The Silver Metal Lover Read Free Page A

ugly. And then, pointing something out to the small gathering about him, he turned fully toward me, not seeing me. He was handsome, and his eyes were like two russet stars. Yes, they were exactly like stars. And his skin seemed only pale, as if there were an actor’s makeup on it, and then I saw it was silver—face, throat, the V of chest inside the open-necked shirt, the hands that came from the dripping lace at his cuffs. Silver that flushed into almost natural shadings and colors against the bones, the lips, the nails. But silver. Silver.
    It was very silly. I started to cry. It was awful. I didn’t know what to do. My mother would have been pleased, as it meant my basic emotions—whatever they were—were being allowed full and free reign. But she’d also have expected me to control myself. And I couldn’t.
    So I walked under the fountain and stared at it till the tears stopped in envy. And then I was puzzled as to why I’d cried at all.
    When I came out, the crowd, about twenty now, was dispersing. They would all have taken his registration, or whatever, but most of them couldn’t afford him.
    I stood and gazed at him, curious to see if he’d just switch himself off when the crowd went away. But he didn’t. He began to stroll up and down. He had a guitar slung over his shoulder I hadn’t noticed, and he started to caress melodies out of it. It was crazy.
    Then, quite abruptly and inevitably, he registered that someone else was watching after all, and he came toward
me
.
    I was frightened. He was a robot and he seemed just like a man, and he scared me in a way I couldn’t explain. I would have run away like a child, but I was too frightened to run.
    He came within three feet of me, and he smiled at me. Total coordination. All the muscles, even those of his face. He seemed perfectly human, utterly natural, except he was too beautiful to be either.
    “Hallo,” he said.
    “Are you—” I said.
    “Am I?”
    “Are you—the—are you a robot?”
    “Yes. Registration Silver. That is S.I.L.V.E.R. which stands for Silver Ionized Locomotive Verisimulated Electronic Robot. Neat, isn’t it?”
    “No,” I said. “No.” Again without warning, I began once more to cry.
    His smile faded. He looked concerned, his eyes were like pools of fulvous lead. His reactions were superb. I hated him. I wished he were a box on wheels, or I wished he were human.
    “What’s the matter?” he said eventually, and very gently, making it much worse. “The idea is for me to amuse you. I seem to be failing. Am I intruding on some sort of personal grief?”
    “You horrible thing,” I whispered. “How dare you stand there and talk to me?”
    The reactions were astounding. His eyes went flat and wicked. He gave me the coldest smile I ever saw, and bowed to me. He really did turn on his heel, and he walked directly away from me.
    I wished the concrete would open and swallow me. I truly wished it. I wanted to be ten years old and run home to my mother, who might comfort or lecture me, but who would be omnipotent. Or I wanted to be a hundred and twenty, and wise, and not care.
    Anyway, I raced off the terrace, and to Clovis.

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    Clovis’s apartment overlooks a stretch of the New River, which is clean and sparkling. People who live along the banks can open their windows on it, unlike the people who live along the banks of the polluted Old River, who have to use the filtered air-conditioning even in winter. Every apartment there has a warning notice cut into the window frame, which says: The Surgeon General has established that to open this window for more than ten minutes every day can seriously damage your health. Clovis has friends on the Old River who leave their windows open all the time. “Will you look at the muck on the buildings,” they say. “Why don’t the Godawful Surgeon General and the Goddamn City Marshal clean up the air and the traffic fumes before going dippy over the Godball river?” Clovis also asserts that