Piers Anthony - Split Infinity

“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 in-jury, 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 al-ready 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. There-fore 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 pro- file. “Sheen, these machines are making a demand with- out 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 Pro-ton? 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.”