Juxtaposition (25 page)

The prior case cleared, and it was Stile’s turn before the panel. “It has been brought to our attention that you propose to designate a humanoid robot as your heir to Citizenship,” the presiding Citizen said. “Do you care to present your rationale?”

Stile knew this had to be good. These were not objective machines but subjective people, which was why there could be no certainty about the decision. The wrong words could foul it up. “I am a very recent Citizen, whose life has been threatened by calamitous events; I am conscious of my mortality and wish to provide for the continuation of my estate. Therefore I have designated as my heir the person who is closest to me in Proton: my prospective wife, the Lady Sheen, here.” He indicated Sheen, who cast her eyes down demurely.

“She happens to be a lady robot.
 
As you surely know, robots are sophisticated today; she is hardly distinguishable from a living person in ordinary interactions. She can eat and sleep and initiate complex sequences. She can even evince bad temper.”

“The typical woman,” the presiding Citizen agreed with a brief smile. “Please come to the point.”

“Sheen has saved my life on more than one occasion, and she means more to me than any other person here. I have made her my chief of staff and am satisfied with the manner in which she is running my estate. I want to make our association more binding. Unless there is a regulation preventing the designation of one’s wife as one’s heir, I see no problem.”

The three panelists deliberated. “There is no precedent,” the presiding Citizen said. “No one has designated a robot before. Machines do well enough as staff members, concubines, stand-ins, and such, but seldom is one married and never have we had a nonhuman Citizen.”

“If an alien creature won the Tourney one year, would it be granted Citizenship?” Stile asked.
 

“Of course. Good point,” the Citizen said, nodding.
 
“But robots are not permitted to participate in the Game, so can not win the Tourney.”

“Do you mean to tell me that a frog-eyed, tentacular mass of slime from the farthest wash of the galaxy can be a Citizen—but this woman can not?” Stile demanded, again indicating Sheen.

The Citizens of the panel and of the group of bettors looked at Sheen, considering her as a person. She stood there bravely, smooth chin elevated, green eyes bright, her light brown hair flowing down her backside. Her face and figure were exquisitely female. There was even a slight flush at her throat. She had been created beautiful; in this moment she was splendid.

“But a robot has no human feeling,” another panelist said.

“How many Citizens do?” Stile asked.

The bettors laughed. “Good shot!” Waldens muttered.
 
The panelists did not respond to the humor. “A robot has no personal volition,” the presiding Citizen said. “A robot is not alive.”

This was awkward territory. Stile had promised not to give away the nature of the self-willed machines, who did indeed have personal volition. But he saw a way through.
 
“Sheen is a very special robot, the top of her class of machine,” he said. “Her brain is half digital, half analog, much as is the human brain, figuratively. Two hemispheres, with differing modes of operation. She approximates human consciousness and initiative as closely as a machine can. She has been programmed to resemble a living woman in all things, to think of herself as possessing the cares and concerns of life. She believes she has feeling and volition, because this is the nature of her program and her construction.” As he spoke, he remembered his first discussion with Sheen on this subject, before he discovered the frame of Phaze. He had chided her on her illusion of consciousness, and she had challenged him to prove he had free will. She had won her point, and he had come to love her as a person-a robot person. He had tended to forget, since his marriage to the Lady Blue, how deep his feeling for Sheen was. Now he was swinging back to her.
 
He truly believed she was a real person, whose mechanism happened to differ from his own but resulted in the same kind of personality.

“Many creatures have illusions,” a panelist remarked.

‘This is no necessary onus for Citizenship.” Stile saw that more would be required to overcome their prejudice. He would have to do a thing he did not like.
 
“Sheen, how do you feel about me?” he asked.

“I love you, sir,” she said.

“But you know I can not truly love a machine.”

“I know, sir.”

“And you are a machine.”

“Yes, sir”

“I will marry you and designate you as my heir to Citizenship, but I will not love you as man to woman. You know it is a marriage of convenience.”

“I know, sir.”

“Why do you submit to this indignity?”

“Because she wants Citizenship!” a Citizen exclaimed.
 
He was one of the ones betting against the acceptance of the heir designation.

Stile turned to the man. “How can a machine want?”

Then he returned to Sheen. “Do you want Citizenship?”

“No, sir.”

“Then why do you accede to this arrangement?”

“Because your wife in Phaze asked me to.”

“Oh, a stand-in for an other-frame wife!” Waldens said knowingly. “Cast in her image?”

“No, sir, she is beautiful,” Sheen said. “I can never substitute for her.”

‘I am interested,” the presiding panelist said. “Robot, are you capable of emotion? Do you feel, or think you feel? Do you want anything?”

“Yes, sir, to all three,” Sheen replied.

“Exactly what do you want, if not Citizenship?”

“I want Stile’s love, sir,” she said.

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 God’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 Citizenship as is a frog eyed, tentacular mass 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 damned! 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. “Damn!” he exclaimed. “I’m sorry. Sheen.”

She paused momentarily, analyzing 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. “Damn 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 Citizenship 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 compassion 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.”