Part 16 (1/2)
The panelist looked at his co-panelists. ”Let the record note that the robot is crying.”
All the Citizens looked closely at Sheen. Her posture and expression had not changed, but the tears were streaming down her cheeks.
”Why would any woman, human or robot, cry in response to simple, straightforward questions?” a panelist asked.
Citizen Waldens stepped forward suddenly, putting his cloaked arm around Sheen's shoulders. ”For G.o.d's sake! She is not on trial! Spare her this cruelty!”
The presiding panelist nodded sagely. ”She weeps be cause she knows she can never have her love returned by the man she loves, no matter what else he gives her. Our questioning made this truth unconscionably clear, causing her to react as the woman she represents would act. I do not believe she was conscious of the tears, or that this is a detail that would have occurred to a man.” He pondered a moment, then spoke deliberately. ”We of this panel are not without feeling ourselves. We are satisfied that this person, the robot Sheen, is as deserving of Citizens.h.i.+p as is a frog eyed, tentacular ma.s.s of slime from the farthest wash of the galaxy.” He glanced at his co-panelists for confirmation. ”We therefore approve the robot Sheen's designation as heir, pending such decision as the court may make.” The Citizens applauded politely. Waldens brought Sheen back to Stile.
”I'm glad to lose that bet. Stile. She's a good woman. Reminds me of my wife, when she was young and feeling. This robot deserves better than you are giving her.”
”Yes,” Stile agreed.
Waldens started to turn away, then snapped back in a double take. ”I'll be d.a.m.ned! You're crying tool” Stile nodded dumbly.
”And you think you don't love her.” The Citizen shrugged. ”Care to make a bet on that?”
”No,” Stile said.
Sheen turned to him with incredulous surmise, ”The illusion of nonfeeling-it is yours!” she said. ”The Lady knew!” The Lady had known. Stile was indeed a man of two loves, suppressing one for the sake of the other-in vain.
”Well, I'll bet you on something else,” Waldens said. ”One kilo, this time. I happen to know you can afford it.”
Stile wrenched himself back to the practicalities of the moment. He looked at Mellon. ”Can I?”
”Sir, your betting is becoming more hazardous than necessary.”
”That's his way of saying yes,” Waldens said. ”I feel you owe me one more bet. It wasn't right to use your girl that way. You set her up for it, knowing how she loved you.”
”Yet he gave back more than he took,” Sheen said. There was now a certain radiance about her, the knowledge of discovered treasure. Stile had actually set himself up.
”I'll give you your bet,” Stile agreed. ”And I'll match anybody else, if I don't run out of grams. Right now I have to trace an old message to its source. Care to bet whether I make it?”
”No. I don't know enough about the situation. But I'll bet when I do. You are involved in odd things, for a new Citizen. Usually they're busy for the first month just experiencing the novelty of having serfs say sir to them.”
”I have some equipment waiting at the site,” Stile said. He gave the address, and the other Citizens dispersed to their private capsules.
Alone with Sheen and Mellon in his own capsule. Stile looked at Sheen. Emotion overwhelmed him. ”d.a.m.n!” he exclaimed. ”I'm sorry. Sheen.”
She paused momentarily, a.n.a.lyzing which level he was on. ”You had to do it, sir. It was necessity, not cruelty, sir.”
”Stop calling me sir!” he cried.
”When we are alone,” she agreed.
”Maybe I am fooling myself. Maybe what I feel for you is what most others would call love. But since I met the Lady Blue-”
She laid her soft hand on his. ”I would not change you if I could.”
Which was what the Lady Blue had said. Sheen could have had no way to know that.
”It is an interesting relation you share,” Mellon said. ”I am not programmed for romantic emotion. I admit to curiosity as to its nature and usefulness.”
”You are better off not knowing,” Sheen said, squeezing Stile's hand.
”I do experience excitement when a large property transaction is imminent.”
”If the self-willed machines gain recognition,” Stile said, ”you will receive whatever programming you wish, including romantic. For now, she's right; you are happier as you are.”
”I will be ecstatic if I complete your target fortune. So far I have had little to do with it. I fear my circuits will short out, observing your mode of operation.”
Stile smiled. ”Now that I have inordinate wealth, I find it does not mean much to me,” he said. ”It is merely the substance of another game. I want to win, of course-but my real ambition lies elsewhere.” He glanced again at Sheen. ”My emotion is so erratic, I really think it would be better for you to accept reprogramming to eliminate your love for me. It would save you so much grief-”
”Or you could accept conditioning to eliminate your love for the Lady Blue,” she said.
”Touche.”
”Or to diminish your prejudice against robots.”
”I'm not prejudiced against-” He paused. ”d.a.m.n it, now I know I could love you. Sheen, if I didn't have the Lady Blue. But my cultural conditioning ... I would prefer to give up life itself, rather than lose her.”
”Of course. I feel the same about you. Now I know I have enough of you to make my existence worthwhile.” She was happy with half a loaf.
Stile still felt guilty. ”Sometimes I wish there were another me. That I had two selves again, with one who was available for Citizens.h.i.+p and who would love you, while the other could roam forever free in Phaze.” He sighed. ”But of course when there were two of me, I knew about none of this. My other self had the Lady Blue.”
”That self committed suicide,” she said.
”Suicide! By no means! He was murdered!”
”He accepted murder. Perhaps that is not clear to your illogical and vacillating mind.”
”My mind was his!”
”In a different situation. He had reason.” Accepted murder. Stile considered that. He had marveled before that the Blue Adept had been dispatched by so crude a device-strangled by a demon from an amulet. It was indeed a suspicious situation. No magic of that sort had been able to kill Stile; why had it worked against his other self? And the Blue Adept's harmonica, his prized possession, had been left for Stile to find, conveniently. Yet suicide-could that be believed? If so, why? Why would any man permit himself to be ignominiously slain? Why, specifically, should Stile himself, in his other guise, permit it? He simply was not the type.
”You say he had reason. Why do you feel he did that?”
”Because he lacked enough of the love of the one he loved,” she said promptly.
”But the Lady Blue gave him the third thee,” he protested. ”In Phaze, that is absolute love.”
”But it was late and slow, and as much from duty and guilt as from true feeling. Much the same as your love for me. I, too, tried to suicide.”
Indeed she had, once. One might debate whether a non living creature could die, but Sheen had certainly tried to destroy herself. Only the compa.s.sion of the Lady Blue had restored Sheen's will to endure. The Lady Blue, obviously, had understood. What a hard lesson she had learned when her husband died!
”Somehow I shall do right by you. Sheen,” Stile said. ”I don't know how, right now, but I will find a way.”
”Maybe with magic,” she said, unsmiling.
They arrived at the site of the message-tracing team. Stile was glad to let this conversation drop. He loved Sheen, but not consistently and not enough. His personal life in Proton seemed to be an unravelable knot. They were in one of the public lavatories for serfs, with rows of sinks, toilets, and showers. The message cable pa.s.sed the length of its floor, buried but within range of the detector. Pa.s.sing serfs, seeing a Citizen present, hastily departed for other facilities.