Split Infinity Read Online Free PDF Page B

she looked halfway hopeful. Stile knew her facial expressions were the product of the same craftsmanship as the rest of her; perhaps he was imagining the emotion he saw. Yet it moved him.
    “You presume too much. Ultimately I must go with my own kind. But in the interim I am satisfied to play the Game—at least until I can discover what threat there is to my welfare that requires a humanoid robot for protection.”
    She nodded. “Yes, there is logic. I was to pose as your lady friend, thereby being close to you at all times, even during your sleep, guarding you from harm. If you pretend to accept me as such, I can to that extent fulfill my mission.”
    “Why should I pretend? I accept you as you are.” “Stop it!” she cried. “You have no idea what it is like to be a robot!   To be made in the image of the ideal, yet doomed always to fall short—“
    Now Stile felt brief anger. “Sheen, turn off your logic and listen.” He sat beside her on the couch and took her hand. Her fingers trembled with an unmechanical disturbance. “I am a small man, smaller than almost anyone I know. All my life it has been the bane of my existence. As a child I was teased and excluded from many games because others did not believe I could per-form. My deficiency was so obvious that the others often did not even realize they were hurting my feelings by omitting me. In adolescence it was worse; no girl cared to associate with a boy smaller than herself. In adult life it is more subtle, yet perhaps worst of all.   Human beings place inordinate stress on physical height. Tall men are deemed to be the leaders, short men are the clowns. In reality, small people are generally healthier than large ones; they are better coordinated, they live longer. They eat less, waste less, require less space. I benefit from all these things; it is part of what makes me a master of the Game and a top jockey.   But small people are not taken seriously. My opinion is not granted the same respect as that of a large man.
    When I encounter another person, and my level gaze meets his chin, he knows I am inferior, and so does everyone else, and it becomes difficult for me to doubt it myself.” “But you are not inferior!” Sheen protested. “Neither are you! Does that knowledge help?”
    She was silent. “We are not dealing with an objective thing,” Stile continued. “Self-respect is subjective. It may be based on foolishness, but it is critical to a per-son’s motivation. You said I had no idea what it meant to be doomed always to fall short. But I am literally shorter than you are. Do you understand?”
    “No. You are human. You have proved yourself. It would be foolish to—“
    “Foolish? Indubitably. But I would give all my status in the Game, perhaps my soul itself, for one quarter meter more height. To be able to stand before you and look down at you. You may be fashioned in my ideal of woman, but I am not fashioned in my ideal of man. You are a rational creature, beneath your superficial programming; under my programming I am an irrational animal.”
    She shifted her weight on the couch, but did not try to stand. Her body, under the gauze, was a marvel of allure. How patently her designer had crafted her to subvert Stile’s reason, making him blind himself to the truth in his sheer desire to possess such a woman! On another day, that might have worked. Stile had almost been fooled. “Would you exchange your small human body,” she asked, “for a large humanoid robot body?”
    “No.” He did not even need to consider.
    “Then you do not fall short of me.”
    “This is the point I am making. I know what it is to be unfairly ridiculed or dismissed. I know what it is to be doomed to be less than the ideal, with no hope of improvement. Because the failure is, at least in part, in my ideal. I could have surgery to lengthen my body.   But the wounds are no longer of the body. My body has proved itself. My soul has not.”
    “I have no soul