“Sir, I am accompanied by a humanoid robot programmed to guard me from harm. Did you send her?”
“No.”
“Then another Citizen may have done so. My suspicion is that a competitor could have sugarcoated a bomb-“
“No!” Sheen cried in horror.
“Get that thing away from my horses!” the Citizen snapped. “My security squad will handle it.”
“Sheen, dismount and run!” Stile cried. “Away from us, until the squad hails you.”
She leaped out of the saddle and ran through the trees.
“Sir,” Stile said.
“What is it now. Stile?” The impatience was stronger.
“I plead: be gentle with her. She means no harm.”
There was no answer. The Citizen was now tuning in on the activity of his security squad. Stile could only hope. If this turned out to be a false alarm, he would receive a reprimand for his carelessness in bringing Sheen to these premises unverified, and she might be returned to him intact. His employer was cognizant of the human factor in the winning of races, just as Stile was aware of the equine factor. There was no point in prejudicing the spirit of a jockey before a race.
But if Sheen did in fact represent a threat, such as an explosive device planted inside her body and concealed from her knowledge—
Stile waited where he was for ten minutes, while the two horses fidgeted, aware of his nervousness. He had certainly been foolish; he should have checked with his employer at the outset, when he first caught on that Sheen was a robot. Had not his liking for her blinded him—as perhaps it was supposed to—he would have realized immediately that a robot-covered bomb would make a mockery of her prime directive to guard him from harm. How could she protect him from her own unanticipated destruction? Yet now he was imposing on her another rape—
“She is clean,” the concealed speaker said. “I believe one of my friends has played a practical joke on me. Do you wish to keep her?”
“Sir, I do.” Stile felt immense relief. The Citizen was taking this with good grace.
Again, there was no response. The Citizen had better things to do than chat with errant serfs. But in a moment Sheen came walking back through the foliage. She looked the same—but as she reached him, she dissolved into tears.
Stile jumped down and took her in his arms. She clung to him desperately. “Oh, it was horrible!” she sobbed. “They rayed me and took off my head and dismantled my body—“
“The security squad is efficient,” Stile agreed. “But they put you back together again, as good as before.”
“I can’t believe that! Resoldered connections aren’t as strong as the originals, and I think they damaged my power supply by shorting it out. I spoke of rape last night, but I did not know the meaning of the term!”
And this was the gentle treatment! Had Stile not pleaded for her, and had he not been valuable to the Citizen, Sheen would have been junked without compunction. It would not have occurred to the Citizen to consider her feelings, or even to realize that a robot had feelings. Fortunately she had turned out clean, no bomb or other threat in her, and had been restored to him. He had been lucky. “Sir: thank you.”
“Just win that race,” the speaker said grumpily.
There it was, without even the effort to conceal it: the moment Stile’s usefulness ended, he would be discarded with no further concern. He had to keep winning races!
“You pleaded for me,” Sheen said, wiping her eyes with her fingers. “You saved me.”
“I like you,” Stile admitted awkwardly.
“And I love you. And oh. Stile, I can never—“
He halted her protestations with a kiss. What use to dwell on the impossible? He liked her, and respected her—but they both knew he could never, this side of sanity, actually love a machine.
They remounted and continued their ride through the lush gardens. They passed a quaint ornate fountain, with a stone fish jetting water from its mouth, and followed the flow to a glassy pond. Sheen paused to use the reflection to clean up her face and check for dam-age, not quite trusting the expertise of the security squad.
“Twice I have accused you falsely—“ Stile began, deeply disturbed.
“No, Stile. The second time I accused me. It could have been, you know—a programmed directive to guard you from harm, with an unprogrammed, strictly mechanical booby trap to do the opposite. Or to take out the Citizen himself, when we got close enough. We had to check—but oh, I feel undone!”
“Nevertheless, I owe you one,” he said. “You are a machine—but you do have rights. Ethical rights, if not legal ones. You should not have been subjected to this sort of thing—and if I had been alert, I would have kept you off my employer’s premises until—“ He shrugged. “I would never have put you through this, had I anticipated it.”
“I know you wouldn’t,” she said. “You have this foolish concern for animals and machines.” She smiled wanly. Then she organized herself and remounted Molly. “Come on—let’s canter!”
They cantered. Then the horses got the spirit of competition and moved into a full gallop, pretending to race each other. They had felt the tension and excitement of the bomb investigation without comprehending it, and now had surplus energy to let off. Arcades and mini-jungles and statuary sped by, a wonderland of wealth, but no one cared. For the moment they were free, the four of them, charging through their own private world—a world where they were man and woman, stallion and mare, in perfect harmony. Four minds with a single appreciation.
Too soon it ended. They had completed the loop. They dismounted, and Stile turned Battleaxe over to a groom. “Walk him down; he’s in fine fettle, but I’ll be racing him this afternoon. Give Molly a treat; she’s good company.”
“That’s all?” Sheen inquired as they left the premises. “You have time off?”
“My time is my own—so long as I win races. The horse is ready; odds are we’ll take that race handily. I may even avoid a reprimand for my carelessness, though the Citizen knows I know I deserve one. Now I have only to prepare myself.”
“How do you do that?”
“One guess,” he said, squeezing her hand.
“Is that according to the book?”
“Depends on the book.”
“I like that book. Must be hard on normal girls, though.”
He snorted. She was well aware he had not had normal girls in his apartment for a long time. Not on a live-in arrangement.
Back at that apartment. Sheen went about her toilette. Now that she no longer had to conceal her nature from him, she stopped eating; there was no sense wasting food. But she had to dispose of the food she had consumed before. Her process of elimination resembled the human process, except that the food was undigested. She flushed herself by drinking a few liters of water and passing it immediately through, followed by an antiseptic solution. After that, she was clean—literally. She would need water only to recharge her reserve after tears; she did not perspire.
Stile knew about all this because he knew about robots; he did not further degrade her appearance of life by asking questions. She had privacy when she wanted it, as a human woman would have had. He did wonder why the security squad had bothered to reassemble her complete with food; maybe they had concentrated on her metal bones rather than the soft tissues, and had not actually deboweled her.
He treated her as he would a lady—yet as he became more thoroughly aware that she was not human, a certain reserve was forming like a layer of dust on a once-bright surface. He liked her very well—but his emotion would inevitably become platonic in time.
He tried to conceal this from her, but she knew it. “My time with you is limited,” she said. “Yet let me dream while I may.”
Stile took her, and held her, and let her dream. He knew no other way to lessen her long-term tragedy.