Robot Adept (22 page)

Fleta had already seen enough of the game system to appreciate how intolerant the Game Computer was of interference. That reassured her.

“Of course that doesn’t apply to Citizens,” Mach said. “They set their own schedules. But most who have the interest to play, also have the pride to do it properly.”

“But if the prize be Citizenship, and the cost of loss be exile, why do Citizens play?” Fleta asked.
 

“Mere entertainment. Victory gains them nothing, and loss costs them nothing. They are immune. But those they play against are bound. If you come up against a Citizen, call him sir and play to win. He cannot hurt you, here, except by beating you.”

“Not e’en Citizen Tan?”

“Not even he,” he reassured her.

Then, seemingly suddenly, the Tourney started, and she was summoned to her first game. “I am not allowed to help you, here,” Mach said. “But I will try to tune in on Bane. If I can find him, I can tell him what we need.”

“Do thou do that,” she said, kissing him.
 
She followed the line to the console. She was the first there, which made her feel better, though she knew it made no difference.

She looked at the screen.

TOURNEY ROUND ONE: FLETA VS JIMBO

She hoped Jimbo was a duffer.

He turned out to be a man in his fifties. There were no ladders in the Tourney; they were for qualification only. He nodded at her, then took his stance at the console.

Her numbers lighted. That meant she could not select ANIMAL. But she had discussed this with Mach, and knew her best route. Without hesitation she touched 4.ARTS.

It settled on 4A: Naked Arts. The choices were Poetry, Stories, Singing, Dancing, Pantomime and Drama, with distinctions between recitative and creative. They assembled the nine-square subgrid and chose, and came up with Original Story telling.

JUDGING: the screen printed.
    
COMPUTER
           
PANEL
    
AUDIENCE.

This was new to Fleta. Should she touch one of the words? But there was no grid.

“We can do it by agreement if we want,” Jimbo said.
 
“Me, I don’t like a machine deciding how I rate, or a panel of experts either.”

“A living audience,” Fleta agreed, relieved. She touched that choice, and evidently he did too, for that one highlighted.

SUBJECT:
           
the screen continued.
   
SELECTED BY COMPUTER RANDOM AUDIENCE.

Fleta hadn’t realized that a subject had to be chosen; she had assumed that any story would do. She wasn’t certain how she would do if she got a bad subject. Since she could not choose it herself, and shared her opponent’s distrust of impersonal decisions, she asked “Audience?”

“Agreed,” Jimbo said immediately.

ADJOURN TO STAGE. And a line appeared, showing the way.

They followed it to the stage. There was a small dais and an audience section with seats for about twenty five.

Now they had to wait for the audience to arrive. It seemed that a number of Tourney spectators had registered for audience purposes, and were on tap awaiting assignment. The Computer was making a random selection and notifying the selectees of this assignment.
 
They were now following their lines to this chamber.

In a few minutes exactly twenty-five people arrived.
 
They were all serfs, male and female, ranging from young to old. They took their seats in silence.
 
A note sounded at the large screen set in the wall behind the stage. All eyes fixed on it.

AUDIENCE WILL SELECT SUBJECT FOR STORYTELLING. THE FOLLOWING SUBJECTS ARE AVAILABLE; TOUCH BUTTON ON CHAIR WHEN CHOICE IS HIGHLIGHTED.

Then the screen was filled with an alphabetical listing of subjects, beginning with ABANDONMENT and ending with ZOOLOGICAL. The Computer gave the audience a moment to consider the list, then the first word was highlighted. In a second the next was, and then the third, the lighting continuing at one-second 1intervals until the list had been covered, several minutes later.

THE LEADING CHOICES ARE, the screen announced, ILLICIT WEALTH
    
UNTIMELY

DEATH
   
FORBIDDEN LOVE. TOUCH

WHEN CHOICE IS HIGHLIGHTED.

The highlight made its tour.

Then: SUBJECT IS FORBIDDEN LOVE. AUDIENCE WILL FIRST STORYTELLER.

Then a light illuminated Fleta, and moved across to Jimbo. JIMBO SPEAKS FIRST.

Fleta did not know on what basis the audience decided, but she was relieved; this was proceeding so efficiently that she had not been able to organize her thoughts. She was, after all, an animal; she knew she lacked the versatility of a human being. What story of forbidden love was right for this audience?
 
“Uh, well,” Jimbo said, evidently also somewhat at a loss. He did not seem to be any better prepared for this than Fleta was, which made her wonder. Maybe he had just gotten into a bad area, for him.
 
Then he shrugged, as if deciding something private, and began his story.

“There was once this serf, and he wasn’t much, he was forty when he came to Proton, but all they let anybody have is twenty years anyway so maybe that didn’t make much difference. He was a message carrier—any time the Citizen wanted a note delivered personal, so it wouldn’t be in the records, this serf would hand-carry it to wherever it was going. It wasn’t a bad job; he got to travel all over Proton, just taking messages, and got to sleep over at some pretty fancy Citizen estates while waiting for the reply-message to be ready.
 
It went along like this for about nine years, and then the Citizen died and his daughter inherited it.” Jimbo paused. Fleta saw some knowing smiles in the audience, and realized that they were guessing what was coming next. This seemed to be Jimbo’s own story!
 
“This woman, the new Citizen, was maybe twenty nine years old, and she was the damned loveliest creature in the dome. Her hair sort of rippled when she walked, throwing off highlights, and her eyes were like twin headlamps, they were so clear and bright. But because she was new, she was uncertain, and she didn’t want to make any fool of herself, putting on the wrong airs in the wrong place, you know, specially when it came to handling serfs. So she sort of asked this serf for advice, because he’d been with the estate for nine years and kept his mouth shut, because sometimes the messages he carried were verbal and he would’ve been fired if he ever breathed a syllable of them to any but the designated party, so he just didn’t say much of anything to anyone, just to be safe. She liked that, so she said, ‘I want a message, only to me,’ and then she asked how she should handle this other serf who sort of did things wrong but didn’t mean to. And the me sage serf, he delivered his message, only it was really just his advice, that she should maybe reorganize her household a little, and move that clumsy serf to another position without saying why, so no feelings would be hurt and nobody had to be fired. And she did that, and it worked out just fine, and after that she asked for other messages like that.

“And then one time she sort of forgot where she was, only it didn’t really matter because Citizens make their own rules and serfs just do what they’re told. She was getting ready for a party, and she’d sent her personal maid for something, and the messenger man was there, so she just told him to take off her robe and put on the new one she had selected. So he put his hands on her shoulders from behind, and pinched the fabric, and lifted it up, and it came right off her and she was naked.
 
Then he folded it and set it down and fetched the new robe from its hanger, only it was really more like an evening gown, and she turned and lifted her arms so he could put the gown up over her, and she had the body like only an android or robot made for that sort of thing ever has, only on her it was real, I mean natural, and he like to have goggled, because mostly Citizens don’t take much care of themselves and even when they look good in a gown it’s mostly corset stays and foundation creme and whatever, or maybe a fresh rejuve treatment, but she didn’t even use underwear, her body was genuine throughout. And then she was mostly dressed, and looking just as good, only better, because he knew it didn’t just come with the clothing.
 

“Then the maid came back, and took over, and he went back to his chamber. But it was like that image of that body was burned into his retinas, because he kept seeing it every time he blinked. And suddenly he lost interest in the android gal who would be with him any time he wanted, because she was like a cratered moon, and the Citizen was like the sun. And every time he saw the Citizen, she was clothed but he saw her naked like a serf, and her skin shining, and her eyes sort of looking at him, and it was like a fire inside him, but she never noticed. Sometimes she’d bring in these men, Citizens, and have sex with them, and they were jaded but they got hot for her in a hurry when they discovered that her body didn’t come off with the clothing, and sometimes she’d just hire a robot to do it exactly the way she liked it. Only she didn’t like to have to tell a robot how, that was maybe too much like masturbation, so she’d have the messenger tell the robot, and make sure the robot had it right. And the messenger—“

Jimbo paused, again, and it was clear that every member of the audience understood his hesitation perfectly.
 
He had conceived a passion for a Citizen: forbidden love indeed! What was he going to do about it?
 

“Then one day she had a new robot, and maybe there was a circuit not properly integrated, because it wasn’t getting it quite right, even though it had the instructions down pat and could repeat them verbatim. ‘Damn it!’ she swore, irritated. So she called in the messenger and told him to show the robot how to do it right. He was moving too fast and heavy, when she liked slow and light. So the messenger, he got down on her—“ He paused again, but the audience did not object.
 
Evidently he was uncertain about how much detail he should provide, and what was relevant to the assigned subject, and how to phrase it for this mixed audience.
 
Fleta, too, was thrust into thought, perhaps for different reason. Jimbo was telling how a male humanoid robot was routinely used for sexual purpose; apparently this was accepted in Proton. She had had relations with just such a robot. If she told her own story—and indeed, it was all she could think of to do—would this audience take it to be routine and therefore dull, and deem her the loser? What was the most wonderful experience of her life might seem, here, to be unworthy of mention.
 
If she lost, here in this first round, she would be shipped to Moeba, and would never be able to exchange back to her own body in Phaze. But if she won, she would have several more days before the second round, and maybe by then—

“He got down on her,” Jimbo repeated, resuming his narration. “His heart was beating like a teenager’s, because the Citizen’s body was his ultimate dream, and all he wanted to do was be like this with her for real, and have her want him as a man. He knew this wasn’t so, that she saw him only as a convenient source of minor information, and now as a device to demonstrate a minor technique to a machine, but his dream wanted to pretend it was something more.

“His flesh touched hers, lightly, and penetrated gently, moving with just that constrained urgency that she required. ‘Yes, like that,’ she said to the robot. ‘Proceed exactly like that.’ The robot nodded, understanding at last.

“Her face turned back to the messenger, and he knew she was about to tell him to get off, now that his job was done. But the folly of the forbidden dream over came him, and suddenly he plunged on in, exactly the way the robot was not supposed to. Her mouth opened with surprise, the annoyance just beginning, and he put his mouth on hers and kissed her savagely as his loin thrust against her and his body exploded in rapture.
 

“Then, his folly of passion abating, he realized what he had done. He had raped a Citizen! He scrambled up and ran from the chamber, knowing that his life was forfeit. He did not try to flee, for there was nowhere to go; he simply waited for what was to come.
 

“After an hour the call came: to report to the Citizen’s front office. He knew there would be a robot there to take him into custody. For one moment of bliss he had forfeited all that he had worked for for nine years.
 
He went, but the Citizen was there alone, standing in total loveliness in a gown. ‘I require a message, for one only,’ she said. ‘If a serf oversteps his bounds, what should a Citizen do?’ He knew she was referring to him.
 
‘Have him put to death,’ he replied, determined at least not to be a coward in his termination.

“Her expression did not change. ‘If he has otherwise given good service, and perhaps was overtaken by an aberration of the moment?’ she asked. He had not even hoped for such generosity of response! ‘Fire him,’ he said.

“She turned away from him. ‘If publication of the offense might cause embarrassment to the Citizen?’ she asked. Then he dared indeed hope! ‘Enter him in the Tourney without explanation,’ he said.

“She nodded. ‘Thank you,’ she said. And so it was that he found himself in the Tourney, though he had always been a duffer in the Game and knew he would quickly wash out and be deported. But his years of service still counted (for he had not been fired) and would represent a very nice payment on his departure; he would leave with an untarnished record. He was duly grateful for this, knowing how much worse it could have been, and his respect for his employer was undiminished. But still in his dream he had the temerity to wonder: was it possible that in some tiny way the Citizen had returned his interest, and perhaps been nattered by his inability to hold back when given the opportunity to indulge his passion with her? Could she have been unable to admit any trace of an interest so far beneath her, yet not displeased to have had the indulgence of it forced upon her? Would that account for her uncommon generosity in dealing with the one who had ravished her?”