That line isn’t, er, too bad,” he said. “More welcoming than just a slot. They’ve caught on quite well. The Flyer Company is considering installation. We, ah, we recognized our limitations, there…”
Flick. A grey metal box with a friendly head, and two pretty girl’s hands. “Good morning, madam. How would you like your hair styled today?”
Flick. “Where we came unstuck,” said Swohnson, “was in trying to create a thing which could rival the human artist. The creative individual. Our Sophisticated Formats. Of course, computers have been fooling with that for years. And we all know, it just doesn’t work. Man is inspirational. Unpredictable. He, ah, he has the genius a machine can never have.”
Flick. A young woman was standing on a stage a long way off. The camera glided toward her slowly, and as it did so, highlights gleamed and flowed across her white-wine-colored gown, her copper skin, her wheat yellow hair. Her sweet and musical voice said effortlessly and surely: “Gallop apace, you fiery footed steeds—” And said again: “Gallop apace, you fiery footed steeds—” and again and again and again. And every time with the same inflexion.
“A perfect performance,” Swohnson said, as the camera glided about her, “and the same every time. No variation. No—um—no ingenuity.”
Flick. Swohnson sat, beaming, holding his hand.
“But very lifelike,” said an invisible interviewer, subtle and insinuating. He was accusing Swohnson of something. Swohnson knew it.
Swohnson beamed, broader and broader, as if exercising his facial muscles.
“Verisimulated,” said Swohnson.
“Could be mistaken for human,” accused the newsman.