Tanith Lee: Metallic Love

Of course I kneeled down and peered in. I didn’t see what was there for a minute, because it was wrapped in a worn dark scarf. When finally I realized and pulled it out, the scarf itself tore at once in a ragged hole. I’d heard of people hiding money in old houses—obviously not I.M.U. cards, but nickels and dimes, or whole fortunes in antique gold. My heart stood still, and when I saw what was wrapped in the scarf was only a battered paper book, I felt a wrench of bitter disappointment. Maybe that was itself my first true whiff of rebellion—for I know, if it had been money, I’d never have told the Apocalytes. To them, to have wealth of any sort was just one more sinful Hell-deserving giving-in-to-temptation.

The cover of the book was plain resined black paper. Not knowing what else to do with it, I opened it. Which is what you do with a book, except I’d never had a chance to open anything but an improving religious tract. (Even the Bible was generally kept from us by Grandfather, who only occasionally read us alarming snippets.)

And the book’s title seemed depressingly like those of some of the lesser religious works: Jane’s Story. Under that, however, was this: Published by Catch-Us-If-You-Can Press. Be advised, to possess this book is to risk intimidation and possible prosecution by the City Senate. Do not read this book in any public place—you have been warned!

I sat on my heels, gaping at the book, and in the background the jug was boiling dry on the stove.

Then I heard someone descending the stairs. I could tell from the flump of the footfall it was Big Joy, the oldest girl, who was in charge of the rest of us.

I found I’d gotten up and pushed the book in the pocket of my dishwashing overall. I kicked the hatch-thing back into place and ran for the jug. When Big Joy came in, I was lugging it over to the sink like a virtuous little Apocalyte. Joy was a bully, and perhaps, if it had been one of the others, I might have shared my discovery. I’ll never be sure.

Someone else stumbled on the hatch, and hurt her ankle, a few days later. Obviously there was nothing in there by then.

Rather curiously I’d thought the book was ancient. (Like the fortune I’d hoped for?) But naturally it had been published by an underground press only a few years before I found it. I assume someone from outside, but still from our own beloved Order—one of the ones, probably, who came to fix the stair and roof—managed to set it in under the basement floor on Babel Boulevard. Either they were hiding it for their own safety, or they were passing on the Book, covertly, knowing that sometime it would again come to light, and then another person might read it. I think there was a lot of that with Jane and Silver’s Book, as maybe you know. A whole kind of secret club, reading it, whispering about it, moving it along for others to read and whisper over. If you’re reading this now, I guess you were part of that shining, shadowy chain.

I read it, too. Cover to cover.

What do I say to you, then, about reading that Book?

What would you say to me ?

But maybe I presume. Maybe you didn’t.

Okay. Plotline: There’s this girl of sixteen (Jane), rich and naive, and under the thumb of her tyrannical, bloody, mind-fucking bitch of a mother—only Jane innocently doesn’t know how terrible Mom is—but one day the girl meets a robot. Now we’ve had robots for ages, right. They do most of the jobs people used to—and so create a permanent underclass of unemployed subsistence plebs, like me. But anyway, we’re accustomed to machines, and they are simply machines—boxes, tubes on wheels, faceplates that look as real as a badly made statue. Only this one is different. He’s part of a new line designed for pleasure—of all and every sort. And he looks just like a man—a beautiful one. He’s tall, strong, elegant, and handsome. A musician, a lover —and his skin is silver, his hair russet, his eyes amber. He truly does appear and feel—if you touch him, which is all you want to do—human. But he is to humanity what sunlight is to a low-wattage bulb. He is—indescribably—wonderful.

And Jane falls in love with him. And, knowing that no human could be allowed to love a robot —still she can’t stop herself. So she leaves Dire Momma, and goes to live with Silver in the pits and craters of the slums. And he makes her life heaven on earth. And for the first time ever, she’s—happy.

But then the firm that created him calls back all the robots of that special super-deluxe line. Something wrong with them, they say. But we all know, we who are reading Jane’s Story of Silver, that all that’s wrong in Silver’s case, is he’s too right.

She tries her damnedest to save him. Gets betrayed—her evil little friends, Jason and Medea, her lunatic friend Egyptia. Life intervenes—earthquake, muddle. He’s caught. They dismantle him. They kill him.

And she…

Jane tried to commit suicide. Didn’t make it. But then she received a message from beyond the gate of death. Without a doubt it’s him. He tells her things only she could know. Proves he is still alive after death… somewhere, out of the world. And proves, too, by doing the rest, that inside the robot body there had been a soul.

So then Jane tries to go on living, living both her own life and his, knowing that one day, far, far off (for the rich can survive to be a hundred and fifty years of age) she will see him again.

That’s the plot in the most crass terms, of Jane and Silver’s Story.

Well. It changed my life.

I used to read it in the eye-aching half-dark of stubs of candles—in the basement at one A.M., the yard where the chickens were kept, on one of the lavatories, with people banging on the door and me calling, “I got sick!” and retching to show I needed to stay there. Chasing the truth of love.

Oh, Silver.

Silver.

When I finished that Book, I started again at the beginning.

I read it twelve times, that year between eleven and twelve.

Was apprehended only once.

“What are you doing reading, girl? You should be at prayers.” “Sorry. Only this—” proffering the religious leaflet in which I had wrapped Jane’s Book—and getting away with only a slap across my head.

I loved him. I loved him so. And through his strength and compassionate sweetness, I learned a lesson none of them had ever tried to teach me. That God might not be fire and hell and horror. That God was love. And so sometimes, here in this vicious world, love was to be found, too.

That was the lesson.

At twelve years old I had it—by heart.

We went into the city quite often. An aspect of the Apocalytes’ “mission” was to knock on doors or talk to people on the street and try and pin them down to a long old natter about the deity—i.e. how rotten the world was, how sinful they were, and that ours was the only means of salvation.

After the quake when I was nine/ten, we’d even made a bit of progress. A couple of scared citizens signed up for our regime of total self-denial and utter hatred of all physical enjoyments. No drink, no cigarines, no painkillers even—sex only in the effort to construct one more little Apocalyte. But strangely, not everyone was keen.

I recall a woman saying exasperatedly, as our group hemmed her in at the corner of Lilac and Dyle, “But Jesus Christ drank wine!” “A mistranslation,” announced our group leader, a big bald man called Samuel. “What was he drinking, then?” demanded the woman, trying to push us away. “A type of herbal tea,” declared Samuel knowingly. But the woman managed to escape just after this, and bolted off up the street—even grabbing others en route and alerting them to our menacing presence.