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?
'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 because 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 too!'
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.'
