"You mustn't interrupt," I said, very low. "I want to apologize. I know you're indifferent to my-my tantrums. But I have to apologize for my own sake. Tell you I'm sorry. And why. I'm confused. I've never had a s.e.xual relationship with a man. I've had dates, but nothing important. I never enjoyed-I'm a virgin."

"You're sixteen."

"Most of my friends had s.e.xual experience at thirteen or fourteen. Anyway. Anyway, I never will go with a man now. I don't want to." I waited, not for effect, but to contain myself. "Because," I said, "I'm in love with you. Please don't laugh or reason with me. Or say it will go away. It won't. I love you." My voice was calm, and I heard it with admiration. "I know you don't love. Can't love. I know we're just all like slices of cake or something-don't," I said, for I felt him tremble with laughter. "But I have less than two days with you, because then my mother comes home and Egyptia will want you back. And I don't know if I'm ready or not, but please make love to me. Not so I can boast, or to get rid of something, like cutting my nails, or because I'm bored. But because, because-" I stopped talking and rubbed my cheek against him. His long fingers curved over my skull and held me close. I knew I had struck the right note at last. He could give me pleasure of the emotions if not of the body. He could help me. Function fulfilled. But his sweetness came to me, his strength and his sweetness. I trusted him. I'd trusted him with the truth, undramatized, and with no prop-my weakness, my childishness-to take the blame for what I did. I didn't know him. He was unknowable. But I trusted him.

I got up slowly, and reached down my hand and he took it and left the chair and stood with me, looking into my face. His eyes were full of tenderness, and a kind of wicked joy. Itwas wicked, and itwas joy.

"I love you," I said, meeting his eyes.

"I know," he told me. "You said it in Clovis's apartment, at the window."

"You heard me? But I didn't even whisper-"

"I saw your reflection in the gla.s.s, as you saw mine, Lip movements."

"Well... you know, then. I didn't want to be afraid of saying it. Accidentally."

" 'I love you,' she said accidentally. Don't be afraid to say it. To my knowledge, you're the first human who ever did love me."

"Oh, but-"

"Magnetized, yes. Obsessed. Not love."

"You're not going to patronize me."

"No, Jane."

"Can we make believe," I said, "that I don't need to give any instructions. Please."

"You don't," he said.

He drew me into his arms. It was like the pull of the sea. Kind. Irresistible. Swimming. The texture of the mouth, its moisture-human, the same... only the sensations of the kiss were utterly changed. Then he picked me up as if I weighed nothing at all, and carried me into the lift.

I'm not Egyptia. I don't want to go into endless details. I was afraid, and not afraid. I was elated, and filled by despair. His nakedness dazzled me, though Demeta long ago saw to it that male nakedness was familiar to me in her selection of my visuals. But he was beautiful and silver, with the blaze of a fire at his groin. Why is the male p.e.n.i.s supposed to be ugly? All of him was beautiful. All. And I-I was self- conscious, but his gentleness and his care of me made nothing of that. His gentleness, his care. I didn't even tear, or bleed. I wasn't even hurt. Yet he filled me, gloriously. His hair swept me like a tide. No part of him is like metal, except to look at. To touch, like skin, but perfect skin, without unevenness or flaw.

And when I said at last, abashed, regretful, but content-"I'm sorry, I don't think I can, I mean, I won't climax-I won't climax"-even the awful jargon didn't jar, even to speak of it was acceptable. And almost at once a pressure began to grow inside me, and suddenly there were rollers of ecstasy and I caught my breath and clung to him, until they let me go.

He held me in his arms, and I said, "But you, what about you?"

"No."

"But-can't you-don't you-"

"It isn't necessary for me." And then, his voice amused in the darkness, "I can fake it, if you want. I frequently have."

"No. Don't fake it with me. Not ever. Please don't."

"Then I won't."

I fell asleep, until the Asteroid, rising, cut a hole through the blind. I woke, and he lay by me, his arms about me, his eyes closed as if he slept. But when he felt me stir, he opened his eyes. We looked at each other, and he said, "You're beautiful."

I would have denied it, but I felt it to be true. With him, for that moment, true.

My joy was his joy. I'd been crazy to say what I had, that he couldn't love. He can love all of us. Heis love.

In the morning, we showered together.

"Do youneed to?"

"City dirt makes no exceptions," he said, soaping his hair under the green waterfall. "Don't worry, I'm entirely rustproof."

He ate breakfast with me, to please me. He ate just like a young man, economically wolfing the food down.

"Can you taste it?"

"I can if I put the right circuits into action."

"That's ridiculous," I said, and giggled.

My laughter intrigued him: He went into routines that made me helpless with it. Idiotically convincing voices, other personae, absurd songs, jokes.

One of the s.p.a.cemen came to clear the breakfast things and I fell silent, embarra.s.sed by this other robot, so unlike him. The s.p.a.ceman gave me a little tray with vitamins on it, and my Phy-Excellence capsules.

I meant to take them. I did. But I forgot.

We went back to bed. When the ecstasy left me, I cried again.

"It must be horrible for you," I sobbed.

"Do I seem to find it horrible?"

"You'd act. It's part of your character. And to say I'm beautiful."

"You are. You have a skin like cream."

"Do I?"

"And eyes like cowrie sh.e.l.ls, with every color of the sea in them."

"No I don't."

"Yes you do."

"You say this to everyone."

"Not quite. Besides which, they would be different things. And only when they were true."

I got out of bed and went to the mirror, and looked at myself, lifting my hair over my head, widening my eyes.

He lay in the sheets like a sleeping dog-fox, smiling, aware of my delight.

"Did you fake o.r.g.a.s.m," I said boldly, "with Egyptia?"

"Many many times," he said, with a note of such ironic dismay that I laughed again.

The next time he made love to me, the ecstasy was like a spear going through me. I screamed out, and was astonished.

"Just pretending," I said.

The phone gave a sound a few minutes before noon, the low purring it makes on the console by my bed.

Correction: made. I turned off the video, and answered it. I needn't have bothered with the video.

"Bad news," said Clovis.

"That isn't me," I said, "or is that who's calling?"

"Jane, don't be witty. When's Demeta coming back?"

"Tomorrow."

"I hate to break up your amour impropre early, but Egyptia has decided to a.s.sert her rights. She says she signed your metal playmate over to you for six hours. Only. You want him, I paid for him, but we can't do a thing. She's eighteen and he's in her name."

"You could stall her..."

"No. Anyway, I've got other things to do with my day. Or did you think my only mission in life was to be your nursemaid?"

Rancor. I could hear it. Something grated inside him. Because he'd helped me and he'd lost out. And because he'd seen Silver.

"What do I do, Clovis?"

"Send him over to The Island on a fast ferry. Or she may make a hysterical call to a lawyer. Or her awful mother in that trench."

"But-"

"You didn't think she was a friend of yours, did you?"

Everything in the room had stopped moving. It was funny, of course nothing had been moving, yet everything had looked alive, and now it didn't anymore.

"All right," I said.

"Or," he said, "you can send it here, if you want. It, him. Egyptia can collect him, and maybe I can calm her down."

"To your apartment," I said.

"To my apartment. I'm so glad you didn't think I meant the middle of the river."

"I'll pay you back the money," I said. I had twisted the edge of the sheets into a hard corded knot.

"Oh, no rush."

I switched the phone off.

"What is it?" my lover said to me. His arm came round my shoulders.

"Didn't you hear?"

"Yes."

"Clovis wants you. And then Egyptia wants you."

"Well apparently I legally belong to them."

"Don't you care?"

"You want me to say I care about leaving you."

I let him hold me. I knew everything was useless, was over, dead, like brown leaves crushed off the trees.

"I do care about leaving you, Jane."

"But you'll be just the same with them."

"I'll be what they need me to be."

I left the bed and went into the bathroom. I ran the taps and held my hands under the water for a long while, for no reason at all. When I came back, he was dressing, pulling on the mulberry boots.

"I wish you wanted to stay with me," I said.

"I do."

"Only me."

"You can't change me," he said. "You have to accept what I am."

"I may never see you again."

He moved to me and took me back into his arms. I knew the texture of these clothes now, as I knew the texture of his skin and hair, which are neither. Even in my misery, his touch soothed me.

"If you never see me again," he said, "I'm still part of you, now. Or do you regret that we've spent time together?"

"No."

"Then be glad. Even if it's finished."

"I won't let it be finished," I said. I held him fiercely, but he kissed me and put me away, tactfully and finally.

"There's a flyer in ten minutes," he said.