Robot Adept by Piers Anthony Read Free Book Online

he said.
    She gazed at him in surprise. “Another game? But I thought—“
    “Thou didst think rightly! But I—I find I be not ready. I want to experience more things with thee, a greater variety, while I may. I want to build up a store o’ precious memories. Or something. I know not exactly what I want, only that I want it to be with thee.”
    “I see I have much to learn yet about the human condition,” she said, perplexed.
    “Nay, it be not thee, but me,” he reassured her.   “Only accept that I love thee, and let the rest be confused.”
    She spread her hands in a careful human gesture.
    “As you wish, Bane.”
    They went out to play another game, and another, and another, the victories and the losses immaterial, only the experience being important. So it continued for several days, with physical, mental and chance games of every type. They raced each other in sailcraft, they played Chinese checkers, they bluffed each other with poker, they battled with punnish riddles. Some times they cheated, indulging in one game while nominally playing another, as when they made love while theoretically wrestling in gelatin. Whatever else they did, they lived their joint life to the fullest extent they could manage, trying to cram decades into days.   They found themselves in machine-assisted art: playing parts in a randomly selected play whose other parts were played by programmed robots. Each of them was cued continuously on lines and action, so that there was no problem of memorization or practice. It was their challenge to interpret their parts well, with the Game Computer ready to rate their performance at the end.   They had specified a play involving male-female relations, of a romantic nature, with difficulties, and the computer had made a selection from among the many thousands in its repertoire.
    Thus they were acting in one by George Bernard Shaw titled You Never Can Tell, dating from the nineteenth century of Earth. Bane was VALENTINE and Agape was GLORIA CLANDON. They were well into the scene.
    “Oh, Miss Clandon, Miss Clandon: how could you?” he demanded.
    “What have I done?” she asked, startled.  
    “Thrown this enchantment on me ...” And as he spoke the scripted lines, he realized that it was true: she had enchanted him, though she had not intended to.
    “I hope you are not going to be so foolish—so vulgar—as to say love,” she responded with uncertain feeling. According to the play, she had no special feeling for him, but in reality she did; this was getting difficult for her.
    “No, no, no, no, no. Not love; we know better than that,” he said earnestly. “Let’s call it chemistry ...” And wasn’t this also true? What was love, really? But as he spoke, he became aware of something that should have been irrelevant. They had an audience.  
    “Nonsense!” she exclaimed with more certainty.
    They had not had an audience when they started.
    Several serfs had entered the chamber and taken seats.   Why? This was a private game, of little interest to any one else. “. . . you’re a prig: a feminine prig: that’s what you are,” he said, enjoying the line. “Now I suppose you’ve done with me forever.”
    “... I have many faults,” she said primly. “Very serious faults—of character and temper; but if there is one thing that I am not, it is what you call a prig.” She gazed challengingly at him.
    “Oh, yes, you are. My reason tells me so: my experience tells me so.” And his reason and experience told him that something was wrong: there should be no audience.
    “... your knowledge and your experience are not infallible,” she was saying, handling her lines with in creasing verve. “At least I hope not.”
    “I must believe them,” he said, wishing he could warn her about the audience without interfering with the set lines. “Unless you wish me to believe my eyes, my heart, my instincts, my imagination, which are all telling me the most monstrous lies about