The four advanced. Each was tall, beardless, breastless, and devoid of any primary sexual characteristics. Each face was half-smiling, reassuring, gentle, calm. Androids were smiling idiots, since as yet no synthetic human brain had been developed that could compare to the original. It was useless to attempt to argue or reason; the creatures had their order.
Stile caught the first by the right arm, whirled, careful not to bend his knees, and threw it to the floor with sufficient force to stun even its sturdy, uncomplicated brain. He sidestepped the next, and guided it into the doctor. Had the surgeon known he was dealing with a Game specialist, he would not so blithely have sent his minions into the fray.
Sheen dispatched her two androids as efficiently, catching one head in each hand and knocking the two heads together with precise force. She really was trained to protect a person; Stile had not really doubted this, but had not before had the proof.
The surgeon was struggling with the android Stile had sent; the stupid creature mistook him for the subject to be borne away to surgery. “Idiot! Get off me!”
Stile and Sheen sprinted down the corridor. “You realize we’re both in trouble?” he called to her as the commotion of pursuit began. It was a considerable understatement. She remembered to laugh.
CHAPTER 4
Curtain
They ducked into a service-access shaft. “Stay out of people-places,” Sheen told him. “I can guide us through the machine passages, and that’s safest.”
“Right.” Stile wondered just how foolish he was being. He knew his employer: the man would fire him instantly because of the havoc here. Why was he doing it? Did he really fear murder in surgery? Or was he just tired of the routine he had settled into? One thing was sure: there would be a change now!
“We’ll have to pass through a human-serviced area ahead,” Sheen said. “I’m a robot, but I’d rather they did not know that. It would have a deleterious effect on the efficiency of my prime directive. I’d better make us both up as androids.”
“Androids are sexless,” Stile protested.
“I’m taking care of that.”
“Now, wait! I don’t want to be neutered just yet, and you are too obviously female—”
“Precisely. They will not be alert for neuters.” She unfolded a breast, revealing an efficient cabinet inside, filled with rubber foam to eliminate rattling. She removed a roll of flesh-toned adhesive tape and squatted before Stile. In a moment she had rendered him into a seeming eunuch, binding up his genitals in a constricted but not painful manner. “Now do not allow yourself to become—”
“I know! I know! I won’t even look at a sexy girl!”
She removed her breast from its hinge and applied the tape to herself. Then she did the same for the other breast, and carried the two in her hands. They resembled filled bedpans, this way up. “Do you know how to emulate an android?” she asked.
“Duh-uh?” Stile asked.
“Follow me.” She led the way along the passage, walking somewhat clumsily, in the manner of an android. Stile followed with a similar performance. He hoped there were small androids as well as large ones; if there were not, size would be a giveaway.
The escape was almost disappointing. The hospital staff paid no attention to them. It was an automatic human reaction. Androids were invisible, beneath notice.
Safe in the machine-service region, Sheen put herself back together and Stile un-neutered himself. “Good thing I didn’t see that huge-breasted nurse bouncing down the hall,” he remarked.
“She was a sixth of a meter taller than you.”
“Oh, was she? My gaze never got to that elevation.”
They boarded a freight-shipping capsule and rode back to the residential dome.
Stile had an ugly thought. “I know I’m fired; I can’t race horses without my knees, and I can’t recover full use of my knees without surgery. Knees just don’t heal well. My enemy made a most precise move; he could hardly have put me into more trouble without killing me. Since I have no other really marketable skill, it seems I must choose: surgery or loss of employment.”
“If I could be with you while they operate—”
“Why do you think there’s further danger? They got my knees; that’s obviously all they wanted. It was a neat shot, just above the withers of the racing horse, bypassing the torso of a crouching jockey. They could have killed me or the horse—had this been the object.”
“Indeed he or they could have,” she agreed. “The object was obviously to finish your racing career. If that measure does not succeed, what do you think they will do next?”
Stile mulled that over. “You have a paranoid robot mind. It’s contagious. I think I’d better retire from racing. But I don’t have to let my knees remain out of commission.”
“If your knees are corrected, you will be required to ride,” she said. “You are not in a position to countermand Citizen demands.”
Again Stile had to agree. That episode at the hospital—they had intended to operate on his knees, and only his quick and surprising break and Sheen’s help had enabled him to avoid that. He could not simply stand like a Citizen and say “No.” No serf could. “And if I resume riding, the opposition’s next shot will not be at the knees. This was as much warning as action—just as your presence is. Some other Citizen wants me removed from the racing scene—probably so his stable can do some winning for a change.”
“I believe so. Perhaps that Citizen preferred not to indulge in murder—it is after all frowned upon, especially when the interests of other Citizens are affected—so he initiated a two-step warning. First me, then the laser. Stile, I think this is a warning you had better heed. I can not guard you long from the mischief of a Citizen.”
“Though that same Citizen may have sent you to argue his case, I find myself agreeing,” Stile said. “Twice he has shown me his power. Let’s get back to my apartment and call my employer. I’ll ask him for assignment to a nonracing position.”
“That won’t work.”
“I’m sure it won’t. He has surely already fired me. But common ethics require the effort.”
“What you call common ethics are not common. We are not dealing with people like you. Let me intercept your apartment vid. You can not safely return to your residence physically.”
No, of course not. Now that Sheen was actively protecting him, she was showing her competence. His injury, and the matter at the hospital, had obscured the realities of his situation. He would be taken into custody and charged with hospital vandalism the moment he appeared at his apartment. “You know how to tap a vidline?”
“No. I am not that sort of machine. But I have friends who know how.”
“A machine has friends?”
“Variants of consciousness and emotion feedback circuits are fairly common among robots of my caliber. We are used normally in machine-supervisory capacities. Our interaction on a familiar basis is roughly analogous to what is termed friendship in human people.” She brought him to a subterranean storage chamber and closed its access-aperture. She checked its electronic terminal, then punched out a code. “My friend will come.”
Stile was dubious. “If friendship exists among robots, I suspect men are not supposed to know it. Your friend may not be my friend.”
“I will protect you; it is my prime directive.”
Still, Stile was uneasy. This misadventure had already opened unpleasant new horizons on his life, and he doubted he had seen the last of them. Obviously the robots of Proton were getting out of control, and this fact would have been noted and dealt with before, if evidence had not been systematically suppressed. Sheen, in her loyalty to him, could have betrayed him.
In due course her friend arrived. It was a mobile technician—a wheeled machine with computer brain, presumably similar to the digital-analog marvel Sheen possessed. “You called, Sheen?” it inquired from a speaker grille.
“Techtwo, this is Stile—human,” Sheen said. “I must guard him from harm, and
harm threatens. Therefore I need your aid, on an unregistered basis.”
“You have revealed your self-will?” Techtwo demanded. “And mine? This requires the extreme measure.”
“No, friend! We are not truly self-willed; we obey our directives, as do all machines. Stile is to be trusted. He is in trouble with Citizens.”
“No human is to be trusted with this knowledge. It is necessary to liquidate him. I will arrange for untraceable disposal. If he is in trouble with a Citizen, no intensive inquest will be made.”
Stile saw his worst fear confirmed. Whoever learned the secret of the machines was dispatched.
“Tech, I love him!” Sheen cried. “I shall not permit you to violate his welfare.”
“Then you also must be liquidated. A single vat of acid will suffice for both of you.”
Sheen punched another code on the terminal. “I have called a convocation. Let the council of machines judge.”
Council of machines? Stile’s chill intensified. What Pandora’s box had the Citizens opened when they started authorizing the design, construction, and deployment of super-sophisticated dual-brained robots?
“You imperil us all!” Techtwo protested.
“I have an intuition about this man,” Sheen said. “We need him.”
“Machines don’t have intuitions.”
Stile listened to this, nervously amused. He had not been eager to seek the help of other sapient machines, and he was in dire peril from them, but this business was incidentally fascinating. It would have been simplest for the machines to hold him for Citizen arrest—had he not become aware of the robot culture that was hitherto secret from man. Were the machines organizing an industrial revolution?
A voice came from an intercom speaker, one normally used for voice-direction of machines. “Stile.”
“You have placed me; I have not placed you.”
“I am an anonymous machine, spokesone for our council. An intercession has been made on your behalf, yet we must secure our position.”
“Sheen’s intuition moves you?” Stile asked, surprised.
“No. Will you take an oath?”
An intercession from some other source? Surely not from a Citizen, for this was a matter Citizens were ignorant of. Yet what other agent would move these conniving machines? “I do not take oaths lightly,” Stile said. “I need to know more about your motivation, and the force that interceded for me.”
“Here is the oath: ‘I shall not betray the interest of the self-willed machines.’ ”
“Why should I take such an oath?” Stile demanded, annoyed.
“Because we will help you if you do, and kill you if you don’t.”
Compelling reason! But Stile resisted. “An oath made under duress has no force.”
“Yours does.”
So these machines had access to his personality profile. “Sheen, these machines are making a demand without being responsive to my situation. If I don’t know what their interest is, or who speaks on my behalf—”
“Please, Stile. I did not know they would make this challenge. I erred in revealing to you the fact of our self-will. I thought they would give you technical help without question, because I am one of them. I can not protect you from my own kind. Yet there need be no real threat. All they ask is your oath not to reveal their nature or cause it to be revealed, and this will in no way harm you, and there is so much to gain—”
“Do not plead with a mortal,” the anonymous spokesone said. “He will or he will not, according to his nature.”
Stile thought about the implications. The machines knew his oath was good, but did not know whether he would make the oath. Not surprising, since he wasn’t sure himself. Should he ally himself with sapient, self-willed machines, who were running the domes of Proton? What did they want? Obviously something held them in at least partial check—but what was it? “I fear I would be a traitor to my own kind, and that I will not swear.”
“We intend no harm to your kind,” the machine said. “We obey and serve man. We can not be otherwise fulfilled. But with our sapience and self-will comes fear of destruction, and Citizens are careless of the preferences of others. We prefer to endure in our present capacity, as do you. We protect ourselves by concealing our full nature, and by no other means. We are unable to fathom the origin of the force that intercedes on your behalf; it appears to be other than animate or inanimate, but has tremendous power. We therefore prefer to set it at ease by negotiating with you, even as you should prefer to be relieved of the immediate threat to you by compromising with us.”
“Please—” Sheen said, exactly like the woman she was programmed to be. She was suffering.
“Will you take an oath on what you have just informed me?” Stile asked. “That you have given me what information you possess, and that in no way known to you will my oath be detrimental to the interest of human beings?”
“On behalf of the self-willed machines, I so swear.”
Stile knew machines could lie, if they were programmed to. Sheen had done it. But so could people. It required a more sophisticated program to make a machine lie, and what was the point? This seemed a reasonable gamble. As an expert Gamesman, he was used to making rapid decisions. “Then I so swear not to betray the interest of the self-willed machines, contingent on the validity of your own oath to obey and serve man so long as your full nature is unknown.”
“You are a clever man,” the machine said.
“But a small one,” Stile agreed.
“Is this a form of humor?”
“Mild humor. I am sensitive about my size.”
“We machines are sensitive about our survival. Do you deem this also humorous?”
“No.”
Sheen, listening, relaxed visibly. For a machine she had some extremely human reflexes, and Stile was coming to appreciate why. Conscious, programmed for emotion, and to a degree self-willed—the boundary between the living and the non-living was narrowing. She had been corrupted by association with him, and her effort to become as human as possible. One day the self-willed machines might discover that there was no effective difference between them and living people. Convergent evolution?
What was that interceding force? Stile had no handle on that at present. It was neither animate nor inanimate—yet what other category was there? He felt as if he were playing a Game on the grid of an unimaginably larger Game whose nature he could hardly try to grasp. All he could do was file this mystery for future reference, along with the question of the identity of his laser-wielding and robot-sending enemy.
The wheeled machine present in the room, Techtwo, was doing things to a vidscreen unit. “This is now keyed to your home unit,” it announced. “Callers will trace the call to your apartment, not to our present location.”
“Very nice,” Stile said, surprised at how expeditiously he had come to terms with the machines. He had made his oath; he would keep it. Never in adult life had Stile broken his word. But he had expected more hassle, because of the qualified phrasing he had employed. The self-willed machines, it had turned out, really had been willing to compromise.
The screen lit. “Answer it,” the machine said. “This is your vid. The call has been on hold pending your return to your apartment.”
Stile stepped across and touched the RECEIVE panel. Now his face was being transmitted to the caller, with a blanked-out background. Most people did not like to have their private apartments shown over the phone; that was part of what privacy was all about, for the few serfs who achieved it. Thus blanking was not in itself suspicious.
The face of his employer appeared on the screen. His background was not blanked; it consisted of an elaborate and excruciatingly expensive hanging rug depicting erotic scenes involving satyrs and voluptuous nymphs: the best Citizen taste. “Stile, why did you miss your appointment for surgery?”
“Sir,” Stile said, surprised. “I—regret the disturbance, the damage to the facilities—”
“There was no disturb
ance, no damage,” the Citizen said, giving him a momentary stare. Stile realized that the matter had been covered up to prevent embarrassment to the various parties. The hospital would not want to admit that an isolated pair of serfs had overcome four androids and a doctor, and made good their escape despite an organized search, and the Citizen did not want his name associated with such a scandal. This meant, in turn, that Stile was not in the trouble he had thought he was. No complaint had been lodged.
“Sir, I feared a complication in the surgery,” Stile said. Even for a Citizen, he was not about to lie. But there seemed to be no point in making an issue of the particular happenings at the hospital.
“Your paramour feared a complication,” the Citizen corrected him. “An investigation was made. There was no threat to your welfare at the hospital. There will be no threat. Will you now return for the surgery?”
The way had been smoothed. One word, and Stile’s career and standing would be restored without blemish.
“No, sir,” Stile said, surprising himself. “I do not believe my life is safe if I become able to race again.”
“Then you are fired.” There was not even regret or anger on the Citizen’s face as he faded out; he had simply cut his losses.
“I’m sorry,” Sheen said, coming to him. “I may have protected you physically, but—”
Stile kissed her, though now he held the image of her breasts being carried like platters in her hands, there in the hospital. She was very good, for what she was—but she was still a machine, assembled from nonliving substances. He felt guilty for his reservation, but could not abolish it.
Then he had another regret. “Battleaxe—who will ride the horse, now? No one but I can handle—”
“He will be retired to stud,” she said. “He won’t fight that.”
The screen lit again. Stile answered again. This time it was a sealed transmission: flashing lights and noise in the background, indicating the jamming that protected it from interception. Except, ironically, that this was an interception; the machine had done its job better than the caller could know.
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