“I don’t know. I must love you and guard you.”
“Who sent you?”
“I do not know.”
Stile touched his wall vid. “Game-control,” he said.
“Don’t do that!” Sheen cried.
“Cancel call,” Stile said to the vid. Evidently violence was not in the offing, and he had leverage. This was like a Game. “The printout.”
She dropped her gaze, and her head. Her lustrous hair fell about her shoulders, coursing over the material of the negligee. “Yes.”
Suddenly he felt sorry for her. Was she really a machine? Now he had doubts. But of course the matter was subject to verification. “I have a terminal here,” he said, touching another section of the wall. A cord came into his hand, with a multi-pronged plug at its end. Very few serfs were permitted such access directly—but he was one of the most privileged serfs on Proton, and would remain so as long as he was circumspect and rode horses well. “Which one?” he asked.
She turned her face away from him. Her hand went to her right ear, clearing away a lock of hair and pressing against the lobe. Her ear slid forward, leaving the socket open.
Stile plugged in the cord. Current flowed. Immediately the printout sheets appeared from the wall slot, crammed with numbers, graphs, and pattern-blocks. Though he was no computer specialist, Stile’s Game training made him a fair hand at ballpark analysis of programs, and he had continuing experience doing analysis of the factors leading into given races. That was why his employer had arranged this: to enable Stile to be as good a jockey as he could be. That was extremely good, for he had a ready mind as well as a ready body.
He whistled as he studied the sheets. This was a dual-element brain, with mated digital and analog components, rather like the dual-yet-differing hemispheres of the human brain. The most sophisticated computer capable of being housed in a robot. It possessed intricate feedback circuits, enabling the machine to learn from experience and to reprogram aspects of itself, within its prime directive. It could improve its capacity as it progressed. In short, it was intelligent and conscious: machine’s nearest approach to humanity.
Quickly Stile oriented on the key section: her origin and prime directive. A robot could lie, steal, and kill without conscience, but it could not violate its prime directive. He took the relevant data and fed them back to the analyzer for a summary.
The gist was simple: NO RECORD OF ORIGIN. DIRECTIVE: GUARD STILE FROM HARM, SUBDIRECTIVE: LOVE STILE.
What she had told him was true. She did not know who had sent her, and she had only his safety in mind. Tempered by love, so that she would not protect him in some fashion that cost him more than it was worth. This was a necessary caution, with otherwise unfeeling robots. This machine really did care. He could have taken her word.
Stile unplugged the cord, and Sheen put her ear back into place with a certain tremor. Again she looked completely human. He had been unyielding before, when she opposed him; now he felt guilty. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I had to know.”
She did not meet his gaze. “You have raped me.”
Stile realized it was true. He had taken her measure without her true consent; he had done it by duress, forcing the knowledge. There was even a physical analogy, plugging the rigid terminus of the cord into a private aperture, taking what had been hers alone. “I had to know,” he repeated lamely. “I am a very privileged serf, but only a serf. Why should anyone send an expensive robot to guard a man who is not threatened? I could not afford to believe your story without verification, especially since your cover story was untrue.”
“I am programmed to react exactly as a real girl would react!” she flared. “A real girl wouldn’t claim to have been built in a machine shop, would she?”
“That’s so …” he agreed. “But still—”
“The important part is my prime directive. Specifically, to be appealing to one man—you—and to love that man, and to do everything to help him. I was fashioned in the partial likeness of a woman you once knew, not close enough to be identifiable as such, but enough to make me attractive to your specific taste—”
“That succeeded,” he said. “I liked you the moment I saw you, and didn’t realize why.”
“I came to offer you everything of which I am capable, and that is a good deal, including the allure of feminine mystery. I even donned this ridiculous shift, that no human woman would have. And you—you—”
“I destroyed that mystery,” Stile finished. “Had I had any other way to be sure—”
“Oh, I suppose you couldn’t help it. You’re a man.”
Stile glanced at her, startled again. Her face was still averted, her gaze downcast. “Are you, a robot, really being emotional?”
“I’m programmed to be!”
True. He moved around to look at her face. She turned it away again. He put his hand to her chin to lift it.
“Get away from me!” she cried.
That was some programming! “Look, Sheen. I apologize. I—”
“Don’t apologize to a robot! Only an idiot would converse with a machine.”
“Correct,” he agreed. “I acted stupidly, and now I want to make what amends are possible.”
He tried again to see her face, and again she hid it. “Damn it, look at me!” he exclaimed. His emotion was high, flashing almost without warning into embarrassment, sorrow, or anger.
“I am here to serve; I must obey,” she said, turning her eyes to him. They were bright, and her cheeks were moist. Humanoid robots could cry, of course; they could do almost anything people could do. This one had been programmed to react this way when hurt or affronted. He knew that, yet was oddly moved. She did indeed subtly resemble one he had loved. The accuracy with which she had been fashioned was a commentary on the appalling power available to the Citizens of this planet. Even the most private, subtle knowledge could be drawn from the computer registries at any time.
“You are here to guard me, not to serve me, Sheen.”
“I can only guard you if I stay with you. Now that you know what I am—”
“Why are you being so negative? I have not sent you away.”
“I was made to please you, to want to please you. So I can better serve my directive. Now I can not.”
“Why not?”
“Why do you tease me? Do you think that programmed feelings are less binding than flesh ones? That the electrochemistry of the inanimate is less valid than that of the animate? That my illusion of consciousness is any less potent than your illusion of self-determination? I exist for one purpose, and you have prevented me from accomplishing it, and now I have no reason for existence. Why couldn’t you have accepted me as I seemed to be? I would have become perfect at it, with experience. Then it would have been real.”
“You have not answered my question.”
“You have not answered mine!”
Stile did a rapid internal shifting of gears. This was the most femalish robot he had encountered! “Very well, Sheen. I answer your questions. Why do I tease you? Answer: I am not teasing you—but if I did, it would not be to hurt you. Do I think that your programmed feelings are less valid than my mortal ones? Answer: No, I must conclude that a feeling is a feeling, whatever its origin. Some of my own feelings are short-sighted, unreasonable, and unworthy; they govern me just the same. Is your illusion of consciousness less valid than my illusion of free will? Answer: No. If you think you are conscious, you must be conscious, because that’s what consciousness is. The feedback of self-awareness. I don’t have much illusion about my free will. I am a serf, governed by the will of my employer. I have no doubt I am governed by a multitude of other things I seldom even notice, such as the force of gravity and my own genetic code and the dictates of society, Most of my freedom exists in my mind—which is where your consciousness does, too. Why couldn’t I accept you as you seemed to be? Because I am a skilled Gamesman, not the best that ever was, but probably destined for recognition as one of the best of my generation.
I succeed not by virtue of my midget body but by virtue of my mind. By questioning, by comprehending my own nature and that of all others I encounter. When I detect an anomaly, I must discover its reason. You are attractive, you are nice, you are the kind of girl I have held in my mind as the ideal, even to your size, for it would be too obvious for me to have a woman smaller than I am, and I don’t like being obvious in this connection. You came to me for what seemed insufficient reason, you did not laugh as you should have, you did not react quite on key. You seemed to know about things, yet when I probed for depth I found it lacking. I probed as a matter of course; it is my nature. I asked about your music, and you expressed interest, but had no specifics. That sort of thing. This is typical of programmed artificial intelligence; even the best units can approach only one percent of the human capacity, weight for weight. A well-tuned robot in a controlled situation may seem as intelligent as a man, because of its specific and relevant and instantly accessible information; a man is less efficiently organized, with extraneous memories obscuring the relevant ones, and information accessible only when deviously keyed. But the robot’s intellect is illusory, and it soon shows when those devious and unreasonable off-trails are explored. A mortal person’s mind is like a wilderness, with a tremendous volume of decaying constructs and half-understood experience forming natural harbors for wild-animal effects. A robot is disciplined, civilized; it has no vast and largely wasted reservoir of the unconscious to draw from, no spongy half-forgotten backup impression. It knows what it knows, and is ignorant where it is ignorant, with a quite sharp demarcation between. Therefore a robot is not intuitive, which is the polite way of saying that it does not frequently reach down into the maelstrom of its garbage dump and draw out serendipitous insights. Your mind was more straightforward than mine, and that aroused my suspicion, and so I could not accept you at face value. I would not be the quality of player I am, were I given to such acceptances.”
Sheen’s eyes had widened. “You answered!”
Stile laughed. It had been quite an impromptu lecture! “Again I inquire: why not?”
“Because I am Sheen-machine. Another man might be satisfied with the construct, the perfect female form; that is one reason my kind exists. But you are rooted in reality, however tangled a wilderness you may perceive it to be. The same thing that caused you to fathom my nature will cause you to reject the illusion I proffer. You want a real live girl, and you know I am not, and can never be. You will not long want to waste your time talking to me as if I were worthwhile.”
“You presume too much on my nature. My logic is other than yours. I said you were limited; I did not say you were not worthwhile.”
“You did not need to. It is typical of your nature that you are polite even to machines, as you were to the Dust Slide ticket taker. But that was brief, and public; you need no such byplay here in private. Now that I have seen you in action, discovering how much more there is to you than what the computer knows, I realize I was foolish to—”
“A foolish machine?”
“—suppose I could deceive you for any length of time. I deserved what you did to me.”
“I am not sure you deserved it, Sheen. You were sent innocently to me, to my jungle, unrealistically programmed.”
“Thank you,” she said with a certain unmetallic irony. “I did assume you would take what was offered, if you desired it, and now I know that was simplistic. What am I to do now? I have nowhere to return, and do not wish to be prematurely junked. There are many years of use left in me before my parts wear appreciably.”
“Why, you will stay with me, of course.”
She looked blank. “This is humor? Should I laugh?”
“This is serious,” he assured her.
“Without reason?”
“I am unreasonable, by your standards. But in this case I do have reason.”
She made an almost visible, almost human connection. “To be your servant? You can require that of me, just as you forced me to submit to the printout. I am at your mercy. But I am programmed for a different relationship.”
“Serfs can’t have servants. I want you for your purpose.”
“Protection and romance? I am too logical to believe that. You are not the type to settle for a machine in either capacity.” Yet she looked halfway hopeful. Stile knew her facial expressions were the product of the same craftsmanship as the rest of her; perhaps he was imagining the emotion he saw. Yet it moved him.
“You presume too much. Ultimately I must go with my own kind. But in the interim I am satisfied to play the Game—at least until I can discover what threat there is to my welfare that requires a humanoid robot for protection.”
She nodded. “Yes, there is logic. I was to pose as your lady friend, thereby being close to you at all times, even during your sleep, guarding you from harm. If you pretend to accept me as such, I can to that extent fulfill my mission.”
“Why should I pretend? I accept you as you are.”
“Stop it!” she cried. “You have no idea what it is like to be a robot! To be made in the image of the ideal, yet doomed always to fall short—”
Now Stile felt brief anger. “Sheen, turn off your logic and listen.” He sat beside her on the couch and took her hand. Her fingers trembled with an unmechanical disturbance. “I am a small man, smaller than almost anyone I know. All my life it has been the bane of my existence. As a child I was teased and excluded from many games because others did not believe I could perform. My deficiency was so obvious that the others often did not even realize they were hurting my feelings by omitting me. In adolescence it was worse; no girl cared to associate with a boy smaller than herself. In adult life it is more subtle, yet perhaps worst of all. Human beings place inordinate stress on physical height. Tall men are deemed to be the leaders, short men are the clowns. In reality, small people are generally healthier than large ones; they are better coordinated, they live longer. They eat less, waste less, require less space. I benefit from all these things; it is part of what makes me a master of the Game and a top jockey. But small people are not taken seriously. My opinion is not granted the same respect as that of a large man. When I encounter another person, and my level gaze meets his chin, he knows I am inferior, and so does everyone else, and it becomes difficult for me to doubt it myself.”
“But you are not inferior!” Sheen protested.
“Neither are you! Does that knowledge help?”
She was silent. “We are not dealing with an objective thing,” Stile continued. “Self-respect is subjective. It may be based on foolishness, but it is critical to a person’s motivation. You said I had no idea what it meant to be doomed always to fall short. But I am literally shorter than you are. Do you understand?”
“No. You are human. You have proved yourself. It would be foolish to—”
“Foolish? Indubitably. But I would give all my status in the Game, perhaps my soul itself, for one quarter meter more height. To be able to stand before you and look down at you. You may be fashioned in my ideal of woman, but I am not fashioned in my ideal of man. You are a rational creature, beneath your superficial programming; under my programming I am an irrational animal.”
She shifted her weight on the couch, but did not try to stand. Her body, under the gauze, was a marvel of allure. How patently her designer had crafted her to subvert Stile’s reason, making him blind himself to the truth in his sheer desire to possess such a woman! On another day, that might have worked. Stile had almost been fooled. “Would you exchange your small human body,” she asked, “for a large humanoid robot body?”
“No.” He did not even need to consider.
“Then you do not fall short of me.”
“This is the point I am making. I know what it is to be unfairly ridiculed or dismissed. I know what it is to be doomed to be less than the ideal, with no hope of improvement. Because the failure is, at least in part, in my ideal. I could have surgery to lengthen my body. But the wounds are no longer of the body. M
y body has proved itself. My soul has not.”
“I have no soul at all.”
“How do you know?”
Again she did not answer. “I know how you know,” he said. “You know because you know. It is inherent in your philosophy. Just as I know I am inferior. Such knowledge is not subject to rational refutation. So I do understand your position. I understand the position of all the dispossessed. I empathize with all those who hunger for what they can not have. I long to help them, knowing no one can help them. I would trade everything I am or might be for greater physical height, knowing how crazy that desire is, knowing it would not bring me happiness or satisfaction. You would trade your logic and beauty for genuine flesh and blood and bone. Your machine invulnerability for human mortality. You are worse off than I; we both know that. Therefore I feel no competition in your presence, as I would were you human. A real girl like you would be above me; I would have to compete to prove myself, to bring her down, to make her less than my ideal, so that I could feel worthy of her. But with you—”
“You can accept me as I am—because I am a robot,” Sheen said, seeming amazed. “Because I am less than you.”
“Now I think we understand each other.” Stile put his arm about her and brought her in for a kiss. “If you want me on that basis—”
She drew away. “You’re sorry for me! You raped me and now you’re trying to make me like it!”
He let her go. “Maybe I am. I don’t really know all my motives. I won’t hold you here if you don’t want to stay. I’ll leave you strictly alone if you do stay, and want it that way. I’ll show you how to perfect your human role, so that others will not fathom your nature the way I did. I’ll try to make it up to you—”
She stood. “I’d rather be junked.” She crossed to the vid screen and touched the button. “Game-control, please.”
Stile launched himself from the couch and almost leaped through the air to her. He caught her about the shoulder and bore her back. “Cancel call!” he yelled. Then they both fetched up against the opposite wall.