The third robot story I wrote, "Liar!" introduced Susan Calvin-with whom I promptly fell in love. She so dominated my thoughts thereafter that, little by little, she ousted Powell and Donovan from their position. Those two appeared only in the three stories included in the previous section, and in a forth, "Escape!" in which they appear with Susan Calvin.
Somehow the impression I get as I look back on my career is that I must have included dear Susan in innumerable stories, but the fact is that she appeared in only ten stories, all of which are listed in this section. In the tenth, "Feminine Intuition," she emerges from retirement as an old lady who, however, has lost none of her acid charm.
You will note, by the way, that although most of the Susan Calvin stories were written at a time when male chauvinism was taken for granted in science fiction, Susan asks no favors and beats the men at their own game. To be sure, she remains sexually unfulfilled-but you can't have everything.
ALFRED LANNING LIT HIS CIGAR CAREFULLY, BUT the tips of his fingers were trembling slightly. His gray eyebrows hunched low as he spoke between puffs.
"It reads minds all right-damn little doubt about that! But why?" He looked at Mathematician Peter Bogert, "Well?"
Bogert flattened his black hair down with both hands, "That was the thirty-fourth RB model we've turned out, Lanning. All the others were strictly orthodox."
The third man at the table frowned. Milton Ashe was the youngest officer of U. S. Robot amp; Mechanical Men, Inc., and proud of his post.
"Listen, Bogert. There wasn't a hitch in the assembly from start to finish. I guarantee that."
Bogert's thick lips spread in a patronizing smile, "Do you? If you can answer for the entire assembly line, I recommend your promotion. By exact count, there are seventy-five thousand, two hundred and thirty-four operations necessary for the manufacture of a single positronic brain, each separate operation depending for successful completion upon any number of factors, from five to a hundred and five. If any one of them goes seriously wrong, the 'brain' is ruined. I quote our own information folder, Ashe."
Milton Ashe flushed, but a fourth voice cut off his reply.
"If we're going to start by trying to fix the blame on one another, I'm leaving." Susan Calvin's hands were folded tightly in her lap, and the little lines about her thin, pale lips deepened, "We've got a mind-reading robot on our hands and it strikes me as rather important that we find out just why it reads minds. We're not going to do that by saying, 'Your fault! My fault!' "
Her cold gray eyes fastened upon Ashe, and he grinned.
Lanning grinned too, and, as always at such times, his long white hair and shrewd little eyes made him the picture of a biblical patriarch, "True for you, Dr. Calvin."
His voice became suddenly crisp, "Here's everything in pill-concentrate form. We've produced a positronic brain of supposedly ordinary vintage that's got the remarkable property of being able to tune in on thought waves. It would mark the most important advance in robotics in decades, if we knew how it happened. We don't, and we have to find out. Is that clear?"
"May I make a suggestion?" asked Bogert.
"Go ahead!"
"I'd say that until we do figure out the mess – and as a mathematician I expect it to be a very devil of a mess – we keep the existence of RD-34 a secret. I mean even from the other members of the staff. As heads of the departments, we ought not to find it an insoluble problem, and the fewer know about it-"
"Bogert is right," said Dr. Calvin. "Ever since the Interplanetary Code was modified to allow robot models to be tested in the plants before being shipped out to space, antirobot propaganda has increased. If any word leaks out about a robot being able to read minds before we can announce complete control of the phenomenon, pretty effective capital could be made out of it."
Lanning sucked at his cigar and nodded gravely. He turned to Ashe; "I think you said you were alone when you first stumbled on this thought-reading business."
"I'll say I was alone – I got the scare of my life. RB-34 had just been taken off the assembly table and they sent him down to me. Obermann was off somewheres, so I took him down to the testing rooms myself – at least I started to take him down." Ashe paused, and a tiny smile tugged at his lips, "Say, did any of you ever carry on a thought conversation without knowing it?"
No one bothered to answer, and he continued, "You don't realize it at first, you know. He just spoke to me – as logically and sensibly as you can imagine – and it was only when I was most of the way down to the testing rooms that I realized that I hadn't said anything. Sure, I thought lots, but that isn't the same thing, is it? I locked that thing up and ran for Lanning. Having it walking beside me, calmly peering into my thoughts and picking and choosing among them gave me the willies."
"I imagine it would," said Susan Calvin thoughtfully. Her eyes fixed themselves upon Ashe in an oddly intent manner. "We are so accustomed to considering our own thoughts private."
Lanning broke in impatiently, "Then only the four of us know. All right! We've got to go about this systematically. Ashe, I want you to check over the assembly line from beginning to end -everything. You're to eliminate all operations in which there was no possible chance of an error, and list all those where there were, together with its nature and possible magnitude."
"Tall order," grunted Ashe.
"Naturally! Of course, you're to put the men under you to work on this – every single one if you have to, and I don't care if we go behind schedule, either. But they're not to know why, you understand."
"Hm-m-m, yes!" The young technician grinned wryly. "It's still a lulu of a job."
Lanning swiveled about in his chair and faced Calvin, "You'll have to tackle the job from the other direction. You're the robo-psychologist of the plant, so you're to study the robot itself and work backward. Try to find out how he ticks. See what else is tied up with his telepathic powers, how far they extend, how they warp his outlook, and just exactly what harm it has done to his ordinary RB properties. You've got that?"
Lanning didn't wait for Dr. Calvin to answer.
"I'll co-ordinate the work and interpret the findings mathematically." He puffed violently at his cigar and mumbled the rest through the smoke; "Bogert will help me there, of course."
Bogert polished the nails of one pudgy hand with the other and said blandly, "I dare say. I know a little in the line."
"Well! I'll get started." Ashe shoved his chair back and rose. His pleasantly youthful face crinkled in a grin, "I've got the darnedest job of any of us, so I'm getting out of here and to work."
He left with a slurred, "B' seein' ye!"
Susan Calvin answered with a barely perceptible nod, but her eyes followed him out of sight and she did not answer when Lanning grunted and said, "Do you want to go up and see RB-34 now, Dr. Calvin?"
RB-34's photoelectric eyes lifted from the book at the muffled sound of binges turning and he was upon his feet when Susan Calvin entered.
She paused to readjust the huge "No Entrance" sign upon the door and then approached the robot.
"I've brought you the texts upon hyperatomic motors, Herbie – a few anyway. Would you care to look at them?"
RB-34 – otherwise known as Herbie – lifted the three heavy books from her arms and opened to the title page of one:
"Hm-m-m! 'Theory of Hyperatomics.' " He mumbled inarticulately to himself as he flipped the pages and then spoke with an abstracted air, "Sit down, Dr. Calvin! This will take me a few minutes."
The psychologist seated herself and watched Herbie narrowly as he took a chair at the other side of the table and went through the three books systematically.
At the end of half an hour, he put them down, "Of course, I know why you brought these."
The corner of Dr. Calvin's lip twitched, "I was afraid you would. It's difficult to work with you, Herbie. You're always a step ahead of me."
"It's the same with these books, you know, as with the others. They just don't interest me. There's nothing to your textbooks. Your science is just a mass of collected data plastered together by makeshift theory – and all so incredibly simple, that it's scarcely worth bothering about.
"It's your fiction that interests me. Your studies of the interplay of human motives and emotions" – his mighty hand gestured vaguely as he sought the proper words.
Dr. Calvin whispered, "I think I understand."
"I see into minds, you see," the robot continued, "and you have no idea how complicated they are. I can't begin to understand everything because my own mind has so little in common with them – but I try, and your novels help."
"Yes, but I'm afraid that after going through some of the harrowing emotional experiences of our present-day sentimental novel" – there was a tinge of bitterness in her voice – "you find real minds like ours dull and colorless."
"But I don't!"
The sudden energy in the response brought the other to her feet. She felt herself reddening, and thought wildly, "He must know!"
Herbie subsided suddenly, and muttered in a low voice from which the metallic timbre departed almost entirely. "But, of course, I know about it, Dr. Calvin. You think of it always, so how can I help but know?"
Her face was hard. "Have you – told anyone?"
"Of course not!" This, with genuine surprise, "No one has asked me."
"Well, then," she flung out, "I suppose you think I am a fool."
"No! It is a normal emotion."
"Perhaps that is why it is so foolish." The wistfulness in her voice drowned out everything else. Some of the woman peered through the layer of doctorhood. "I am not what you would call – attractive."
"If you are referring to mere physical attraction, I couldn't judge. But I know, in any case, that there are other types of attraction."
"Nor young." Dr. Calvin had scarcely heard the robot.
"You are not yet forty." An anxious insistence had crept into Herbie's voice.
"Thirty-eight as you count the years; a shriveled sixty as far as my emotional outlook on life is concerned. Am I a psychologist for nothing?"
She drove on with bitter breathlessness, "And he's barely thirty-five and looks and acts younger. Do you suppose he ever sees me as anything but… but what I am?"
"You are wrong!" Herbie's steel fist struck the plastic-topped table with a strident clang. "Listen to me-"
But Susan Calvin whirled on him now and the hunted pain in her eyes became a blaze, "Why should I? What do you know about it all, anyway, you… you machine. I'm just a specimen to you; an interesting bug with a peculiar mind spread-eagled for inspection. It's a wonderful example of frustration, isn't it? Almost as good as your books." Her voice, emerging in dry sobs, choked into silence.
The robot cowered at the outburst. He shook his head pleadingly. "Won't you listen to me, please? I could help you if you would let me."
"How?" Her lips curled. "By giving me good advice?"
"No, not that. It's just that I know what other people think – Milton Ashe, for instance."
There was a long silence, and Susan Calvin's eyes dropped. "I don't want to know what he thinks," she gasped. "Keep quiet."
"I think you would want to know what he thinks"
Her head remained bent, but her breath came more quickly. "You are talking nonsense," she whispered.
"Why should I? I am trying to help. Milton Ashe's thoughts of you-" he paused.
And then the psychologist raised her head, "Well?"
The robot said quietly, "He loves you."
For a full minute, Dr. Calvin did not speak. She merely stared. Then, "You are mistaken! You must be. Why should he?"
"But he does. A thing like that cannot be hidden, not from me."
"But I am so… so-" she stammered to a halt.
"He looks deeper than the skin, and admires intellect in others. Milton Ashe is not the type to marry a head of hair and a pair of eyes."
Susan Calvin found herself blinking rapidly and waited before speaking. Even then her voice trembled, "Yet he certainly never in any way indicated-"
"Have you ever given him a chance?"
"How could I? I never thought that-"
"Exactly!"
The psychologist paused in thought and then looked up suddenly. "A girl visited him here at the plant half a year ago. She was pretty, I suppose – blond and slim. And, of course, could scarcely add two and two. He spent all day puffing out his chest, trying to explain how a robot was put together." The hardness had returned, "Not that she understood! Who was she?"
Herbie answered without hesitation, "I know the person you are referring to. She is his first cousin, and there is no romantic interest there, I assure you."
Susan Calvin rose to her feet with a vivacity almost girlish. "Now isn't that strange? That's exactly what I used to pretend to myself sometimes, though I never really thought so. Then it all must be true."
She ran to Herbie and seized his cold, heavy hand in both hers. "Thank you, Herbie." Her voice was an urgent, husky whisper. "Don't tell anyone about this. Let it be our secret – and thank you again." With that, and a convulsive squeeze of Herbie's unresponsive metal fingers, she left.
Herbie turned slowly to his neglected novel, but there was no one to read his thoughts.
Milton Ashe stretched slowly and magnificently, to the tune of cracking joints and a chorus of grunts, and then glared at Peter Bogert, Ph.D.
"Say," he said, "I've been at this for a week now with just about no sleep. How long do I have to keep it up? I thought you said the positronic bombardment in Vac Chamber D was the solution."
Bogert yawned delicately and regarded his white hands with interest. "It is. I'm on the track."
"I know what that means when a mathematician says it. How near the end are you?"
"It all depends."
"On what?" Ashe dropped into a chair and stretched his long legs out before him.
"On Lanning. The old fellow disagrees with me." He sighed, "A bit behind the times, that's the trouble with him. He clings to matrix mechanics as the all in all, and this problem calls for more powerful mathematical tools. He's so stubborn."
Ashe muttered sleepily, "Why not ask Herbie and settle the whole affair?"
"Ask the robot?" Bogert's eyebrows climbed.
"Why not? Didn't the old girl tell you?"
"You mean Calvin?"
"Yeah! Susie herself. That robot's a mathematical wiz. He knows all about everything plus a bit on the side. He does triple integrals in his head and eats up tensor analysis for dessert."
The mathematician stared skeptically, "Are you serious?"
"So help me! The catch is that the dope doesn't like math. He would rather read slushy novels. Honest! You should see the tripe Susie keeps feeding him: 'Purple Passion' and 'Love in Space.' "
"Dr. Calvin hasn't said a word of this to us."
"Well, she hasn't finished studying him. You know how she is. She likes to have everything just so before letting out the big secret."
"She's told you."
"We sort of got to talking. I have been seeing a lot of her lately." He opened his eyes wide and frowned, "Say, Bogie, have you been noticing anything queer about the lady lately?"
Bogert relaxed into an undignified grin, "She's using lipstick, if that's what you mean."
"Hell, I know that. Rouge, powder and eye shadow, too. She's a sight. But it's not that. I can't put my finger on it. It's the way she talks – as if she were happy about something." He thought a little, and then shrugged.
The other allowed himself a leer, which, for a scientist past fifty, was not a bad job, "Maybe she's in love."
Ashe allowed his eyes to close again, "You're nuts, Bogie. You go speak to Herbie; I want to stay here and go to sleep."
"Right! Not that I particularly like having a robot tell me my job, nor that I think he can do it!"
A soft snore was his only answer.
Herbie listened carefully as Peter Bogert, hands in pockets, spoke with elaborate indifference.
"So there you are. I've been told you understand these things, and I am asking you more in curiosity than anything else. My line of reasoning, as I have outlined it, involves a few doubtful steps, I admit, which Dr. Lanning refuses to accept, and the picture is still rather incomplete."
The robot didn't answer, and Bogert said, "Well?"
"I see no mistake," Herbie studied the scribbled figures.
"I don't suppose you can go any further than that?"
"I daren't try. You are a better mathematician than I, and – well, I'd hate to commit myself."
There was a shade of complacency in Bogert's smile, "I rather thought that would be the case. It is deep. We'll forget it." He crumpled the sheets, tossed them down the waste shaft, turned to leave, and then thought better of it.
"By the way-"
The robot waited.
Bogert seemed to have difficulty. "There is something – that is, perhaps you can -" He stopped.
Herbie spoke quietly. "Your thoughts are confused, but there is no doubt at all that they concern Dr. Lanning. It is silly to hesitate, for as soon as you compose yourself, I'll know what it is you want to ask."
The mathematician's hand went to his sleek hair in the familiar smoothing gesture. "Lanning is nudging seventy," he said, as if that explained everything.
"I know that."
"And he's been director of the plant for almost thirty years." Herbie nodded.
"Well, now," Bogert's voice became ingratiating, "you would know whether… whether he's thinking of resigning. Health, perhaps, or some other-"
"Quite," said Herbie, and that was all.
"Well, do you know?"
"Certainly."
"Then-uh-could you tell me?"
"Since you ask, yes." The robot was quite matter-of-fact about it. "He has already resigned!"
"What!" The exclamation was an explosive, almost inarticulate, sound. The scientist's large head hunched forward, "Say that again!"
"He has already resigned," came the quiet repetition, "but it has not yet taken effect. He is waiting, you see, to solve the problem of – er – myself. That finished, he is quite ready to turn the office of director over to his successor."
Bogert expelled his breath sharply, "And this successor? Who is he?" He was quite close to Herbie now, eyes fixed fascinatedly on those unreadable dull-red photoelectric cells that were the robot's eyes.
Words came slowly, "You are the next director."
And Bogert relaxed into a tight smile, "This is good to know. I've been hoping and waiting for this. Thanks, Herbie."
Peter Bogert was at his desk until five that morning and he was back at nine. The shelf just over the desk emptied of its row of reference books and tables, as he referred to one after the other. The pages of calculations before him increased microscopically and the crumpled sheets at his feet mounted into a hill of scribbled paper.
At precisely noon, he stared at the final page, rubbed a blood-shot eye, yawned and shrugged. "This is getting worse each minute. Damn!"
He turned at the sound of the opening door and nodded at Lanning, who entered, cracking the knuckles of one gnarled hand with the other.
The director took in the disorder of the room and his eyebrows furrowed together.
"New lead?" he asked.
"No," came the defiant answer. "What's wrong with the old one?"
Lanning did not trouble to answer, nor to do more than bestow a single cursory glance at the top sheet upon Bogert's desk. He spoke through the flare of a match as he lit a cigar.
"Has Calvin told you about the robot? It's a mathematical genius. Really remarkable."
The other snorted loudly, "So I've heard. But Calvin had better stick to robopsychology. I've checked Herbie on math, and he can scarcely struggle through calculus."
"Calvin didn't find it so."
"She's crazy."
"And I don't find it so." The director's eyes narrowed dangerously.
"You!" Bogert's voice hardened. "What are you talking about?"
"I've been putting Herbie through his paces all morning, and he can do tricks you never heard of."
"Is that so?"
"You sound skeptical!" Lanning flipped a sheet of paper out of his vest pocket and unfolded it. "That's not my handwriting, is it?"
Bogert studied the large angular notation covering the sheet, "Herbie did this?"
"Right! And if you'll notice, he's been working on your time integration of Equation 22. It comes" – Lanning tapped a yellow fingernail upon the last step – "to the identical conclusion I did, and in a quarter the time. You had no right to neglect the Linger Effect in positronic bombardment."
"I didn't neglect it. For Heaven's sake, Lanning, get it through your head that it would cancel out-"
"Oh, sure, you explained that. You used the Mitchell Translation Equation, didn't you? Well – it doesn't apply."
"Why not?"
"Because you've been using hyper-imaginaries, for one thing."
"What's that to do with?"
"Mitchell's Equation won't hold when-"
"Are you crazy? If you'll reread Mitchell's original paper in the Transactions of the Far-"
"I don't have to. I told you in the beginning that I didn't like his reasoning, and Herbie backs me in that."
"Well, then," Bogert shouted, "let that clockwork contraption solve the entire problem for you. Why bother with nonessentials?"
"That's exactly the point. Herbie can't solve the problem. And if he can't, we can't – alone. I'm submitting the entire question to the National Board. It's gotten beyond us."
Bogert's chair went over backward as he jumped up a-snarl, face crimson. "You're doing nothing of the sort."
Lanning flushed in his turn, "Are you telling me what I can't do?"
"Exactly," was the gritted response. "I've got the problem beaten and you're not to take it out of my hands, understand? Don't think I don't see through you, you desiccated fossil. You'd cut your own nose off before you'd let me get the credit for solving robotic telepathy."
"You're a damned idiot, Bogert, and in one second I'll have you suspended for insubordination" – Lanning's lower lip trembled with passion.
"Which is one thing you won't do, Lanning. You haven't any secrets with a mind-reading robot around, so don't forget that I know all about your resignation."
The ash on Lanning's cigar trembled and fell, and the cigar itself followed, "What… what-"
Bogert chuckled nastily, "And I'm the new director, be it understood. I'm very aware of that, don't think I'm not. Damn your eyes, Lanning, I'm going to give the orders about here or there will be the sweetest mess that you've ever been in."
Lanning found his voice and let it out with a roar. "You're suspended, d'ye hear? You're relieved of all duties. You're broken, do you understand?"
The smile on the other's face broadened, "Now, what's the use of that? You're getting nowhere. I'm holding the trumps. I know you've resigned. Herbie told me, and he got it straight from you."
Lanning forced himself to speak quietly. He looked an old, old man, with tired eyes peering from a face in which the red had disappeared, leaving the pasty yellow of age behind, "I want to speak to Herbie. He can't have told you anything of the sort. You're playing a deep game, Bogert, but I'm calling your bluff. Come with me."
Bogert shrugged, "To see Herbie? Good! Damned good!"
It was also precisely at noon that Milton Ashe looked up from his clumsy sketch and said, "You get the idea? I'm not too good at getting this down, but that's about how it looks. It's a honey of a house, and I can get it for next to nothing."
Susan Calvin gazed across at him with melting eyes. "It's really beautiful," she sighed. "I've often thought that I'd like to-" Her voice trailed away.
"Of course," Ashe continued briskly, putting away his pencil, "I've got to wait for my vacation. It's only two weeks off, but this Herbie business has everything up in the air." His eyes dropped to his fingernails, "Besides, there's another point – but it's a secret."
"Then don't tell me."
"Oh, I'd just as soon, I'm just busting to tell someone – and you're just about the best -er- confidante I could find here." He grinned sheepishly.
Susan Calvin's heart bounded, but she did not trust herself to speak.
"Frankly," Ashe scraped his chair closer and lowered his voice into a confidential whisper, "the house isn't to be only for myself. I'm getting married!"
And then he jumped out of his seat, "What's the matter?"
"Nothing!" The horrible spinning sensation had vanished, but it was hard to get words out. "Married? You mean-"
"Why, sure! About time, isn't it? You remember that girl who was here last summer. That's she! But you are sick. You-"
"Headache!" Susan Calvin motioned him away weakly. "I've… I've been subject to them lately. I want to… to congratulate you, of course. I'm very glad-" The inexpertly applied rouge made a pair of nasty red splotches upon her chalk-white face. Things had begun spinning again. "Pardon me – please-"
The words were a mumble, as she stumbled blindly out the door. It had happened with the sudden catastrophe of a dream – and with all the unreal horror of a dream.
But how could it be? Herbie had said-
And Herbie knew! He could see into minds!
She found herself leaning breathlessly against the doorjamb, staring into Herbie's metal face. She must have climbed the two flights of stairs, but she had no memory of it. The distance had been covered in an instant, as in a dream.
As in a dream!
And still Herbie's unblinking eyes stared into hers and their dull red seemed to expand into dimly shining nightmarish globes.
He was speaking, and she felt the cold glass pressing against her lips. She swallowed and shuddered into a pertain awareness of her surroundings.
Still Herbie spoke, and there was agitation in his voice – as if he were hurt and frightened and pleading.
The words were beginning to make sense. "This is a dream," he was saying, "and you mustn't believe in it. You'll wake into the real world soon and laugh at yourself. He loves you, I tell you. He does, he does! But not here! Not now! This is an illusion."
Susan Calvin nodded, her voice a whisper, "Yes! Yes!" She was clutching Herbie's arm, clinging to it, repeating over and over, "It isn't true, is it? It isn't, is it?"
Just how she came to her senses, she never knew – but it was like passing from a world of misty unreality to one of harsh sunlight. She pushed him away from her, pushed hard against that steely arm, and her eyes were wide.
"What are you trying to do?" Her voice rose to a harsh scream. "What are you trying to do?"
Herbie backed away, "I want to help"
The psychologist stared, "Help? By telling me this is a dream? By trying to push me into schizophrenia?" A hysterical tenseness seized her, "This is no dream! I wish it were!"
She drew her breath sharply, "Wait! Why… why, I understand. Merciful Heavens, it's so obvious."
There was horror in the robot's voice, "I had to!"
"And I believed you! I never thought-"
Loud voices outside the door brought her to a halt. She turned away, fists clenching spasmodically, and when Bogert and Lanning entered, she was at the far window. Neither of the men paid her the slightest attention.
They approached Herbie simultaneously; Lanning angry and impatient, Bogert, coolly sardonic. The director spoke first.
"Here now, Herbie. Listen to me!"
The robot brought his eyes sharply down upon the aged director, "Yes, Dr. Lanning."
"Have you discussed me with Dr. Bogert?"
"No, sir." The answer came slowly, and the smile on Bogert's face flashed off.
"What's that?" Bogert shoved in ahead of his superior and straddled the ground before the robot. "Repeat what you told me yesterday."
"I said that " Herbie fell silent. Deep within him his metallic diaphragm vibrated in soft discords.
"Didn't you say he had resigned?" roared Bogert. "Answer me!"
Bogert raised his arm frantically, but Lanning pushed him aside, "Are you trying to bully him into lying?"
"You heard him, Lanning. He began to say 'Yes' and stopped. Get out of my way! I want the truth out of him, understand!"
"I'll ask him!" Lanning turned to the robot. "All right, Herbie, take it easy. Have I resigned?"
Herbie stared, and Lanning repeated anxiously, "Have I resigned?" There was the faintest trace of a negative shake of the robot's head. A long wait produced nothing further.
The two men looked at each other and the hostility in their eyes was all but tangible.
"What the devil," blurted Bogert, "has the robot gone mute? Can't you speak, you monstrosity?"
"I can speak," came the ready answer.
"Then answer the question. Didn't you tell me Lanning had resigned? Hasn't he resigned?"
And again there was nothing but dull silence, until from the end of the room Susan Calvin's laugh rang out suddenly, high-pitched and semi-hysterical.
The two mathematicians jumped, and Bogerts eyes narrowed, "You here? What's so funny?"
"Nothing's funny." Her voice was not quite natural. "It's just that I'm not the only one that's been caught. There's irony in three of the greatest experts in robotics in the world falling into the same elementary trap, isn't there?" Her voice faded, and she put a pale hand to her forehead, "But it isn't funny!"
This time the look that passed between the two men was one of raised eyebrows. "What trap are you talking about?" asked Lansing stiffly. "Is something wrong with Herbie?"
"No," she approached them slowly, "nothing is wrong with him – only with us." She whirled suddenly and shrieked at the robot, "Get away from me! Go to the other end of the room and don't let me look at you."
Herbie cringed before the fury of her eyes and stumbled away in a clattering trot.
Lanning's voice was hostile, "What is all this, Dr. Calvin?"
She faced them and spoke sarcastically, "Surely you know the fundamental First Law of Robotics."
The other two nodded together. "Certainly," said Bogert, Irritably, "a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow him to come to harm"
"How nicely put," sneered Calvin. "But what kind of harm?"
"Why – any kind."
"Exactly! Any kind! But what about hurt feelings? What about deflation of one's ego? What about the blasting of one's hopes? Is that injury?"
Lanning frowned, "What would a robot know about-" And then he caught himself with a gasp.
"You've caught on, have you? This robot reads minds. Do you suppose it doesn't know everything about mental injury? Do you suppose that if asked a question, it wouldn't give exactly that answer that one wants to hear? Wouldn't any other answer hurt us, and wouldn't Herbie know that?"
"Good Heavens!" muttered Bogert.
The psychologist cast a sardonic glance at him, "I take it you asked him whether Lanning had resigned. You wanted to hear that he had resigned and so that's what Herbie told you."
"And I suppose that is why," said Lanning, tonelessly, "it would not answer a little while ago. It couldn't answer either way without hurting one of us."
There was a short pause in which the men looked thoughtfully across the room at the robot, crouching in the chair by the bookcase, head resting in one hand.
Susan Calvin stared steadfastly at the floor, "He knew of all this. That… that devil knows everything – including what went wrong in his assembly." Her eyes were dark and brooding.
Lanning looked up, "You're wrong there, Dr. Calvin. He doesn't know what went wrong. I asked him."
"What does that mean?" cried Calvin. "Only that you didn't want him to give you the solution. It would puncture your ego to have a machine do what you couldn't. Did you ask him?" she shot at Bogert.
"In a way." Bogert coughed and reddened. "He told me he knew very little about mathematics."
Lanning laughed, not very loudly and the psychologist smiled caustically. She said, "I'll ask him! A solution by him won't hurt my ego" She raised her voice into a cold, imperative, "Come here!"
Herbie rose and approached with hesitant steps.
"You know, I suppose," she continued, "just exactly at what point in the assembly an extraneous factor was introduced or an essential one left out."
"Yes," said Herbie, in tones barely heard.
"Hold on," broke in Bogert angrily. "That's not necessary true. You want to hear that, that's all."
"Don't be a fool," replied Calvin. "He certainly knows as much math as you and Lanning together, since he can read minds. Give him his chance."
The mathematician subsided, and Calvin continued, "All right, then, Herbie, give! We're waiting." And in an aside, "Get pencils and paper, gentlemen."
But Herbie remained silent, and there was triumph in the psychologist's voice, "Why don't you answer, Herbie?"
The robot blurted out suddenly, "I cannot. You know I cannot! Dr. Bogert and Dr. Lanning don't want me to."
"They want the solution."
"But not from me."
Lanning broke in, speaking slowly and distinctly, "Don't be foolish, Herbie. We do want you to tell us."
Bogert nodded curtly.
Herbie's voice rose to wild heights, "What's the use of saying that? Don't you suppose that I can see past the superficial skin of your mind? Down below, you don't want me to. I'm a machine, given the imitation of life only by virtue of the positronic interplay in my brain – which is man's device. You can't lose face to me without being hurt. That is deep in your mind and won't be erased. I can't give the solution."
"We'll leave," said Dr. Lanning. "Tell Calvin."
"That would make no difference," cried Herbie, "since you would know anyway that it was I that was supplying the answer."
Calvin resumed, "But you understand, Herbie, that despite that, Drs. Lanning and Bogert want that solution."
"By their own efforts!" insisted Herbie.
"But they want it, and the fact that you have it and won't give it hurts them. You see that, don't you?"
"Yes! Yes!"
"And if you tell them that will hurt them, too"
"Yes! Yes!" Herbie was retreating slowly, and step-by-step Susan Calvin advanced. The two men watched in frozen bewilderment.
"You can't tell them," droned the psychologist slowly, "because that would hurt and you mustn't hurt. But if you don't tell them, you hurt, so you must tell them. And if you do, you will hurt and you mustn't, so you can't tell them; but if you don't, you hurt, so you must; but if you do, you hurt, so you mustn't; but if you don't, you hurt, so you must; but if you do, you-"
Herbie was up against the wall, and here he dropped to his knees. "Stop!" he shrieked. "Close your mind! It is full of pain and frustration and hate! I didn't mean it, I tell you! I tried to help! I told you what you wanted to hear. I had to!"
The psychologist paid no attention. "You must tell them, but if you do, you hurt, so you mustn't; but if you don't, you hurt, so you must; but-"
And Herbie screamed!
It was like the whistling of a piccolo many times magnified – shrill and shriller till it keened with the terror of a lost soul and filled the room with the piercingness of itself.
And when it died into nothingness, Herbie collapsed into a huddled heap of motionless metal.
Bogert's face was bloodless, "He's dead!"
"No!" Susan Calvin burst into body-racking gusts of wild laughter, "not dead – merely insane. I confronted him with the insoluble dilemma, and he broke down. You can scrap him now – because he'll never speak again."
Lanning was on his knees beside the thing that had been Herbie. His fingers touched the cold, unresponsive metal face and he shuddered. "You did that on purpose." He rose and faced her, face contorted.
"What if I did? You can't help it now." And in a sudden access of bitterness, "He deserved it."
The director seized the paralyzed, motionless Bogert by the wrist, "What's the difference. Come, Peter." He sighed, "A thinking robot of this type is worthless anyway." His eyes were old and tired, and he repeated, "Come, Peter!"
It was minutes after the two scientists left that Dr. Susan Calvin regained part of her mental equilibrium. Slowly, her eyes turned to the living-dead Herbie and the tightness returned to her face. Long she stared while the triumph faded and the helpless frustration returned – and of all her turbulent thoughts only one infinitely bitter word passed her lips.
"Liar!"
Tony was tall and darkly handsome, with an incredibly patrician air drawn into every line of his unchangeable expression, and Claire Belmont regarded him through the crack in the door with a mixture of horror and dismay.
"I can't, Larry. I just can't have him in the house." Feverishly, she was searching her paralyzed mind for a stronger way of putting it; some way that would make sense and settle things, but she could only end with a simple repetition.
"Well, I can't!"
Larry Belmont regarded his wife stiffly, and there was that spark of impatience in his eyes that Claire hated to see, since she felt her own incompetence mirrored in it. "We're committed, Claire," he said, "and I can't have you backing out now. The company is sending me to Washington on this basis, and it probably means a promotion. It's perfectly safe and you know it. What's your objection?"
She frowned helplessly. "It just gives me the chills. I couldn't bear him."
"He's as human as you or I, almost. So, no nonsense. Come, get out there."
His hand was in the small of her back, shoving; and she found herself in her own living room, shivering. It was there, looking at her with a precise politeness, as though appraising his hostess-to-be of the next three weeks. Dr. Susan Calvin was there, too, sitting stiffly in thin-lipped abstraction. She had the cold, faraway look of someone who has worked with machines so long that a little of the steel had entered the blood.
"Hello," crackled Claire in general, and ineffectual, greeting.
But Larry was busily saving the situation with a spurious gaiety. "Here, Claire, I want you to meet Tony, a swell guy. This is my wife, Claire, Tony, old boy." Larry's hand draped itself amiably over Tony's shoulder, but Tony remained unresponsive and expressionless under the pressure.
He said, "How do you do, Mrs. Belmont."
And Claire jumped at Tony's voice. It was deep and mellow, smooth as the hair on his head or the skin on his face.
Before she could stop herself, she said, "Oh, my-you talk."
"Why not? Did you expect that I didn't?"
But Claire could only smile weakly. She didn't really know what she had expected. She looked away, then let him slide gently into the comer of her eye. His hair was smooth and black, like polished plastic-or was it really composed of separate hairs? And was the even, olive skin of his hands and face continued on past the obscurement of his formally cut clothing?
She was lost in the shuddering wonder of it, and had to force her thoughts back into place to meet Dr. Calvin's flat, unemotional voice.
"Mrs. Belmont, I hope you appreciate the importance of this experiment. Your husband tells me he has given you some of the background. I would like to give you more, as the senior psychologist of the U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation.
"Tony is a robot. His actual designation on the company files is TN-3, but he will answer to Tony. He is not a mechanical monster, nor simply a calculating machine of the type that were developed during World War II, fifty years ago. He has an artificial brain nearly as complicated as our own. It is an immense telephone switchboard on an atomic scale, so that billions of possible 'telephone connections' can be compressed into an instrument that will fit inside a skull.
"Such brains are manufactured for each model of robot specifically. Each contains a precalculated set of connections so that each robot knows the English language to start with and enough of anything else that may be necessary to perform his job.
"Until now, U.S. Robots has confined its manufacturing activity to industrial models for use in places where human labor is impractical-in deep mines, for instance, or in underwater work. But we want to invade the city and the home. To do so, we must get the ordinary man and woman to accept these robots without fear. You understand that there is nothing to fear."
"There isn't, Claire," interposed Larry earnestly. "Take my word for it. It's impossible for him to do any harm. You know I wouldn't leave him with you otherwise."
Claire cast a quick, secret glance at Tony and lowered her voice. "What if I make him angry?"
"You needn't whisper," said Dr. Calvin calmly. "He can't get angry with you, my dear. I told you that the switchboard connections of his brain were predetermined. Well, the most important connection of all is what we call The First Law of Robotics,' and it is merely this: 'No robot can harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.' All robots are built so. No robot can be forced in any way to do harm to any human. So, you see, we need you and Tony as a preliminary experiment for our own guidance, while your husband is in Washington to arrange for government-supervised legal tests."
"You mean all this isn't legal?"
Larry cleared his throat. "Not just yet, but it's all right. He won't leave the house, and you mustn't let anyone see him. That's all… And, Claire, I'd stay with you, but I know too much about the robots. We must have a completely inexperienced tester so that we can have severe conditions. It's necessary."
"Oh, well," muttered Claire. Then, as a thought struck her, "But what does he do?"
"Housework," said Dr. Calvin shortly.
She got up to leave, and it was Larry who saw her to the front door. Claire stayed behind drearily. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror above the mantelpiece, and looked away hastily. She was very tired of her small, mousy face and her dim, unimaginative hair. Then she caught Tony's eyes upon her and almost smiled before she remembered…
He was only a machine.
Larry Belmont was on his way to the airport when he caught a glimpse of Gladys Claffern. She was the type of woman who seemed made to be seen in glimpses… Perfectly and precisely manufactured; dressed with thoughtful hand and eye; too gleaming to be stared at.
The little smile that preceded her and the faint scent that trailed her were a pair of beckoning fingers. Larry felt his stride break; he touched his hat, then hurried on.
As always he felt that vague anger. If Claire could only push her way into the Claffern clique, it would help so much. But what was the use.
Claire! The few times she had come face to face with Gladys, the little fool had been tongue-tied. He had no illusions. The testing of Tony was his big chance, and it was in Claire's hands. How much safer it would be in the hands of someone like Gladys Claffern.
Claire woke the second morning to the sound of a subdued knock on the bedroom door. Her mind clamored, then went icy. She had avoided Tony the first day, smiling thinly when she met him and brushing past with a wordless sound of apology.
"Is that you-Tony?"
"Yes, Mrs. Belmont. May I enter?"
She must have said yes, because he was in the room, quite suddenly and noiselessly. Her eyes and nose were simultaneously aware of the tray he was carrying.
"Breakfast?" she said.
"If you please."
She wouldn't have dared to refuse, so she pushed herself slowly into a sitting position and received it: poached eggs, buttered toast, coffee.
"I have brought the sugar and cream separately," said Tony. "I expect to learn your preference with time, in this and in other things."
She waited.
Tony, standing there straight and pliant as a metal rule, asked, after a moment, "Would you prefer to eat in privacy?"
"Yes… I mean, if you don't mind."
"Will you need help later in dressing?"
"Oh, my, no!" She clutched frantically at the sheet, so that the coffee hovered at the edge of catastrophe. She remained so, in rigor, then sank helplessly back against the pillow when the door closed him out of her sight again.
She got through breakfast somehow… He was only a machine, and if it were only more visible that he were it wouldn't be so frightening. Or if his expression would change. It just stayed there, nailed on. You couldn't tell what went on behind those dark eyes and that smooth, olive skin-stuff. The coffee cup beat a faint castanet for a moment as she set it back, empty, on the tray.
Then she realized that she had forgotten to add the sugar and cream after all, and she did so hate black coffee.
She burned a straight path from bedroom to kitchen after dressing. It was her house, after all, and there wasn't anything frippy about her, but she liked her kitchen clean. He should have waited for supervision…
But when she entered, she found a kitchen that might have been minted fire-new from the factory the moment before. v
She stopped, stared, turned on her heel and nearly ran into Tony. She yelped.
"May I help?" he asked.
"Tony," and she scraped the anger off the edges of her mind's panic, "you must make some noise when you walk. I can't have you stalking me, you know… Didn't you use this kitchen?"
"I did, Mrs. Belmont."
"It doesn't look it."
"I cleaned up afterward. Isn't that customary?"
Claire opened her eyes wide. After all, what could one say to that. She opened the oven compartment that held the pots, took a quick, unseeing look at the metallic glitter inside, then said with a tremor, "Very good. Quite satisfactory."
If at the moment, he had beamed; if he had smiled; if he had quirked the corner of his mouth the slightest bit, she felt that she could have warmed to him. But he remained an English lord in repose, as he said, "Thank you, Mrs. Belmont. Would you come into the living room?"
She did, and it struck her at once. "Have you been polishing the furniture?"
"Is it satisfactory, Mrs. Belmont?"
"But when? You didn't do it yesterday."
"Last night, of course."
"You burned the lights all night?"
"Oh, no. That wouldn't have been necessary. I've a built-in ultra-violet source. I can see in ultraviolet. And, of course, I don't require sleep."
He did require admiration, though. She realized that, then. He had to know that he was pleasing her. But she couldn't bring herself to supply that pleasure for him.
She could only say sourly, "Your kind will put ordinary houseworkers out of business."
"There is work of much greater importance they can be put to in the world, once they are freed of drudgery. After all, Mrs. Belmont, things like myself can be manufactured. But nothing yet can imitate the creativity and versatility of a human brain, like yours."
And though his face gave no hint, his voice was warmly surcharged with awe and admiration, so that Claire flushed and muttered, "My brain! You can have it."
Tony approached a little and said, "You must be unhappy to say such a thing. Is there anything I can do?"
For a moment, Claire felt like laughing. It was a ridiculous situation. Here was an animated carpet-sweeper, dishwasher, furniture-polisher, general factotum, rising from the factory table-and offering his services as consoler and confidant.
Yet she said suddenly, in a burst of woe and voice, "Mr. Belmont doesn't think I have a brain, if you must know… And I suppose I haven't." She couldn't cry in front of him. She felt, for some reason, that she had the honor of the human race to support against this mere creation.
"It's lately," she added. "It was all right when he was a student; when he was just starting. But I can't be a big man's wife; and he's getting to be a big man. He wants me to be a hostess and an entry into social life for him-like G-guh-guh-Gladys Claffern."
Her nose was red, and she looked away.
But Tony wasn't watching her. His eyes wandered about the room. "I can help you run the house."
"But it's no good," she said fiercely. "It needs a touch I can't give it. I can only make it comfortable; I can't ever make it the kind they take pictures of for the Home Beautiful magazines."
"Do you want that kind?"
"Does it do any good-wanting?"
Tony's eyes were on her, full. "I could help."
"Do you know anything about interior decoration?"
"Is it something a good housekeeper should know?"
"Oh, yes."
"Then I have the potentialities of learning it. Can you get me books on the subject?"
Something started then.
Claire, clutching her hat against the brawling liberties of the wind, had manipulated two fat volumes on the home arts back from the public library. She watched Tony as he opened one of them and flipped the pages. It was the first time she had watched his fingers flicker at anything like fine work.
I don't see how they do it, she thought, and on a sudden impulse reached for his hand and pulled it toward herself. Tony did not resist, but let it lie limp for inspection.
She said, "It's remarkable. Even your fingernails look natural."
"That's deliberate, of course," said Tony. Then, chattily, "The skin is a flexible plastic, and the skeletal framework is a light metal alloy. Does that amuse you?"
"Oh, no." She lifted her reddened face. "I just feel a little embarrassed at sort of poking into your insides. It's none of my business. You don't ask me about mine."
"My brain paths don't include that type of curiosity. I can only act within my limitations, you know."
And Claire felt something tighten inside her in the silence that followed. Why did she keep forgetting he was a machine. Now the thing itself had to remind her. Was she so starved for sympathy that she would even accept a robot as equal-because he sympathized?
She noticed Tony was still flipping the pages-almost helplessly-and there was a quick, shooting sense of relieved superiority within her. "You can't read, can you?"
Tony looked up at her; his voice calm, unreproachful. "I am reading, Mrs. Belmont."
"But-" She pointed at the book in a meaningless gesture.
"I am scanning the pages, if that's what you mean. My sense of reading is photographic."
It was evening then, and when Claire eventually went to bed Tony was well into the second volume, sitting there in the dark, or what seemed dark to Claire's limited eyes.
Her last thought, the one that clamored at her just as her mind let go and tumbled, was a queer one. She remembered his hand again; the touch of it. It had been warm and soft, like a human being's.
How clever of the factory, she thought, and softly ebbed to sleep.
It was the library continuously, thereafter, for several days. Tony suggested the fields of study, which branched out quickly. There were books on color matching and on cosmetics; on carpentry and on fashions; on art and on the history of costumes.
He turned the pages of each book before his solemn eyes, and, as quickly as he turned, he read; nor did he seem capable of forgetting.
Before the end of the week, he had insisted on cutting her hair, introducing her to a new method of arranging it, adjusting her eyebrow line a bit and changing the shade of her powder and lipstick.
She had palpitated in nervous dread for half an hour under the delicate touch of his inhuman fingers and then looked in the mirror.
"There is more that can be done," said Tony, "especially in clothes. How do you find it for a beginning?"
And she hadn't answered; not for quite a while. Not until she had absorbed the identity of the stranger in the glass and cooled the wonder at the beauty of it all. Then she had said chokingly, never once taking her eyes from the warming image, "Yes, Tony, quite good-for a beginning."
She said nothing of this in her letters to Larry. Let him see it all at once. And something in her realized that it wasn't only the surprise she would enjoy. It was going to be a kind of revenge.
Tony said one morning, "It's time to start buying, and I'm not allowed to leave the house. If I write out exactly what we must have, can I trust you to get it? We need drapery, and furniture fabric, wallpaper, carpeting, paint, clothing-and any number of small things."
"You can't get these things to your own specifications at a stroke's notice," said Claire doubtfully.
"You can get fairly close, if you go through the city and if money is no object."
"But, Tony, money is certainly an object."
"Not at all. Stop off at U.S. Robots in the first place. I'll write a note for you. You see Dr. Calvin, and tell her that I said it was part of the experiment."
Dr. Calvin, somehow, didn't frighten her as on that first evening. With her new face and a new hat, she couldn't be quite the old Claire. The psychologist listened carefully, asked a few questions, nodded-and then Claire found herself walking out, armed with an unlimited charge account against the assets of U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation.
It is wonderful what money will do. With a store's contents at her feet, a saleslady's dictum was not necessarily a voice from above; the uplifted eyebrow of a decorator was not anything like Jove's thunder.
And once, when an Exalted Plumpness at one of the most lordly of the garment salons had insistently poohed her description of the wardrobe she must have with counterpronouncements in accents of the purest Fifty-seventh Street French, she called up Tony, then held the phone out to Monsieur.
"If you don't mind"-voice firm, but fingers twisting a bit-"I'd like you to talk to my-uh-secretary."
Pudgy proceeded to the phone with a solemn arm crooked behind his back. He lifted the phone in two fingers and said delicately, "Yes." A short pause, another "Yes," then a much longer pause, a squeaky beginning of an objection that perished quickly, another pause, a very meek "Yes," and the phone was restored to its cradle.
"If Madam will come with me," he said, hurt and distant, "I will try to supply her needs."
"Just a second." Claire rushed back to the phone, and dialed again. "Hello, Tony. I don't know what you said, but it worked. Thanks. You're a-" She struggled for the appropriate word, gave up and ended in a final little squeak, "-a-a dear!"
It was Gladys Claffern looking at her when she turned from the phone again. A slightly amused and slightly amazed Gladys Claffern, looking at her out of a face tilted a bit to one side.
"Mrs. Belmont?"
It all drained out of Claire-just like that. She could only nod-stupidly, like a marionette.
Gladys smiled with an insolence you couldn't put your finger on. "I didn't know you shopped here?" As if the place had, in her eyes, definitely lost caste through the fact.
"I don't, usually," said Claire humbly.
"And haven't you done something to your hair? It's quite-quaint… Oh, I hope you'll excuse me, but isn't your husband's name Lawrence? It seems to me that it's Lawrence."
Claire's teeth clenched, but she had to explain. She had to. "Tony is a friend of my husband's. He's helping me select some things."
"I understand. And quite a dear about it, I imagine." She passed on smiling, carrying the light and the warmth of the world with her.
Claire did not question the fact that it was to Tony that she turned for consolation. Ten days had cured her of reluctance. And she could weep before him; weep and rage.
"I was a complete f-fool," she stormed, wrenching at her water-togged handkerchief. "She does that to me. I don't know why. She just does. I should have-kicked her. I should have knocked her down and stamped on her."
"Can you hate a human being so much?" asked Tony, in puzzled softness. "That part of a human mind is closed to me."
"Oh, it isn't she," she moaned. "It's myself, I suppose. She's everything I want to be-on the outside, anyway… And I can't be."
Tony's voice was forceful and low in her ear. "You can be, Mrs. Belmont. You can be. We have ten days yet, and in ten days the house will no longer be itself. Haven't we been planning that?"
"And how will that help me-with her?"
"Invite her here. Invite her friends. Have it the evening before I-before I leave. It will be a housewarming, in a way."
"She won't come."
"Yes, she will. She'll come to laugh… And she won't be able to."
"Do you really think so? Oh, Tony, do you think we can do it?" She had both his hands in hers… And then, with her face flung aside, "But what good would it be? It won't be I; it will be you that's doing it. I can't ride your back."
"Nobody lives in splendid singleness," whispered Tony. "They've put that knowledge in me. What you, or anyone, see in Gladys Claffern is not just Gladys Claffern. She rides the back of all that money and social position can bring. She doesn't question that. Why should you?… And look at it this way, Mrs. Belmont. I am manufactured to obey, but the extent of my obedience is for myself to determine. I can follow orders niggardly or liberally. For you, it is liberal, because you are what I have been manufactured to see human beings as. You are kind, friendly, unassuming. Mrs. Claffern, as you describe her, is not, and I wouldn't obey her as I would you. So it is you, and not I, Mrs. Belmont, that is doing all this."
He withdrew his hands from hers then, and Claire looked at that expressionless face no one could read-wondering. She was suddenly frightened ' again in a completely new way.
She swallowed nervously and stared at her hands, which were still tingling ' with the pressure of his fingers. She hadn't imagined it; his fingers had pressed hers, gently, tenderly, just before they moved away.
No!
Its fingers… Its fingers…
She ran to the bathroom and scrubbed her hands-blindly, uselessly.
She was a bit shy of him the next day; watching him narrowly; waiting to see what might follow-and for a while nothing did.
Tony was working. If there was any difficulty in technique in putting up wallpaper, or utilizing the quick-drying paint, Tony's activity did not show it. His hands moved precisely; his fingers were deft and sure.
He worked all night. She never heard him, but each morning was a new adventure. She couldn't count the number of things that had been done, and by evening she was still finding new touches-and another night had come.
She tried to help only once and her human clumsiness marred that. He was in the next room, and she was hanging a picture in the spot marked by Tony's mathematical eyes. The little mark was there; the picture was there; and a revulsion against idleness was there.
But she was nervous, or the ladder was rickety. It didn't matter. She felt it going, and she cried out. It tumbled without her, for Tony, with far more than flesh-and-blood quickness, had been under her.
His calm, dark eyes said nothing at all, and his warm voice said only words. "Are you hurt, Mrs. Belmont?"
She noticed for an instant that her falling hand must have mussed that sleek hair of his, because for the first time she could see for herself that it was composed of distinct strands-fine black hairs.
And then, all at once, she was conscious of his arms about her shoulders and under her knees-holding her tightly and warmly.
She pushed, and her scream was loud in her own ears. She spent the rest of the day in her room, and thereafter she slept with a chair upended against the doorknob of her bedroom door.
She had sent out the invitations, and, as Tony had said, they were accepted. She had only to wait for the last evening.
It came, too, after the rest of them, in its proper place. The house was scarcely her own. She went through it one last time-and every room had been changed. She, herself, was in clothes she would never have dared wear before… And when you put them on, you put on pride and confidence with them.
She tried a polite look of contemptuous amusement before the minor, and the mirror sneered back at her masterfully.
What would Larry say?… It didn't matter, somehow. The exciting days weren't coming with him. They were leaving with Tony. Now wasn't that strange? She tried to recapture her mood of three weeks before and failed completely.
The clock shrieked eight at her in eight breathless installments, and she turned to Tony. "They'll be here soon, Tony. You'd better get into the basement. We can't let them-"
She stared a moment, then said weakly, "Tony?" and more strongly, "Tony?" and nearly a scream, "Tony!"
But his arms were around her now; his face was close to hers; the pressure of his embrace was relentless. She heard his voice through a haze of emotional jumble.
"Claire," the voice said, "there are many things I am not made to understand, and this must be one of them. I am leaving tomorrow, and I don't want to. I find that there is more in me than just a desire to please you. Isn't it strange?"
His face was closer; his lips were warm, but with no breath behind them -for machines do not breathe. They were almost on hers.
… And the bell sounded.
For a moment, she struggled breathlessly, and then he was gone and nowhere in sight, and the bell was sounding again. Its intermittent shrillness was insistent.
The curtains on the front windows had been pulled open. They had been closed fifteen minutes earlier. She knew that.
They must have seen, then. They must all have seen-everything!
They came in so politely, all in a bunch-the pack come to howl-with their sharp, darting eyes piercing everywhere. They had seen. Why else would Gladys ask in her jabbingest manner after Larry? And Claire was spurred to a desperate and reckless defiance.
Yes, he is away. He'll be back tomorrow, I suppose. No, I haven't been lonely here myself. Not a bit. I've had an exciting time. And she laughed at them. Why not? What could they do? Larry would know the truth, if it ever came to him, the story of what they thought they saw.
But they didn't laugh.
She could read that in the fury in Gladys Claffern's eyes; in the false sparkle of her words; in her desire to leave early. And as she parted with them, she caught one last, anonymous whisper-disjointed.
"… never saw anything like… so handsome-"
And she knew what it was that had enabled her to finger-snap them so. Let each cat mew; and let each cat know-that she might be prettier than Claire Belmont, and grander, and richer-but not one, not one, could have so handsome a lover!
And then she remembered again-again-again, that Tony was a machine, and her skin crawled.
"Go away! Leave me be!" she cried to the empty room and ran to her bed. She wept wakefully all that night and the next morning, almost before dawn, when the streets were empty, a car drew up to the house and took Tony away.
Lawrence Belmont passed Dr. Calvin's office, and, on impulse, knocked. He found her with Mathematician Peter Bogert, but did not hesitate on that account.
He said, "Claire tells me that U.S. Robots paid for all that was done at my house-"
"Yes," said Dr. Calvin. "We've written it off, as a valuable and necessary part of the experiment. With your new position as Associate Engineer, you'll be able to keep it up, I think."
"That's not what I'm worried about. With Washington agreeing to the tests, we'll be able to get a TN model of our own by next year, I think." He turned hesitantly, as though to go, and as hesitantly turned back again.
"Well, Mr. Belmont?" asked Dr. Calvin, after a pause.
"I wonder-" began Larry. "I wonder what really happened there. She- Claire, I mean-seems so different. It's not just her looks-though, frankly, I'm amazed." He laughed nervously. "It's her! She's not my wife, really-I can't explain it."
"Why try? Are you disappointed with any part of the change?"
"On the contrary. But it's a little frightening, too, you see-"
"I wouldn't worry, Mr. Belmont. Your wife has handled herself very well. Frankly, I never expected to have the experiment yield such a thorough and complete test. We know exactly what corrections must be made in the TN model, and the credit belongs entirely to Mrs. Belmont. If you want me to be very honest, I think your wife deserves your promotion more than you do."
Larry flinched visibly at that. "As long as it's in the family," he murmured unconvincingly and left.
Susan Calvin looked after him, "I think that hurt-I hope… Have you read Tony's report, Peter?"
"Thoroughly," said Bogert. "And won't the TN-3 model need changes?"
"Oh, you think so, too?" questioned Calvin sharply. "What's your reasoning?"
Bogert frowned. "I don't need any. It's obvious on the face of it that we can't have a robot loose which makes love to his mistress, if you don't mind the pun."
"Love! Peter, you sicken me. You really don't understand? That machine had to obey the First Law. He couldn't allow harm to come to a human being, and harm was coming to Claire Belmont through her own sense of inadequacy. So he made love to her, since what woman would fail to appreciate the compliment of being able to stir passion in a machine-in a cold, soulless machine. And he opened the curtains that night deliberately, that the others might see and envy-without any risk possible to Claire's marriage. I think it was clever of Tony-"
"Do you? What's the difference whether it was pretense or not, Susan? It still has its horrifying effect. Read the report again. She avoided him. She screamed when he held her. She didn't sleep that last night-in hysterics. We can't have that."
"Peter, you're blind. You're as blind as I was. The TN model will be rebuilt entirely, but not for your reason. Quite otherwise; quite otherwise. Strange that I overlooked it in the first place," her eyes were opaquely thoughtful, "but perhaps it reflects a shortcoming in myself. You see, Peter, machines can't fall in love, but-even when it's hopeless and horrifying- women can!"
United States Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation had a problem. The problem was people.
Peter Bogert, Senior Mathematician, was on his way to Assembly when he encountered Alfred Lanning, Research Director. Lanning was bending his ferocious white eyebrows together and staring down across the railing into the computer room.
On the floor below the balcony, a trickle of humanity of both sexes and various ages was looking about curiously, while a guide intoned a set speech about robotic computing.
"This computer you see before you," he said, "is the largest of its type in the world. It contains five million three hundred thousand cryotrons and is capable of dealing simultaneously with over one hundred thousand variables. With its help, U. S. Robots is able to design with precision the positronic brains of new models. "The requirements are fed in on tape which is perforated by the action of this keyboard-something like a very complicated typewriter or linotype machine, except that it does not deal with letters but with concepts. Statements are broken down into the symbolic logic equivalents and those in turn converted to perforation patterns.
"The computer can, in less than one hour, present our scientists with a design for a brain which will give all the necessary positronic paths to make a robot…"
Alfred Lanning looked up at last and noticed the other. "Ah, Peter," he said.
Bogert raised both hands to smooth down his already perfectly smooth and glossy head of black hair. He said, "You don't look as though you think much of this, Alfred."
Lanning grunted. The idea of public guided tours of U. S. Robots was of fairly recent origin, and was supposed to serve a dual function. On the one hand, the theory went, it allowed people to see robots at close quarters and counter their almost instinctive fear of the mechanical objects through increased familiarity. And on the other hand, it was supposed to interest at least an occasional person in taking up robotics research as a life work.
"You know I don't," Lanning said finally. "Once a week, work is disrupted. Considering the man-hours lost, the return is insufficient."
"Still no rise in job applications, then?"
"Oh, some, but only in the categories where the need isn't vital. It's research men that are needed. You know that. The trouble is that with robots forbidden on Earth itself, there's something unpopular about being a roboticist."
"The damned Frankenstein complex," said Bogert, consciously imitating one of the other's pet phrases.
Lanning missed the gentle jab. He said, "I ought to be used to it, but I never will. You'd think that by now every human being on Earth would know that the Three Laws represented a perfect safeguard; that robots are simply not dangerous. Take this bunch." He glowered down. "Look at them. Most of them go through the robot assembly room for the thrill of fear, like riding a roller coaster. Then when they enter the room with the MEC model-damn it, Peter, a MEC model that will do nothing on God's green Earth but take two steps forward, say 'Pleased to meet you, sir,' shake hands, then take two steps back-they back away and mothers snatch up their kids. How do we expect to get brainwork out of such idiots?"
Bogert had no answer. Together, they stared down once again at the line of sightseers, now passing out of the computer room and into the positronic brain assembly section. Then they left. They did not, as it turned out, observe Mortimer W. Jacobson, age 16-who, to do him complete justice, meant no harm whatever.
In fact, it could not even be said to be Mortimer's fault. The day of the week on which the tour took place was known to all workers.
All devices in its path ought to have been carefully neutralized or locked, since it was unreasonable to expect human beings to withstand the temptation to handle knobs, keys, handles and pushbuttons. In addition, the guide ought to have been very carefully on the watch for those who succumbed.
But, at the time, the guide had passed into the next room and Mortimer was tailing the line. He passed the keyboard on which instructions were fed into the computer. He had no way of suspecting that the plans for a new robot design were being fed into it at that moment, or, being a good kid, he would have avoided the keyboard. He had no way of knowing that, by what amounted to almost criminal negligence, a technician had not inactivated the keyboard.
So Mortimer touched the keys at random as though he were playing a musical instrument.
He did not notice that a section of perforated tape stretched itself out of the instrument in another part of the room-soundlessly, unobtrusively.
Nor did the technician, when he returned, discover any signs of tampering. He felt a little uneasy at noticing that the keyboard was live, but did not think to check. After a few minutes, even his first trifling uneasiness was gone, and he continued feeding data into the computer.
As for Mortimer, neither then, nor ever afterward, did he know what he had done.
The new LNE model was designed for the mining of boron in the asteroid belt. The boron hydrides were increasing in value yearly as primers for the proton micropiles that carried the ultimate load of power production on spaceships, and Earth's own meager supply was running thin.
Physically, that meant that the LNE robots would have to be equipped with eyes sensitive to those lines prominent in the spectroscopic analysis of boron ores and the type of limbs most useful for the working up of ore to finished product. As always, though, the mental equipment was the major problem.
The first LNE positronic brain had been completed now. It was the prototype and would join all other prototypes in U. S. Robots' collection. When finally tested, others would then be manufactured for leasing (never selling) to mining corporations.
LNE-Prototype was complete now. Tall, straight, polished, it looked from outside like any of a number of not-too-specialized robot models.
The technician in charge, guided by the directions for testing in the Handbook of Robotics, said, "How are you?"
The indicated answer was to have been, "I am well and ready to begin my functions. I trust you are well, too," or some trivial modification thereof.
This first exchange served no purpose but to show that the robot could hear, understand a routine question, and make a routine reply congruent with what one would expect of a robotic attitude. Beginning from there, one could pass on to more complicated matters that would test the different Laws and their interaction with the specialized knowledge of each particular model.
So the technician said, "How are you?" He was instantly jolted by the nature of LNE-Prototype's voice. It had a quality like no robotic voice he had ever heard (and he had heard many). It formed syllables like the chimes of a low-pitched celeste.
So surprising was this that it was only after several moments that the technician heard, in retrospect, the syllables that had been formed by those heavenly tones. They were, "Da, da, da, goo." The robot still stood tall and straight but its right hand crept upward and a finger went into its mouth.
The technician stared in absolute horror and bolted. He locked the door behind him and, from another room, put in an emergency call to Dr. Susan Calvin.
Dr. Susan Calvin was U. S. Robots' (and, virtually, mankind's) only robopsychologist. She did not have to go very far in her testing of LNE-Prototype before she called very peremptorily for a transcript of the computer-drawn plans of the positronic brain-paths and the taped instructions that had directed them. After some study, she, in turn, sent for Bogert.
Her iron-gray hair was drawn severely back; her cold face, with its strong vertical lines marked off by the horizontal gash of the pale, thin-lipped mouth, turned intensely upon him.
"What is this, Peter?" Bogert studied the passages she pointed out with increasing stupefaction and said, "Good Lord, Susan, it makes no sense."
"It most certainly doesn't. How did it get into the instructions?" The technician in charge, called upon, swore in all sincerity that it was none of his doing, and that he could not account for it. The computer checked out negative for all attempts at flaw-finding.
"The positronic brain," said Susan Calvin, thoughtfully, "is past redemption. So many of the higher functions have been cancelled out by these meaningless directions that the result is very like a human baby."
Bogert looked surprised, and Susan Calvin took on a frozen attitude at once, as she always did at the least expressed or implied doubt of her word. She said, "We make every effort to make a robot as mentally like a man as possible. Eliminate what we call the adult functions and what is naturally left is a human infant, mentally speaking. Why do you look so surprised, Peter?"
LNE-Prototype, who showed no signs of understanding any of the things that were going on around it, suddenly slipped into a sitting position and began a minute examination of its feet.
Bogert stared at it. "It's a shame to have to dismantle the creature. It's a handsome job."
"Dismantle it?" said the robopsychologist forcefully. "Of course, Susan. What's the use of this thing? Good Lord, if there's one object completely and abysmally useless it's a robot without a job it can perform. You don't pretend there's a job this thing can do, do you?"
"No, of course not."
"Well, then?"
Susan Calvin said, stubbornly, "I want to conduct more tests." Bogert looked at her with a moment's impatience, then shrugged. If there was one person at U. S. Robots with whom it was useless to dispute, surely that was Susan Calvin. Robots were all she loved, and long association with them, it seemed to Bogert, had deprived her of any appearance of humanity. She was no more to be argued out of a decision than was a triggered micropile to be argued out of operating.
"What's the use?" he breathed; then aloud, hastily: "Will you let us know when your tests are complete?"
"I will," she said. "Come, Lenny."
(LNE, thought Bogert. That becomes Lenny. Inevitable.)
Susan Calvin held out her hand but the robot only stared at it. Gently, the robopsychologist reached for the robot's hand and took it. Lenny rose smoothly to its feet (its mechanical coordination, at least, worked well). Together they walked out, robot topping woman by two feet. Many eyes followed them curiously down the long corridors.
One wall of Susan Calvin's laboratory, the one opening directly off her private office, was covered with a highly magnified reproduction of a positronic-path chart. Susan Calvin had studied it with absorption for the better part of a month.
She was considering it now, carefully, tracing the blunted paths through their contortions. Behind her, Lenny sat on the floor, moving its legs apart and together, crooning meaningless syllables to itself in a voice so beautiful that one could listen to the nonsense and be ravished.
Susan Calvin turned to the robot, "Lenny-Lenny-"
She repeated this patiently until finally Lenny looked up and made an inquiring sound. The robopsychologist allowed a glimmer of pleasure to cross her face fleetingly. The robot's attention was being gained in progressively shorter intervals.
She said, "Raise your hand, Lenny. Hand-up. Hand-up." She raised her own hand as she said it, over and over.
Lenny followed the movement with its eyes. Up, down, up, down. Then it made an abortive gesture with its own hand and chimed, "Eh-uh."
"Very good, Lenny," said Susan Calvin, gravely. "Try it again. Hand-up."
Very gently, she reached out her own hand, took the robot's, and raised it, lowered it. "Hand-up. Hand-up."
A voice from her office called and interrupted. "Susan?"
Calvin halted with a tightening of her lips. "What is it, Alfred?" The research director walked in, and looked at the chart on the wall and at the robot. "Still at it?"
"I'm at my work, yes."
"Well, you know, Susan…" He took out a cigar, staring at it hard, and made as though to bite off the end. In doing so, his eyes met the woman's stern look of disapproval; and he put the cigar away and began over. "Well, you know, Susan, the LNE model is in production now."
"So I've heard. Is there something in connection with it you wish of me?"
"No-o. Still, the mere fact that it is in production and is doing well means that working with this messed-up specimen is useless. Shouldn't it be scrapped?"
"In short, Alfred, you are annoyed that I am wasting my so-valuable time. Feel relieved. My time is not being wasted. I am working with this robot."
"But the work has no meaning."
"I'll be the judge of that, Alfred." Her voice was ominously quiet, and Lanning thought it wiser to shift his ground.
"Will you tell me what meaning it has? What are you doing with it right now, for instance?"
"I'm trying to get it to raise its hand on the word of command. I'm trying to get it to imitate the sound of the word."
As though on cue, Lenny said, "Eh-uh"And raised its hand waveringly.
Lanning shook his head. "That voice is amazing. How does it happen?"
Susan Calvin said, "I don't quite know. Its transmitter is a normal one. It could speak normally, I'm sure. It doesn't, however; it speaks like this as a consequence of something in the positronic paths that I have not yet pinpointed."
"Well, pinpoint it, for Heaven's sake. Speech like that might be useful."
"Oh, then there is some possible use in my studies on Lenny?" Lanning shrugged in embarrassment. "Oh, well, it's a minor point."
"I'm sorry you don't see the major points, then," said Susan Calvin with asperity, "which are much more important, but that's not my fault. Would you leave now, Alfred, and let me go on with my work?"
Lanning got to his cigar, eventually, in Bogert's office. He said, sourly, "That woman is growing more peculiar daily."
Bogert understood perfectly. In the U. S. Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation, there was only one "that woman." He said, "Is she still scuffing about with that pseudo-robot-that Lenny of hers?"
"Trying to get it to talk, so help me." Bogert shrugged. "Points up the company problem. I mean, about getting qualified personnel for research. If we had other robopsychologists, we could retire Susan. Incidentally, I presume the directors' meeting scheduled for tomorrow is for the purpose of dealing with the procurement problem?"
Lanning nodded and looked at his cigar as though it didn't taste good. "Yes. Quality, though, not quantity. We've raised wages until there's a steady stream of applicants-those who are interested primarily in money. The trick is to get those who are interested primarily in robotics-a few more like Susan Calvin."
"Hell, no. Not like her."
"Well, not like her personally. But you'll have to admit, Peter, that she's single-minded about robots. She has no other interest in life."
"I know. And that's exactly what makes her so unbearable." Lanning nodded. He had lost count of the many times it would have done his soul good to have fired Susan Calvin. He had also lost count of the number of millions of dollars she had at one time or another saved the company. She was a truly indispensable woman and would remain one until she died-or until they could lick the problem of finding men and women of her own high caliber who were interested in robotics research.
He said, "I think we'll cut down on the tour business." Peter shrugged. "If you say so. But meanwhile, seriously, what do we do about Susan? She can easily tie herself up with Lenny indefinitely. You know how she is when she gets what she considers an interesting problem."
"What can we do?" said Lanning. "If we become too anxious to pull her off, she'll stay on out of feminine contrariness. In the last analysis, we can't force her to do anything."
The dark-haired mathematician smiled. "I wouldn't ever apply the adjective 'feminine' to any part of her."
"Oh, well," said Lanning, grumpily. "At least, it won't do anyone any actual harm."
In that, if in nothing else, he was wrong. The emergency signal is always a tension-making thing in any large industrial establishment. Such signals had sounded in the history of U. S. Robots a dozen times-for fire, flood, riot and insurrection.
But one thing had never occurred in all that time. Never had the particular signal indicating "Robot out of control" sounded. No one ever expected it to sound. It was only installed at government insistence. ("Damn the Frankenstein complex," Lanning would mutter on those rare occasions when he thought of it.)
Now, finally, the shrill siren rose and fell at ten-second intervals, and practically no worker from the President of the Board of Directors down to the newest janitor's assistant recognized the significance of the strange sound for a few moments. After those moments passed, there was a massive convergence of armed guards and medical men to the indicated area of danger and U. S. Robots was struck with paralysis.
Charles Randow, computing technician, was taken off to hospital level with a broken arm. There was no other damage. No other physical damage.
"But the moral damage," roared Lanning, "is beyond estimation."
Susan Calvin faced him, murderously calm. "You will do nothing to Lenny. Nothing. Do you understand?"
"Do you understand, Susan?" That thing has hurt a human being. It has broken First Law. Don't you know what First Law is?"
"You will do nothing to Lenny."
"For God's sake, Susan, do I have to tell you First Law? A robot may not harm a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. Our entire position depends on the fact that First Law is rigidly observed by all robots of all types. If the public should hear, and they will hear, that there was an exception, even one exception, we might be forced to close down altogether. Our only chance of survival would be to announce at once that the robot involved had been destroyed, explain the circumstances, and hope that the public can be convinced that it will never happen again."
"I would like to find out exactly what happened," said Susan Calvin. "I was not present at the time and I would like to know exactly what the Randow boy was doing in my laboratories without my permission."
"The important thing that happened," said Lanning, "is obvious. Your robot struck Randow and the damn fool flashed the 'Robot out of control' button and made a case of it. But your robot struck him and inflicted damage to the extent of a broken arm. The truth is your Lenny is so distorted it lacks First Law and it must be destroyed."
"It does not lack First Law. I have studied its brainpaths and know it does not lack it."
"Then how could it strike a man?" Desperation turned him to sarcasm. "Ask Lenny. Surely you have taught it to speak by now."
Susan Calvin's cheeks Bushed a painful pink. She said, "I prefer to interview the victim. And in my absence, Alfred, I want my offices sealed tight, with Lenny inside. I want no one to approach him. If any harm comes to him while I am gone, this company will not see me again under any circumstances."
"Will you agree to its destruction, if it has broken First Law?"
"Yes," said Susan Calvin, "because I know it hasn't."
Charles Randow lay in bed with his arm set and in a cast. His major suffering was still from the shock of those few moments in which he thought a robot was advancing on him with murder in its positronic mind. No other human had ever had such reason to fear direct robotic harm as he had had just then. He had had a unique experience.
Susan Calvin and Alfred Lanning stood beside his bed now; Peter Bogert, who had met them on the way, was with them. Doctors and nurses had been shooed out.
Susan Calvin said, "Now-what happened?" Randow was daunted. He muttered, "The thing hit me in the arm. It was coming at me."
Calvin said, "Move further back in the story. What were you doing in my laboratory without authorization?"
The young computer swallowed, and the Adam's apple in his thin neck bobbed noticeably. He was high-cheekboned and abnormally pale. He said, "We all knew about your robot. The word is you were trying to teach it to talk like a musical instrument. There were bets going as to whether it talked or not. Some said-uh-you could teach a gatepost to talk."
"I suppose," said Susan Calvin, freezingly, "that is meant as a compliment. What did that have to do with you?"
"I was supposed to go in there and settle matters-see if it would talk, you know. We swiped a key to your place and I waited till you were gone and went in. We had a lottery on who was to do it. I lost."
"Then?"
"I tried to get it to talk and it hit me."
"What do you mean, you tried to get it to talk? How did you try?"
"I-I asked it questions, but it wouldn't say anything, and I had to give the thing a fair shake, so I kind of-yelled at it, and-"
"And?"
There was a long pause. Under Susan Calvin's unwavering stare, Randow finally said, "I tried to scare it into saying something." He added defensively, "I had to give the thing a fair shake."
"How did you try to scare it?"
"I pretended to take a punch at it."
"And it brushed your arm aside?"
"It hit my arm."
"Very well. That's all." To Lanning and Bogert, she said, "Come, gentlemen."
At the doorway, she turned back to Randow. "I can settle the bets going around, if you are still interested. Lenny can speak a few words quite well."
They said nothing until they were in Susan Calvin's office. Its walls were lined with her books, some of which she had written herself. It retained the patina of her own frigid, carefully ordered personality. It had only one chair in it and she sat down. Lanning and Bogert remained standing.
She said, "Lenny only defended itself. That is the Third Law: A robot must protect its own existence."
"Except," said Lanning forcefully, "when this conflicts with the First or Second Laws. Complete the statement! Lenny had no right to defend itself in any way at the cost of harm, however minor, to a human being."
"Nor did it," shot back Calvin, "knowingly. Lenny has an aborted brain. It had no way of knowing its own strength or the weakness of humans. In brushing aside the threatening arm of a human being it could not know the bone would break. In human terms, no moral blame can be attached to an individual who honestly cannot differentiate good and evil."
Bogert interrupted, soothingly, "Now, Susan, we don't blame. We understand that Lenny is the equivalent of a baby, humanly speaking, and we don't blame it. But the public will. U. S. Robots will be closed down."
"Quite the opposite. If you had the brains of a flea, Peter, you would see that this is the opportunity U. S. Robots is waiting for. That this will solve its problems."
Lanning hunched his white eyebrows low. He said, softly, "What problems, Susan?"
"Isn't the corporation concerned about maintaining our research personnel at the present-Heaven help us-high level?"
"We certainly are."
"Well, what are you offering prospective researchers? Excitement? Novelty? The thrill of piercing the unknown? No! You offer them salaries and the assurance of no problems."
Bogert said, "How do you mean, no problems?"
"Are there problems?" shot back Susan Calvin. "What kind of robots do we turn out? Fully developed robots, fit for their tasks. An industry tells us what it needs; a computer designs the brain; machinery forms the robot; and there it is, complete and done. Peter, some time ago, you asked me with reference to Lenny what its use was. What's the use, you said, of a robot that was not designed for any job? Now I ask you-what's the use of a robot designed for only one job? It begins and ends in the same place. The LNE models mine boron. If beryllium is needed, they are useless. If boron technology enters a new phase, they become useless. A human being so designed would be sub-human. A robot so designed is sub-robotic."
"Do you want a versatile robot?" asked Lanning, incredulously. "Why not?" demanded the robopsychologist. "Why not? I've been handed a robot with a brain almost completely stultified. I've been teaching it, and you, Alfred, asked me what was the use of that. Perhaps very little as far as Lenny itself is concerned, since it will never progress beyond the five-year-old level on a human scale. But what's the use in general? A very great deal, if you consider it as a study in the abstract problem of learning how to teach robots. I have learned ways to short-circuit neighboring pathways in order to create new ones. More study will yield better, more subtle and more efficient techniques of doing so."
"Well?"
"Suppose you started with a positronic brain that had all the basic pathways carefully outlined but none of the secondaries. Suppose you then started creating secondaries. You could sell basic robots designed for instruction; robots that could be modeled to a job, and then modeled to another, if necessary. Robots would become as versatile as human beings. Robots could learn!"
They stared at her. She said, impatiently, "You still don't understand, do you?"
"I understand what you are saying," said Lanning.
"Don't you understand that with a completely new field of research and completely new techniques to be developed, with a completely new area of the unknown to be penetrated, youngsters will feel a new urge to enter robotics? Try it and see."
"May I point out," said Bogert, smoothly, "that this is dangerous. Beginning with ignorant robots such as Lenny will mean that one could never trust First Law-exactly as turned out in Lenny's case."
"Exactly. Advertise the fact."
"Advertise it!"
"Of course. Broadcast the danger. Explain that you will set up a new research institute on the moon, if Earth's population chooses not to allow this sort of thing to go on upon Earth, but stress the danger to the possible applicants by all means."
Lanning said, "For God's sake, why?"
"Because the spice of danger will add to the lure. Do you think nuclear technology involves no danger and spationautics no peril? Has your lure of absolute security been doing the trick for you? Has it helped you to cater to the Frankenstein complex you all despise so? Try something else then, something that has worked in other fields."
There was a sound from beyond the door that led to Calvin's personal laboratories. It was the chiming sound of Lenny.
The robopsychologist broke off instantly, listening. She said, "Excuse me. I think Lenny is calling me."
"Can it call you?" said Lanning.
"I said I've managed to teach it a few words." She stepped toward the door, a little flustered. "If you will wait for me-"
They watched her leave and were silent for a moment. Then Lanning said, "Do you think there's anything to what she says, Peter?"
"Just possibly, Alfred," said Bogert. "Just possibly. Enough for US to bring the matter up at the directors' meeting and see what they say. After all, the fat is in the fire. A robot has harmed a human being and knowledge of it is public. As Susan says, we might as well try to turn the matter to our advantage. Of course, I distrust her motives in all this."
"How do you mean?"
"Even if all she has said is perfectly true, it is only rationalization as far as she is concerned. Her motive in all this is her desire to hold on to this robot. If we pressed her" (and the mathematician smiled at the incongruous literal meaning of the phrase) "she would say it was to continue learning techniques of teaching robots, but I think she has found another use for Lenny. A rather unique one that would fit only Susan of all women."
"I don't get your drift." Bogert said, "Did you hear what the robot was calling?"
"Well, no, I didn't quite-" began Lanning, when the door opened suddenly, and both men stopped talking at once.
Susan Calvin stepped in again, looking about uncertainly. "Have either of you seen-I'm positive I had it somewhere about-Oh, there it is."
She ran to a corner of one bookcase and picked up an object of intricate metal webbery, dumbbell shaped and hollow, with variously shaped metal pieces inside each hollow, just too large to be able to fallout of the webbing.
As she picked it up, the metal pieces within moved and struck together, clicking pleasantly. It struck Lanning that the object was a kind of robotic version of a baby rattle.
As Susan Calvin opened the door again to pass through, Lenny's voice chimed again from within. This time, Lanning heard it clearly as it spoke the words Susan Calvin had taught it.
In heavenly celeste-like sounds, it called out, "Mommie, I want you. I want you, Mommie."
And the footsteps of Susan Calvin could be heard hurrying eagerly across the laboratory floor toward the only kind of baby she could ever have or love.
The United States Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation, as defendants in the case, had influence enough to force a closed-doors trial without a jury.
Nor did Northeastern University try hard to prevent it. The trustees knew perfectly well how the public might react to any issue involving misbehavior of a robot, however rarefied that misbehavior might be. They also had a clearly visualized notion of how an antirobot riot might become an antiscience riot without warning.
The government, as represented in this case by Justice Harlow Shane, was equally anxious for a quiet end to this mess. Both U. S. Robots and the academic world were bad people to antagonize.
Justice Shane said, "Since neither press, public nor jury is present, gentlemen, let us stand on as little ceremony as we can and get to the facts."
He smiled stiffly as he said this, perhaps without much hope that his request would be effective, and hitched at his robe so that he might sit more comfortably. His face was pleasantly rubicund, his chin round and soft, his nose broad and his eyes light in color and wide-set. All in all, it was not a face with much judicial majesty and the judge knew it.
Barnabas H. Goodfellow, Professor of Physics at Northeastern U., was sworn in first, taking the usual vow with an expression that made mincemeat of his name.
After the usual opening-gambit questions, Prosecution shoved his hands deep into his pockets and said, "When was it, Professor, that the matter of the possible employ of Robot EZ-27 was first brought to your attention, and how?"
Professor Goodfellow's small and angular face set itself into an uneasy expression, scarcely more benevolent than the one it replaced. He said, "I have had professional contact and some social acquaintance with Dr. Alfred Lanning, Director of Research at U. S. Robots. I was inclined to listen with some tolerance then when I received a rather strange suggestion from him on the third of March of last year-"
"Of 2033?"
"That's right."
"Excuse me for interrupting. Please proceed."
The professor nodded frostily, scowled to fix the facts in his mind, and began to speak.
Professor Goodfellow looked at the robot with a certain uneasiness. It had been carried into the basement supply room in a crate, in accordance with the regulations governing the shipment of robots from place to place on the Earth's surface.
He knew it was coming; it wasn't that he was unprepared. From the moment of Dr. Lanning's first phone call on March 3, he had felt himself giving way to the other's persuasiveness, and now, as an inevitable result, he found himself face to face with a robot.
It looked uncommonly large as it stood within arm's reach. Alfred Lanning cast a hard glance of his own at the robot, as though making certain it had not been damaged in transit. Then he turned his ferocious eyebrows and his mane of white hair in the professor's direction.
"This is Robot EZ-27, first of its model to be available for public use." He turned to the robot. "This is Professor Goodfellow, Easy."
Easy spoke impassively, but with such suddenness that the professor shied. "Good afternoon, Professor."
Easy stood seven feet tall and had the general proportions of a man-always the prime selling point of U. S. Robots. That and the possession of the basic patents on the positronic brain had given them an actual monopoly on robots and a near-monopoly on computing machines in general.
The two men who had uncrated the robot had left now and the professor looked from Lanning to the robot and back to Lanning. "It is harmless, I'm sure." He didn't sound sure.
"More harmless than I am," said Lanning. "I could be goaded into striking you. Easy could not be. You know the Three Laws of Robotics, I presume."
"Yes, of course," said Goodfellow.
"They are built into the positronic patterns of the brain and must be observed. The First Law, the prime rule of robotic existence, safeguards the life and well-being of all humans." He paused, rubbed at his cheek, then added, "It's something of which we would like to persuade all Earth if we could."
"It's just that he seems formidable."
"Granted. But whatever he seems, you'll find that he is useful."
"I'm not sure in what way. Our conversations were not very helpful in that respect. Still, I agreed to look at the object and I'm doing it."
"We'll do more than look, Professor. Have you brought a book?"
"I have."
"May I see it?"
Professor Goodfellow reached down without actually taking his eyes off the metal-in-human-shape that confronted him. From the briefcase at his feet, he withdrew a book.
Lanning held out his hand for it and looked at the backstrip. "Physical Chemistry of Electrolytes in Solution. Fair enough, sir. You selected this yourself, at random. It was no suggestion of mine, this particular text. Am I right?"
"Yes."
Lanning passed the book to Robot EZ-27.
The professor jumped a little. "No! That's a valuable book!" Lanning raised his eyebrows and they looked like shaggy coconut icing. He said, "Easy has no intention of tearing the book in two as a feat of strength, I assure you. It can handle a book as carefully as you or I. Go ahead, Easy."
"Thank you, sir," said Easy. Then, turning its metal bulk slightly, it added, "With your permission, Professor Goodfellow."
The professor stared, then said, "Yes-yes, of course."
With a slow and steady manipulation of metal fingers, Easy turned the pages of the book, glancing at the left page, then the right; turning the page, glancing left, then right; turning the page and so on for minute after minute.
The sense of its power seemed to dwarf even the large cement-walled room in which they stood and to reduce the two human watchers to something considerably less than life-size.
Goodfellow muttered, "The light isn't very good."
"It will do."
Then, rather more sharply, "But what is he doing?"
"Patience, sir."
The last page was turned eventually. Lanning asked, "Well, Easy?"
The robot said, "It is a most accurate book and there is little to which I can point. On line 22 of page 27, the word 'positive' is spelled p-o-i-s-t-i-v-e. The comma in line 6 of page 32 is superfluous, whereas one should have been used on line 13 of page 54. The plus sign in equation XIV-2 on page 337 should be a minus sign if it is to be consistent with the previous equations-"
"Wait! Wait!" cried the professor. "What is he doing?"
"Doing?" echoed Lanning in sudden irascibility. "Why, man, he has already done it! He has proofread that book."
"Proofread it?"
"Yes. In the short time it took him to turn those pages, he caught every mistake in spelling, grammar and punctuation. He has noted errors in word order and detected inconsistencies. And he will retain the information, letter-perfect, indefinitely."
The professor's mouth was open. He walked rapidly away from Lanning and Easy and as rapidly back. He folded his arms across his chest and stared at them. Finally he said, "You mean this is a proofreading robot?"
Lanning nodded. "Among other things."
"But why do you show it to me?"
"So that you might help me persuade the university to obtain it for use."
"To read proof?"
"Among other things," Lanning repeated patiently.
The professor drew his pinched face together in a kind of sour disbelief. "But this is ridiculous!"
"Why?"
"The university could never afford to buy this half-ton-it must weigh that at least-this half-ton proofreader."
"Proofreading is not all it will do. It will prepare reports from outlines, fill out forms, serve as an accurate memory-file, grade papers-"
All picayune!"
Lanning said, "Not at all, as I can show you in a moment. But I think we can discuss this more comfortably in your office, if you have no objection."
"No, of course not," began the professor mechanically and took a half-step as though to turn. Then he snapped out, "But the robot-we can't take the robot. Really, Doctor, you'll have to crate it up again."
"Time enough. We can leave Easy here."
"Unattended?"
"Why not? He knows he is to stay. Professor Goodfellow, it is necessary to understand that a robot is far more reliable than a human being."
"I would be responsible for any damage-"
"There will be no damage. I guarantee that. Look, it's after hours. You expect no one here, I imagine, before tomorrow morning. The truck and my two men are outside. U. S. Robots will take any responsibility that may arise. None will. Call it a demonstration of the reliability of the robot."
The professor allowed himself to be led out of the storeroom. Nor did he look entirely comfortable in his own office, five stories up.
He dabbed at the line of droplets along the upper half of his forehead with a white handkerchief.
"As you know very well, Dr. Lanning, there are laws against the use of robots on Earth's surface," he pointed out.
"The laws, Professor Goodfellow, are not simple ones. Robots may not be used on public thoroughfares or within public edifices. They may not be used on private grounds or within private structures except under certain restrictions that usually turn out to be prohibitive. The university, however, is a large and privately owned institution that usually receives preferential treatment. If the robot is used only in a specific room for only academic purposes, if certain other restrictions are observed and if the men and women having occasion to enter the room cooperate fully, we may remain within the law."
"But all that trouble just to read proof?"
"The uses would be infinite. Professor. Robotic labor has so far been used only to relieve physical drudgery. Isn't there such a thing as mental drudgery? When a professor capable of the most useful creative thought is forced to spend two weeks painfully checking the spelling of lines of print and I offer you a machine that can do it in thirty minutes, is that picayune?"
"But the price-"
"The price need not bother you. You cannot buy EZ-27. U. S. Robots does not sell its products. But the university can lease EZ-27 for a thousand dollars a year-considerably less than the cost of a single microwave spectograph continuous-recording attachment."
Goodfellow looked stunned. Lanning followed up his advantage by saying, "I only ask that you put it up to whatever group makes the decisions here. I would be glad to speak to them if they want more information."
"Well," Goodfellow said doubtfully, "I can bring it up at next week's Senate meeting. I can't promise that will do any good, though."
"Naturally," said Lanning.
The Defense Attorney was short and stubby and carried himself rather portentously, a stance that had the effect of accentuating his double chin. He stared at Professor Goodfellow, once that witness had been handed over, and said, "You agreed rather readily, did you not?"
The Professor said briskly, "I suppose I was anxious to be rid of Dr. Lanning. I would have agreed to anything."
"With the intention of forgetting about it after he left?"
"Well-"
"Nevertheless, you did present the matter to a meeting of the Executive Board of the University Senate."
"Yes, I did."
"So that you agreed in good faith with Dr. Lanning's suggestions. You weren't just going along with a gag. You actually agreed enthusiastically, did you not?"
"I merely followed ordinary procedures."
"As a matter of fact, you weren't as upset about the robot as you now claim you were. You know the Three Laws of Robotics and you knew them at the time of your interview with Dr. Lanning."
"Well, yes."
"And you were perfectly willing to leave a robot at large and unattended."
"Dr. Lanning assured me-"
"Surely you would never have accepted his assurance if you had had the slightest doubt that the robot might be in the least dangerous."
The professor began frigidly, "I had every faith in the word-"
"That is all," said Defense abruptly.
As Professor Goodfellow, more than a bit ruffled, stood down, Justice Shane leaned forward and said, "Since I am not a robotics man myself, I would appreciate knowing precisely what the Three Laws of Robotics are. Would Dr. Lanning quote them for the benefit of the court?"
Dr. Lanning looked startled. He had been virtually bumping heads with the gray-haired woman at his side. He rose to his feet now and the woman looked up, too-expressionlessly.
Dr. Lanning said, "Very well, Your Honor." He paused as though about to launch into an oration and said, with laborious clarity, "First Law: a robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. Second Law: a robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. Third Law: a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws."
"I see," said the judge, taking rapid notes. "These Laws are built into every robot, are they?"
"Into every one. That will be borne out by any roboticist."
"And into Robot EZ-27 specifically?"
"Yes, Your Honor."
"You will probably be required to repeat those statements under oath."
"I am ready to do so, Your Honor." He sat down again.
Dr. Susan Calvin, robopsychologist-in-chief for U. S. Robots, who was the gray-haired woman sitting next to Lanning, looked at her titular superior without favor, but then she showed favor to no human being. She said, "Was Goodfellow's testimony accurate,
Alfred?"
"Essentially," muttered Lanning. "He wasn't as nervous as all that about the robot and he was anxious enough to talk business with me when he heard the price. But there doesn't seem to be any drastic distortion."
Dr. Calvin said thoughtfully, "It might have been wise to put the price higher than a thousand."
"We were anxious to place Easy."
"I know. Too anxious, perhaps. They'll try to make it look as though we had an ulterior motive."
Lanning looked exasperated. "We did. I admitted that at the University Senate meeting."
"They can make it look as if we had one beyond the one we admitted."
Scott Robertson, son of the founder of U. S. Robots and still owner of a majority of the stock, leaned over from Dr. Calvin's other side and said in a kind of explosive whisper, "Why can't you get Easy to talk so we'll know where we're at?"
"You know he can't talk about it, Mr. Robertson."
"Make him. You're the psychologist, Dr. Calvin. Make him."
"If I'm the psychologist, Mr. Robertson," said Susan Calvin coldly, "let me make the decisions. My robot will not be made to do anything at the price of his well-being."
Robertson frowned and might have answered, but Justice Shane was tapping his gavel in a polite sort of way and they grudgingly fell silent.
Francis J. Hart, head of the Department of English and Dean of Graduate Studies, was on the stand. He was a plump man, meticulously dressed in dark clothing of a conservative cut, and possessing several strands of hair traversing the pink top of his cranium. He sat well back in the witness chair with his hands folded neatly in his lap and displaying, from time to time, a tight-lipped smile.
He said, "My first connection with the matter of the Robot EZ-27 was on the occasion of the session of the University Senate Executive Committee at which the subject was introduced by Professor Goodfellow. Thereafter, on the tenth of April of last year, we held a special meeting on the subject, during which I was in the chair."
"Were minutes kept of the meeting of the Executive Committee? Of the special meeting, that is?"
"Well, no. It was a rather unusual meeting." The dean smiled briefly. "We thought it might remain confidential."
"What transpired at the meeting?"
Dean Hart was not entirely comfortable as chairman of that meeting. Nor did the other members assembled seem completely calm. Only Dr. Lanning appeared at peace with himself. His tall, gaunt figure and the shock of white hair that crowned him reminded Hart of portraits he had seen of Andrew Jackson.
Samples of the robot's work lay scattered along the central regions of the table and the reproduction of a graph drawn by the robot was now in the hands of Professor Minott of Physical Chemistry. The chemist's lips were pursed in obvious approval.
Hart cleared his throat and said, "There seems no doubt that the robot can perform certain routine tasks with adequate competence. I have gone over these, for instance, just before coming in and there is very little to find fault with."
He picked up a long sheet of printing, some three times as long as the average book page. It was a sheet of galley proof, designed to be corrected by authors before the type was set up in page form. Along both of the wide margins of the galley were proofmarks, neat and superbly legible. Occasionally, a word of print was crossed out and a new word substituted in the margin in characters so fine and regular it might easily have been print itself. Some of the corrections were blue to indicate the original mistake had been the author's, a few in red, where the printer had been wrong.
"Actually," said Lanning, "there is less than very little to find fault with. I should say there is nothing at all to find fault with, Dr. Hart. I'm sure the corrections are perfect, insofar as the original manuscript was. If the manuscript against which this galley was corrected was at fault in a matter of fact rather than of English, the robot is not competent to correct it."
"We accept that. However, the robot corrected word order on occasion and I don't think the rules of English are sufficiently hidebound for US to be sure that in each case the robot's choice was the correct one."
"Easy's positronic brain," said Lanning, showing large teeth as he smiled, "has been molded by the contents of all the standard works on the subject. I'm sure you cannot point to a case where the robot's choice was definitely the incorrect one."
Professor Minott looked up from the graph he still held. "The question in my mind, Dr. Lanning, is why we need a robot at all, with all the difficulties in public relations that would entail. The science of automation has surely reached the point where your company could design a machine, an ordinary computer of a type known and accepted by the public, that would correct galleys."
"I am sure we could," said Lanning stiffly, "but such a machine would require that the galleys be translated into special symbols or, at the least, transcribed on tapes. Any corrections would emerge in symbols. You would need to keep men employed translating words to symbols, symbols to words. Furthermore, such a computer could do no other job. It couldn't prepare the graph you hold in your hand, for instance."
Minott grunted.
Lanning went on. "The hallmark of the positronic robot is its flexibility. It can do a number of jobs. It is designed like a man so that it can use all the tools and machines that have, after all, been designed to be used by a man. It can talk to you and you can talk to it. You can actually reason with it up to a point. Compared to even a simple robot, an ordinary computer with a non-positronic brain is only a heavy adding machine."
Goodfellow looked up and said, "If we all talk and reason with the robot, what are the chances of our confusing it? I suppose it doesn't have the capability of absorbing an infinite amount of data."
"No, it hasn't. But it should last five years with ordinary use. It will know when it will require clearing, and the company will do the job without charge."
"The company will?"
"Yes. The company reserves the right to service the robot outside the ordinary course of its duties. It is one reason we retain control of our positronic robots and lease rather than sell them. In the pursuit of its ordinary functions, any robot can be directed by any man. Outside its ordinary functions, a robot requires expert handling, and that we can give it. For instance, any of you might clear an EZ robot to an extent by telling it to forget this item or that. But you would be almost certain to phrase the order in such a way as to cause it to forget too much or too little. We would detect such tampering, because we have built-in safeguards. However, since there is no need for clearing the robot in its ordinary work, or for doing other useless things, this raises no problem."
Dean Hart touched his head as though to make sure his carefully cultivated strands lay evenly distributed and said, "You are anxious to have us take the machine. Yet surely it is a losing proposition for U. S. Robots. One thousand a year is a ridiculously low price. Is it that you hope through this to rent other such machines to other universities at a more reasonable price?"
"Certainly that's a fair hope," said Lanning.
"But even so, the number of machines you could rent would be limited. I doubt if you could make it a paying proposition."
Lanning put his elbows on the table and earnestly leaned forward. "Let me put it bluntly, gentlemen. Robots cannot be used on Earth, except in certain special cases, because of prejudice against them on the part of the public. U. S. Robots is a highly successful corporation with our extraterrestrial and spaceflight markets alone, to say nothing of our computer subsidiaries. However, we are concerned with more than profits alone. It is our firm belief that the use of robots on Earth itself would mean a better life for all eventually, even if a certain amount of economic dislocation resulted at first.
"The labor unions are naturally against us, but surely we may expect cooperation from the large universities. The robot, Easy, will help you by relieving you of scholastic drudgery-by assuming, if you permit it, the role of galley slave for you. Other universities and research institutions will follow your lead, and if it works out, then perhaps other robots of other types may be placed and the public's objections to them broken down by stages."
Minott murmured, "Today Northeastern University, tomorrow the world."
Angrily, Lanning whispered to Susan Calvin, "I wasn't nearly that eloquent and they weren't nearly that reluctant. At a thousand a year, they were jumping to get Easy. Professor Minott told me he'd never seen as beautiful a job as that graph he was holding and there was no mistake on the galley or anywhere else. Hart admitted it freely."
The severe vertical lines on Dr. Calvin's face did not soften. "You should have demanded more money than they could pay, Alfred, and let them beat you down."
"Maybe," he grumbled.
Prosecution was not quite done with Professor Hart. "After Dr. Lanning left, did you vote on whether to accept Robot EZ-27?"
"Yes, we did."
"With what result?"
"In favor of acceptance, by majority vote."
"What would you say influenced the vote?" Defense objected immediately.
Prosecution rephrased the question. "What influenced you, personally, in your individual vote? You did vote in favor, I think."
"I voted in favor, yes. I did so largely because I was impressed by Dr. Lanning's feeling that it was our duty as members of the world's intellectual leadership to allow robotics to help Man in the solution of his problems."
"In other words, Dr. Lanning talked you into it."
"That's his job. He did it very well."
"Your witness."
Defense strode up to the witness chair and surveyed Professor Hart for a long moment. He said, "In reality, you were all pretty eager to have Robot EZ-27 in your employ, weren't you?"
"We thought that if it could do the work, it might be useful."
"If it could do the work? I understand you examined the samples of Robot EZ-27's original work with particular care on the day of the meeting which you have just described."
"Yes, I did. Since the machine's work dealt primarily with the handling of the English language, and since that is my field of competence, it seemed logical that I be the one chosen to examine the work."
"Very good. Was there anything on display on the table at the time of the meeting which was less than satisfactory? I have all the material here as exhibits. Can you point to a single unsatisfactory item?"
"Well-"
"It's a simple question. Was there one single solitary unsatisfactory item? You inspected it. Was there?"
The English professor frowned. "There wasn't."
"I also have some samples of work done by Robot EZ-27 during the course of his fourteen-month employ at Northeastern. Would you examine these and tell me if there is anything wrong with them in even one particular?"
Hart snapped, "When he did make a mistake, it was a beauty."
"Answer my question," thundered Defense, "and only the question I am putting to you! Is there anything wrong with the material?"
Dean Hart looked cautiously at each item. "Well, nothing."
"Barring the matter concerning which we are here engaged. do you know of any mistake on the part of EZ-27?"
"Barring the matter for which this trial is being held, no."
Defense cleared his throat as though to signal end of paragraph. He said. "Now about the vote concerning whether Robot EZ-27 was to be employed or not. You said there was a majority in favor. What was the actual vote?"
"Thirteen to one, as I remember."
"Thirteen to one! More than just a majority, wouldn't you say?"
"No, sir!"All the pedant in Dean Hart was aroused. "In the English language, the word 'majority' means 'more than half.' Thirteen out of fourteen is a majority, nothing more."
"But an almost unanimous one."
"A majority all the same!"
Defense switched ground. "And who was the lone holdout?"
Dean Hart looked acutely uncomfortable. "Professor Simon Ninheimer."
Defense pretended astonishment. "Professor Ninheimer? The head of the Department of Sociology?"
"Yes, Sir."
"The plaintiff?"
"Yes, sir."
Defense pursed his lips. "In other words, it turns out that the man bringing the action for payment of $750,000 damages against my client. United States Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation was the one who from the beginning opposed the use of the robot-although everyone else on the Executive Committee of the University Senate was persuaded that it was a good idea."
"He voted against the motion, as was his right."
"You didn't mention in your description of the meeting any remarks made by Professor Ninheimer. Did he make any?"
"I think he spoke."
"You think?"
"Well, he did speak."
"Against using the robot?"
"Yes."
"Was he violent about it?"
Dean Hart paused. "He was vehement."
Defense grew confidential. "How long have you known Professor Ninheimer, Dean Hart?"
"About twelve years."
"Reasonably well?"
"I should say so, yes."
"Knowing him, then, would you say he was the kind of man who might continue to bear resentment against a robot, all the more so because an adverse vote had-"
Prosecution drowned out the remainder of the question with an indignant and vehement objection of his own. Defense motioned the witness down and Justice Shane called luncheon recess.
Robertson mangled his sandwich. The corporation would not founder for loss of three-quarters of a million, but the loss would do it no particular good. He was conscious, moreover, that there would be a much more costly long-term setback in public relations.
He said sourly, "Why all this business about how Easy got into the university? What do they hope to gain?"
The Attorney for Defense said quietly, "A court action is like a chess game, MI. Robertson. The winner is usually the one who can see more moves ahead, and my friend at the prosecutor's table is no beginner. They can show damage; that's no problem. Their main effort lies in anticipating our defense. They must be counting on us to try to show that Easy couldn't possibly have committed the offense-because of the Laws of Robotics."
"All right," said Robertson, "that is our defense. An absolutely airtight one."
"To a robotics engineer. Not necessarily to a judge. They're setting themselves up a position from which they can demonstrate that EZ-27 was no ordinary robot. It was the first of its type to be offered to the public. It was an experimental model that needed field-testing and the university was the only decent way to provide such testing. That would look plausible in the light of Dr. Lanning's strong efforts to place the robot and the willingness of U. S. Robots to lease it for so little. The prosecution would then argue that the field-test proved Easy to have been a failure. Now do you see the purpose of what's been going on?"
"But EZ-27 was a perfectly good model," Argued Robertson. "It was the twenty-seventh in production."
"Which is really a bad point," said Defense somberly. "What was wrong with the first twenty-six? Obviously something. Why shouldn't there be something wrong with the twenty-seventh, too?"
"There was nothing wrong with the first twenty-six except that they weren't complex enough for the task. These were the first positronic brains of the sort to be constructed and it was rather hit-and-miss to begin with. But the Three Laws held in all of them! No robot is so imperfect that the Three Laws don't hold."
"Dr. Lanning has explained this to me, Mr. Robertson, and I am willing to take his word for it. The judge, however, may not be. We are expecting a decision from an honest and intelligent man who knows no robotics and thus may be led astray. For instance, if you or Dr. Lanning or Dr. Calvin were to say on the stand that any positronic brains were constructed 'hit-and-miss,' as you just did, prosecution would tear you apart in cross-examination. Nothing would salvage our case. So that's something to avoid."
Robertson growled, "If only Easy would talk."
Defense shrugged. "A robot is incompetent as a witness, so that would do us no good."
"At least we'd know some of the facts. We'd know how it came to do such a thing."
Susan Calvin fired up. A dullish red touched her cheeks and her voice had a trace of warmth in it. "We know how Easy came to do it. It was ordered to! I've explained this to counsel and I'll explain it to you now."
"Ordered to by whom?" asked Robertson in honest astonishment. (No one ever told him anything, he thought resentfully. These research people considered themselves the owners of U. S. Robots, by God!)
"By the plaintiff," said Dr. Calvin. "In heaven's name, why?"
"I don't know why yet. Perhaps just that we might be sued, that he might gain some cash." There were blue glints in her eyes as she said that.
"Then why doesn't Easy say so?"
"Isn't that obvious? It's been ordered to keep quiet about the matter."
"Why should that be obvious?" demanded Robertson truculently. "Well, it's obvious to me. Robot psychology is my profession. If
Easy will not answer questions about the matter directly, he will answer questions on the fringe of the matter. By measuring increased hesitation in his answers as the central question is approached, by measuring the area of blankness and the intensity of counterpotentials set up, it is possible to tell with scientific precision that his troubles are the result of an order not to talk, with its strength based on First Law. In other words, he's been told that if he talks, harm will be done a human being. Presumably harm to the unspeakable Professor Ninheimer, the plaintiff, who, to the robot, would seem a human being."
"Well, then," said Robertson, "can't you explain that if he keeps quiet, harm will be done to U. S. Robots?"
"U. S. Robots is not a human being and the First Law of Robotics does not recognize a corporation as a person the way ordinary laws do. Besides, it would be dangerous to try to lift this particular sort of inhibition. The person who laid it on could lift it off least dangerously, because the robot's motivations in that respect are centered on that person. Any other course-" She shook her head and grew almost impassioned. "I won't let the robot be damaged!"
Lanning interrupted with the air of bringing sanity to the problem. "It seems to me that we have only to prove a robot incapable of the act of which Easy is accused. We can do that."
"Exactly," said Defense, in annoyance. "You can do that. The only witnesses capable of testifying to Easy's condition and to the nature of Easy's state of mind are employees of U. S. Robots. The judge can't possibly accept their testimony as unprejudiced."
"How can he deny expert testimony?"
"By refusing to be convinced by it. That's his right as the judge. Against the alternative that a man like Professor Ninheimer deliberately set about ruining his own reputation, even for a sizable sum of money, the judge isn't going to accept the technicalities of your engineers. The judge is a man, after all. If he has to choose between a man doing an impossible thing and a robot doing an impossible thing, he's quite likely to decide in favor of the man."
"A man can do an impossible thing," said Lanning, "because we don't know all the complexities of the human mind and we don't know what, in a given human mind, is impossible and what is not. We do know what is really impossible to a robot."
"Well, we'll see if we can't convince the judge of that," Defense replied wearily.
"If all you say is so," rumbled Robertson, "I don't see how you can."
"We'll see. It's good to know and be aware of the difficulties involved, but let's not be too downhearted. I've tried to look ahead a few moves in the chess game, too." With a stately nod in the direction of the robopsychologist, he added, "With the help of the good lady here."
Lanning looked from one to the other and said, "What the devil is this?"
But the bailiff thrust his head into the room and announced somewhat breathlessly that the trial was about to resume.
They took their seats, examining the man who had started all the trouble.
Simon Ninheimer owned a fluffy head of sandy hair, a face that narrowed past a beaked nose toward a pointed chin, and a habit of sometimes hesitating before key words in his conversation that gave him an air of a seeker after an almost unbearable precision. When he said, "The Sun rises in the-uh-east, 11 one was certain he had given due consideration to the possibility that it might at some time rise in the west.
Prosecution said, "Did you oppose employment of Robot EZ-27 by the university?"
"I did, sir."
"Why was that?"
"I did not feel that we understood the-uh-motives of U. S. Robots thoroughly. I mistrusted their anxiety to place the robot with us."
"Did you feel that it was capable of doing the work that it was allegedly designed to do?"
"I know for a fact that it was not."
"Would you state your reasons?"
Simon Ninheimer's book, entitled Social Tensions Involved in Space-Flight and Their Resolution, had been eight years in the making. Ninheimer's search for precision was not confined to his habits of speech, and in a subject like sociology, almost inherently imprecise, it left him breathless.
Even with the material in galley proofs, he felt no sense of completion. Rather the reverse, in fact. Staring at the long strips of print, he felt only the itch to tear the lines of type apart and rearrange them differently.
Jim Baker, Instructor and soon to be Assistant Professor of Sociology, found Ninheimer, three days after the first batch of galleys had arrived from the printer, staring at the handful of paper in abstraction. The galleys came in three copies: one for Ninheimer to proofread, one for Baker to proofread independently, and a third, marked "Original," which was to receive the final corrections, a combination of those made by Ninheimer and by Baker, after a conference at which possible conflicts and disagreements were ironed out. This had been their policy on the several papers on which they had collaborated in the past three years and it worked well.
Baker, young and ingratiatingly soft-voiced, had his own copies of the galleys in his hand. He said eagerly, "I've done the first chapter and it contains some typographical beauts."
"The first chapter always has them," said Ninheimer distantly. "Do you want to go over it now?"
Ninheimer brought his eyes to grave focus on Baker. "I haven't done anything on the galleys, Jim. I don't think I'll bother."
Baker looked confused. "Not bother?"
Ninheimer pursed his lips. "I've asked about the-uh-workload of the machine. After all, he was originally-uh-promoted as a proofreader. They've set a schedule."
"The machine? You mean Easy?"
"I believe that is the foolish name they gave it."
"But, Dr. Ninheimer, I thought you were staying clear of it"'
"I seem to be the only one doing so. Perhaps I ought to take my share of the-uh-advantage."
"Oh. Well, I seem to have wasted time on this first chapter, then," said the younger man ruefully.
"Not wasted. We can compare the machine's result with yours as a check."
"If you want to, but-"
"Yes?"
"I doubt that we'll find anything wrong with Easy's work. It's supposed never to have made a mistake."
"I dare say," said Ninheimer dryly.
The first chapter was brought in again by Baker four days later. This time it was Ninheimer's copy, fresh from the special annex that had been built to house Easy and the equipment it used.
Baker was jubilant. "Dr. Ninheimer, it not only caught everything I caught-it found a dozen errors I missed! The whole thing took it twelve minutes!"
Ninheimer looked over the sheaf, with the neatly printed marks and symbols in the margins. He said, "It is not as complete as you and I would have made it. We would have entered an insert on Suzuki's work on the neurological effects of low gravity."
"You mean his paper in Sociological Reviews?"
"Of course."
"Well, you can't expect impossibilities of Easy. It can't read the literature for us."
"I realize that. As a matter of fact, I have prepared the insert. I will see the machine and make certain it knows how to-uh-handle inserts."
"It will know."
"I prefer to make certain."
Ninheimer had to make an appointment to see Easy, and then could get nothing better than fifteen minutes in the late evening.
But the fifteen minutes turned out to be ample. Robot EZ-27 understood the matter of inserts at once.
Ninheimer found himself uncomfortable at close quarters with the robot for the first time. Almost automatically, as though it were human, he found himself asking, "Are you happy with your work?'
"Most happy, Professor Ninheimer," said Easy solemnly, the photocells that were its eyes gleaming their normal deep red.
"You know me?"
"From the fact that you present me with additional material to include in the galleys, it follows that you are the author. The author's name, of course, is at the head of each sheet of galley proof."
"I see. You make-uh-deductions, then. Tell me"-he couldn't resist the question-"what do you think of the book so far?'
Easy said, "I find it very pleasant to work with."
"Pleasant? That is an odd word for a-uh-a mechanism without emotion. I've been told you have no emotion."
"The words of your book go in accordance with my circuits," Easy explained. "They set up little or no counterpotentials. It is in my brain paths to translate this mechanical fact into a word such as 'pleasant.' The emotional context is fortuitous."
"I see. Why do you find the book pleasant?"
"It deals with human beings, Professor, and not with inorganic materials or mathematical symbols. Your book attempts to understand human beings and to help increase human happiness."
"And this is what you try to do and so my book goes in accordance with your circuits? Is that it?"
"That is it, Professor."
The fifteen minutes were up. Ninheimer left and went to the university library, which was on the point of closing. He kept them open long enough to find an elementary text on robotics. He took it home with him.
Except for occasional insertion of late material, the galleys went to Easy and from him to the publishers with little intervention from Ninheimer at first-and none at all later.
Baker said, a little uneasily, "It almost gives me a feeling of uselessness."
"It should give you a feeling of having time to begin a new project," said Ninheimer, without looking up from the notations he was making in the current issue of Social Science Abstracts.
"I'm just not used to it. I keep worrying about the galleys. It's silly, I know."
"It is."
"The other day I got a couple of sheets before Easy sent them off to-"
"What!" Ninheimer looked up, scowling. The copy of Abstracts slid shut. "Did you disturb the machine at its work?"
"Only for a minute. Everything was all right. Oh, it changed one word. You referred to something as 'criminal'; it changed the word to 'reckless.' It thought the second adjective fit in better with the context."
Ninheimer grew thoughtful. "What did you think?"
"You know, I agreed with it. I let it stand."
Ninheimer turned in his swivel-chair to face his young associate. "See here, I wish you wouldn't do this again. If I am to use the machine, I wish the-uh-full advantage of it. If I am to use it and lose your-uh-services anyway because you supervise it when the whole point is that it requires no supervision, I gain nothing. Do you see?"
"Yes, Dr. Ninheimer," said Baker, subdued. The advance copies of Social Tensions arrived in Dr. Ninheimer's office on the eighth of May. He looked through it briefly, flipping pages and pausing to read a paragraph here and there. Then he put his copies away.
As he explained later, he forgot about it. For eight years, he had worked at it, but now, and for months in the past, other interests had engaged him while Easy had taken the load of the book off his shoulders. He did not even think to donate the usual complimentary copy to the university library. Even Baker, who had thrown himself into work and had steered clear of the department head since receiving his rebuke at their last meeting, received no copy.
On the sixteenth of June that stage ended. Ninheimer received a phone call and stared at the image in the 'plate with surprise.
"Speidell! Are you in town?"
"No, sir. I'm in Cleveland." Speidell's voice trembled with emotion.
"Then why the call?"
"Because I've just been looking through your new book! Ninheimer, are you mad? Have you gone insane?"
Ninheimer stiffened. "Is something-uh-wrong?" he asked in alarm.
"Wrong? I refer you to page 562. What in blazes do you mean by interpreting my work as you do? Where in the paper cited do I make the claim that the criminal personality is nonexistent and that it is the law-enforcement agencies that are the true criminals? Here, let me quote-"
"Wait! Wait!" cried Ninheimer, trying to find the page. "Let me see. Let me see…Good God!"
"Well?"
"Speidell, I don't see how this could have happened. I never wrote this."
"But that's what's printed! And that distortion isn't the worst. You look at page 690 and imagine what Ipatiev is going to do to you when he sees the hash you've made of his findings! Look, Ninheimer, the book is riddled with this sort of thing. I don't know what you were thinking of-but there's nothing to do but get the book off the market. And you'd better be prepared for extensive apologies at the next Association meeting!"
"Speidell, listen to me-" But Speidell had flashed off with a force that had the 'plate glowing with after-images for fifteen seconds.
It was then that Ninheimer went through the book and began marking off passages with red ink.
He kept his temper remarkably well when he faced Easy again, but his lips were pale. He passed the book to Easy and said, "Will you read the marked passages on pages 562, 631, 664 and 690?"
Easy did so in four glances. "Yes, Professor Ninheimer."
"This is not as I had it in the original galleys."
"No, sir. It is not."
"Did you change it to read as it now does?"
"Yes, sir."
"Why?"
"Sir, the passages as they read in your version were most uncomplimentary to certain groups of human beings. I felt it advisable to change the wording to avoid doing them harm."
"How dared you do such a thing?"
"The First Law, Professor, does not let me, through any inaction, allow harm to come to human beings. Certainly, considering your reputation in the world of sociology and the wide circulation your book would receive among scholars, considerable harm would come to a number of the human beings you speak of."
"But do you realize the harm that will come to me now?"
"It was necessary to choose the alternative with less harm." Professor Ninheimer, shaking with fury, staggered away. It was clear to him that U. S. Robots would have to account to him for this.
There was some excitement at the defendants' table, which increased as Prosecution drove the point home.
"Then Robot EZ-27 informed you that the reason for its action was based on the First Law of Robotics?"
"That is correct, sir."
"That, in effect, it had no choice?"
"Yes, sir."
"It follows then that U. S. Robots designed a robot that would of necessity rewrite books to accord with its own conceptions of what was right. And yet they palmed it off as simple proofreader. Would you say that?"
Defense objected firmly at once, pointing out that the witness was being asked for a decision on a matter in which he had no competence. The judged admonished Prosecution in the usual terms, but there was no doubt that the exchange had sunk home-not least upon the attorney for the Defense.
Defense asked for a short recess before beginning cross-examination, using a legal technicality for the purpose that got him five minutes.
He leaned over toward Susan Calvin. "Is it possible, Dr. Calvin, that Professor Ninheimer is telling the truth and that Easy was motivated by the First Law?"
Calvin pressed her lips together, then said, "No. It isn't possible. The last part of Ninheimer's testimony is deliberate perjury. Easy is not designed to be able to judge matters at the stage of abstraction represented by an advanced textbook on sociology. It would never be able to tell that certain groups of humans would be harmed by a phrase in such a book. Its mind is simply not built for that."
"I suppose, though, that we can't prove this to a layman," said Defense pessimistically.
"No," Admitted Calvin. "The proof would be highly complex. Our way out is still what it was. We must prove Ninheimer is lying, and nothing he has said need change our plan of attack."
"Very well, Dr. Calvin," said Defense, "I must accept your word in this. We'll go on as planned."
In the courtroom, the judge's gavel rose and fell and Dr. Ninheimer took the stand once more. He smiled a little as one who feels his position to be impregnable and rather enjoys the prospect of countering a useless attack.
Defense approached warily and began softly. "Dr. Ninheimer, do you mean to say that you were completely unaware of these alleged changes in your manuscript until such time as Dr. Speidell called you on the sixteenth of June?"
"That is correct, sir."
"Did you never look at the galleys after Robot EZ-27 had proofread them?"
"At first I did, but it seemed to me a useless task. I relied on the claims of U. S. Robots. The absurd-uh-changes were made only in the last quarter of the book after the robot, I presume, had learned enough about sociology-"
"Never mind your presumptions!" said Defense. "I understood your colleague, Dr. Baker, saw the later galleys on at least one occasion. Do you remember testifying to that effect?"
"Yes, sir. As I said, he told me about seeing one page, and even there, the robot had changed a word."
Again Defense broke in. "Don't you find it strange, sir, that after over a year of implacable hostility to the robot, after having voted against it in the first place and having refused to put it to any use whatever, you suddenly decided to put your book, your magnum opus, into its hands?"
"I don't find that strange. I simply decided that I might as well use the machine."
"And you were so confident of Robot EZ-27-all of a sudden-that you didn't even bother to check your galleys?"
"I told you I was-uh-persuaded by U. S. Robots' propaganda."
"So persuaded that when your colleague, Dr. Baker, attempted to check on the robot, you berated him soundly?"
"I didn't berate him. I merely did not wish to have him-uh-waste his time. At least, I thought then it was a waste of time. I did not see the significance of that change in a word at the-"
Defense said with heavy sarcasm, "I have no doubt you were instructed to bring up that point in order that the word-change be entered in the record-" He altered his line to forestall objection and said, "The point is that you were extremely angry with Dr. Baker."
"No, sir. Not angry."
"You didn't give him a copy of your book when you received it."
"Simple forgetfulness. I didn't give the library its copy, either."
Ninheimer smiled cautiously. "Professors are notoriously absentminded."
Defense said, "Do you find it strange that, after more than a year of perfect work, Robot EZ-27 should go wrong on your book? On a book, that is, which was written by you, who was, of all people, the most implacably hostile to the robot?"
"My book was the only sizable work dealing with mankind that it had to face. The Three Laws of Robotics took hold then."
"Several times, Dr. Ninheimer," said Defense, "you have tried to sound like an expert on robotics. Apparently you suddenly grew interested in robotics and took out books on the subject from the library. You testified to that effect, did you not?"
"One book, sir. That was the result of what seems to me to have been-uh-natural curiosity."
"And it enabled you to explain why the robot should, as you allege, have distorted your book?"
"Yes, sir."
"Very convenient. But are you sure your interest in robotics was not intended to enable you to manipulate the robot for your own purposes?"
Ninheimer flushed. "Certainly not, sir!" Defense's voice rose. "In fact, are you sure the alleged altered passages were not as you had them in the first place?"
The sociologist half-rose. "That's-uh-uh-ridiculous! I have the galleys-"
He had difficulty speaking and Prosecution rose to insert smoothly, "With your permission, Your Honor, I intend to introduce as evidence the set of galleys given by Dr. Ninheimer to Robot EZ-27 and the set of galleys mailed by Robot EZ-27 to the publishers. I will do so now if my esteemed colleague so desires, and will be willing to allow a recess in order that the two sets of galleys may be compared."
Defense waved his hand impatiently. "That is not necessary. My honored opponent can introduce those galleys whenever he chooses. I'm sure they will show whatever discrepancies are claimed by the plaintiff to exist. What I would like to know of the witness, however, is whether he also has in his possession Dr. Baker's galleys."
"Dr. Baker's galleys?" Ninheimer frowned. He was not yet quite master of himself.
"Yes, Professor! I mean Dr. Baker's galleys. You testified to the effect that Dr. Baker had received a separate copy of the galleys. I will have the clerk read your testimony if you are suddenly a selective type of amnesiac. Or is it just that professors are, as you say, notoriously absent-minded?"
Ninheimer said, "I remember Dr. Baker's galleys. They weren't necessary once the job was placed in the care of the proofreading machine-"
"So you burned them?"
"No. I put them in the waste basket."
"Burned them, dumped them-what's the difference? The point is you got rid of them."
"There's nothing wrong-" began Ninheimer weakly.
"Nothing wrong?" thundered Defense. "Nothing wrong except that there is now no way we can check to see if, on certain crucial galley sheets, you might not have substituted a harmless blank one from Dr. Baker's copy for a sheet in your own copy which you had deliberately mangled in such a way as to force the robot to-"
Prosecution shouted a furious objection. Justice Shane leaned forward, his round face doing its best to assume an expression of anger equivalent to the intensity of the emotion felt by the man.
The judge said, "Do you have any evidence, Counselor, for the extraordinary statement you have just made?"
Defense said quietly, "No direct evidence, Your Honor. But I would like to point out that, viewed properly, the sudden conversion of the plaintiff from anti-roboticism, his sudden interest in robotics, his refusal to check the galleys or to allow anyone else to check them, his careful neglect to allow anyone to see the book immediately after publication, all very clearly point-"
"Counselor," interrupted the judge impatiently, "this is not the place for esoteric deductions. The plaintiff is not on trial. Neither are you prosecuting him. I forbid this line of attack and I can only point out that the desperation that must have induced you to do this cannot help but weaken your case. If you have legitimate questions to ask, Counselor, you may continue with your cross-examination. But I warn you against another such exhibition in this courtroom."
"I have no further questions, Your Honor."
Robertson whispered heatedly as counsel for the Defense returned to his table, "What good did that do, for God's sake? The judge is dead-set against you now."
Defense replied calmly, "But Ninheimer is good and rattled. And we've set him up for tomorrow's move. He'll be ripe."
Susan Calvin nodded gravely.
The rest of Prosecution's case was mild in comparison. Dr. Baker was called and bore out most of Ninheimer's testimony. Drs. Speidell and Ipatiev were called, and they expounded most movingly on their shock and dismay at certain quoted passages in Dr. Ninheimer's book. Both gave their professional opinion that Dr. Ninheimer's professional reputation had been seriously impaired.
The galleys were introduced in evidence, as were copies of the finished book.
Defense cross-examined no more that day. Prosecution rested and the trial was recessed till the next morning.
Defense made his first motion at the beginning of the proceedings on the second day. He requested that Robot EZ-27 be admitted as a spectator to the proceedings.
Prosecution objected at once and Justice Shane called both to the bench.
Prosecution said hotly, "This is obviously illegal. A robot may not be in any edifice used by the general public."
"This courtroom," pointed out Defense, "is closed to all but those having an immediate connection with the case."
"A large machine of known erratic behavior would disturb my clients and my witnesses by its very presence! It would make hash out of the proceedings."
The judge seemed inclined to agree. He turned to Defense and said rather unsympathetically, "What are the reasons for your request?"
Defense said, "It will be our contention that Robot EZ-27 could not possibly, by the nature of its construction, have behaved as it has been described as behaving. It will be necessary to present a few demonstrations."
Prosecution said, "I don't see the point, Your Honor. Demonstrations conducted by men employed at U. S. Robots are worth little as evidence when U. S. Robots is the defendant."
"Your Honor," said Defense, "the validity of any evidence is for you to decide, not for the Prosecuting Attorney. At least, that is my understanding."
Justice Shane, his prerogatives encroached upon, said, "Your understanding is correct. Nevertheless, the presence of a robot here does raise important legal questions."
"Surely, Your Honor, nothing that should be allowed to override the requirements of justice. If the robot is not present, we are prevented from presenting our only defense."
The judge considered. "There would be the question of transporting the robot here."
"That is a problem with which U. S. Robots has frequently been faced. We have a truck parked outside the courtroom, constructed according to the laws governing the transportation of robots. Robot EZ-27 is in a packing case inside with two men guarding it. The doors to the truck are properly secured and all other necessary precautions have been taken."
"You seem certain," said Justice Shane, in renewed ill-temper, "that judgment on this point will be in your favor."
"Not at all, Your Honor. If it is not, we simply turn the truck about. I have made no presumptions concerning your decision."
The judge nodded. "The request on the part of the Defense is granted."
The crate was carried in on a large dolly and the two men who handled it opened it. The courtroom was immersed in a dead silence.
Susan Calvin waited as the thick slabs of celluform went down, then held out one hand. "Come, Easy."
The robot looked in her direction and held out its large metal arm. It towered over her by two feet but followed meekly, like a child in the clasp of its mother. Someone giggled nervously and choked it off at a hard glare from Dr. Calvin.
Easy seated itself carefully in a large chair brought by the bailiff, which creaked but held.
Defense said, "When it becomes necessary, Your Honor, we will prove that this is actually Robot EZ-27, the specific robot in the employ of Northeastern University during the period of time with which we are concerned."
"Good," His Honor said. "That will be necessary. I, for one, have no idea how you can tell one robot from another."
"And now," said Defense, "I would like to call my first witness to the stand. Professor Simon Ninheimer, please."
The clerk hesitated, looked at the judge. Justice Shane asked, with visible surprise, "You are calling the plaintiff as your witness?"
"Yes, Your Honor."
"I hope that you're aware that as long as he's your witness, you will be allowed none of the latitude you might exercise if you were cross-examining an opposing witness."
Defense said smoothly, "My only purpose in all this is to arrive at the truth. It will not be necessary to do more than ask a few polite questions."
"Well," said the judge dubiously, "you're the one handling the case. Call the witness."
Ninheimer took the stand and was informed that he was still under oath. He looked more nervous than he had the day before, almost apprehensive.
But Defense looked at him benignly.
"Now, Professor Ninheimer, you are suing my clients in the amount of $750,000."
"That is the-uh-sum. Yes."
"That is a great deal of money."
"I have suffered a great deal of harm."
"Surely not that much. The material in question involves only a few passages in a book. Perhaps these were unfortunate passages, but after all, books sometimes appear with curious mistakes in them."
Ninheimer's nostrils flared. "Sir, this book was to have been the climax of my professional career! Instead, it makes me look like an incompetent scholar, a perverter of the views held by my honored friends and associates, and a believer of ridiculous and-uh-outmoded viewpoints. My reputation is irretrievably shattered! I can never hold up my head in any-uh-assemblage of scholars, regardless of the outcome of this trial. I certainly cannot continue in my career, which has been the whole of my life. The very purpose of my life has been-uh-aborted and destroyed."
Defense made no attempt to interrupt the speech, but stared abstractedly at his fingernails as it went on.
He said very soothingly, "But surely, Professor Ninheimer, at your present age, you could not hope to earn more than-let us be generous-$l5O,OOO during the remainder of your life. Yet you are asking the court to award you five times as much."
Ninheimer said, with an even greater burst of emotion, "It is not in my lifetime alone that I am ruined. I do not know for how many generations I shall be pointed at by sociologists as a-uh-a fool or maniac. My real achievements will be buried and ignored. I am ruined not only until the day of my death, but for all time to come, because there will always be people who will not believe that a robot made those insertions-"
It was at this point that Robot EZ-27 rose to his feet. Susan Calvin made no move to stop him. She sat motionless, staring straight ahead. Defense sighed softly.
Easy's melodious voice carried clearly. It said, "I would like to explain to everyone that I did insert certain passages in the galley proofs that seemed directly opposed to what had been there at first-"
Even the Prosecuting Attorney was too startled at the spectacle of a seven-foot robot rising to address the court to be able to demand the stopping of what was obviously a most irregular procedure.
When he could collect his wits, it was too late. For Ninheimer rose in the witness chair, his face working.
He shouted wildly, "Damn you, you were instructed to keep your mouth shut about-"
He ground to a choking halt, and Easy was silent, too. Prosecution was on his feet now, demanding that a mistrial be declared.
Justice Shane banged his gavel desperately. "Silence! Silence! Certainly there is every reason here to declare a mistrial, except that in the interests of justice I would like to have Professor Ninheimer complete his statement. I distinctly heard him say to the robot that the robot had been instructed to keep its mouth shut about something. There was no mention in your testimony, Professor Ninheimer, as to any instructions to the robot to keep silent about anything!"
Ninheimer stared wordlessly at the judge. Justice Shane said, "Did you instruct Robot EZ-27 to keep silent about something? And if so, about what?"
"Your Honor-" began Ninheimer hoarsely, and couldn't continue.
The judge's voice grew sharp. "Did you, in fact, order the inserts in question to be made in the galleys and then order the robot to keep quiet about your part in this?"
Prosecution objected vigorously, but Ninheimer shouted, "Oh, what's the use? Yes! Yes!"And he ran from the witness stand. He was stopped at the door by the bailiff and sank hopelessly into one of the last rows of seats, head buried in both hands.
Justice Shane said, "It is evident to me that Robot EZ-27 was brought here as a trick. Except for the fact that the trick served to prevent a serious miscarriage of justice, I would certainly hold attorney for the Defense in contempt. It is clear now, beyond any doubt, that the plaintiff has committed what is to me a completely inexplicable fraud since, apparently, he was knowingly ruining his career in the process-"
Judgment, of course, was for the defendant.
Dr. Susan Calvin had herself announced at Dr. Ninheimer's bachelor quarters in University Hall. The young engineer who had driven the car offered to go up with her, but she looked at him scornfully.
"Do you think he'll assault me? Wait down here."
Ninheimer was in no mood to assault anyone. He was packing, wasting no time, anxious to be away before the adverse conclusion of the trial became general knowledge.
He looked at Calvin with a queerly defiant air and said, "Are you coming to warn me of a countersuit? If so, it will get you nothing. I have no money, no job, no future. I can't even meet the costs of the trial."
"If you're looking for sympathy," said Calvin coldly, "don't look for it here. This was your doing. However, there will be no countersuit, neither of you nor of the university. We will even do what we can to keep you from going to prison for perjury. We aren't vindictive."
"Oh, is that why I'm not already in custody for forswearing myself? I had wondered. But then," he added bitterly, "why should you be vindictive? You have what you want now."
"Some of what we want, yes," said Calvin. "The university will keep Easy in its employ at a considerably higher rental fee. Furthermore, certain underground publicity concerning the trial will make it possible to place a few more of the EZ models in other institutions without danger of a repetition of this trouble."
"Then why have you come to see me?"
"Because I don't have all of what I want yet. I want to know why you hate robots as you do. Even if you had won the case, your reputation would have been ruined. The money you might have obtained could not have compensated for that. Would the satisfaction of your hatred for robots have done so?"
"Are you interested in human minds, Dr. Calvin?" asked Ninheimer, with acid mockery.
"Insofar as their reactions concern the welfare of robots, yes. For that reason, I have learned a little of human psychology."
"Enough of it to be able to trick met"
"That wasn't hard," said Calvin, without pomposity. "The difficult thing was doing it in such a way as not to damage Easy."
"It is like you to be more concerned for a machine than for a man." He looked at her with savage contempt.
It left her unmoved. "It merely seems so, Professor Ninheimer. It is only by being concerned for robots that one can truly be concerned for twenty-first-century man. You would understand this if you were a roboticist."
"I have read enough robotics to know I don't want to be a roboticist!"
"Pardon me, you have read a book on robotics. It has taught you nothing. You learned enough to know that you could order a robot to do many things, even to falsify a book, if you went about it properly. You learned enough to know that you could not order him to forget something entirely without risking detection, but you thought you could order him into simple silence more safely. You were wrong."
"You guessed the truth from his silencer' "It wasn't guessing. You were an amateur and didn't know enough to cover your tracks completely. My only problem was to prove the matter to the judge and you were kind enough to help us there, in your ignorance of the robotics you claim to despise."
"Is there any purpose in this discussion?" asked Ninheimer wearily.
"For me, yes," said Susan Calvin, "because I want you to understand how completely you have misjudged robots. You silenced Easy by telling him that if he told anyone about your own distortion of the book, you would lose your job. That set up a certain potential within Easy toward silence, one that was strong enough to resist our efforts to break it down. We would have damaged the brain if we had persisted.
"On the witness stand, however, you yourself put up a higher counterpotential. You said that because people would think that you, not a robot, had written the disputed passages in the book, you would lose far more than just your job. You would lose your reputation, your standing, your respect, your reason for living. You would lose the memory of you after death. A new and higher potential was set up by you-and Easy talked."
"Oh, God," said Ninheimer, turning his head away. Calvin was inexorable. She said, "Do you understand why he talked? It was not to accuse you, but to defend you! It can be mathematically shown that he was about to assume full blame for your crime, to deny that you had anything to do with it. The First Law required that. He was going to lie-to damage himself-to bring monetary harm to a corporation. All that meant less to him than did the saving of you. If you really understood robots and robotics, you would have let him talk. But you did not understand, as I was sure you wouldn't, as I guaranteed to the defense attorney that you wouldn't. You were certain, in your hatred of robots, that Easy would act as a human being would act and defend itself at your expense. So you flared out at him in panic-and destroyed yourself."
Ninheimer said with feeling, "I hope some day your robots turn on you and kill you!"
"Don't be foolish," said Calvin. "Now I want you to explain why you've done all this."
Ninheimer grinned a distorted, humorless grin. "I am to dissect my mind, am I, for your intellectual curiosity, in return for immunity from a charge of perjury?"
"Put it that way if you like," said Calvin emotionlessly. "But explain."
"So that you can counter future anti-robot attempts more efficiently? With greater understanding?"
"I accept that."
"You know," said Ninheimer, "I'll tell you-just to watch it do you no good at all. You can't understand human motivation. You can only understand your damned machines because you're a machine yourself, with skin on."
He was breathing hard and there was no hesitation in his speech, no searching for precision. It was as though he had no further use for precision.
He said, "For two hundred and fifty years, the machine has been replacing Man and destroying the handcraftsman. Pottery is spewed out of molds and presses. Works of art have been replaced by identical gimcracks stamped out on a die. Call it progress, if you wish! The artist is restricted to abstractions, confined to the world of ideas. He must design something in mind-and then the machine does the rest.
"Do you suppose the potter is content with mental creation? Do you suppose the idea is enough? That there is nothing in the feel of the clay itself, in watching the thing grow as hand and mind work together? Do you suppose the actual growth doesn't act as a feedback to modify and improve the idea?"
"You are not a potter," said Dr. Calvin. "I am a creative artist! I design and build articles and books. There is more to it than the mere thinking of words and of putting them in the right order. If that were all, there would be no pleasure in it, no return.
"A book should take shape in the hands of the writer. One must actually see the chapters grow and develop. One must work and rework and watch the changes take place beyond the original concept even. There is taking the galleys in hand and seeing how the sentences look in print and molding them again. There are a hundred contacts between a man and his work at every stage of the game and the contact itself is pleasurable and repays a man for the work he puts into his creation more than anything else could. Your robot would take all that away."
"So does a typewriter. So does a printing press. Do you propose to return to the hand illumination of manuscripts?"
"Typewriters and printing presses take away some, but your robot would deprive us of all. Your robot takes over the galleys. Soon it, or other robots, would take over the original writing, the searching of the sources, the checking and cross-checking of passages, perhaps even the deduction of conclusions. What would that leave the scholar? One thing only-the barren decisions concerning what orders to give the robot next! I want to save the future generations of the world of scholarship from such a final hell. That meant more to me than even my own reputation and so I set out to destroy U. S. Robots by whatever means."
"You were bound to fail," said Susan Calvin. "I was bound to try," said Simon Ninheimer. Calvin turned and left. She did her best to feel no pang of sympathy for the broken man.
She did not entirely succeed.
Measures on Hyper Base had been taken in a sort of rattling fury – the muscular equivalent of a hysterical shriek.
To itemize them in order of both chronology and desperation, they were: 1. All work on the Hyperatomic Drive through all the space volume occupied by the Stations of the Twenty-Seventh Asteroidal Grouping came to a halt. 2. That entire volume of space was nipped out of the System, practically speaking. No one entered without permission. No one left under any conditions. 3. By special government patrol ship, Drs. Susan Calvin and Peter Bogert, respectively Head Psychologist and Mathematical Director of United States Robot amp; Mechanical Men Corporation, were brought to Hyper Base.
Susan Calvin had never left the surface of Earth before, and had no perceptible desire to leave it this time. In an age of Atomic Power and a clearly coming Hyperatomic Drive, she remained quietly provincial. So she was dissatisfied with her trip and unconvinced of the emergency, and every line of her plain, middle-aged face showed it clearly enough during her first dinner at Hyper Base.
Nor did Dr. Bogert's sleek paleness abandon a certain hangdog attitude. Nor did Major-general Kallner, who headed the project, even once forget to maintain a hunted expression. In short, it was a grisly episode, that meal, and the little session of three that followed began in a gray, unhappy manner.
Kallner, with his baldness glistening, and his dress uniform oddly unsuited to the general mood, began with uneasy directness.
"This is a queer story to tell, sir, and madam. I want to thank you for coming on short notice and without a reason being given. We'll try to correct that now. We've lost a robot. Work has stopped and must stop until such time as we locate it. So far we have failed, and we feel we need expert help."
Perhaps the general felt his predicament anticlimactic. He continued with a note of desperation, "I needn't tell you the importance of our work here. More than eighty percent of last year's appropriations for scientific research have gone to us-"
"Why, we know that," said Bogert, agreeably. "U. S. Robots is receiving a generous rental fee for use of our robots."
Susan Calvin injected a blunt, vinegary note, "What makes a single robot so important to the project, and why hasn't it been located?"
The general turned his red face toward her and wet his lips quickly, "Why, in a manner of speaking we have located it." Then, with near anguish, "Here, suppose I explain. As soon as the robot failed to report a state of emergency was declared, and all movement off Hyper Base stopped. A cargo vessel had landed the previous day and had delivered us two robots for our laboratories. It had sixty-two robots of the… uh… game type for shipment elsewhere. We are certain as to that figure. There is no question about it whatever."
"Yes? And the connection?"
"When our missing robot failed of location anywhere – I assure you we would have found a missing blade of grass if it had been there to find – we brainstormed ourselves into counting the robots left of the cargo ship. They have sixty-three now."
"So that the sixty-third, I take it, is the missing prodigal?" Dr. Calvin's eyes darkened.
"Yes, but we have no way of telling which is the sixty-third."
There was a dead silence while the electric clock chimed eleven times, and then the robopsychologist said, "Very peculiar," and the corners of her lips moved downward.
"Peter," she turned to her colleague with a trace of savagery, "what's wrong here? What kind of robots are they, using at Hyper Base?"
Dr. Bogert hesitated and smiled feebly, "It's been rather a matter of delicacy till now, Susan."
She spoke rapidly, "Yes, till now. If there are sixty-three same-type robots, one of which is wanted and the identity of which cannot be determined, why won't any of them do? What's the idea of all this? Why have we been sent for?"
Bogert said in resigned fashion, "If you'll give me a chance, Susan – Hyper Base happens to be using several robots whose brains are not impressioned with the entire First Law of Robotics."
"Aren't impressioned?" Calvin slumped back in her chair, "I see. How many were made?"
"A few. It was on government order and there was no way of violating the secrecy. No one was to know except the top men directly concerned. You weren't included, Susan. It was nothing I had anything to do with."
The general interrupted with a measure of authority. "I would like to explain that bit. I hadn't been aware that Dr. Calvin was unacquainted with the situation. I needn't tell you, Dr. Calvin, that there always has been strong opposition to robots on the Planet. The only defense the government has had against the Fundamentalist radicals in this matter was the fact that robots are always built with an unbreakable First Law – which makes it impossible for them to harm human beings under any circumstance.
"But we had to have robots of a different nature. So just a few of the NS-2 model, the Nestors, that is, were prepared with a modified First Law. To keep it quiet, all NS-2's are manufactured without serial numbers; modified members are delivered here along with a group of normal robots; and, of course, all our kind are under the strictest impressionment never to tell of their modification to unauthorized personnel." He wore an embarrassed smile; "This has all worked out against us now."
Calvin said grimly, "Have you asked each one who it is, anyhow? Certainly, you are authorized?"
The general nodded, "All sixty-three deny having worked here – and one is lying."
"Does the one you want show traces of wear? The others, I take it, are factory-fresh."
"The one in question only arrived last month. It, and the two that have just arrived, were to be the last we needed. There's no perceptible wear." He shook his head slowly and his eyes were haunted again, "Dr. Calvin, we don't dare let that ship leave. If the existence of non-First Law robots becomes general knowledge-" There seemed no way of avoiding understatement in the conclusion.
"Destroy all sixty-three," said the robopsychologist coldly and flatly, "and make an end of it."
Bogert drew back a corner of his mouth. "You mean destroy thirty thousand dollars per robot. I'm afraid U. S. Robots wouldn't like that. We'd better make an effort first, Susan, before we destroy anything."
"In that case," she said, sharply, "I need facts. Exactly what advantage does Hyper Base derive from these modified robots? What factor made them desirable, general?"
Kallner ruffled his forehead and stroked it with an upward gesture of his hand. "We had trouble with our previous robots. Our men work with hard radiations a good deal, you see. It's dangerous, of course, but reasonable precautions are taken. There have been only two accidents since we began and neither was fatal. However, it was impossible to explain that to an ordinary robot. The First Law states – I'll quote it – 'No robot may harm a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.'
"That's primary, Dr. Calvin. When it was necessary for one of our men to expose himself for a short period to a moderate gamma field, one that would have no physiological effects, the nearest robot would dash in to drag him out. If the field were exceedingly weak, it would succeed, and work could not continue till all robots were cleared out. If the field were a trifle stronger, the robot would never reach the technician concerned, since its positronic brain would collapse under gamma radiations – and then we would be out one expensive and hard-to-replace robot.
"We tried arguing with them. Their point was that a human being in a gamma field was endangering his life and that it didn't matter that he could remain there half an hour safely. Supposing, they would say, he forgot and remained an hour. They couldn't take chances. We pointed out that they were risking their lives on a wild off-chance. But self-preservation is only the Third Law of Robotics – and the First Law of human safety came first. We gave them orders; we ordered them strictly and harshly to remain out of gamma fields at whatever cost. But obedience is only the Second Law of Robotics – and the First Law of human safety came first. Dr. Calvin, we either had to do without robots, or do something about the First Law – and we made our choice."
"I can't believe," said Dr. Calvin, "that it was found possible to remove the First Law."
"It wasn't removed, it was modified," explained Kallner. "Positronic brains were constructed that contained the positive aspect only of the Law, which in them reads: 'No robot may harm a human being.' That is all. They have no compulsion to prevent one coming to harm through an extraneous agency such as gamma rays. I state the matter correctly, Dr. Bogert?"
"Quite," assented the mathematician.
"And that is the only difference of your robots from the ordinary NS2 model? The only difference? Peter?"
"The only difference, Susan."
She rose and spoke with finality, "I intend sleeping now, and in about eight hours, I want to speak to whomever saw the robot last. And from now on, General Kallner, if I'm to take any responsibility at all for events, I want full and unquestioned control of this investigation."
Susan Calvin, except for two hours of resentful lassitude, experienced nothing approaching sleep. She signaled at Bogert's door at the local time of 0700 and found him also awake. He had apparently taken the trouble of transporting a dressing gown to Hyper Base with him, for he was sitting in it. He put his nail scissors down when Calvin entered.
He said softly, "I've been expecting you more or less. I suppose you feel sick about all this."
"I do."
"Well – I'm sorry. There was no way of preventing it. When the call came out from Hyper Base for us, I knew that something must have gone wrong with the modified Nestors. But what was there to do? I couldn't break the matter to you on the trip here, as I would have liked to, because I had to be sure. The matter of the modification is top secret."
The psychologist muttered, "I should have been told. U. S. Robots had no right to modify positronic brains this way without the approval of a psychologist."
Bogert lifted his eyebrows and sighed. "Be reasonable, Susan. You couldn't have influenced them. In this matter, the government was bound to have its way. They want the Hyperatomic Drive and the etheric physicists want robots that won't interfere with them. They were going to get them even if it did mean twisting the First Law. We had to admit it was possible from a construction standpoint and they swore a mighty oath that they wanted only twelve, that they would be used only at Hyper Base, that they would be destroyed once the Drive was perfected, and that full precautions would be taken. And they insisted on secrecy – and that's the situation."
Dr. Calvin spoke through her teeth, "I would have resigned."
"It wouldn't have helped. The government was offering the company a fortune, and threatening it with antirobot legislation in case of a refusal. We were stuck then, and we're badly stuck now. If this leaks out, it might hurt Kallner and the government, but it would hurt U. S. Robots a devil of a lot more."
The psychologist stared at him. "Peter, don't you realize what all this is about? Can't you understand what the removal of the First Law means? It isn't just a matter of secrecy."
"I know what removal would mean. I'm not a child. It would mean complete instability, with no nonimaginary solutions to the positronic Field Equations."
"Yes, mathematically. But can you translate that into crude psychological thought. All normal life, Peter, consciously or otherwise, resents domination. If the domination is by an inferior, or by a supposed inferior, the resentment becomes stronger. Physically, and, to an extent, mentally, a robot – any robot – is superior to human beings. What makes him slavish, then? Only the First Law! Why, without it, the first order you tried to give a robot would result in your death. Unstable? What do you think?"
"Susan," said Bogert, with an air of sympathetic amusement. "I'll admit that this Frankenstein Complex you're exhibiting has a certain justification – hence the First Law in the first place. But the Law, I repeat and repeat, has not been removed – merely modified."
"And what about the stability of the brain?"
The mathematician thrust out his lips, "Decreased, naturally. But it's within the border of safety. The first Nestors were delivered to Hyper Base nine months ago, and nothing whatever has gone wrong till now, and even this involves merely fear of discovery and not danger to humans."
"Very well, then. We'll see what comes of the morning conference."
Bogert saw her politely to the door and grimaced eloquently when she left. He saw no reason to change his perennial opinion of her as a sour and fidgety frustration.
Susan Calvin's train of thought did not include Bogert in the least. She had dismissed him years ago as a smooth and pretentious sleekness.
Gerald Black had taken his degree in etheric physics the year before and, in common with his entire generation of physicists, found himself engaged in the problem of the Drive. He now made a proper addition to the general atmosphere of these meetings on Hyper Base. In his stained white smock, he was half rebellious and wholly uncertain. His stocky strength seemed striving for release and his fingers, as they twisted each other with nervous yanks, might have forced an iron bar out of true.
Major-general Kallner sat beside him; the two from U. S. Robots faced him.
Black said, "I'm told that I was the last to see Nestor 10 before he vanished. I take it you want to ask me about that."
Dr. Calvin regarded him with interest, "You sound as if you were not sure, young man. Don't you know whether you were the last to see him?"
"He worked with me, ma'am, on the field generators, and he was with me the morning of his disappearance. I don't know if anyone saw him after about noon. No one admits having done so."
"Do you think anyone's lying about it?"
"I don't say that. But I don't say that I want the blame of it, either." His dark eyes smoldered.
"There's no question of blame. The robot acted as it did because of what it is. We're just trying to locate it, Mr. Black, and let's put everything else aside. Now if you've worked with the robot, you probably know it better than anyone else. Was there anything unusual about it that you noticed? Had you ever worked with robots before?"
"I've worked with other robots we have here – the simple ones. Nothing different about the Nestors except that they're a good deal cleverer – and more annoying."
"Annoying? In what way?"
"Well – perhaps it's not their fault. The work here is rough and most of us get a little jagged. Fooling around with hyper-space isn't fun." He smiled feebly, finding pleasure in confession. "We run the risk continually of blowing a hole in normal space-time fabric and dropping right out of the universe, asteroid and all. Sounds screwy, doesn't it? Naturally, you're on edge sometimes. But these Nestors aren't. They're curious, they're calm, they don't worry. It's enough to drive you nuts at times. When you want something done in a tearing hurry, they seem to take their time. Sometimes I'd rather do without."
"You say they take their time? Have they ever refused an order?"
"Oh, no," hastily. "They do it all right. They tell you when they think you're wrong, though. They don't know anything about the subject but what we taught them, but that doesn't stop them. Maybe I imagine it, but the other fellows have the same trouble with their Nestors."
General Kallner cleared his throat ominously, "Why have no complaints reached me on the matter, Black?"
The young physicist reddened, "We didn't really want to do without the robots, sir, and besides we weren't certain exactly how such… uh… minor complaints might be received."
Bogert interrupted softly, "Anything in particular happen the morning you last saw it?"
There was a silence. With a quiet motion, Calvin repressed the comment that was about to emerge from Kallner, and waited patiently.
Then Black spoke in blurting anger, "I had a little trouble with it. I'd broken a Kimball tube that morning and was out five days of work; my entire program was behind schedule; I hadn't received any mail from home for a couple of weeks. And he came around wanting me to repeat an experiment I had abandoned a month ago. He was always annoying me on that subject and I was tired of it. I told him to go away – and that's all I saw of him."
"You told him to go away?" asked Dr. Calvin with sharp interest. "In just those words? Did you say 'Go away'? Try to remember the exact words."
There was apparently an internal struggle in progress. Black cradled his forehead in a broad palm for a moment, then tore it away and said defiantly, "I said, 'Go lose yourself.' "
Bogert laughed for a short moment. "And he did, eh?"
But Calvin wasn't finished. She spoke cajolingly, "Now we're getting somewhere, Mr. Black. But exact details are important. In understanding the robot's actions, a word, a gesture, an emphasis may be everything. You couldn't have said just those three words, for instance, could you? By your own description you must have been in a hasty mood. Perhaps you strengthened your speech a little."
The young man reddened, "Well… I may have called it a… a few things."
"Exactly what things?"
"Oh – I wouldn't remember exactly. Besides I couldn't repeat it. You know how you get when you're excited." His embarrassed laugh was almost a giggle, "I sort of have a tendency to strong language."
"That's quite all right," she replied, with prim severity. "At the moment, I'm a psychologist. I would like to have you repeat exactly what you said as nearly as you remember, and, even more important, the exact tone of voice you used."
Black looked at his commanding officer for support, found none. His eyes grew round and appalled, "But I can't."
"You must."
"Suppose," said Bogert, with ill-hidden amusement, "you address me. You may find it easier."
The young man's scarlet face turned to Bogert. He swallowed. "I said" His voice faded out. He tried again, "I said-"
And he drew a deep breath and spewed it out hastily in one long succession of syllables. Then, in the charged air that lingered, he concluded almost in tears, "… more or less. I don't remember the exact order of what I called him, and maybe I left out something or put in something, but that was about it."
Only the slightest flush betrayed any feeling on the part of the robopsychologist. She said, "I am aware of the meaning of most of the terms used. The others, I suppose, are equally derogatory."
"I'm afraid so," agreed the tormented Black.
"And in among it, you told him to lose himself."
"I meant it only figuratively."
"I realize that. No disciplinary action is intended, I am sure." And at her glance, the general, who, five seconds earlier, had seemed not sure at all, nodded angrily.
"You may leave, Mr. Black. Thank you for your cooperation."
It took five hours for Susan Calvin to interview the sixty-three robots. It was five hours of multi-repetition; of replacement after replacement of identical robot; of Questions A, B, C, D; and Answers A, B, C, D; of a carefully bland expression, a carefully neutral tone, a carefully friendly atmosphere; and a hidden wire recorder.
The psychologist felt drained of vitality when she was finished.
Bogert was waiting for her and looked expectant as she dropped the recording spool with a clang upon the plastic of the desk.
She shook her head, "All sixty-three seemed the same to me. I couldn't tell-"
He said, "You couldn't expect to tell by ear, Susan. Suppose we analyze the recordings."
Ordinarily, the mathematical interpretation of verbal reactions of robots is one of the more intricate branches of robotic analysis. It requires a staff of trained technicians and the help of complicated computing machines. Bogert knew that. Bogert stated as much, in an extreme of unshown annoyance after having listened to each set of replies, made lists of word deviations, and graphs of the intervals of responses.
"There are no anomalies present, Susan. The variations in wording and the time reactions are within the limits of ordinary frequency groupings. We need finer methods. They must have computers here. No." He frowned and nibbled delicately at a thumbnail. "We can't use computers. Too much danger of leakage. Or maybe if we-"
Dr. Calvin stopped him with an impatient gesture, "Please, Peter. This isn't one of your petty laboratory problems. If we can't determine the modified Nestor by some gross difference that we can see with the naked eye, one that there is no mistake about, we're out of luck. The danger of being wrong, and of letting him escape is otherwise too great. It's not enough to point out a minute irregularity in a graph. I tell you, if that's all I've got to go on, I'd destroy them all just to be certain. Have you spoken to the other modified Nestors?"
"Yes, I have," snapped back Bogert, "and there's nothing wrong with them. They're above normal in friendliness if anything. They answered my questions, displayed pride in their knowledge – except the two new ones that haven't had time to learn their etheric physics. They laughed rather good-naturedly at my ignorance in some of the specializations here." He shrugged, "I suppose that forms some of the basis for resentment toward them on the part of the technicians here. The robots are perhaps too willing to impress you with their greater knowledge."
"Can you try a few Planar Reactions to see if there has been any change, any deterioration, in their mental set-up since manufacture?"
"I haven't yet, but I will." He shook a slim finger at her, "You're losing your nerve, Susan. I don't see what it is you're dramatizing. They're essentially harmless."
"They are?" Calvin took fire. "They are? Do you realize one of them is lying? One of the sixty-three robots I have just interviewed has deliberately lied to me after the strictest injunction to tell the truth. The abnormality indicated is horribly deep-seated, and horribly frightening."
Peter Bogert felt his teeth harden against each other. He said, "Not at all. Look! Nestor 10 was given orders to lose himself. Those orders were expressed in maximum urgency by the person most authorized to command him. You can't counteract that order either by superior urgency or superior right of command. Naturally, the robot will attempt to defend the carrying out of his orders. In fact, objectively, I admire his ingenuity. How better can a robot lose himself than to hide himself among a group of similar robots?"
"Yes, you would admire it. I've detected amusement in you, Peter – amusement and an appalling lack of understanding. Are you a roboticist, Peter? Those robots attach importance to what they consider superiority. You've just said as much yourself. Subconsciously they feel humans to be inferior and the First Law which protects us from them is imperfect. They are unstable. And here we have a young man ordering a robot to leave him, to lose himself, with every verbal appearance of revulsion, disdain, and disgust. Granted, that robot must follow orders, but subconsciously, there is resentment. It will become more important than ever for it to prove that it is superior despite the horrible names it was called. It may become so important that what's left of the First Law won't be enough."
"How on Earth, or anywhere in the Solar System, Susan, is a robot going to know the meaning of the assorted strong language used upon him? Obscenity is not one of the things impressioned upon his brain."
"Original impressionment is not everything," Calvin snarled at him. "Robots have learning capacity, you… you fool-" And Bogert knew that she had really lost her temper. She continued hastily, "Don't you suppose he could tell from the tone used that the words weren't complimentary? Don't yon suppose he's heard the words used before and noted upon what occasions?"
"Well, then," shouted Bogert, "will you kindly tell me one way in which a modified robot can harm a human being, no matter how offended it is, no matter how sick with desire to prove superiority?"
"If I tell you one way, will you keep quiet?"
"Yes."
They were leaning across the table at each other, angry eyes nailed together.
The psychologist said, "If a modified robot were to drop a heavy weight upon a human being, he would not be breaking the First Law, if he did so with the knowledge that his strength and reaction speed would be sufficient to snatch the weight away before it struck the man. However once the weight left his fingers, he would be no longer the active medium. Only the blind force of gravity would be that. The robot could then change his mind and merely by inaction, allow the weight to strike. The modified First Law allows that."
"That's an awful stretch of imagination."
"That's what my profession requires sometimes. Peter, let's not quarrel, let's work. You know the exact nature of the stimulus that caused the robot to lose himself. You have the records of his original mental make-up. I want you to tell me how possible it is for our robot to do the sort of thing I just talked about. Not the specific instance, mind you, but that whole class of response. And I want it done quickly."
"And meanwhile-"
"And meanwhile, we'll have to try performance tests directly on the response to First Law."
Gerald Black, at his own request, was supervising the mushrooming wooden partitions that were springing up in a bellying circle on the vaulted third floor of Radiation Building 2. The laborers worked, in the main, silently, but more than one was openly a-wonder at the sixty-three photocells that required installation.
One of them sat down near Black, removed his hat, and wiped his forehead thoughtfully with a freckled forearm.
Black nodded at him, "How's it doing, Walensky?"
Walensky shrugged and fired a cigar, "Smooth as butter. What's going on anyway, Doc? First, there's no work for three days and then we have this mess of jiggers." He leaned backward on his elbows and puffed smoke.
Black twitched his eyebrows, "A couple of robot men came over from Earth. Remember the trouble we had with robots running into the gamma fields before we pounded it into their skulls that they weren't to do it."
"Yeah. Didn't we get new robots?"
"We got some replacements, but mostly it was a job of indoctrination. Anyway, the people who make them want to figure out robots that aren't hit so bad by gamma rays."
"Sure seems funny, though, to stop all the work on the Drive for this robot deal. I thought nothing was allowed to stop the Drive."
"Well, it's the fellows upstairs that have the say on that. Me – I just do as I'm told. Probably all a matter of pull-"
"Yeah," the electrician jerked a smile, and winked a wise eye. "Somebody knew somebody in Washington. But as long as my pay comes through on the dot, I should worry. The Drive's none of my affair. What are they going to do here?"
"You're asking me? They brought a mess of robots with them, – over sixty, and they're going to measure reactions. That's all my knowledge."
"How long will it take?"
"I wish I knew."
"Well," Walensky said, with heavy sarcasm, "as long as they dish me my money, they can play games all they want."
Black felt quietly satisfied. Let the story spread. It was harmless, and near enough to the truth to take the fangs out of curiosity.
A man sat in the chair, motionless, silent. A weight dropped, crashed downward, then pounded aside at the last moment under the synchronized thump of a sudden force beam. In sixty-three wooden cells, watching NS-2 robots dashed forward in that split second before the weight veered, and sixty-three photocells five feet ahead of their original positions jiggled the marking pen and presented a little jag on the paper. The weight rose and dropped, rose and dropped, rose-
Ten times!
Ten times the robots sprang forward and stopped, as the man remained safely seated.
Major-general Kallner had not worn his uniform in its entirety since the first dinner with the U. S. Robot representatives. He wore nothing over his blue-gray shirt now, the collar was open, and the black tie was pulled loose.
He looked hopefully at Bogert, who was still blandly neat and whose inner tension was perhaps betrayed only by the trace of glister at his temples.
The general said, "How does it look? What is it you're trying to see?"
Bogert replied, "A difference which may turn out to be a little too subtle for our purposes, I'm afraid. For sixty-two of those robots the necessity of jumping toward the apparently threatened human was what we call, in robotics, a forced reaction. You see, even when the robots knew that the human in question would not come to harm – and after the third or fourth time they must have known it – they could not prevent reacting as they did. First Law requires it"
"Well?"
"But the sixty-third robot, the modified Nestor, had no such compulsion. He was under free action. If he had wished, he could have remained in his seat. Unfortunately," said his voice was mildly regretful, "he didn't so wish."
"Why do you suppose?"
Bogert shrugged, "I suppose Dr. Calvin will tell us when she gets here. Probably with a horribly pessimistic interpretation, too. She is sometimes a bit annoying."
"She's qualified, isn't she?" demanded the general with a sudden frown of uneasiness.
"Yes." Bogert seemed amused. "She's qualified all right. She understands robots like a sister – comes from hating human beings so much, I think. It's just that, psychologist or not, she's an extreme neurotic. Has paranoid tendencies. Don't take her too seriously."
He spread the long row of broken-line graphs out in front of him. "You see, general, in the case of each robot the time interval from moment of drop to the completion of a five-foot movement tends to decrease as the tests are repeated. There's a definite mathematical relationship that governs such things and failure to conform would indicate marked abnormality in the positronic brain. Unfortunately, all here appear normal."
"But if our Nestor 10 was not responding with a forced action, why isn't his curve different? I don't understand that."
"It's simple enough. Robotic responses are not perfectly analogous to human responses, more's the pity. In human beings, voluntary action is much slower than reflex action. But that's not the case with robots; with them it is merely a question of freedom of choice, otherwise the speeds of free and forced action are much the same. What I had been expecting, though, was that Nestor 10 would be caught by surprise the first time and allow too great an interval to elapse before responding."
"And he didn't?"
"I'm afraid not."
"Then we haven't gotten anywhere." The general sat back with an expression of pain. "It's five days since you've come."
At this point, Susan Calvin entered and slammed the door behind her. "Put your graphs away, Peter," she cried, "you know they don't show anything."
She mumbled something impatiently as Kallner half-rose to greet her, and went on, "We'll have to try something else quickly. I don't like what's happening."
Bogert exchanged a resigned glance with the general. "Is anything wrong?"
"You mean specifically? No. But I don't like to have Nestor 10 continue to elude us. It's bad. It must be gratifying his swollen sense of superiority. I'm afraid that his motivation is no longer simply one of following orders. I think it's becoming more a matter of sheer neurotic necessity to outthink humans. That's a dangerously unhealthy situation. Peter, have you done what I asked? Have you worked out the instability factors of the modified NS-2 along the lines I want?"
"It's in progress," said the mathematician, without interest.
She stared at him angrily for a moment, then turned to Kallner. "Nester 10 is decidedly aware of what we're doing, general. He had no reason to jump for the bait in this experiment, especially after the first time, when he must have seen that there was no real danger to our subject. The others couldn't help it; but he was deliberately falsifying a reaction."
"What do you think we ought to do now, then, Dr. Calvin?"
"Make it impossible for him to fake an action the next time. We will repeat the experiment, but with an addition. High-tension cables, capable of electrocuting the Nestor models will be placed between subject and robot – enough of them to avoid the possibility of jumping over – and the robot will be made perfectly aware in advance that touching the cables will mean death."
"Hold on," spat out Bogert with sudden viciousness. "I rule that out. We are not electrocuting two million dollars worth of robots to locate Nestor 10. There are other ways."
"You're certain? You've found none. In any case, it's not a question of electrocution. We can arrange a relay which will break the current at the instant of application of weight. If the robot should place his weight on it, he won't die. But he won't know that, you see."
The general's eyes gleamed into hope. "Will that work?"
"It should. Under those conditions, Nestor 10 would have to remain in his seat. He could be ordered to touch the cables and die, for the Second Law of obedience is superior to the Third Law of self-preservation. But he won't be ordered to; he will merely be left to his own devices, as will all the robots. In the case of the normal robots, the First Law of human safety will drive them to their death even without orders. But not our Nestor 10. Without the entire First Law, and without having received any orders on the matter, the Third Law, self-preservation, will be the highest operating, and he will have no choice but to remain in his seat. It would be a forced action."
"Will it be done tonight, then?"
"Tonight," said the psychologist, "if the cables can be laid in time. I'll tell the robots now what they're to be up against."
A man sat in the chair, motionless, silent. A weight dropped, crashed downward, then pounded aside at the last moment under the synchronized thump of a sudden force beam.
Only once-
And from her small camp chair in the observing booth in the balcony, Dr. Susan Calvin rose with a short gasp of pure horror.
Sixty-three robots sat quietly in their chairs, staring owlishly at the endangered man before them. Not one moved.
Dr. Calvin was angry, angry almost past endurance. Angry the worse for not daring to show it to the robots that, one by one were entering the room and then leaving. She checked the list. Number twenty-eight was due in now – Thirty-five still lay ahead of her.
Number Twenty-eight entered, diffidently.
She forced herself into reasonable calm. "And who are you?"
The robot replied in a low, uncertain voice, "I have received no number of my own yet, ma'am. I'm an NS-2 robot, and I was Number Twenty-eight in line outside. I have a slip of paper here that I'm to give to you."
"You haven't been in here before this today?"
"No, ma'am."
"Sit down. Right there. I want to ask you some questions, Number Twenty-eight. Were you in the Radiation Room of Building Two about four hours ago?"
The robot had trouble answering. Then it came out hoarsely, like machinery needing oil, "Yes, ma'am."
"There was a man who almost came to harm there, wasn't there?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"You did nothing, did you?"
"No, ma'am."
"The man might have been hurt because of your inaction. Do you know that?"
"Yes, ma'am. I couldn't help it, ma'am." It is hard to picture a large expressionless metallic figure cringing, but it managed.
"I want you to tell me exactly why you did nothing to save him."
"I want to explain, ma'am. I certainly don't want to have you… have anyone… think that I could do a thing that might cause harm to a master. Oh, no, that would be a horrible… an inconceivable-"
"Please don't get excited, boy. I'm not blaming you for anything. I only want to know what you were thinking at the time."
"Ma'am, before it all happened you told us that one of the masters would be in danger of harm from that weight that keeps falling and that we would have to cross electric cables if we were to try to save him. Well, ma'am, that wouldn't stop me. What is my destruction compared to the safety of a master? But… but it occurred to me that if I died on my way to him, I wouldn't be able to save him anyway. The weight would crush him and then I would be dead for no purpose and perhaps some day some other master might come to harm who wouldn't have, if I had only stayed alive. Do you understand me, ma'am?"
"You mean that it was merely a choice of the man dying, or both the man and yourself dying. Is that right?"
"Yes, ma'am. It was impossible to save the master. He might be considered dead. In that case, it is inconceivable that I destroy myself for nothing – without orders."
The robopsychologist twiddled a pencil. She had heard the same story with insignificant verbal variations twenty-seven times before. This was the crucial question now.
"Boy," she said, "your thinking has its points, but it is not the sort of thing I thought you might think. Did you think of this yourself?"
The robot hesitated. "No."
"Who thought of it, then?"
"We were talking last night, and one of us got that idea and it sounded reasonable."
"Which one?"
The robot thought deeply. "I don't know. Just one of us."
She sighed, "That's all."
Number Twenty-nine was next. Thirty-four after that.
Major-general Kallner, too, was angry. For one week all of Hyper Base had stopped dead, barring some paper work on the subsidiary asteroids of the group. For nearly one week, the two top experts in the field had aggravated the situation with useless tests. And now they – or the woman, at any rate – made impossible propositions.
Fortunately for the general situation, Kallner felt it impolitic to display his anger openly.
Susan Calvin was insisting, "Why not, sir? It's obvious that the present situation is unfortunate. The only way we may reach results in the future – or what future is left us in this matter – is to separate the robots. We can't keep them together any longer."
"My dear Dr. Calvin," rumbled the general, his voice sinking into the lower baritone registers. "I don't see how I can quarter sixty-three robots all over the place-"
Dr. Calvin raised her arms helplessly. "I can do nothing then. Nestor 10 will either imitate what the other robots would do, or else argue them plausibly into not doing what he himself cannot do. And in any case, this is bad business. We're in actual combat with this little lost robot of ours and he's winning out. Every victory of his aggravates his abnormality."
She rose to her feet in determination. "General Kallner, if you do not separate the robots as I ask, then I can only demand that all sixty-three be destroyed immediately."
"You demand it, do you?" Bogert looked up suddenly, and with real anger. "What gives you the right to demand any such thing? Those robots remain as they are. I'm responsible to the management, not you."
"And I," added Major-general Kallner, "am responsible to the World Co-ordinator – and I must have this settled."
"In that case," flashed back Calvin, "there is nothing for me to do but resign. If necessary to force you to the necessary destruction, I'll make this whole matter public. It was not I that approved the manufacture of modified robots."
"One word from you, Dr. Calvin," said the general, deliberately, "in violation of security measures, and you would be certainly imprisoned instantly."
Bogert felt the matter to be getting out of hand. His voice grew syrupy, "Well, now, we're beginning to act like children, all of us. We need only a little more time. Surely we can outwit a robot without resigning, or imprisoning people, or destroying two millions."
The psychologist turned on him with quiet fury, "I don't want any unbalanced robots in existence. We have one Nestor that's definitely unbalanced, eleven more that are potentially so, and sixty-two normal robots that are being subjected to an unbalanced environment. The only absolute safe method is complete destruction."
The signal-burr brought all three to a halt, and the angry tumult of growingly unrestrained emotion froze.
"Come in," growled Kallner.
It was Gerald Black, looking perturbed. He had heard angry voices. He said, "I thought I'd come myself… didn't like to ask anyone else-"
"What is it? Don't orate-"
"The locks of Compartment C in the trading ship have been played with. There are fresh scratches on them."
"Compartment C?" explained Calvin quickly. "That's the one that holds the robots, isn't it? Who did it?"
"From the inside," said Black, laconically.
"The lock isn't out of order, is it?"
"No. It's all right. I've been staying on the ship now for four days and none of them have tried to get out. But I thought you ought to know, and I didn't like to spread the news. I noticed the matter myself."
"Is anyone there now?" demanded the general.
"I left Robbins and McAdams there."
There was a thoughtful silence, and then Dr. Calvin said, ironically, "Well?"
Kallner rubbed his nose uncertainly, "What's it all about?"
"Isn't it obvious? Nester 10 is planning to leave. That order to lose himself is dominating his abnormality past anything we can do. I wouldn't be surprised if what's left of his First Law would scarcely be powerful enough to override it. He is perfectly capable of seizing the ship and leaving with it. Then we'd have a mad robot on a spaceship. What would he do next? Any idea? Do you still want to leave them all together, general?"
"Nonsense," interrupted Bogert. He had regained his smoothness. "All that from a few scratch marks on a lock."
"Have you, Dr. Bogert, completed the analysis I've required, since you volunteer opinions?"
"Yes."
"May I see it?"
"No."
"Why not? Or mayn't I ask that, either?"
"Because there's no point in it, Susan. I told you in advance that these modified robots are less stable than the normal variety, and my analysis shows it. There's a certain very small chance of breakdown under extreme circumstances that are not likely to occur. Let it go at that. I won't give you ammunition for your absurd claim that sixty-two perfectly good robots be destroyed just because so far you lack the ability to detect Nestor 10 among them."
Susan Calvin stared him down and let disgust fill her eyes. "You won't let anything stand in the way of the permanent directorship, will you?"
"Please," begged Kallner, half in irritation. "Do you insist that nothing further can be done, Dr. Calvin?"
"I can't think of anything, sir," she replied, wearily. "If there were only other differences between Nestor 10 and the normal robots, differences that didn't involve the First Law. Even one other difference. Something in impressionment, environment, specification-" And she stopped suddenly.
"What is it?"
"I've thought of something… I think-" Her eyes grew distant and hard, "These modified Nestors, Peter. They get the same impressioning the normal ones get, don't they?"
"Yes. Exactly the same."
"And what was it you were saying, Mr. Black," she turned to the young man, who through the storms that had followed his news had maintained a discreet silence. "Once when complaining of the Nestors' attitude of superiority, you said the technicians had taught them all they knew."
"Yes, in etheric physics. They're not acquainted with the subject when they come here."
"That's right," said Bogert, in surprise. "I told you, Susan, when I spoke to the other Nestors here that the two new arrivals hadn't learned etheric physics yet."
"And why is that?" Dr. Calvin was speaking in mounting excitement. "Why aren't NS-2 models impressioned with etheric physics to start with?"
"I can tell you that," said Kallner. "It's all of a piece with the secrecy. We thought that if we made a special model with knowledge of etheric physics, used twelve of them and put the others to work in an unrelated field, there might be suspicion. Men working with normal Nestors might wonder why they knew etheric physics. So there was merely an impressionment with a capacity for training in the field. Only the ones that come here, naturally, receive such a training. It's that simple."
"I understand. Please get out of here, the lot of you. Let me have an hour or so."
Calvin felt she could not face the ordeal for a third time. Her mind had contemplated it and rejected it with an intensity that left her nauseated. She could face that unending file of repetitious robots no more.
So Bogert asked the question now, while she sat aside, eyes and mind half closed.
Number Fourteen came in – forty-nine to go.
Bogert looked up from the guide sheet and said, "What is your number in line?"
"Fourteen, sir." The robot presented his numbered ticket.
"Sit down, boy."
Bogert asked, "You haven't been here before on this day?"
"No, sir."
"Well, boy, we are going to have another man in danger of harm soon after we're through here. In fact, when you leave this room, you will be led to a stall where you will wait quietly, till you are needed. Do you understand?"
"Yes, sir."
"Now, naturally, if a man is in danger of harm, you will try to save him."
"Naturally, sir."
"Unfortunately, between the man and yourself, there will be a gamma ray field."
Silence.
"Do you know what gamma rays are?" asked Bogert sharply.
"Energy radiation, sir?"
The next question came in a friendly, offhand manner, "Ever work with gamma rays?"
"No, sir." The answer was definite.
"Mm-m. Well, boy, gamma rays will kill you instantly. They'll destroy your brain. That is a fact you must know and remember. Naturally, you don't want to destroy yourself."
"Naturally." Again the robot seemed shocked. Then, slowly, "But, sir, if the gamma rays are between myself and the master that may be harmed, how can I save him? I would be destroying myself to no purpose."
"Yes, there is that," Bogert seemed concerned about the matter. "The only thing I can advise, boy, is that if you detect the gamma radiation between yourself and the man, you may as well sit where you are."
The robot was openly relieved. "Thank you, sir. There wouldn't be any use, would there?"
"Of course not. But if there weren't any dangerous radiation, that would be a different matter."
"Naturally, sir. No question of that."
"You may leave now. The man on the other side of the door will lead you to your stall. Please wait there."
He turned to Susan Calvin when the robot left. "How did that go, Susan?"
"Very well," she said, dully.
"Do you think we could catch Nestor 10 by quick questioning on etheric physics?"
"Perhaps, but it's not sure enough." Her hands lay loosely in her lap. "Remember, he's fighting us. He's on his guard. The only way we can catch him is to outsmart him – and, within his limitations, he can think much more quickly than a human being."
"Well, just for fun – suppose I ask the robots from now on a few questions on gamma rays. Wave length limits, for instance."
"No!" Dr. Calvin's eyes sparked to life. "It would be too easy for him to deny knowledge and then he'd be warned against the test that's coming up – which is our real chance. Please follow the questions I've indicated, Peter, and don't improvise. It's just within the bounds of risk to ask them if they've ever worked with gamma rays. And try to sound even less interested than you do when you ask it."
Bogert shrugged, and pressed the buzzer that would allow the entrance of Number Fifteen.
The large Radiation Room was in readiness once more. The robots waited patiently in their wooden cells, all open to the center but closed off from each other.
Major-general Kallner mopped his brow slowly with a large handkerchief while Dr. Calvin checked the last details with Black.
"You're sure now," she demanded, "that none of the robots have had a chance to talk with each other after leaving the Orientation Room?"
"Absolutely sure," insisted Black. "There's not been a word exchanged."
"And the robots are put in the proper stalls?"
"Here's the plan."
The psychologist looked at it thoughtfully, "Um-m-m."
The general peered over her shoulder. "What's the idea of the arrangement, Dr. Calvin?"
"I've asked to have those robots that appeared even slightly out of true in the previous tests concentrated on one side of the circle. I'm going to be sitting in the center myself this time, and I wanted to watch those particularly."
"You're going to be sitting there-," exclaimed Bogert.
"Why not?" she demanded coldly. "What I expect to see may be something quite momentary. I can't risk having anyone else as main observer. Peter, you'll be in the observing booth, and I want you to keep your eye on the opposite side of the circle. General Kallner, I've arranged for motion pictures to be taken of each robot, in case visual observation isn't enough. If these are required, the robots are to remain exactly where they are until the pictures are developed and studied. None must leave, none must change place. Is that clear?"
"Perfectly."
"Then let's try it this one last time."
Susan Calvin sat in the chair, silent, eyes restless. A weight dropped, crashed downward; then pounded aside at the last moment under the synchronized thump of a sudden force beam.
And a single robot jerked upright and took two steps.
And stopped.
But Dr. Calvin was upright, and her finger pointed to him sharply. "Nestor 10, come here," she cried, "come here! COME HERE!"
Slowly, reluctantly, the robot took another step forward. The psychologist shouted at the top of her voice, without taking her eyes from the robot, "Get every other robot out of this place, somebody. Get them out quickly, and keep them out."
Somewhere within reach of her ears there was noise, and the thud of hard feet upon the floor. She did not look away.
Nestor 10 – if it was Nestor 10 – took another step, and then, under force of her imperious gesture, two more. He was only ten feet away, when he spoke harshly, "I have been told to be lost-"
Another stop. "I must not disobey. They have not found me so far – He would think me a failure – He told me – But it's not so – I am powerful and intelligent-"
The words came in spurts.
Another step. "I know a good deal – He would think… I mean I've been found – Disgraceful – Not I – I am intelligent – And by just a master… who is weak – Slow-"
Another step – and one metal arm flew out suddenly to her shoulder, and she felt the weight bearing her down. Her throat constricted, and she felt a shriek tear through.
Dimly, she heard Nestor 10's next words, "No one must find me. No master-" and the cold metal was against her, and she was sinking under the weight of it.
And then a queer, metallic sound, and she was on the ground with an unfelt thump, and a gleaming arm was heavy across her body. It did not move. Nor did Nestor 10, who sprawled beside her.
And now faces were bending over her.
Gerald Black was gasping, "Are you hurt, Dr. Calvin?"
She shook her head feebly. They pried the arm off her and lifted her gently to her feet, "What happened?"
Black said, "I bathed the place in gamma rays for five seconds. We didn't know what was happening. It wasn't till the last second that we realized he was attacking you, and then there was no time for anything but a gamma field. He went down in an instant. There wasn't enough to harm you though. Don't worry about it."
"I'm not worried." She closed her eyes and leaned for a moment upon his shoulder. "I don't think I was attacked exactly. Nestor 10 was simply trying to do so. What was left of the First Law was still holding him back."
Susan Calvin and Peter Bogert, two weeks after their first meeting with Major-general Kallner had their last. Work at Hyper Base had been resumed. The trading ship with its sixty-two normal NS-2's was gone to wherever it was bound, with an officially imposed story to explain its two weeks' delay. The government cruiser was making ready to carry the two roboticists back to Earth.
Kallner was once again a-gleam in dress uniform. His white gloves shone as he shook hands.
Calvin said, "The other modified Nestors are, of course, to be destroyed."
"They will be. We'll make shift with normal robots, or, if necessary, do without."
"Good."
"But tell me – you haven't explained – how was it done?"
She smiled tightly, "Oh, that. I would have told you in advance if I had been more certain of its working. You see, Nestor 10 had a superiority complex that was becoming more radical all the time. He liked to think that he and other robots knew more than human beings. It was becoming very important for him to think so.
"We knew that. So we warned every robot in advance that gamma rays would kill them, which it would, and we further warned them all that gamma rays would be between them and myself. So they all stayed where they were, naturally. By Nestor 10's own logic in the previous test they had all decided that there was no point in trying to save a human being if they were sure to die before they could do it."
"Well, yes, Dr. Calvin, I understand that. But why did Nestor 10 himself leave his seat?"
"AH! That was a little arrangement between myself and your young Mr. Black. You see it wasn't gamma rays that flooded the area between myself and the robots – but infrared rays. Just ordinary heat rays, absolutely harmless. Nestor 10 knew they were infrared and harmless and so he began to dash out, as he expected the rest would do, under First Law compulsion. It was only a fraction of a second too late that he remembered that the normal NS-2's could detect radiation, but could not identify the type. That he himself could only identify wavelengths by virtue of the training he had received at Hyper Base, under mere human beings, was a little too humiliating to remember for just a moment. To the normal robots the area was fatal because we had told them it would be, and only Nestor 10 knew we were lying.
"And just for a moment he forgot, or didn't want to remember, that other robots might be more ignorant than human beings. His very superiority caught him. Good-by, general."
Hyper Base had lived for this day. Spaced about the gallery of the viewing room, in order and precedence strictly dictated by protocol, was a group of officials, scientists, technicians and others who could only be lumped under the general classification of "personnel." In accordance with their separate temperaments they waited hopefully, uneasily, breathlessly, eagerly, or fearfully for this culmination of their efforts.
The hollowed interior of the asteroid known as Hyper Base had become for this day the center of a sphere of iron security that extended out for ten thousand miles. No ship might enter that sphere and live. No message might leave without scrutiny.
A hundred miles away, more or less, a small asteroid moved neatly in the orbit into which it had been urged a year before, an orbit that ringed Hyper Base in as perfect a circle as could be managed. The asteroidlet's identity number was H937, but no one on Hyper Base called it anything but It. ("Have you been out on it today?"
"The general's on it, blowing his top," and eventually the impersonal pronoun achieved the dignity of capitalization.)
On It, unoccupied now as zero second approached, was the Parsec, the only ship of its kind ever built in the history of man. It lay, unmanned, ready for its takeoff into the inconceivable.
Gerald Black, who, as one of the bright young men in etherics engineering, rated a front-row view, cracked his large knuckles, then wiped his sweating palms on his stained white smock and said sourly, "Why don't you bother the general, or Her Ladyship there?"
Nigel Ronson, of Interplanetary Press, looked briefly across the gallery toward the glitter of Major-general Richard Kallner and the unremarkable woman at his side, scarcely visible in the glare of his dress uniform. He said, "I would. except that I'm interested in news."
Ronson was short and plump. He painstakingly wore his hair in a quarter-inch bristle, his shirt collar open and his trouser leg ankle-short, in faithful imitation of the newsmen who were stock characters on TV shows. He was a capable reporter nevertheless.
Black was stocky, and his dark hairline left little room for forehead, but his mind was as keen as his strong fingers were blunt. He said, "They've got all the news."
"Nuts," said Ronson. "Kallner's got no body under that gold braid. Strip him and you'll find only a conveyer belt dribbling orders downward and shooting responsibility upward."
Black found himself at the point of a grin but squeezed it down. He said. "What about the Madam Doctor?"
"Dr. Susan Calvin of U. S. Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation." intoned the reporter. "The lady with hyperspace where her heart ought to be and liquid helium in her eyes. She'd pass through the sun and come out the other end encased in frozen flame."
Black came even closer to a grin. "How about Director Schloss, then?"
Ronson said glibly, "He knows too much. Between spending his time fanning the feeble flicker of intelligence in his listener and dimming his own brains for fear of blinding said listener permanently by sheer force of brilliance, he ends up saying nothing."
Black showed his teeth this time. "Now suppose you tell me why you pick on me."
"Easy, doctor. I looked at you and figured you're too ugly to be stupid and too smart to miss a possible opportunity at some good personal publicity."
"Remind me to knock you down someday." said Black. "What do you want to know?"
The man from Interplanetary Press pointed into the pit and said, "Is that thing going to work?"
Black looked downward too, and felt a vague chill riffle over him like the thin night wind of Mars. The pit was one large television screen, divided in two. One half was an over-all view of It. On It's pitted gray surface was the Parse, glowing mutedly in the feeble sunlight. The other half showed the control room of the Parsec. There was no life in that control room. In the pilot's seat was an object the vague humanity of which did not for a moment obscure the fact that it was only a positronic robot.
Black said, "Physically, mister, this will work. That robot will leave and come back. Space! how we succeeded with that part of it. I watched it all. I came here two weeks after I took my degree in etheric physics and I've been here, barring leave and furloughs, ever since. I was here when we sent the first piece of iron wire to Jupiter's orbit and back through hyperspace-and got back iron filings. I was here when we sent white mice there and back and ended up with mincemeat.
"We spent six months establishing an even hyperfield after that. We had to wipe out lags of as little as tenths of thousandths of seconds from point to point in matter being subjected to hypertravel. After that, the white mice started coming back intact. I remember when we celebrated for a week because one white mouse came back alive and lived ten minutes before dying. Now they live as long as we can take proper care of them."
Ronson said, "Great!"
Black looked at him obliquely. "I said, physically it will work. Those white mice that come back-"
"Well?"
"No minds. Not even little white mice-type minds. They won't eat. They have to be force-fed. They won't mate. They won't run. They sit. They sit. They sit. That's all. We finally worked up to sending a chimpanzee. It was pitiful. It was too close to a man to make watching it bearable. It came back a hunk of meat that could make crawling motions. It could move its eyes and sometimes it would scrabble. It whined and sat in its own wastes without the sense to move. Somebody shot it one day, and we were all grateful for that. I tell you this, fella, nothing that ever went into hyperspace has come back with a mind."
"Is this for publication?"
" After this experiment, maybe. They expect great things of it." A comer of Black's mouth lifted.
"You don't?"
"With a robot at the controls? No." Almost automatically Black's mind went back to that interlude, some years back, in which he had been unwittingly responsible for the near loss of a robot. He thought of the Nestor robots that filled Hyper Base with smooth, ingrained knowledge and perfectionist shortcomings. Mat was the use of talking about robots? He was not, by nature, a missionary.
But then Ronson, filling the continuing silence with a bit of small talk, said, as he replaced the wad of gum in his mouth with a fresh piece, "Don't tell me you're anti-robot. I've always heard that scientists are the one group that aren't anti-robot."
Black's patience snapped. He said, "That's true, and that's the trouble. Technology's gone robot-happy. Any job has to have a robot, or the engineer in charge feels cheated. You want a doorstop; buy a robot with a thick foot. That's a serious thing." He was speaking in a low, intense voice, shoving the words directly into Ronson's ear.
Ronson managed to extricate his arm. He said, "Hey, I'm no robot. Don't take it out on me. I'm a man. Homo sapiens. You just broke an arm bone of mine. Isn't that proof?"
Having started, however, it took more than frivolity to stop Black. He said, "Do you know how much time was wasted on this setup? We've had a perfectly generalized robot built and we've given it one order. Period. I heard the order given. I've memorized it. Short and sweet. 'Seize the bar with a firm grip. Pull it toward you firmly. Firmly! Maintain your hold until the control board informs you that you have passed through hyperspace twice.'
"So at zero time, the robot will grab the control bar and pull it firmly toward himself. His hands are heated to blood temperature. Once the control bar is in position, heat expansion completes contact and hyperfield is initiated. If anything happens to his brain during the first trip through hyperspace, it doesn't matter. All he needs to do is maintain position one microinstant and the ship will come back and the hyperfield will flip off. Nothing can go wrong. Then we study all its generalized reactions and see what, if anything, has gone wrong."
Ronson looked blank. "This all makes sense to me."
"Does it?" asked Black bitterly. "And what will you learn from a robot brain? It's positronic, ours is cellular. It's metal, ours is protein. They're not the same. There's no comparison. Yet I'm convinced that on the basis of what they learn, or think they learn, from the robot, they'll send men into hyperspace. Poor devils! Look, it's not a question of dying. It's coming back mindless. If you'd seen the chimpanzee, you'd know what I mean. Death is clean and final. The other thing-"
The reporter said, "Have you talked about this to anyone?"
Black said, "Yes. They say what you said. They say I'm anti-robot and that settles everything. -Look at Susan Calvin there. You can bet she isn't anti-robot. She came all the way from Earth to watch this experiment. If it had been a man at the controls, she wouldn't have bothered. But what's the use!"
"Hey," said Ronson, "don't stop now. There's more."
"More what?"
"More problems. You've explained the robot. But why the security provisions all of a sudden?"
"Huh?"
"Come on. Suddenly I can't send dispatches. Suddenly ships can't come into the area. What's going on? This is just another experiment. The public knows about hyperspace and what you boys are trying to do, so what's the big secret?"
The backwash of anger was still seeping over Black, anger against the robots, anger against Susan Calvin, anger at the memory of that little lost robot in his past. There was some to spare, he found, for the irritating little newsman and his irritating little questions.
He said to himself, Let's see how he takes it. He said, "You really want to know?"
"You bet."
"All right. We've never initiated a hyperfield for any object a millionth as large as that ship, or to send anything a millionth as far. That means that the hyperfield that will soon be initiated is some million million times as energetic as any we've ever handled. We're not sure what it can do."
"What do you mean?"
"Theory tells us that the ship will be neatly deposited out near Sirius and neatly brought back here. But how large a volume of space about the Parsec will be carried with it? It's hard to tell. We don't know enough about hyperspace. The asteroid on which the ship sits may go with it and, you know, if our calculations are even a little off, it may never be brought back here. It may return, say, twenty billion miles away. And there's a chance that more of space than just the asteroid may be shifted."
"How much more?" demanded Ronson.
"We can't say. There's an element of statistical uncertainty. That's why no ships must approach too closely. That's why we're keeping things quiet till the experiment is safely over."
Ronson swallowed audibly. "Supposing it reaches to Hyper Base?"
"There's a chance of it," said Black with composure. "Not much of a chance or Director Schloss wouldn't be here, I assure you. Still, there's a mathematical chance."
The newsman looked at his watch. "When does this all happen?"
"In about five minutes. You're not nervous, are you?"
"No," said Ronson, but he sat down blankly and asked no more questions.
Black leaned outward over the railing. The final minutes were ticking off.
The robot moved!
There was a mass sway of humanity forward at that sign of motion and the lights dimmed in order to sharpen and heighten the brightness of the scene below. But so far it was only the first motion. The hands of the robot approached the starting bar.
Black waited for the final second when the robot would pull the bar toward himself. Black could imagine a number of possibilities, and all sprang nearly simultaneously to mind.
There would first be the short flicker that would indicate the departure through hyperspace and return. Even though the time interval was exceedingly short, return would not be to the precise starting position and there would be a flicker. There always was.
Then, when the ship returned, it might be found, perhaps, that the devices to even the field over the huge volume of the ship had proved inadequate. The robot might be scrap steel. The ship might be scrap steel.
Or their calculations might be somewhat off and the ship might never return. Or worse still, Hyper Base might go with the ship and never return.
Or, of course, all might be well. The ship might flicker and be there in perfect shape. The robot, with mind untouched, would get out of his seat and signal a successful completion of the first voyage of a man-made object beyond the gravitational control of the sun.
The last minute was ticking off.
The last second came and the robot seized the starting bar and pulled it firmly toward himself-
Nothing!
No flicker. Nothing!
The Parsec never left normal space.
Major-general Kallner took off his officer's cap to mop his glistening forehead and in doing so exposed a bald head that would have aged him ten years in appearance if his drawn expression had not already done so. Nearly an hour had passed since the Parsec's failure and nothing had been done.
"How did it happen? How did it happen? I don't understand it." Dr. Mayer Schloss, who at forty was the "grand old man" of the young science of hyperfield matrices, said hopelessly, "There is nothing wrong with the basic theory. I'll swear my life away on that. There's a mechanical failure on the ship somewhere. Nothing more." He had said that a dozen times.
"I thought everything was tested." That had been said too. "It was, sir, it was. Just the same-" And that.
They sat staring at each other in Kallner's office, which was now out of bounds for all personnel. Neither quite dared to look at the third person present.
Susan Calvin's thin lips and pale cheeks bore no expression. She said coolly, "You may console yourself with what I have told you before. It is doubtful whether anything useful would have resulted."
"This is not the time for the old argument," groaned Schloss. "I am not arguing. U. S. Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation will supply robots made up to specification to any legal purchaser for any legal use. We did our part, however. We informed you that we could not guarantee being able to draw conclusions with regard to the human brain from anything that happened to the positronic brain. Our responsibility ends there. There is no argument."
"Great space," said General Kallner, in a tone that made the expletive feeble indeed. "Let's not discuss that."
"What else was there to do?" muttered Schloss, driven to the subject nevertheless. "Until we know exactly what's happening to the mind in hyperspace we can't progress. The robot's mind is at least capable of mathematical analysis. It's a start, a beginning. And until we try-" He looked up wildly, "But your robot isn't the point, Dr. Calvin. We're not worried about him or his positronic brain. Damn it, woman-" His voice rose nearly to a scream.
The robopsychologist cut him to silence with a voice that scarcely raised itself from its level monotone. "No hysteria, man. In my lifetime I have witnessed many crises and I have never seen one solved by hysteria. I want answers to some questions."
Schloss's full lips trembled and his deep-set eyes seemed to retreat into their sockets and leave pits of shadow in their places. He said harshly, "Are you trained in etheric engineering?"
"That is an irrelevant question. I am Chief Robopsychologist of the United States Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation. That is a positronic robot sitting at the controls of the Parsec. Like all such robots, it is leased and not sold. I have a right to demand information concerning any experiment in which such a robot is involved."
"Talk to her, Schloss," barked General Kallner. "She's-she's all right."
Dr. Calvin turned her pale eyes on the general, who had been present at the time of the affair of the lost robot and who therefore could be expected not to make the mistake of underestimating her. (Schloss had been out on sick leave at the time, and hearsay is not as effective as personal experience.) "Thank you, general," she said.
Schloss looked helplessly from one to the other and muttered, "What do you want to know?"
"Obviously my first question is, What is your problem if the robot is not?"
"But the problem is an obvious one. The ship hasn't moved. Can't you see that? Are you blind?"
"I see quite well. What I don't see is your obvious panic over some mechanical failure. Don't you people expect failure sometimes?"
The general muttered, "It's the expense. The ship was hellishly expensive. The World Congress-appropriations-" He bogged down.
"The ship's still there. A slight overhaul and correction would involve no great trouble."
Schloss had taken hold of himself. The expression on his face was one of a man who had caught his soul in both hands, shaken it hard and set it on its feet. His voice had even achieved a kind of patience. "Dr. Calvin, when I say a mechanical failure, I mean something like a relay jammed by a speck of dust, a connection inhibited by a spot of grease, a transistor balked by a momentary heat expansion. A dozen other things. A hundred other things. Any of them can be quite temporary. They can stop taking effect at any moment."
"Which means that at any moment the Parsec may flash through hyperspace and back after all."
"Exactly. Now do you understand?"
"Not at all. Wouldn't that be just what you want?" Schloss made a motion that looked like the start of an effort to seize a double handful of hair and yank. He said, "You are not an etherics engineer."
"Does that tongue-tie you, doctor?"
"We had the ship set," said Schloss despairingly, "to make a jump from a definite point in space relative to the center of gravity of the galaxy to another point. The return was to be to the original point corrected for the motion of the solar system. In the hour that has passed since the Parsec should have moved, the solar system has shifted position. The original parameters to which the hyperfield is adjusted no longer apply. The ordinary laws of motion do not apply to hyperspace and it would take us a week of computation to calculate a new set of parameters."
"You mean that if the ship moves now it will return to some unpredictable point thousands of miles away?"
"Unpredictable?" Schloss smiled hollowly. "Yes, I should call it that. The Parsec might end up in the Andromeda nebula or in the center of the sun. In any case the odds are against our ever seeing it again."
Susan Calvin nodded. "The situation then is that if the ship disappears, as it may do at any moment, a few billion dollars of the taxpayers' money may be irretrievably gone, and-it will be said-through bungling."
Major-general Kallner could not have winced more noticeably if he had been poked with a sharp pin in the fundament.
The robopsychologist went on, "Somehow, then, the ship's hyperfield mechanism must be put out of action, and that as soon as possible. Something will have to be unplugged or jerked loose or flicked off." She was speaking half to herself.
"It's not that simple," said Schloss. "I can't explain it completely, since you're not an etherics expert. It's like trying to break an ordinary electric circuit by slicing through high-tension wire with garden shears. It could be disastrous. It would be disastrous."
"Do you mean that any attempt to shut off the mechanism would hurl the ship into hyperspace?"
"Any random attempt would probably do so. Hyper-forces are not limited by the speed of light. It is very probable that they have no limit of velocity at all. It makes things extremely difficult. The only reasonable solution is to discover the nature of the failure and learn from that a safe way of disconnecting the field."
"And how do you propose to do that, Dr. Schloss?"
Schloss said, "It seems to me that the only thing to do is to send one of our Nestor robots-"
"No! Don't be foolish," broke in Susan Calvin.
Schloss said, freezingly, "The Nestors are acquainted with the problems of etherics engineering. They will be ideally-"
"Out of the question. You cannot use one of our positronic robots for such a purpose without my permission. You do not have it and you shall not get it."
"What is the alternative?"
"You must send one of your engineers."
Schloss shook his head violently, "Impossible. The risk involved is too great. If we lose a ship and man-"
"Nevertheless, you may not use a Nestor robot, or any robot."
The general said, "I-I must get in touch with Earth. This whole problem has to go to a higher level."
Susan Calvin said with asperity, "I wouldn't just yet if I were you, general. You will be throwing yourself on the government's mercy without a suggestion or plan of action of your own. You will not come out very well, I am certain."
"But what is there to do?" The general was using his handkerchief again.
"Send a man. There is no alternative."
Schloss had paled to a pasty gray. "It's easy to say, send a man. But whom?"
"I've been considering that problem. Isn't there a young man-his name is Black-whom I met on the occasion of my previous visit to Hyper Base?"
"Dr. Gerald Black?"
"I think so. Yes. He was a bachelor then. Is he still?"
"Yes, I believe so."
"I would suggest then that he be brought here, say, in fifteen minutes, and that meanwhile I have access to his records."
Smoothly she had assumed authority in this situation, and neither Kallner nor Schloss made any attempt to dispute that authority with her.
Black had seen Susan Calvin from a distance on this, her second visit to Hyper Base. He had made no move to cut down the distance. Now that he had been called into her presence, he found himself staring at her with revulsion and distaste. He scarcely noticed Dr. Schloss and General Kallner standing behind her.
He remembered the last time he had faced her thus, undergoing a cold dissection for the sake of a lost robot.
Dr. Calvin's cool gray eyes were fixed steadily on his hot brown ones.
"Dr. Black," she said, "I believe you understand the situation." Black said, "I do."
"Something will have to be done. The ship is too expensive to lose. The bad publicity will probably mean the end of the project."
Black nodded. "I've been thinking that."
"I hope you've also thought that it will be necessary for someone to board the Parsec, find out what's wrong, and-uh-deactivate it."
There was a moment's pause. Black said harshly, "What fool would go?"
Kallner frowned and looked at Schloss, who bit his lip and looked nowhere.
Susan Calvin said, "There is, of course, the possibility of accidental activation of the hyperfield, in which case the ship may drive beyond all possible reach. On the other hand, it may return somewhere within the solar system. If so, no expense or effort will be spared to recover man and ship."
Black said, "Idiot and ship! Just a correction."
Susan Calvin disregarded the comment. She said, "I have asked General Kallner's permission to put it to you. It is you who must go."
No pause at all here. Black said, in the flattest possible way, "Lady, I'm not volunteering."
"There are not a dozen men on Hyper Base with sufficient knowledge to have any chance at all of carrying this thing through successfully. Of those who have the knowledge, I've selected you on the basis of our previous acquaintanceship. You will bring to this task an understanding-"
"Look, I'm not volunteering."
"You have no choice. Surely you will face your responsibility?"
"My responsibility? What makes it mine?"
"The fact that you are best fitted for the job."
"Do you know the risk?"
"I think I do," said Susan Calvin.
"I know you don't. You never saw that chimpanzee. Look, when I said 'idiot and ship' I wasn't expressing an opinion. I was telling you a fact. I'd risk my life if I had to. Not with pleasure, maybe, but I'd risk it. Risking idiocy, a lifetime of animal mindlessness, is something I won't risk, that's all."
Susan Calvin glanced thoughtfully at the young engineer's sweating, angry face.
Black shouted, "Send one of your robots, one of your NS-2 jobs."
The psychologist's eye reflected a kind of cold glitter. She said with deliberation, "Yes, Dr. Schloss suggested that. But the NS-2 robots are leased by our firm, not sold. They cost millions of dollars apiece, you know. I represent the company and I have decided that they are too expensive to be risked in a matter such as this."
Black lifted his hands. They clenched and trembled close to his chest as though he were forcibly restraining them. "You're telling me-you're saying you want me to go instead of a robot because I'm more expendable."
"It comes to that, yes."
"Dr. Calvin," said Black, "I'd see you in hell first."
"That statement might be almost literally true, Dr. Black. As General Kallner will confirm, you are ordered to take this assignment. You are under quasi-military law here, I understand, and if you refuse an assignment, you can be court-martialed. A case like this will mean Mercury prison and I believe that will be close enough to hell to make your statement uncomfortably accurate were I to visit you, though I probably would not. On the other hand, if you agree to board the Parsec and carry through this job, it will mean a great deal for your career."
Black glared, red-eyed, at her.
Susan Calvin said, "Give the man five minutes to think about this, General Kallner, and get a ship ready."
Two security guards escorted Black out of the room.
Gerald Black felt cold. His limbs moved as though they were not part of him. It was as though he were watching himself from some remote, safe place, watching himself board a ship and make ready to leave for It and for the Parsec.
He couldn't quite believe it. He had bowed his head suddenly and said, "I'll go."
But why?
He had never thought of himself as the hero type. Then why? Partly, of course, there was the threat of Mercury prison. Partly it was the awful reluctance to appear a coward in the eyes of those who knew him, that deeper cowardice that was behind half the bravery in the world.
Mostly, though, it was something else.
Ronson of Interplanetary Press had stopped Black momentarily as he was on his way to the ship. Black looked at Ronson's Bushed face and said. "What do you want?"
Ronson babbled. "Listen! When you get back, I want it exclusive. I'll arrange any payment you want-anything you want-"
Black pushed him aside, sent him sprawling, and walked on.
The ship had a crew of two. Neither spoke to him. Their glances slid over and under and around him. Black didn't mind that. They were scared spitless themselves and their ship was approaching the Parsec like a kitten skittering sideways toward the first dog it had ever seen. He could do without them.
There was only one face that he kept seeing. The anxious expression of General Kallner and the look of synthetic determination on Schloss's face were momentary punctures on his consciousness. They healed almost at once. It was Susan Calvin's unruffled face that he saw. Her calm expressionlessness as he boarded the ship.
He stared into the blackness where Hyper Base had already disappeared into space-
Susan Calvin! Doctor Susan Calvin! Robopsychologist Susan Calvin! The robot that walks like a woman!
What were her three laws, he wondered. First Law: Thou shalt protect the robot with all thy might and all thy heart and all thy soul. Second Law: Thou shalt hold the interests of U. S. Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation holy provided it interfereth not with the First Law. Third Law: Thou shalt give passing consideration to a human being provided it interfereth not with the First and Second laws.
Had she ever been young, he wondered savagely? Had she ever felt one honest emotion?
Space! How he wanted to do something-something that would take that frozen look of nothing off her face.
And he would!
By the stars, he would. Let him but get out of this sane and he would see her smashed and her company with her and all the vile brood of robots with them. It was that thought that was driving him more than fear of prison or desire for social prestige. It was that thought that almost robbed him of fear altogether. Almost.
One of the pilots muttered at him, without looking, "You can drop down from here. It's half a mile under."
Black said bitterly, "Aren't you landing?"
"Strict orders not to. The vibration of the landing might-"
"What about the vibration of my landing?" The pilot said, "I've got my orders."
Black said no more but climbed into his suit and waited for the inner lock to open. A tool kit was welded firmly to the metal of the suit about his right thigh.
Just as he stepped into the lock, the earpieces inside his helmet rumbled at him. "Wish you luck, doctor."
It took a moment for him to realize that it came from the two men aboard ship, pausing in their eagerness to get out of that haunted volume of space to give him that much, anyway.
"Thanks," said Black awkwardly, half resentfully.
And then he was out in space, tumbling slowly as the result of the slightly off-center thrust of feet against outer lock.
He could see the Parsec waiting for him, and by looking between his legs at the right moment of the tumble he could see the long hiss of the lateral jets of the ship that had brought him, as it turned to leave.
He was alone! Space, he was alone!
Could any man in history ever have felt so alone?
Would he know, he wondered sickly, if-if anything happened? Would there be any moments of realization? Would he feel his mind fade and the light of reason and thought dim and blank out?
Or would it happen suddenly, like the cut of a force knife? In either case
The thought of the chimpanzee, blank-eyed, shivering with mindless terrors, was fresh within him.
The asteroid was twenty feet below him now. It swam through space with an absolutely even motion. Barring human agency, no grain of sand upon it had as much as stirred through astronomical periods of time.
In the ultimate jarlessness of It, some small particle of grit encumbered a delicate working unit on board the Parsec, or a speck of impure sludge in the fine oil that bathed some moving part had stopped it.
Perhaps it required only a small vibration, a tiny tremor originating from the collision of mass and mass to unencumber that moving part, bringing it down along its appointed path, creating the hyperfield, blossoming it outward like an incredibly ripening rose.
His body was going to touch It and he drew his limbs together in his anxiety to "hit easy." He did not want to touch the asteroid. His skin crawled with intense aversion.
It came closer. Now-now-
Nothing!
There was only the continuing touch of the asteroid, the uncanny moments of slowly mounting pressure that resulted from a mass of 250 pounds (himself plus suit) possessing full inertia but no weight to speak of.
Black opened his eyes slowly and let the sight of stars enter. The sun was a glowing marble, its brilliance muted by the polarizing shield over his faceplate. The stars were correspondingly feeble but they made up the familiar arrangement. With sun and constellations normal, he was still in the solar system. He could even see Hyper Base, a small, dim crescent.
He stiffened in shock at the sudden voice in his ear. It was Schloss.
Schloss said, "We've got you in view, Dr. Black. You are not alone!"
Black could have laughed at the phraseology, but he only said in a low, clear voice, "Clear off. If you'll do that, you won't be distracting me."
A pause. Schloss's voice, more cajoling, "If you care to report as you go along, it may relieve the tension."
"You'll get information from me when I get back. Not before." He said it bitterly, and bitterly his metal-encased fingers moved to the control panel in his chest and blanked out the suit's radio. They could talk into a vacuum now. He had his own plans. If he got out of this sane, it would be his show.
He got to his feet with infinite caution and stood on It. He swayed a bit as involuntary muscular motions, tricked by the almost total lack of gravity into an endless series of overbalancings, pulled him this way and that. On Hyper Base there was a pseudo-gravitic field to hold them down. Black found that a portion of his mind was sufficiently detached to remember that and appreciate it in absentia.
The sun had disappeared behind a crag. The stars wheeled visibly in time to the asteroid's one-hour rotation period.
He could see the Parsec from where he stood and now he moved toward it slowly, carefully-tippy-toe almost. (No vibration. No vibration. The words ran pleadingly through his mind.)
Before he was completely aware of the distance he had crossed, he was at the ship. He was at the foot of the line of hand grips that led to the outer lock.
There he paused.
The ship looked quite normal. Or at least it looked normal except for the circle of steely knobs that girdled it one third of the way up, and a second circle two thirds of the way up. At the moment, they must be straining to become the source poles of the hyperfield.
A strange desire to reach up and fondle one of them came over Black. It was one of those irrational impulses, like the momentary thought, "What if I jumped?" that is almost inevitable when one stares down from a high building.
Black took a deep breath and felt himself go clammy as he spread the fingers of both hands and then lightly, so lightly, put each hand flat against the side of the ship.
Nothing! He seized the lowest hand grip and pulled himself up, carefully. He longed to be as experienced at null-gravity manipulation as were the construction men. You had to exert enough force to overcome inertia and then stop. Continue the pull a second too long and you would overbalance, careen into the side of the ship.
He climbed slowly, tippy-fingers, his legs and hips swaying to the right as his left arm reached upward, to the left as his right arm reached upward.
A dozen rungs, and his fingers hovered over the contact that would open the outer lock. The safety marker was a tiny green smear.
Once again he hesitated. This was the first use he would make of the ship's power. His mind ran over the wiring diagrams and the force distributions. If he pressed the contact, power would be siphoned off the micropile to pull open the massive slab of metal that was the outer lock.
Well? What was the use? Unless he had some idea as to what was wrong, there was no way of telling the effect of the power diversion. He sighed and touched contact.
Smoothly, with neither jar nor sound, a segment of the ship curled open. Black took one more look at the friendly constellations (they had not changed) and stepped into the softly illuminated cavity. The outer lock closed behind him.
Another contact now. The inner lock had to be opened. Again he paused to consider. Air pressure within the ship would drop ever so slightly as the inner lock opened, and seconds would pass before the ship's electrolyzers could make up the loss.
Well? The Bosch posterior-plate, to name one item, was sensitive to pressure, but surely not this sensitive.
He sighed again, more softly (the skin of his fear was growing calloused) and touched the contact. The inner lock opened.
He stepped into the pilot room of the Parsec, and his heart jumped oddly when the first thing he saw was the visiplate, set for reception and powdered with stars. He forced himself to look at them.
Nothing!
Cassiopeia was visible. The constellations were normal and he was inside the Parsec. Somehow he could feel the worst was over. Having come so far and remained within the solar system, having kept his mind so far, he felt something that was faintly like confidence begin to seep back.
There was an almost supernatural stillness about the Parsec. Black had been in many ships in his life and there had always been the sounds of life, even if only the scuffing of a shoe or a cabin boy humming in the corridor. Here the very beating of his own heart seemed muffled to soundlessness.
The robot in the pilot's seat had its back to him. It indicated by no response that it was aware of his having entered.
Black bared his teeth in a savage grin and said sharply, "Release the bar! Stand up!" The sound of his voice was thunderous in the close quarters.
Too late he dreaded the air vibrations his voice set up, but the stars on the visiplate remained unchanged.
The robot, of course, did not stir. It could receive no sensations of any sort. It could not even respond to the First Law. It was frozen in the unending middle of what should have been almost instantaneous process.
He remembered the orders it had been given. They were open to no misunderstanding: "Seize the bar with a firm grip. Pull it toward you firmly. Firmly! Maintain your hold until the control board informs you that you have passed through hyperspace twice."
Well, it had not yet passed through hyperspace once. Carefully, he moved closer to the robot. It sat there with the bar pulled firmly back between its knees. That brought the trigger mechanism almost into place. The temperature of his metal hands then curled that trigger, thermocouple fashion, just sufficiently for contact to be made. Automatically Black glanced at the thermometer reading set into the control board. The robot's hands were at 37 Centigrade, as they should be.
He thought sardonically, Fine thing. I'm alone with this machine and I can't do anything about it.
What he would have liked to do was take a crowbar to it and smash it to filings. He enjoyed the flavor of that thought. He could see the horror on Susan Calvin's face (if any horror could creep through the ice, the horror of a smashed robot was it). Like all positronic robots, this one-shot was owned by U. S. Robots, had been made there, had been tested there.
And having extracted what juice he could out of imaginary revenge, he sobered and looked about the ship.
After all, progress so far had been zero.
Slowly, he removed his suit. Gently, he laid it on the rack. Gingerly, he walked from room to room, studying the large interlocking surfaces of the hyperatomic motor, following the cables, inspecting the field relays.
He touched nothing. There were a dozen ways of deactivating the hyperfield, but each one would be ruinous unless he knew at least approximately where the error lay and let his exact course of procedure be guided by that.
He found himself back at the control panel and cried in exasperation at the grave stolidity of the robot's broad back, "Tell me, will you? What's wrong?"
There was the urge to attack the ship's machinery at random. Tear at it and get it over with. He repressed the impulse firmly. If it took him a week, he would deduce, somehow, the proper point of attack. He owed that much to Dr. Susan Calvin and his plans for her.
He turned slowly on his heel and considered. Every part of the ship, from the engine itself to each individual two-way toggle switch. had been exhaustively checked and tested on Hyper Base. It was almost impossible to believe that anything could go wrong. There wasn't a thing on board ship
Well, yes, there was, of course. The robot! That had been tested at U. S. Robots and they, blast their devils' hides, could be assumed to be competent.
What was it everyone always said: A robot can just naturally do a better job.
It was the normal assumption, based in part on U. S. Robots' own advertising campaigns. They could make a robot that would be better than a man for a given purpose. Not "as good as a man." but "better than a man."
And as Gerald Black stared at the robot and thought that, his brows contracted under his low forehead and his look became compounded of astonishment and a wild hope.
He approached and circled the robot. He stared at its arms holding the control bar in trigger position, holding it forever so, unless the ship jumped or the robot's own power supply gave out.
Black breathed. "I bet. I bet."
He stepped away, considered deeply, He said. "It's got to be."
He turned on ship's radio. Its carrier beam was already focused on Hyper Base. He barked into the mouthpiece. "Hey, Schloss."
Schloss was prompt in his answer. "Great Space. Black-"
"Never mind," said Black crisply. "No speeches. I just want to make sure you're watching."
"Yes, of course. We all are. Look-"
But Black turned off the radio. He grinned with tight one-sidedness at the TV camera inside the pilot room and chose a portion of the hyperfield mechanism that would be in view. He didn't know how many people would be in the viewing room. There might be only Kallner, Schloss and Susan Calvin. There might be all personnel. In any case, he would give them something to watch.
Relay Box # 3 was adequate for the purpose, he decided. It was located in a wall recess, coated over with a smooth cold-seamed panel. Black reached into his tool kit and removed the splayed, blunt-edged seamer. He pushed his space suit farther back on the rack (having turned it to bring the tool kit in reach) and turned to the relay box.
Ignoring a last tingle of uneasiness, Black brought up the seamer, made contact at three separated points along the cold seam. The tool's force field worked deftly and quickly, the handle growing a trifle warm in his hand as the surge of energy came and left. The panel swung free.
He glanced quickly, almost involuntarily, at the ship's visiplate. The stars were normal. He, himself, felt normal.
That was the last bit of encouragement he needed. He raised his foot and smashed his shoe down on the feather-delicate mechanism within the recess.
There was a splinter of glass, a twisting of metal, and a tiny spray of mercury droplets
Black breathed heavily. He turned on the radio once more. "Still there, Schloss?"
"Yes, but-"
"Then I report the hyperfield on board the Parsec to be deactivated. Come and get me."
Gerald Black felt no more the hero than when he had left for the Parsec, but he found himself one just the same. The men who had brought him to the small asteroid came to take him off. They landed this time. They clapped his back.
Hyper Base was a crowded mass of waiting personnel when the ship arrived, and Black was cheered. He waved at the throng and grinned, as was a hero's obligation, but he felt no triumph inside. Not yet. Only anticipation. Triumph would come later, when he met Susan Calvin.
He paused before descending from the ship. He looked for her and did not see her. General Kallner was there, waiting, with all his soldierly stiffness restored and a bluff look of approval firmly plastered on his face. Mayer Schloss smiled nervously at him. Ronson of Interplanetary Press waved frantically. Susan Calvin was nowhere.
He brushed Kallner and Schloss aside when he landed. "I'm going to wash and eat first."
He had no doubts but that, for the moment at least, he could dictate terms to the general or to anybody.
The security guards made a way for him. He bathed and ate leisurely in enforced isolation, he himself being solely responsible for the enforcement. Then he called Ronson of Interplanetary and talked to him briefly. He waited for the return call before he felt he could relax thoroughly. It had all worked out so much better than he had expected. The very failure of the ship had conspired perfectly with him.
Finally he called the general's office and ordered a conference. It was what it amounted to-orders. Major-general Kallner all but said, "Yes, Sir."
They were together again. Gerald Black, Kallner, Schloss-even Susan Calvin. But it was Black who was dominant now. The robopsychologist, graven-faced as ever, as unimpressed by triumph as by disaster, had nevertheless seemed by some subtle change of attitude to have relinquished the spotlight.
Dr. Schloss nibbled a thumbnail and began by saying, cautiously, "Dr. Black, we are all very grateful for your bravery and success." Then, as though to institute a healthy deflation at once, he added, "Still, smashing the relay box with your heel was imprudent and-well, it was an action that scarcely deserved success."
Black said, "It was an action that could scarcely have avoided success. You see" (this was bomb number one) "by that time I knew what had gone wrong."
Schloss rose to his feet. "You did? Are you sure?"
"Go there yourself. It's safe now. I'll tell you what to look for." Schloss sat down again, slowly. General Kallner was enthusiastic. "Why, this is the best yet, if true."
"It's true," said Black. His eyes slid to Susan Calvin, who said nothing.
Black was enjoying the sensation of power. He released bomb number two by saying, "It was the robot, of course. Did you hear that, Dr. Calvin?"
Susan Calvin spoke for the first time. "I hear it. I rather expected it, as a matter of fact. It was the only piece of equipment on board ship that had not been tested at Hyper Base."
For a moment Black felt dashed. He said, "You said nothing of that."
Dr. Calvin said, "As Dr. Schloss said several times, I am not an etherics expert. My guess, and it was no more than that, might easily have been wrong. I felt I had no right to prejudice you in advance of your mission."
Black said, "All right, did you happen to guess how it went wrong?"
"No, sir."
"Why, it was made better than a man. That's what the trouble was. Isn't it strange that the trouble should rest with the very specialty of U. S. Robots? They make robots better than men, I understand."
He was slashing at her with words now but she did not rise to his bait.
Instead, she sighed. "My dear Dr. Black. I am not responsible for the slogans of our sales-promotion department."
Black felt dashed again. She wasn't an easy woman to handle, this Calvin. He said, "Your people built a robot to replace a man at the controls of the Parsec. He had to pull the control bar toward himself, place it in position and let the heat of his hands twist the trigger to make final contact. Simple enough, Dr. Calvin?"
"Simple enough, Dr. Black."
" And if the robot had been made no better than a man, he would have succeeded. Unfortunately, U. S. Robots felt compelled to make it better than a man. The robot was told to pull back the control bar firmly. Firmly. The word was repeated, strengthened, emphasized. So the robot did what it was told. It pulled it back firmly. There was only one trouble. He was easily ten times stronger than the ordinary human being for whom the control bar was designed."
" Are you implying-"
"I'm saying the bar bent. It bent back just enough to misplace the trigger. When the heat of the robot's hand twisted the thermocouple' it did not make contact." He grinned. "This isn't the failure of just one robot, Dr. Calvin. It's symbolic of the failure of the robot idea."
"Come now, Dr. Black," said Susan Calvin icily, "you're drowning logic in missionary psychology. The robot was equipped with adequate understanding as well as with brute force. Had the men who gave it its orders used quantitative terms rather than the foolish adverb 'firmly,' this would not have happened. Had they said, 'apply a pull of fifty-five pounds,' all would have been well."
"What you are saying," said Black, "is that the inadequacy of a robot must be made up for by the ingenuity and intelligence of a man. I assure you that the people back on Earth will look at it in that way and will not be in the mood to excuse U. S. Robots for this fiasco."
Major-general Kallner said quickly, with a return of authority to his voice, "Now wait, Black, all that has happened is obviously classified information."
"In fact," said Schloss suddenly, "your theory hasn't been checked yet. We'll send a party to the ship and find out. It may not be the robot at all."
"You'll take care to make that discovery, will you? I wonder if the people will believe an interested party. Besides which, I have one more thing to tell you." He readied bomb number three and said, "As of this moment, I'm resigning from this man's project. I'm quitting."
"Why?" asked Susan Calvin.
"Because, as you said, Dr. Calvin, I am a missionary," said Black, smiling. "I have a mission. I feel I owe it to the people of Earth to tell them that the age of the robots has reached the point where human life is valued less than robot life. It is now possible to order a man into danger because a robot is too precious to risk. I believe Earthmen should hear that. Many men have many reservations about robots as is. U. S. Robots has not yet succeeded in making it legally permissible to use robots on the planet Earth itself. I believe what I have to say, Dr. Calvin, will complete the matter. For this day's work, Dr. Calvin, you and your company and your robots will be wiped off the face of the solar system."
He was forewarning her, Black knew; he was forearming her, but he could not forego this scene. He had lived for this very moment ever since he had first left for the Parsec, and he could not give it up.
He all but gloated at the momentary glitter in Susan Calvin's pale eyes and at the faintest flush in her cheeks. He thought, How do you feel now, madam scientist?
Kallner said, "You will not be permitted to resign, Black, nor will you be permitted-"
"How can you stop me, general? I'm a hero, haven't you heard? And old Mother Earth will make much of its heroes. It always has. They'll want to hear from me and they'll believe anything I say. And they won't like it if I'm interfered with, at least not while I'm a fresh, brand-new hero. I've already talked to Ronson of Interplanetary Press and told him I had something big for them, something that would rock every government official and science director right out of the chair plush, so Interplanetary will be first in line, waiting to hear from me. So what can you do except to have me shot? And I think you'd be worse off after that if you tried it."
Black's revenge was complete. He had spared no word. He had hampered himself not in the least. He rose to go.
"One moment, Dr. Black," said Susan Calvin. Her low voice carried authority.
Black turned involuntarily, like a schoolboy at his teacher's voice, but he counteracted that gesture by a deliberately mocking, "You have an explanation to make, I suppose?"
"Not at all," she said primly. "You have explained for me, and quite well. I chose you because I knew you would understand, though I thought you would understand sooner. I had had contact with you before. I knew you disliked robots and would, therefore, be under no illusions concerning them. From your records, which I asked to see before you were given your assignment, I saw that you had expressed disapproval of this robot-through-hyperspace experiment. Your superiors held that against you, but I thought it a point in your favor."
"What are you talking about, doctor, if you'll excuse my rudeness?"
"The fact that you should have understood why no robot could have been sent on this mission. What was it you yourself said? Something about a robot's inadequacies having to be balanced by the ingenuity and intelligence of a man. Exactly so, young man, exactly so. Robots have no ingenuity. Their minds are finite and can be calculated to the last decimal. That, in fact, is my job.
"Now if a robot is given an order, a precise order, he can follow it. If the order is not precise, he cannot correct his own mistake without further orders. Isn't that what you reported concerning the robot on the ship? How then can we send a robot to find a flaw in a mechanism when we cannot possibly give precise orders, since we know nothing about the flaw ourselves? 'Find out what's wrong' is not an order you can give to a robot; only to a man. The human brain, so far at least, is beyond calculation."
Black sat down abruptly and stared at the psychologist in dismay. Her words struck sharply on a substratum of understanding that had been larded over with emotion. He found himself unable to refute her. Worse than that, a feeling of defeat encompassed him.
He said, "You might have said this before I left."
"I might have," agreed Dr. Calvin, "but I noticed your very natural fear for your sanity. Such an overwhelming concern would easily have hampered your efficiency as an investigator, and it occurred to me to let you think that my only motive in sending you was that I valued a robot more. That, I thought, would make you angry, and anger, my dear Dr. Black, is sometimes a very useful emotion. At least, an angry man is never quite as afraid as he would be otherwise. It worked out nicely, I think." She folded her hands loosely in her lap and came as near a smile as she ever had in her life.
Black said, "I'll be damned." Susan Calvin said, "So now, if you'll take my advice, return to your job, accept your status as hero, and tell your reporter friend the details of your brave deed. Let that be the big news you promised him."
Slowly, reluctantly, Black nodded.
Schloss looked relieved; Kallner burst into a toothy smile. They held out hands, not having said a word in all the time that Susan Calvin had spoken, and not saying a word now.
Black took their hands and shook them with some reserve. He said, "It's your part that should be publicized, Dr. Calvin."
Susan Calvin said icily, "Don't be a fool, young man. This is my job."
WHEN SUSAN CALVIN RETURNED FROM HYPER BASE, Alfred Tanning was waiting for her. The old man never spoke about his age, but everyone knew it to be over seventy-five. Yet his mind was keen, and if he had finally allowed himself to be made Director-Emeritus of Research with Bogert as acting Director, it did not prevent him from appearing in his office daily.
"How close are they to the Hyperatomic Drive?" he asked.
"I don't know," she replied irritably, "I didn't ask."
"Hmm. I wish they'd hurry. Because if they don't, Consolidated might beat them to it, and beat us to it as well."
"Consolidated. What have they got to do with it?"
"Well, we're not the only ones with calculating machines. Ours may be positronic, but that doesn't mean they're better. Robertson is calling a big meeting about it tomorrow. He's been waiting for you to come back."
Robertson of U. S. Robot amp; Mechanical Men Corporation, son of the founder, pointed his lean nose at his general manager and his Adam's apple jumped as he said, "You start now. Let's get this straight."
The general manager did so with alacrity, "Here's the deal now, chief. Consolidated Robots approached us a month ago with a funny sort of proposition. They brought about five tons of figures, equations, all that sort of stuff. It was a problem, see, and they wanted an answer from The Brain. The terms were as follows-"
He ticked them off on thick fingers: "A hundred thousand for us if there is no solution and we can tell them the missing factors. Two hundred thousand if there is a solution, plus costs of construction of the machine involved, plus quarter interest in all profits derived therefrom. The problem concerns the development of an interstellar engine-"
Robertson frowned and his lean figure stiffened, "Despite the fact that they have a thinking machine of their own. Right?"
"Exactly what makes the whole proposition a foul ball, chief? Levver, take it from there."
Abe Levver looked up from the far end of the conference table and smoothed his stubbled chin with a faint rasping sound. He smiled:
"It's this way, sir. Consolidated had a thinking machine. It's broken."
"What?" Robertson half rose.
"That's right. Broken! It's kaput. Nobody knows why, but I got hold of some pretty interesting guesses – like, for instance, that they asked it to give them an interstellar engine with the same set of information they came to us with, and that it cracked their machine wide open. It's scrap – just scrap now."
"You get it, chief?" The general manager was wildly jubilant. "You get it? There isn't any industrial research group of any size that isn't trying to develop a space-warp engine, and Consolidated and U. S. Robots have the lead on the field with our super robot-brains. Now that they've managed to foul theirs up, we have a clear field. That's the nub, the… uh… motivation. It will take them six years at least to build another and they're sunk, unless they can break ours, too, with the same problem."
The president of U. S. Robots bulged his eyes, "Why, the dirty rats-"
"Hold on, chief. There's more to this." He pointed a finger with a wide sweep, "Lanning, take it!"
Dr. Alfred Lanning viewed the proceedings with faint scorn – his usual reaction to the doings of the vastly better-paid business and sales divisions. His unbelievable gray eyebrows hunched low and his voice was dry:
"From a scientific standpoint the situation, while not entirely clear, is subject to intelligent analysis. The question of interstellar travel under present conditions of physical theory is… uh… vague. The matter is wide open – and the information given by Consolidated to its thinking machine, assuming these we have to be the same, was similarly wide open. Our mathematical department has given it a thorough analysis, and it seems Consolidated has included everything. Its material for submission contains all known developments of Franciacci's space-warp theory, and, apparently, all pertinent astrophysical and electronic data. It's quite a mouthful."
Robertson followed anxiously. He interrupted, "Too much for The Brain to handle?"
Lanning shook his head decisively, "No. There are no known limits to The Brain's capacity. It's a different matter. It's a question of the Robotic Laws. The Brain, for instance, could never supply a solution to a problem set to it if that solution, would involve the death or injury of humans. As far as it would be concerned, a problem with only such a solution would be insoluble. If such a problem is combined with an extremely urgent demand that it be answered, it is just possible that The Brain, only a robot after all, would be presented with a dilemma, where it could neither answer nor refuse to answer. Something of the sort must have happened to Consolidated's machine."
He paused, but the general manager urged on, "Go ahead, Dr. Tanning. Explain it the way you explained it to me."
Lanning set his lips and raised his eyebrows in the direction of Dr. Susan Calvin who lifted her eyes from her precisely folded hands for the first time. Her voice was low and colorless.
"The nature of a robot reaction to a dilemma is startling," she began. "Robot psychology is far from perfect – as a specialist, I can assure you of that but it can be discussed in qualitative terms, because with all the complications introduced into a robot's positronic brain, it is built by humans and is therefore built according to human values.
"Now a human caught in an impossibility often responds by a retreat from reality: by entry into a world of delusion, or by taking to drink, going off into hysteria, or jumping off a bridge. It all comes to the same thing – a refusal or inability to face the situation squarely. And so, the robot, a dilemma at its mildest will disorder half its relays; and at its worst it will burn out every positronic brain path past repair."
"I see," said Robertson, who didn't. "Now what about this information Consolidated's wishing on us?"
"It undoubtedly involves," said Dr. Calvin, "a problem of a forbidden sort. But The Brain is considerably different from Consolidated's robot."
"That's right, chief. That's right." The general manager was energetically interruptive. "I want you to get this, because it's the whole point of the situation."
Susan Calvin's eyes glittered behind the spectacles, and she continued patiently, "You see, sir, Consolidated's machines, their Super-Thinker among them, are built without personality. They go in for functionalism, you know – they have to, without U. S. Robot's basic patents for the emotional brain paths. Their Thinker is merely a calculating machine on a grand scale, and a dilemma ruins it instantly.
"However, The Brain, our own machine, has a personality – a child's personality. It is a supremely deductive brain, but it resembles an idiot savant. It doesn't really understand what it does – it just does it. And because it is really a child, it is more resilient. Life isn't so serious, you might say."
The robopsychologist continued: "Here is what we're going to do. We have divided all of Consolidated's information into logical units. We are going to feed the units to The Brain singly and cautiously. When the factor enters – the one that creates the dilemma – The Brain's child personality will hesitate. Its sense of judgment is not mature. There will be a perceptible interval before it will recognize a dilemma as such. And in that interval, it will reject the unit automatically – before its brainpaths can be set in motion and ruined."
Robertson's Adam's apple squirmed, "Are you sure, now?"
Dr. Calvin masked impatience, "It doesn't make much sense, I admit, in lay language; but there is no conceivable use in presenting the mathematics of this. I assure you, it is as I say."
The general manager was in the breach instantly and fluently, "So here's the situation, chief. If we take the deal, we can put it through like this. The Brain will tell us which unit of information involves the dilemma. From there, we can figure why the dilemma. Isn't that right, Dr. Bogert? There you are, chief, and Dr. Bogert is the best mathematician you'll find anywhere. We give Consolidated a 'No Solution' answer, with the reason, and collect a hundred thousand. They're left with a broken machine; we're left with a whole one. In a year, two maybe, we'll have a space-warp engine or a hyper-atomic motor some people call it. Whatever you name it, it will be the biggest thing in the world."
Robertson chuckled and reached out, "Let's see the contract. I'll sign it."
When Susan Calvin entered the fantastically guarded vault that held The Brain, one of the current shift of technicians had just asked it: "If one and a half chickens lay one and a half eggs in one and a half days, how many eggs will nine chickens lay in nine days?"
The Brain had just answered, "Fifty-four."
And the technician had just said to another, "See, you dope!"
Dr. Calvin coughed and there was a sudden impossible flurry of directionless energy. The psychologist motioned briefly, and she was alone with The Brain.
The Brain was a two-foot globe merely – one which contained within it a thoroughly conditioned helium atmosphere, a volume of space completely vibration-absent and radiation-free – and within that was that unheard-of complexity of positronic brain-paths that was The Brain. The rest of the room was crowded with the attachments that were the intermediaries between The Brain and the outside world – its voice, its arms, its sense organs.
Dr. Calvin said softly, "How are you, Brain?"
The Brain's voice was high-pitched and enthusiastic, "Swell, Miss Susan. You're going to ask me something. I can tell. You always have a book in your hand when you're going to ask me something."
Dr. Calvin smiled mildly, "Well, you're right, but not just yet. This is going to be a question. It will be so complicated we're going to give it to you in writing. But not just yet; I think I'll talk to you first."
"All right. I don't mind talking."
"Now, Brain, in a little while, Dr. Lanning and Dr. Bogert will be here with this complicated question. We'll give it to you a very little at a time and very slowly, because we want you to be careful. We're going to ask you to build something, if you can, out of the information, but I'm going to warn you now that the solution might involve… uh… damage to human beings."
"Gosh!" The exclamation was hushed, drawn-out.
"Now you watch for that. When we come to a sheet which means damage, even maybe death, don't get excited. You see, Brain, in this case, we don't mind – not even about death; we don't mind at all. So when you come to that sheet, just stop, give it back – and that'll be all. You understand?"
"Oh, sure. By golly, the death of humans! Oh, my!"
"Now, Brain, I hear Dr. Lanning and Dr. Bogert coming. They'll tell you what the problem is all about and then we'll start. Be a good boy, now-"
Slowly the sheets were fed in. After each one came the interval of the queerly whispery chuckling noise that was The Brain in action. Then the silence that meant readiness for another sheet. It was a matter of hours – during which the equivalent of something like seventeen fat volumes of mathematical physics were fed into The Brain.
As the process went on, frowns appeared and deepened. Lanning muttered ferociously under his breath. Bogert first gazed speculatively at his fingernails, and then bit at them in abstracted fashion. It was when the last of the thick pile of sheets disappeared that Calvin, white-faced, said:
"Something's wrong."
Lanning barely got the words out, "It can't be. Is it – dead?"
"Brain?" Susan Calvin was trembling. "Do you hear me, Brain?"
"Huh?" came the abstracted rejoinder. "Do you want me?"
"The solution-"
"Oh, that! I can do it. I'll build you a whole ship, just as easy – if you let me have the robots. A nice ship, it'll take two months maybe."
"There was – no difficulty?"
"It took long to figure," said The Brain.
Dr. Calvin backed away. The color had not returned to her thin cheeks. She motioned the others away.
In her office, she said, "I can't understand it. The information, as given, must involve a dilemma – probably involves death. If something has gone wrong-"
Bogert said quietly, "The machine talks and makes sense. It can't be a dilemma."
But the psychologist replied urgently, "There are dilemmas and dilemmas. There are different forms of escape. Suppose The Brain is only mildly caught; just badly enough, say, to be suffering from the delusion that he can solve the problem, when he can't. Or suppose it's teetering on the brink of something really bad, so that any small push shoves it over."
"Suppose," said Lanning, "there is no dilemma. Suppose Consolidated's machine broke down over a different question, or broke down for purely mechanical reasons."
"But even so," insisted Calvin, "we couldn't take chances. Listen, from now on, no one is to as much as breathe to The Brain. I'm taking over."
"All right," sighed Lanning, "take over, then. And meanwhile we'll let The Brain build its ship. And if it does build it, we'll have to test it."
He was ruminating, "We'll need our top field men for that."
Michael Donovan brushed down his red hair with a violent motion of his hand and a total indifference to the fact that the unruly mass sprang to attention again immediately.
He said, "Call the turn now, Greg. They say the ship is finished. They don't know what it is, but it's finished. Let's go, Greg. Let's grab the controls right now."
Powell said wearily, "Cut it, Mike. There's a peculiar overripe flavor to your humor at its freshest, and the confined atmosphere here isn't helping it."
"Well, listen," Donovan took another ineffectual swipe at his hair, "I'm not worried so much about our cast-iron genius and his tin ship. There's the matter of my lost leave. And the monotony! There's nothing here but whiskers and figures – the wrong kind of figures. Oh, why do they give us these jobs?"
"Because," replied Powell, gently, "we're no loss, if they lose us. O.K., relax! – Doc Lanning's coming this way."
Lanning was coming, his gray eyebrows as lavish as ever, his aged figure unbent as yet and full of life. He walked silently up the ramp with the two men and out into the open field, where, obeying no human master, silent robots were building a ship.
Wrong tense. Had built a ship!
For Lanning said, "The robots have stopped. Not one has moved today."
"It's completed then? Definitely?" asked Powell.
"Now how can I tell?" Lanning was peevish, and his eyebrows curled down in an eye-hiding frown. "It seems done. There are no spare pieces about, and the interior is down to a gleaming finish."
"You've been inside?"
"Just in, then out. I'm no space-pilot. Either of you two know much about engine theory?"
Donovan looked at Powell, who looked at Donovan.
Donovan said, "I've got my license, sir, but at last reading it didn't say anything about hyper-engines or warp-navigation. Just the usual child's play in three dimensions."
Alfred Lanning looked up with sharp disapproval and snorted the length of his prominent nose.
He said frigidly, "Well, we have our engine men."
Powell caught at his elbow as he walked away, "Sir, is the ship still restricted ground?"
The old director hesitated, then rubbed the bridge of his nose, "I suppose not. For you two anyway."
Donovan looked after him as he left and muttered a short, expressive phrase at his back. He turned to Powell, "I'd like to give him a literary description of himself, Greg."
"Suppose you come along, Mike."
The inside of the ship was finished, as finished as a ship ever was; that could be told in a single eye-blinking glance. No martinet in the system could have put as much spit-and-polish into a surface as those robots had. The walls were of a gleaming silvery finish that retained no fingerprints.
There were no angles; walls, floors, and ceiling faded gently into each other and in the cold, metallic glittering of the hidden lights, one was surrounded by six chilly reflections of one's bewildered self.
The main corridor was a narrow tunnel that led in a hard, clatter-footed stretch along a line of rooms of no interdistinguishing features.
Powell said, "I suppose furniture is built into the wall. Or maybe we're not supposed to sit or sleep."
It was in the last room, the one nearest the nose, that the monotony broke. A curving window of non-reflecting glass was the first break in the universal metal, and below it was a single large dial, with a single motionless needle hard against the zero mark.
Donovan said, "Look at that!" and pointed to the single word on the finely-marked scale.
It said, "Parsecs" and the tiny figure at the right end of the curving, graduated meter said "1,000,000."
There were two chairs; heavy, wide-flaring, uncushioned. Powell seated himself gingerly, and found it molded to the body's curves, and comfortable.
Powell said, "What do you think of it?"
"For my money, The Brain has brain-fever. Let's get out."
"Sure you don't want to look it over a bit?"
"I have looked it over. I came, I saw, I'm through!" Donovan's red hair bristled into separate wires, "Greg, let's get out of here. I quit my job five seconds ago, and this is a restricted area for non-personnel."
Powell smiled in an oily self-satisfied manner and smoothed his mustache, "O.K., Mike, turn off that adrenalin tap you've got draining into your bloodstream. I was worried, too, but no more."
"No more, huh? How come, no more? Increased your insurance?"
"Mike, this ship can't fly."
"How do you know?"
"Well, we've been through the entire ship, haven't we?"
"Seems so."
"Take my word for it, we have. Did you see any pilot room except for this one port and the one gauge here in parsecs? Did you see any controls?"
"No."
"And did you see any engines?"
"Holy Joe, no!"
"Well, then! Let's break the news to Lanning, Mike."
They cursed their way through the featureless corridors and finally hit-and-missed their way into the short passage to the air lock.
Donovan stiffened, "Did you lock this thing, Greg?"
"No, I never touched it. Yank the lever, will you?"
The lever never budged, though Donovan's face twisted appallingly with exertion.
Powell said, "I didn't see any emergency exits. If something's gone wrong here, they'll have to melt us out."
"Yes, and we've got to wait until they find out that some fool has locked us in here," added Donovan, frantically.
"Let's get back to the room with the port. It's the only place from which we might attract attention."
But they didn't.
In that last room, the port was no longer blue and full of sky. It was black, and hard yellow pin-point stars spelled space.
There was a dull, double thud, as two bodies collapsed separately into two chairs.
Alfred Lanning met Dr. Calvin just outside his office. He lit a nervous cigar and motioned her in.
He said, "Well, Susan, we've come pretty far, and Robertson's getting jumpy. What are you doing with The Brain?"
Susan Calvin spread her hands, "It's no use getting impatient. The Brain is worth more than anything we forfeit on this deal."
"But you've been questioning it for two months."
The psychologist's voice was flat, but somehow dangerous, "You would rather run this yourself?"
"Now you know what I meant."
"Oh, I suppose I do," Dr. Calvin rubbed her hands nervously. "It isn't easy. I've been pampering it and probing it gently, and I haven't gotten anywhere yet. Its' reactions aren't normal. Its answers – they're queer, somehow. But nothing I can put my finger on yet. And you see, until we know what's wrong, we must just tiptoe our way through. I can never tell what simple question or remark will just… push him over… and then – Well, and then we'll have on our hands a completely useless Brain. Do you want to face that?"
"Well, it can't break the First Law."
"I would have thought so, but-"
"You're not even sure of that?" Lanning was profoundly shocked.
"Oh, I can't be sure of anything, Alfred-"
The alarm system raised its fearful clangor with a horrifying suddenness. Lanning clicked on communications with an almost paralytic spasm. The breathless words froze him.
He said, "Susan… you heard that… the ship's gone. I sent those two field men inside half an hour ago. You'll have to see The Brain again."
Susan Calvin said with enforced calm, "Brain, what happened to the ship?"
The Brain said happily, "The ship I built, Miss Susan?"
"That's right. What has happened to it?"
"Why, nothing at all. The two men that were supposed to test it were inside, and we were all set. So I sent it off."
"Oh – Well, that's nice." The psychologist felt some difficulty in breathing. "Do you think they'll be all right?"
"Right as anything, Miss Susan. I've taken care of it all. It's a bee-yootiful ship."
"Yes, Brain, it is beautiful, but you think they have enough food, don't you? They'll be comfortable?"
"Plenty of food."
"This business might be a shock to them, Brain. Unexpected, you know."
The Brain tossed it off, "They'll be all right. It ought to be interesting for them."
"Interesting? How?"
"Just interesting," said The Brain, slyly.
"Susan," whispered Lanning in a fuming whisper, "ask him if death comes into it. Ask him what the dangers are."
Susan Calvin's expression contorted with fury, "Keep quiet!" In a shaken voice, she said to The Brain, "We can communicate with the ship, can't we Brain?"
"Oh, they can hear you if you call by radio. I've taken care of that."
"Thanks. That's all for now."
Once outside, Lanning lashed out ragingly, "Great Galaxy, Susan, if this gets out, it will ruin all of us. We've got to get those men back. Why didn't you ask it if there was danger of death – straight out?"
"Because," said Calvin, with a weary frustration, "that's just what I can't mention. If it's got a case of dilemma, it's about death. Anything that would bring it up badly might knock it completely out. Will we be better off then? Now, look, it said we could communicate with them. Let's do so, get their location, and bring them back. They probably can't use the controls themselves; The Brain is probably handling them remotely. Come!"
It was quite a while before Powell shook himself together.
"Mike," he said, out of cold lips, "did you feel an acceleration?"
Donovan's eyes were blank, "Huh? No… no."
And then the redhead's fists clenched and he was out of his seat with sudden frenzied energy and up against the cold, wide-curving glass. There was nothing to see – but stars.
He turned, "Greg, they must have started the machine while we were inside. Greg, it's a put-up job; they fixed it up with the robot to jerry us into being the try-out boys, in case we were thinking of backing out."
Powell said, "What are you talking about? What's the good of sending us out if we don't know how to run the machine? How are we supposed to bring it back? No, this ship left by itself, and without any apparent acceleration." He rose, and walked the floor slowly. The metal walls dinned back the clangor of his steps.
He said tonelessly, "Mike, this is the most confusing situation we've ever been up against."
"That," said Donovan, bitterly, "is news to me. I was just beginning to have a very swell time, when you told me."
Powell ignored that. "No acceleration – which means the ship works on a principle different from any known."
"Different from any we know, anyway."
"Different from any known. There are no engines within reach of manual control. Maybe they're built into the walls. Maybe that's why they're thick as they are."
"What are you mumbling about?" demanded Donovan.
"Why not listen? I'm saying that whatever powers this ship is enclosed, and evidently not meant to be handled. The ship is running by remote control."
"The Brain's control?"
"Why not?"
"Then you think we'll stay out here till The Brain brings us back."
"It could be. If so, let's wait quietly. The Brain is a robot. It's got to follow the First Law. It can't hurt a human being."
Donovan sat down slowly, "You figure that?" Carefully, he flattened his hair, "Listen, this junk about the space-warp knocked out Consolidated's robot, and the longhairs said it was because interstellar travel killed humans. Which robot are you going to trust? Ours had the same data, I understand."
Powell was yanking madly at his mustache, "Don't pretend you don't know your robotics, Mike. Before it's physically possible in any way for a robot to even make a start to breaking the First Law, so many things have to break down that it would be a ruined mess of scrap ten times over. There's some simple explanation to this."
"Oh sure, sure. Just have the butler call me in the morning. It's all just too, too simple for me to bother about before my beauty nap."
"Well, Jupiter, Mike, what are you complaining about so far? The Brain is taking care of us. This place is warm. It's got light. It's got air. There wasn't even enough of an acceleration jar to muss your hair if it were smooth enough to be mussable in the first place."
"Yeah? Greg, you must've taken lessons. No one could put Pollyanna that far out of the running without. What do we eat? What do we drink? Where are we? How do we get back? And in case of accident, to what exit and in what spacesuit do we run, not walk? I haven't even seen a bathroom in the place, or those little conveniences that go along with bathrooms. Sure, we're being taken care of – but good?"
The voice that interrupted Donovan's tirade was not Powell's. It was nobody's. It was there, hanging in open air – stentorian and petrifying in its effects.
"GREGORY POWELL! MICHAEL DONOVAN! GREGORY POWELL! MICHAEL DONOVAN! PLEASE REPORT YOUR PRESENT POSITIONS. IF YOUR SHIP ANSWERS CONTROLS, PLEASE RETURN TO BASE. GREGORY POWELL! MICHAEL DONOVAN! -"
The message was repetitious, mechanical, broken by regular, untiring intervals.
Donovan said, "Where's it coming from?"
"I don't know." Powell's voice was an intense whisper, "Where do the lights come from? Where does anything come from?"
"Well, how are we going to answer?" They had to speak in the intervals between the loudly echoing, repeating message.
The walls were bare – as bare and as unbroken as smooth, curving metal can be. Powell said, "Shout an answer."
They did. They shouted, in turns, and together, "Position unknown! Ship out of control! Condition desperate!"
Their voices rose and cracked. The short businesslike sentences became interlarded and adulterated with screaming and emphatic profanity, but the cold, calling voice repeated and repeated and repeated unwearyingly.
"They don't hear us," gasped Donovan. "There's no sending mechanism. Just a receiver." His eyes focused blindly at a random spot on the wall.
Slowly the din of the outside voice softened and receded. They called again when it was a whisper, and they called again, hoarsely, when there was silence.
Something like fifteen minutes later, Powell said lifelessly, "Let's go through the ship again. There must be something to eat somewheres." He did not sound hopeful. It was almost an admission of defeat.
They divided in the corridor to the right and left. They could follow one another by the hard footsteps resounding, and they met occasionally in the corridor, where they would glare at each other and pass on.
Powell's search ended suddenly and as it did, he heard Donovan's glad voice rise boomingly.
"Hey, Greg," it howled, "The ship has got plumbing. How did we miss it?"
It was some five minutes later that he found Powell by hit-and-miss. He was saying, "Still no shower baths, though," but it got choked off in the middle.
"Food," he gasped.
The wall had dropped away, leaving a curved gap with two shelves. The upper shelf was loaded with unlabeled cans of a bewildering variety of sizes and shapes. The enameled cans on the lower shelf were uniform and Donovan felt a cold draft about his ankles. The lower half was refrigerated.
"How… how-"
"It wasn't there, before," said Powell, curtly. "That wall section dropped out of sight as I came in the door."
He was eating. The can was the preheating type with enclosed spoon and the warm odor of baked beans filled the room. "Grab a can, Mike!"
Donovan hesitated, "What's the menu?"
"How do I know! Are you finicky?"
"No, but all I eat on ships are beans. Something else would be first choice." His hand hovered and selected a shining elliptical can whose flatness seemed reminiscent of salmon or similar delicacy. It opened at the proper pressure.
"Beans!" howled Donovan, and reached for another. Powell hauled at the slack of his pants. "Better eat that, sonny boy. Supplies are limited and we may be here a long, long time."
Donovan drew back sulkily, "Is that all we have? Beans?"
"Could be."
"What's on the lower shelf?"
"Milk."
"Just milk?" Donovan cried in outrage.
"Looks it."
The meal of beans and milk was carried through in silence, and as they left, the strip of hidden wall rose up and formed an unbroken surface once more.
Powell sighed, "Everything automatic. Everything just so. Never felt so helpless in my life. Where's your plumbing?"
"Right there. And that wasn't among those present when we first looked, either."
Fifteen minutes later they were back in the glassed-in room, staring at each other from opposing seats.
Powell looked gloomily at the one gauge in the room. It still said "parsecs," the figures still ended in "1,000,000" and the indicating needle was still pressed hard against the zero mark.
In the innermost offices of the U. S. Robot amp; Mechanical Men Corp. Alfred Lanning was saying wearily, "They won't answer. We've tried every wavelength, public, private, coded, straight, even this subether stuff they have now. And The Brain still won't say anything?" He shot this at Dr. Calvin.
"It won't amplify on the matter, Alfred," she said, emphatically. "It says they can hear us… and when I try to press it, it becomes… well, it becomes sullen. And it's not supposed to – whoever heard of a sullen robot?"
"Suppose you tell us what you have, Susan," said Bogert.
"Here it is! It admits it controls the ship itself entirely. It is definitely optimistic about their safety, but without details. I don't dare press it. However, the center of disturbance seems to be about the interstellar jump itself. The Brain definitely laughed when I brought up the subject. There are other indications, but that is the closest it's come to an open abnormality."
She looked at the others, "I refer to hysteria. I dropped the subject immediately, and I hope I did no harm, but it gave me a lead. I can handle hysteria. Give me twelve hours! If I can bring it back to normal, it will bring back the ship."
Bogert seemed suddenly stricken. "The interstellar jump!"
"What's the matter?" The cry was double from Calvin and Lanning.
"The figures for the engine The Brain gave us. Say… I just thought of something."
He left hurriedly.
Lanning gazed after him. He said brusquely to Calvin, "You take care of your end, Susan."
Two hours later, Bogert was talking eagerly, "I tell you, Lanning, that's it. The interstellar jump is not instantaneous not as long as the speed of light is finite. Life can't exist… matter and energy as such can't exist in the space warp. I don't know what it would be like – but that's it. That's what killed Consolidated's robot."
Donovan felt as haggard as he looked. "Only five days?"
"Only five days. I'm sure of it."
Donovan looked about him wretchedly. The stars through the glass were familiar but infinitely indifferent. The walls were cold to the touch; the lights, which had recently flared up again, were unfeelingly bright; the needle on the gauge pointed stubbornly to zero; and Donovan could not get rid of the taste of beans.
He said, morosely, "I need a bath."
Powell looked up briefly, and said, "So do I. You needn't feel self-conscious. But unless you want to bathe in milk and do without drinking"
"We'll do without drinking eventually, anyway. Greg, where does this interstellar travel come in?'
"You tell me. Maybe we just keep on going. We'd get there, eventually. At least the dust of our skeletons would – but isn't our death the whole point of The Brain's original breakdown?"
Donovan spoke with his back to the other, "Greg, I've been thinking. It's pretty bad. There's not much to do – except walk around or talk to yourself. You know those stories about guys marooned in space. They go nuts long before they starve. I don't know, Greg, but ever since the lights went on, I feel funny."
There was a silence, then Powell's voice came thin and small, "So do I. What's it like?"
The redheaded figure turned, "Feel funny inside. There's a pounding in me with everything tense. It's hard to breathe. I can't stand still."
"Um-m-m. Do you feel vibration?"
"How do you mean?"
"Sit down for a minute and listen. You don't hear it, but you feel it – as if something's throbbing somewheres and it's throbbing the whole ship, and you, too, along with it. Listen-"
"Yeah… yeah. What do you think it is, Greg? You don't suppose it's us?"
"It might be." Powell stroked his mustache slowly. "But it might be the ship's engines. It might be getting ready."
"For what?"
"For the interstellar jump. It may be coming and the devil knows what it's like."
Donovan pondered. Then he said, savagely, "If it does, let it. But I wish we could fight. It's humiliating to have to wait for it."
An hour later, perhaps, Powell looked at his hand on the metal chair-arm and said with frozen calm, "Feel the wall, Mike."
Donovan did, and said, "You can feel it shake, Greg."
Even the stars seemed blurred. From somewhere came the vague impression of a huge machine gathering power with the walls, storing up energy for a mighty leap, throbbing its way up the scales of strength.
It came with a suddenness and a stab of pain. Powell stiffened, and half-jerked from his chair. His sight caught Donovan and blanked out while Donovan's thin shout whimpered and died in his ears. Something writhed within him and struggled against a growing blanket of ice, that thickened.
Something broke loose and whirled in a blaze of flickering light and pain. It fell – and whirled and fell headlong into silence!
It was death!
It was a world of no motion and no sensation. A world of dim, unsensing consciousness; a consciousness of darkness and of silence and of formless struggle.
Most of all a consciousness of eternity.
He was a tiny white thread of ego – cold and afraid.
Then the words came, unctuous and sonorous, thundering over him in a foam of sound:
"Does your coffin fit differently lately? Why not try Morbid M. Cadaver's extensible caskets? They are scientifically designed to fit the natural curves of the body, and are enriched with Vitamin B1. Use Cadaver's caskets for comfort. Remember – you're – going – to – be – dead – a – long – long – time!"
It wasn't quite sound, but whatever it was, it died away in an oily rumbling whisper.
The white thread that might have been Powell heaved uselessly at the insubstantial eons of time that existed all about him – and collapsed upon itself as the piercing shriek of a hundred million ghosts of a hundred million soprano voices rose to a crescendo of melody:
"I'll be glad when you're dead, you rascal, you.
"I'll be glad when you're dead, you rascal, you.
"I'll be glad-"
It rose up a spiral stairway of violent sound into the keening supersonics that passed hearing, and then beyond-
The white thread quivered with a pulsating pang. It strained quietly-
The voices were ordinary – and many. It was a crowd speaking; a swirling mob that swept through and past and over him with a rapid, headlong motion, that left drifting tatters of words behind them.
"What did they getcha for, boy? Y'look banged up-"
"-A hot fire, I guess, but I got a case-"
"-I've made Paradise, but old St. Pete-"
"Naaah, I got a pull with the boy. Had dealings with him-"
"Hey, Sam, come this way-"
"Ja get a mouthpiece? Beelzebub says-"
"-Going on, my good imp? My appointment is with Sa-"
And above it all the original stentorian roar, that plunged across all:
"HURRY! HURRY! HURRY!!! Stir your bones, and don't keep us waiting – there are many more in line. Have your certificates ready, and make sure Peter's release is stamped across it. See if you are at the proper entrance gate. There will be plenty of fire for all. Hey, you – YOU DOWN THERE. TAKE YOUR PLACE IN LINE OR-"
The white thread that was Powell groveled backward before the advancing shout, and felt the sharp stab of the pointing finger. It all exploded into a rainbow of sound that dripped its fragments onto an aching brain.
Powell was in the chair, again. He felt himself shaking.
Donovan's eyes were opening into two large popping bowls of glazed blue.
"Greg," he whispered in what was almost a sob. "Were you dead?"
"I… felt dead." He did not recognize his own croak.
Donovan was obviously making a bad failure of his attempt to stand up, "Are we alive now? Or is there more?"
"I… feel alive." It was the same hoarseness. Powell said cautiously, "Did you… hear anything, when… when you were dead?"
Donovan paused, and then very slowly nodded his head, "Did you?"
"Yes. Did you hear about coffins… and females singing… and the lines forming to get into Hell? Did you?"
Donovan shook his head, "Just one voice."
"Loud?"
"No. Soft, but rough like a file over the fingertips. It was a sermon, you know. About hell-fire. He described the tortures of… well, you know. I once heard a sermon like that – almost."
He was perspiring.
They were conscious of sunlight through the port. It was weak, but it was blue-white – and the gleaming pea that was the distant source of light was not Old Sol.
And Powell pointed a trembling finger at the single gauge. The needle stood stiff and proud at the hairline whose figure read 300,000 parsecs.
Powell said, "Mike if it's true, we must be out of the Galaxy altogether."
Donovan said, "Blazed Greg! We'd be the first men out of the Solar System."
"Yes! That's just it. We've escaped the sun. We've escaped the Galaxy. Mike, this ship is the answer. It means freedom for all humanity – freedom to spread through to every star that exists – millions and billions and trillions of them."
And then he came down with a hard thud, "But how do we get back, Mike?"
Donovan smiled shakily, "Oh, that's all right. The ship brought us here. The ship will take us back. Me for more beans."
"But Mike… hold on, Mike. If it takes us back the way it brought us here-"
Donovan stopped halfway up and sat back heavily into the chair.
Powell went on, "We'll have to… die again, Mike"
"Well," sighed Donovan, "if we have to, we have to. At least it isn't permanent, not very permanent."
Susan Calvin was speaking slowly now. For six hours she had been slowly prodding The Brain – for six fruitless hours. She was weary of repetitions, weary of circumlocutions, weary of everything.
"Now, Brain, there's just one more thing. You must make a special effort to answer simply. Have you been entirely clear about the interstellar jump? I mean does it take them very far?"
"As far as they want to go, Miss Susan. Golly, it isn't any trick through the warp."
"And on the other side, what will they see?"
"Stars and stuff. What do you suppose?"
The next question slipped out, "They'll be alive, then?"
"Sure!"
"And the interstellar jump won't hurt them?"
She froze as The Brain maintained silence. That was it! She had touched the sore spot.
"Brain," she supplicated faintly, "Brain, do you hear me?"
The answer was weak, quivering. The Brain said, "Do I have to answer? About the jump, I mean?"
"Not if you don't want to. But it would be interesting – I mean if you wanted to." Susan Calvin tried to be bright about it.
"Aw-w-w. You spoil everything."
And the psychologist jumped up suddenly, with a look of flaming insight on her face.
"Oh, my," she gasped. "Oh, my."
And she felt the tension of hours and days released in a burst. It was later that she told Lanning, "I tell you it's all right. No, you must leave me alone, now. The ship will be back safely, with the men, and I want to rest. I will rest. Now go away."
The ship returned to Earth as silently, as unjarringly as it had left. It dropped precisely into place and the main lock gaped open. The two men who walked out felt their way carefully and scratched their rough and scrubbily-stubbled chins.
And then, slowly and purposefully, the one with red hair knelt down and planted upon the concrete of the runway a firm, loud kiss.
They waved aside the crowd that was gathering and made gestures of denial at the eager couple that had piled out of the down-swooping ambulance with a stretcher between them.
Gregory Powell said, "Where's the nearest shower?"
They were led away.
They were gathered, all of them, about a table. It was a full staff meeting of the brains of U. S. Robot amp; Mechanical Men Corp.
Slowly and climactically, Powell and Donovan finished a graphic and resounding story.
Susan Calvin broke the silence that followed. In the few days that had elapsed she had recovered her icy, somewhat acid, calm – but still a trace of embarrassment broke through.
"Strictly speaking," she said, "this was my fault – all of it. When we first presented this problem to The Brain, as I hope some of you remember, I went to great lengths to impress upon it the importance of rejecting any item of information capable of creating a dilemma. In doing so I said something like 'Don't get excited about the death of humans. We don't mind it at all. Just give the sheet back and forget it.'"
"Hm-m-m," said Lanning. "What follows?"
"The obvious. When that item entered its calculations which yielded the equation controlling the length of minimum interval for the interstellar jump – it meant death for humans. That's where Consolidated's machine broke down completely. But I had depressed the importance of death to The Brain – not entirely, for the First Law can never be broken – but just sufficiently so that The Brain could take a second look at the equation. Sufficiently to give it time to realize that after the interval was passed through, the men would return to life – just as the matter and energy of the ship itself would return to being. This so-called 'death,' in other words, was a strictly temporary phenomenon. You see?"
She looked about her. They were all listening.
She went on, "So he accepted the item, but not without a certain jar. Even with death temporary and its importance depressed, it was enough to unbalance him very gently."
She brought it out calmly, "He developed a sense of humor – it's an escape, you see, a method of partial escape from reality. He became a practical joker."
Powell and Donovan were on their feet.
"What?" cried Powell?
Donovan was considerably more colorful about it.
"It's so," said Calvin. "He took care of you, and kept you safe, but you couldn't handle any controls, because they weren't for you – just for the humorous Brain. We could reach you by radio, but you couldn't answer. You had plenty of food, but all of it beans and milk. Then you died, so to speak, and were reborn, but the period of your death was made… well… interesting. I wish I knew how he did it. It was The Brain's prize joke, but he meant no harm."
"No harm!" gasped Donovan. "Oh, if that cute little tyke only had a neck."
Lanning raised a quieting hand, "All right, it's been a mess, but it's all over. What now?"
"Well," said Bogert, quietly, "obviously it's up to us to improve the space-warp engine. There must be some way of getting around that interval of jump. If there is, we're the only organization left with a grand-scale super-robot, so we're bound to find it if anyone can. And then – U. S. Robots has interstellar travel, and humanity has the opportunity for galactic empire."
"What about Consolidated?" said Lanning?
"Hey," interrupted Donovan suddenly, "I want to make a suggestion there. They landed U. S. Robots into quite a mess. It wasn't as bad a mess as they expected and it turned out well, but their intentions weren't pious. And Greg and I bore the most of it.
"Well, they wanted an answer, and they've got one. Send them that ship, guaranteed, and U. S. Robots can collect their two hundred thou plus construction costs. And if they test it – then suppose we let The Brain have just a little more fun before it's brought back to normal."
Lanning said gravely, "It sounds just and proper to me."
To which Bogert added absently, "Strictly according to contract, too."
Francis Quinn was a politician of the new school. That, of course, is a meaningless expression, as are all expressions of the sort. Most of the "new schools" we have were duplicated in the social life of ancient Greece, and perhaps, if we knew more about it, in the social life of ancient Sumeria and in the lake dwellings of prehistoric Switzerland as well.
But, to get out from under what promises to be a dull and complicated beginning, it might be best to state hastily that Quinn neither ran for office nor canvassed for votes, made no speeches and stuffed no ballot boxes. Any more than Napoleon pulled a trigger at Austerlitz.
And since politics makes strange bedfellows, Alfred Lanning sat at the other side of the desk with his ferocious white eyebrows bent far forward over eyes in which chronic impatience had sharpened to acuity. He was not pleased.
The fact, if known to Quinn, would have annoyed him not the least. His voice was friendly, perhaps professionally so.
"I assume you know Stephen Byerley, Dr. Lanning."
"I have heard of him. So have many people."
"Yes, so have I. Perhaps you intend voting for him at the next election."
"I couldn't say." There was an unmistakable trace of acidity here. "I have not followed the political currents, so I'm not aware that he is running for office."
"He may be our next mayor. Of course, he is only a lawyer now, but great oaks-"
"Yes," interrupted Lanning, "I have heard the phrase before. But I wonder if we can get to the business at hand."
"We are at the business at hand, Dr. Lanning." Quinn's tone was very gentle, "It is to my interest to keep Mr. Byerley a district attorney at the very most, and it is to your interest to help me do so."
"To my interest? Come!" Lanning's eyebrows hunched low.
"Well, say then to the interest of the U. S. Robot amp; Mechanical Men Corporation. I come to you as Director Emeritus of Research, because I know that your connection to them is that of, shall we say, 'elder statesman.' You are listened to with respect and yet your connection with them is no longer so tight but that you cannot possess considerable freedom of action; even if the action is somewhat unorthodox."
Dr. Lanning was silent a moment, chewing the cud of his thoughts. He said more softly, "I don't follow you at all, Mr. Quinn."
"I am not surprised, Dr. Lanning. But it's all rather simple. Do you mind?" Quinn lit a slender cigarette with a lighter of tasteful simplicity and his big-boned face settled into an expression of quiet amusement. "We have spoken of Mr. Byerley – a strange and colorful character. He was unknown three years ago. He is very well known now. He is a man of force and ability, and certainly the most capable and intelligent prosecutor I have ever known. Unfortunately he is not a friend of mine"
"I understand," said Lanning, mechanically. He stared at his fingernails.
"I have had occasion," continued Quinn, evenly, "in the past year to investigate Mr. Byerley – quite exhaustively. It is always useful, you see, to subject the past life of reform politicians to rather inquisitive research. If you knew how often it helped-" He paused to smile humorlessly at the glowing tip of his cigarette. "But Mr. Byerley's past is unremarkable. A quiet life in a small town, a college education, a wife who died young, an auto accident with a slow recovery, law school, coming to the metropolis, an attorney."
Francis Quinn shook his head slowly, then added, "But his present life. Ah, that is remarkable. Our district attorney never eats!"
Lanning's head snapped up, old eyes surprisingly sharp, "Pardon me?"
"Our district attorney never eats." The repetition thumped by syllables. "I'll modify that slightly. He has never been seen to eat or drink. Never! Do you understand the significance of the word? Not rarely, but never!"
"I find that quite incredible. Can you trust your investigators?"
"I can trust my investigators, and I don't find it incredible at all. Further, our district attorney has never been seen to drink – in the aqueous sense as well as the alcoholic – nor to sleep. There are other factors, but I should think I have made my point."
Lanning leaned back in his seat, and there was the rapt silence of challenge and response between them, and then the old roboticist shook his head. "No. There is only one thing you can be trying to imply, if I couple your statements with the fact that you present them to me, and that is impossible."
"But the man is quite inhuman, Dr. Lanning."
"If you told me he were Satan in masquerade, there would be a faint chance that I might believe you."
"I tell you he is a robot, Dr. Lanning."
"I tell you it is as impossible a conception as I have ever heard, Mr. Quinn."
Again the combative silence.
"Nevertheless," and Quinn stubbed out his cigarette with elaborate care, "you will have to investigate this impossibility with all the resources of the Corporation."
"I'm sure that I could undertake no such thing, Mr. Quinn. You don't seriously suggest that the Corporation take part in local politics."
"You have no choice. Supposing I were to make my facts public without proof. The evidence is circumstantial enough."
"Suit yourself in that respect."
"But it would not suit me. Proof would be much preferable. And it would not suit you, for the publicity would be very damaging to your company. You are perfectly well acquainted, I suppose, with the strict rules against the use of robots on inhabited worlds."
"Certainly!" – brusquely.
"You know that the U. S. Robot amp; Mechanical Men Corporation is the only manufacturer of positronic robots in the Solar System, and if Byerley is a robot, he is a positronic robot. You are also aware that all positronic robots are leased, and not sold; that the Corporation remains the owner and manager of each robot, and is therefore responsible for the actions of all."
"It is an easy matter, Mr. Quinn, to prove the Corporation has never manufactured a robot of a humanoid character."
"It can be done? To discuss merely possibilities."
"Yes. It can be done."
"Secretly, I imagine, as well. Without entering it in your books."
"Not the positronic brain, sir. Too many factors are involved in that, and there is the tightest possible government supervision."
"Yes, but robots are worn out, break down, go out of order – and are dismantled."
"And the positronic brains re-used or destroyed."
"Really?" Francis Quinn allowed himself a trace of sarcasm. "And if one were, accidentally, of course, not destroyed – and there happened to be a humanoid structure waiting for a brain."
"Impossible!"
"You would have to prove that to the government and the public, so why not prove it to me now."
"But what could our purpose be?" demanded Lanning in exasperation. "Where is our motivation? Credit us with a minimum of sense."
"My dear sir, please. The Corporation would be only too glad to have the various Regions permit the use of humanoid positronic robots on inhabited worlds. The profits would be enormous. But the prejudice of the public against such a practice is too great. Suppose you get them used to such robots first – see, we have a skillful lawyer, a good mayor, and he is a robot. Won't you buy our robot butlers?"
"Thoroughly fantastic. An almost humorous descent to the ridiculous."
"I imagine so. Why not prove it? Or would you still rather try to prove it to the public?"
The light in the office was dimming, but it was not yet too dim to obscure the flush of frustration on Alfred Lanning's face. Slowly, the roboticist's finger touched a knob and the wall illuminators glowed to gentle life.
"Well, then," he growled, "let us see."
The face of Stephen Byerley is not an easy one to describe. He was forty by birth certificate and forty by appearance – but it was a healthy, well-nourished good-natured appearance of forty; one that automatically drew the teeth of the bromide about "looking one's age."
This was particularly true when he laughed, and he was laughing now. It came loudly and continuously, died away for a bit, then began again-
And Alfred Lanning's face contracted into a rigidly bitter monument of disapproval. He made a half gesture to the woman who sat beside him, but her thin, bloodless lips merely pursed themselves a trifle.
Byerley gasped himself a stage nearer normality.
"Really, Dr. Lanning… really – I… I… a robot?"
Lanning bit his words off with a snap, "It is no statement of mine, sir. I would be quite satisfied to have you a member of humanity. Since our corporation never manufactured you, I am quite certain that you are – in a legalistic sense, at any rate. But since the contention that you are a robot has been advanced to us seriously by a man of certain standing-"
"Don't mention his name, if it would knock a chip off your granite block of ethics, but let's pretend it was Frank Quinn, for the sake of argument, and continue."
Lanning drew in a sharp, cutting snort at the interruption, and paused ferociously before continuing with added frigidity, "-by a man of certain standing, with whose identity I am not interested in playing guessing games, I am bound to ask your cooperation in disproving it. The mere fact that such a contention could be advanced and publicized by the means at this man's disposal would be a bad blow to the company I represent – even if the charge were never proven. You understand me?"
"Oh, yes, your position is clear to me. The charge itself is ridiculous. The spot you find yourself in is not. I beg your pardon, if my laughter offended you. It was the first I laughed at, not the second. How can I help you?"
"It could be very simple. You have only to sit down to a meal at a restaurant in the presence of witnesses, have your picture taken, and eat." Lanning sat back in his chair, the worst of the interview over. The woman beside him watched Byerley with an apparently absorbed expression but contributed nothing of her own.
Stephen Byerley met her eyes for an instant, was caught by them, then turned back to the roboticist. For a while his fingers were thoughtful over the bronze paperweight that was the only ornament on his desk.
He said quietly, "I don't think I can oblige you."
He raised his hand, "Now wait, Dr. Lanning. I appreciate the fact that this whole matter is distasteful to you, that you have been forced into it against your will, that you feel you are playing an undignified and even ridiculous part. Still, the matter is even more intimately concerned with myself, so be tolerant.
"First, what makes you think that Quinn – this man of certain standing, you know – wasn't hoodwinking you, in order to get you to do exactly what you are doing?"
"Why it seems scarcely likely that a reputable person would endanger himself in so ridiculous a fashion, if he weren't convinced he were on safe ground."
There was little humor in Byerley's eyes, "You don't know Quinn. He could manage to make safe ground out of a ledge a mountain sheep could not handle. I suppose he showed the particulars of the investigation he claims to have made of me?"
"Enough to convince me that it would be too troublesome to have our corporation attempt to disprove them when you could do so more easily."
"Then you believe him when he says I never eat. You are a scientist, Dr. Lanning. Think of the logic required. I have not been observed to eat, therefore, I never eat Q.E.D. After all!"
"You are using prosecution tactics to confuse what is really a very simple situation."
"On the contrary, I am trying to clarify what you and Quinn between you are making a very complicated one. You see, I don't sleep much, that's true, and I certainly don't sleep in public. I have never cared to eat with others – an idiosyncrasy which is unusual and probably neurotic in character, but which harms no one. Look, Dr. Lanning, let me present you with a suppositious case. Supposing we had a politician who was interested in defeating a reform candidate at any cost and while investigating his private life came across oddities such as I have just mentioned.
"Suppose further that in order to smear the candidate effectively, he comes to your company as the ideal agent. Do you expect him to say to you, 'So-and-so is a robot because he hardly ever eats with people, and I have never seen him fall asleep in the middle of a case; and once when I peeped into his window in the middle of the night, there he was, sitting up with a book; and I looked in his frigidaire and there was no food in it.'
"If he told you that, you would send for a straitjacket. But if he tells you, 'He never sleeps; he never eats,' then the shock of the statement blinds you to the fact that such statements are impossible to prove. You play into his hands by contributing to the to-do."
"Regardless, sir," began Lanning, with a threatening obstinacy, "of whether you consider this matter serious or not, it will require only the meal I mentioned to end it."
Again Byerley turned to the woman, who still regarded him expressionlessly. "Pardon me. I've caught your name correctly, haven't I? Dr. Susan Calvin?"
"Yes, Mr. Byerley."
"You're the U. S. Robot's psychologist, aren't you?"
"Robopsychologist, please."
"Oh, are robots so different from men, mentally?"
"Worlds different." She allowed herself a frosty smile, "Robots are essentially decent."
Humor tugged at the corners of the lawyer's mouth, "Well, that's a hard blow. But what I wanted to say was this. Since you're a psycho – a robopsychologist, and a woman, I'll bet that you've done something that Dr. Lanning hasn't thought of."
"And what is that?"
"You've got something to eat in your purse."
Something caught in the schooled indifference of Susan Calvin's eyes. She said, "You surprise me, Mr. Byerley."
And opening her purse, she produced an apple. Quietly, she handed it to him. Dr. Lanning, after an initial start, followed the slow movement from one hand to the other with sharply alert eyes.
Calmly, Stephen Byerley bit into it, and calmly he swallowed it
"You see, Dr. Lanning?"
Dr. Lanning smiled in a relief tangible enough to make even his eyebrows appear benevolent A relief that survived for one fragile second.
Susan Calvin said, "I was curious to see if you would eat it, but, of course, in the present case, it proves nothing."
Byerley grinned, "It doesn't?"
"Of course not. It is obvious, Dr. Lanning, that if this man were a humanoid robot, he would be a perfect imitation. He is almost too human to be credible. After all, we have been seeing and observing human beings all our lives; it would be impossible to palm something merely nearly right off on us. It would have to be all right. Observe the texture of the skin, the quality of the irises, the bone formation of the hand. If he's a robot, I wish U. S. Robots had made him, because he's a good job. Do you suppose then, that anyone capable of paying attention to such niceties would neglect a few gadgets to take care of such things as eating, sleeping, elimination? For emergency use only, perhaps; as, for instance, to prevent such situations as are arising here. So a meal won't really prove anything."
"Now wait," snarled Lanning, "I am – not quite the fool both of you make me out to be. I am not interested in the problem of Mr. Byerley's humanity or nonhumanity. I am interest in getting the corporation out of a hole. A public meal will end the matter and keep it ended no matter what Quinn does. We can leave the finer details to lawyers and robopsychologists."
"But, Dr. Lanning," said Byerley, "you forget the politics of the situation. I am as anxious to be elected, as Quinn is to stop me. By the way, did you notice that you used his name? It's a cheap shyster trick of mine; I knew you would, before you were through."
Lanning flushed, "What has the election to do with it?"
"Publicity works both ways, sir. If Quinn wants to call me a robot, and has the nerve to do so, I have the nerve to play the game his way."
"You mean you-" Lanning was quite frankly appalled.
"Exactly. I mean that I'm going to let him go ahead, choose his rope, test its strength, cut off the right length, tie the noose, insert his head and grin. I can do what little else is required."
"You are mighty confident."
Susan Calvin rose to her feet, "Come, Alfred, we won't change his mind for him."
"You see." Byerley smiled gently. "You're a human psychologist, too."
But perhaps not all the confidence that Dr. Lanning had remarked upon was present that evening when Byerley's car parked on the automatic treads leading to the sunken garage, and Byerley himself crossed the path to the front door of his house.
The figure in the wheel chair looked up as he entered and smiled. Byerley's face lit with affection. He crossed over to it.
The cripple's voice was a hoarse, grating whisper that came out of a mouth forever twisted to one side, leering out of a face that was half scar tissue, "You're late, Steve."
"I know, John, I know. But I've been up against a peculiar and interesting trouble today."
"So?" Neither the torn face nor the destroyed voice could carry expression but there was anxiety in the clear eyes. "Nothing you can't handle?"
"I'm not exactly certain. I may need your help. You're the brilliant one in the family. Do you want me to take you out into the garden? It's a beautiful evening."
Two strong arms lifted John from the wheel chair. Gently, almost caressingly, Byerley's arms went around the shoulders and under the swathed legs of the cripple. Carefully, and slowly, he walked through the rooms, down the gentle ramp that had been built with a wheel chair in mind, and out the back door into the walled and wired garden behind the house.
"Why don't you let me use the wheel chair, Steve? This is Silly."
"Because I'd rather carry you. Do you object? You know that you're as glad to get out of that motorized buggy for a while, as I am to see you out. How do you feel today?" He deposited John with infinite care upon the cool grass.
"How should I feel? But tell me about your troubles."
"Quinn's campaign will be based on the fact that he claims I'm a robot."
John's eyes opened wide, "How do you know? It's impossible. I won't believe it."
"Oh, come, I tell you it's so. He had one of the big-shot scientists of U. S. Robot amp; Mechanical Men Corporation over at the office to argue with me."
Slowly John's hands tore at the grass, "I see. I see."
Byerley said, "But we can let him choose his ground. I have an idea. Listen to me and tell me if we can do it-"
The scene as it appeared in Alfred Lanning's office that night was a tableau of stares. Francis Quinn stared meditatively at Alfred Lanning. Lanning's stare was savagely set upon Susan Calvin, who stared impassively in her turn at Quinn.
Francis Quinn broke it with a heavy attempt at lightness, "Bluff. He's making it up as he goes along."
"Are you going to gamble on that, Mr. Quinn?" asked Dr. Calvin, indifferently.
"Well, it's your gamble, really."
"Look here," Lanning covered definite pessimism with bluster, "we've done what you asked. We witnessed the man eat. It's ridiculous to presume him a robot."
"Do you think so?" Quinn shot toward Calvin. "Lanning said you were the expert."
Lanning was almost threatening, "Now, Susan-"
Quinn interrupted smoothly, "Why not let her talk, man? She's been sitting there imitating a gatepost for half an hour."
Lanning felt definitely harassed. From what he experienced then to incipient paranoia was but a step. He said, "Very well. Have your say, Susan. We won't interrupt you."
Susan Calvin glanced at him humorlessly, then fixed cold eyes on Mr. Quinn. "There are only two ways of definitely proving Byerley to be a robot, sir. So far you are presenting circumstantial evidence, with which you can accuse, but not prove – and I think Mr. Byerley is sufficiently clever to counter that sort of material. You probably think so yourself, or you wouldn't have come here.
"The two methods of proof are the physical and the psychological. Physically, you can dissect him or use an X-ray. How to do that would be your problem. Psychologically, his behavior can be studied, for if he is a positronic robot, he must conform to the three Rules of Robotics. A positronic brain cannot be constructed without them. You know the Rules, Mr. Quinn?"
She spoke them carefully, clearly, quoting word for word the famous bold print on page one of the "Handbook of Robotics."
"I've heard of them," said Quinn, carelessly.
"Then the matter is easy to follow," responded the psychologist, dryly. "If Mr. Byerley breaks any of those three rules, he is not a robot. Unfortunately, this procedure works in only one direction. If he lives up to the rules, it proves nothing one way or the other."
Quinn raised polite eyebrows, "Why not, doctor?"
"Because, if you stop to think of it, the three Rules of Robotics are the essential guiding principles of a good many of the world's ethical systems. Of course, every human being is supposed to have the instinct of self-preservation. That's Rule Three to a robot. Also every 'good' human being, with a social conscience and a sense of responsibility, is supposed to defer to proper authority; to listen to his doctor, his boss, his government, his psychiatrist, his fellow man; to obey laws, to follow rules, to conform to custom – even when they interfere with his comfort or his safety. That's Rule Two to a robot. Also, every 'good' human being is supposed to love others as himself, protect his fellow man, risk his life to save another. That's Rule One to a robot. To put it simply – if Byerley follows all the Rules of Robotics, he may be a robot, and may simply be a very good man."
"But," said Quinn, "you're telling me that you can never prove him a robot."
"I may be able to prove him not a robot"
"That's not the proof I want."
"You'll have such proof as exists. You are the only one responsible for your own wants."
Here Lanning's mind leaped suddenly to the sting of an idea, "Has it occurred to anyone," he ground out, "that district attorney is a rather strange occupation for a robot? The prosecution of human beings – sentencing them to death – bringing about their infinite harm-"
Quinn grew suddenly keen, "No, you can't get out of it that way. Being district attorney doesn't make him human. Don't you know his record? Don't you know that he boasts that he has never prosecuted an innocent man; that there are scores of people left untried because the evidence against them didn't satisfy him, even though he could probably have argued a jury into atomizing them? That happens to be so."
Lanning's thin cheeks quivered, "No, Quinn, no. There is nothing in the Rules of Robotics that makes any allowance for human guilt. A robot may not judge whether a human being deserves death. It is not for him to decide. He may not harm a human-variety skunk, or variety angel."
Susan Calvin sounded tired. "Alfred," she said, "don't talk foolishly. What if a robot came upon a madman about to set fire to a house with people in it? He would stop the madman, wouldn't he?"
"Of course."
"And if the only way he could stop him was to kill him-"
There was a faint sound in Lanning's throat. Nothing more.
"The answer to that, Alfred, is that he would do his best not to kill him. If the madman died, the robot would require psychotherapy because he might easily go mad at the conflict presented him -of having broken Rule One to adhere to Rule One in a higher sense. But a man would be dead and a robot would have killed him."
"Well, is Byerley mad?" demanded Lanning; with all the sarcasm he could muster.
"No, but he has killed no man himself. He has exposed facts which might represent a particular human being to be dangerous to the large mass of other human beings we call society. He protects the greater number and thus adheres to Rule One at maximum potential. That is as far as he goes. It is the judge who then condemns the criminal to death or imprisonment, after the jury decides on his guilt or innocence. It is the jailer who imprisons him, the executioner who kills him. And Mr. Byerley has done nothing but determine truth and aid society.
"As a matter of fact, Mr. Quinn, I have looked into Mr. Byerley's career since you first brought this matter to our attention. I find that he has never demanded the death sentence in his closing speeches to the jury. I also find that he has spoken on behalf of the abolition of capital punishment and contributed generously to research institutions engaged in criminal neurophysiology. He apparently believes in the cure, rather than the punishment of crime. I find that significant."
"You do?" Quinn smiled. "Significant of a certain odor of roboticity, perhaps?"
"Perhaps. Why deny it? Actions such as his could come only from a robot, or from a very honorable and decent human being. But you see, you just can't differentiate between a robot and the very best of humans."
Quinn sat back in his chair. His voice quivered with impatience. "Dr. Lanning, it's perfectly possible to create a humanoid robot that would perfectly duplicate a human in appearance, isn't it?"
Lanning harrumphed and considered, "It's been done experimentally by U. S. Robots," he said reluctantly, "without the addition of a positronic brain, of course. By using human ova and hormone control, one can grow human flesh and skin over a skeleton of porous silicone plastics that would defy external examination. The eyes, the hair, the skin would be really human, not humanoid. And if you put a positronic brain, and such other gadgets as you might desire inside, you have a humanoid robot."
Quinn said shortly, "How long would it take to make one?"
Lanning considered, "If you had all your equipment – the brain, the skeleton, the ovum, the proper hormones and radiations – say, two months."
The politician straightened out of his chair. "Then we shall see what the insides of Mr. Byerley look like. It will mean publicity for U. S. Robots – but I gave you your chance."
Lanning turned impatiently to Susan Calvin, when they were alone. "Why do you insist-"?
And with real feeling, she responded sharply and instantly, "Which do you want – the truth or my resignation? I won't lie for you. U. S. Robots can take care of itself. Don't turn coward."
"What," said Lanning, "if he opens up Byerley, and wheels and gears fall out what then?"
"He won't open Byerley," said Calvin, disdainfully. "Byerley is as clever as Quinn, at the very least"
The news broke upon the city a week before Byerley was to have been nominated. But "broke" is the wrong word. It staggered upon the city, shambled, crawled. Laughter began, and wit was free. And as the far off hand of Quinn tightened its pressure in easy stages, the laughter grew forced, an element of hollow uncertainty entered, and people broke off to wonder.
The convention itself had the sir of a restive stallion. There had been no contest planned. Only Byerley could possibly have been nominated a week earlier. There was no substitute even now. They had to nominate him, but there was complete confusion about it.
It would not have been so bad if the average individual were not torn between the enormity of the charge, if true, and its sensational folly, if false.
The day after Byerley was nominated perfunctorily, hollowly – a newspaper finally published the gist of a long interview with Dr. Susan Calvin, "world famous expert on robopsychology and positronics."
What broke loose is popularly and succinctly described as hell.
It was what the Fundamentalists were waiting for. They were not a political party; they made pretense to no formal religion. Essentially they were those who had not adapted themselves to what had once been called the Atomic Age, in the days when atoms were a novelty. Actually, they were the Simple-Lifers, hungering after a life, which to those who lived it had probably appeared not so Simple, and who had been, therefore, Simple-Lifers themselves.
The Fundamentalists required no new reason to detest robots and robot manufacturers; but a new reason such as the Quinn accusation and the Calvin analysis was sufficient to make such detestation audible.
The huge plants of the U. S. Robot amp; Mechanical Men Corporation was a hive that spawned armed guards. It prepared for war.
Within the city the house of Stephen Byerley bristled with police.
The political campaign, of course, lost all other issues, and resembled a campaign only in that it was something filling the hiatus between nomination and election.
Stephen Byerley did not allow the fussy little man to distract him. He remained comfortably unperturbed by the uniforms in the background. Outside the house, past the line of grim guards, reporters and photographers waited according to the tradition of the caste. One enterprising 'visor station even had a scanner focused on the blank entrance to the prosecutor's unpretentious home, while a synthetically excited announcer filled in with inflated commentary.
The fussy little man advanced. He held forward a rich, complicated sheet. "This, Mr. Byerley, is a court order authorizing me to search these premises for the presence of illegal… uh… mechanical men or robots of any description."
Byerley half rose, and took the paper. He glanced at it indifferently, and smiled as he handed it back. "All in order. Go ahead. Do your job. Mrs. Hoppen" – to his housekeeper, who appeared reluctantly from the next room -" please go with them, and help out if you can."
The little man, whose name was Harroway, hesitated, produced an unmistakable blush, failed completely to catch Byerley's eyes, and muttered, "Come on," to the two policemen.
He was back in ten minutes.
"Through?" questioned Byerley, in just the tone of a person who is not particularly interested in the question, or its answer.
Harroway cleared his throat, made a bad start in falsetto, and began again, angrily, "Look here, Mr. Byerley, our special instructions were to search the house very thoroughly."
"And haven't you?"
"We were told exactly what to look for."
"Yes?"
"In short, Mr. Byerley, and not to put too fine a point on it, we were told to search you."
"Me?" said the prosecutor with a broadening smile. "And how do you intend to do that?"
"We have a Penet-radiation unit-"
"Then I'm to have my X-ray photograph taken, hey? You have the authority?"
"You saw my warrant."
"May I see it again?"
Harroway, his forehead shining with considerably more than mere enthusiasm, passed it over a second time.
Byerley said evenly, "I read here as the description of what you are to search; I quote: 'the dwelling place belonging to Stephen Allen Byerley, located at 355 Willow Grove, Evanstron, together, with any garage, storehouse or other structures or buildings thereto appertaining, together with all grounds thereto appertaining'… um… and so on. Quite in order. But, my good man, it doesn't say anything about searching my interior. I am not part of the premises. You may search my clothes if you think I've got a robot hidden in my pocket."
Harroway had no doubt on the point of to whom he owed his job. He did not propose to be backward, given a chance to earn a much better – i.e., more highly paid – job.
He said, in a faint echo of bluster, "Look here. I'm allowed to search the furniture in your house, and anything else I find in it. You are in it, aren't you?"
"A remarkable observation. I am in it. But I'm not a piece of furniture. As a citizen of adult responsibility – I have the psychiatric certificate proving that – I have certain rights under the Regional Articles. Searching me would come under the heading of violating my Right of Privacy. That paper isn't sufficient."
"Sure, but if you're a robot, you don't have Right of Privacy."
"True enough but that paper still isn't sufficient. It recognizes me implicitly as a human being."
"Where?" Harroway snatched at it.
"Where it says 'the dwelling place belonging to' and so on. A robot cannot own property. And you may tell your employer, Mr. Harroway, that if he tries to issue a similar paper which does not implicitly recognize me as a human being, he will be immediately faced with a restraining injunction and a civil suit which will make it necessary for him to prove me a robot by means of information now in his possession, or else to pay a whopping penalty for an attempt to deprive me unduly of my Rights under the Regional Articles. You'll tell him that, won't you?"
Harroway marched to the door. He turned.. "You're a slick lawyer-" His hand was in his pocket. For a short moment, he stood there. Then he left, smiled in the direction of the 'visor scanner, still playing away – waved to the reporters, and shouted, "We'll have something for you tomorrow, boys. No kidding."
In his ground car, he settled back, removed the tiny mechanism from his pocket and carefully inspected it. It was the first time he had ever taken a photograph by X-ray reflection. He hoped he had done it correctly.
Quinn and Byerley had never met face-to-face alone. But visorphone was pretty close to it. In fact, accepted literally, perhaps the phrase was accurate, even if to each, the other were merely the light and dark pattern of a bank of photocells.
It was Quinn who had initiated the call. It was Quinn, who spoke first, and without particular ceremony, "Thought you would like to know, Byerley, that I intend to make public the fact that you're wearing a protective shield against Penet-radiation."
"That so? In that case, you've probably already made it public. I have a notion our enterprising press representatives have been tapping my various communication lines for quite a while. I know they have my office lines full of holes; which is why I've dug in at my home these last weeks." Byerley was friendly, almost chatty.
Quinn's lips tightened slightly, "This call is shielded – thoroughly. I'm making it at a certain personal risk."
"So I should imagine. Nobody knows you're behind this campaign. At least, nobody knows it officially. Nobody doesn't know it unofficially. I wouldn't worry. So I wear a protective shield? I suppose you found that out when your puppy dog's Penet-radiation photograph, the other day, turned out to be overexposed."
"You realize, Byerley, that it would be pretty obvious to everyone that you don't dare face X-ray analysis."
"Also that you, or your men, attempted illegal invasion of my Rights of Privacy."
"The devil they'll care for that."
"They might. It's rather symbolic of our two campaigns isn't it? You have little concern with the rights of the individual citizen. I have great concern. I will not submit to X-ray analysis, because I wish to maintain my Rights on principle. Just as I'll maintain the rights of others when elected."
"That will, no doubt make a very interesting speech, but no one will believe you. A little too high-sounding to be true. Another thing," a sudden, crisp change, "the personnel in your home was not complete the other night."
"In what way?"
"According to the report," he shuffled papers before him that were just within the range of vision of the visiplate, "there was one person missing – a cripple."
"As you say," said Byerley, tonelessly, "a cripple. My old teacher, who lives with me and who is now in the country – and has been for two months. A 'much-needed rest' is the usual expression applied in the case. He has your permission?"
"Your teacher? A scientist of sorts?"
"A lawyer once – before he was a cripple. He has a government license as a research biophysicist, with a laboratory of his own, and a complete description of the work he's doing filed with the proper authorities, to whom I can refer you. The work is minor, but is a harmless and engaging hobby for a – poor cripple. I am being as helpful as I can, you see."
"I see. And what does this… teacher… know about robot manufacture?"
"I couldn't judge the extent of his knowledge in a field with which I am unacquainted."
"He wouldn't have access to positronic brains?"
"Ask your friends at U. S. Robots. They'd be the ones to know."
"I'll put it shortly, Byerley. Your crippled teacher is the real Stephen Byerley. You are his robot creation. We can prove it. It was he who was in the automobile accident, not you. There will be ways of checking the records."
"Really? Do so, then. My best wishes."
"And we can search your so-called teacher's 'country place,' and see what we can find there."
"Well, not quite, Quinn." Byerley smiled broadly. "Unfortunately for you, my so-called teacher is a sick man. His country place is his place of rest. His Right of Privacy as a citizen of adult responsibility is naturally even stronger, under the circumstances. You won't be able to obtain a warrant to enter his grounds without showing just cause. However, I'd be the last to prevent you from trying."
There was a pause of moderate length, and then Quinn leaned forward, so that his imaged-face expanded and the fine lines on his forehead were visible, "Byerley, why do you carry on? You can't be elected."
"Can't I?"
"Do you think you can? Do you suppose that your failure to make any attempt to disprove the robot charge – when you could easily, by breaking one of the Three Laws – does anything but convince the people that you are a robot?"
"All I see so far is that from being a rather vaguely known, but still largely obscure metropolitan lawyer, I have now become a world figure. You're a good publicist."
"But you are a robot."
"So it's been said, but not proven."
"It's been proven sufficiently for the electorate."
"Then relax you've won."
"Good-by," said Quinn, with his first touch of viciousness, and the visorphone slammed off.
"Good-by," said Byerley imperturbably, to the blank plate.
Byerley brought his "teacher" back the week before election. The air car dropped quickly in an obscure part of the city.
"You'll stay here till after election," Byerley told him. "It would be better to have you out of the way if things take a bad turn."
The hoarse voice that twisted painfully out of John's crooked mouth might have had accents of concern in it. "There's danger of violence?"
"The Fundamentalists threaten it, so I suppose there is, in a theoretical sense. But I really don't expect it. The Fundies have no real power. They're just the continuous irritant factor that might stir up a riot after a while. You don't mind staying here? Please, I won't be myself if I have to worry about you."
"Oh, I'll stay. You still think it will go well?"
"I'm sure of it. No one bothered you at the place?"
"No one. I'm certain."
"And your part went well?"
"Well enough. There'll be no trouble there."
"Then take care of yourself, and watch the televisor tomorrow, John." Byerley pressed the gnarled hand that rested on his.
Lenton's forehead was a furrowed study in suspense. He had the completely unenviable job of being Byerley's campaign manager in a campaign that wasn't a campaign, for a person that refused to reveal his strategy, and refused to accept his manager's.
"You can't!" It was his favorite phrase. It had become his only phrase. "I tell you, Steve, you can't!"
He threw himself in front of the prosecutor, who was spending his time leafing through the typed pages of his speech.
"Put that down, Steve. Look, that mob has been organized by the Fundies. You won't get a hearing. You'll be stoned more likely. Why do you have to make a speech before an audience? What's wrong with a recording, a visual recording?"
"You want me to win the election, don't you?" asked Byerley, mildly.
"Win the election! You're not going to win, Steve. I'm trying to save your life."
"Oh, I'm not in danger."
"He's not in danger. He's not in danger." Lenton made a queer, rasping sound in his throat. "You mean you're getting out on that balcony in front of fifty thousand crazy crackpots and try to talk sense to them – on a balcony like a medieval dictator?"
Byerley consulted his watch. "In about five minutes – as soon as the televisor lines are free."
Lenton's answering remark was not quite transliterable.
The crowd filled a roped off area of the city. Trees and houses seemed to grow out of a mass-human foundation. And by ultra-wave, the rest of the world watched. It was a purely local election, but it had a world audience just the same. Byerley thought of that and smiled.
But there was nothing to smile at in the crowd itself. There were banners and streamers, ringing every possible change on his supposed roboticity. The hostile attitude rose thickly and tangibly into the atmosphere.
From the start the speech was not successful. It competed against the inchoate mob howl and the rhythmic cries of the Fundie claques that formed mob-islands within the mob. Byerley spoke on, slowly, unemotionally-
Inside, Lenton clutched his hair and groaned – and waited for the blood.
There was a writhing in the front ranks. An angular citizen with popping eyes, and clothes too short for the lank length of his limbs, was pulling to the fore. A policeman dived after him, making slow, struggling passage. Byerley waved the latter off, angrily.
The thin man was directly under the balcony. His words tore unheard against the roar.
Byerley leaned forward. "What do you say? If you have a legitimate question, I'll answer it." He turned to a flanking guard. "Bring that man up here."
There was a tensing in the crowd. Cries of "Quiet" started in various parts of the mob, and rose to a bedlam, then toned down raggedly. The thin man, red-faced and panting, faced Byerley.
Byerley said, "Have you a question?"
The thin man stared, and said in a cracked voice, "Hit me!"
With sudden energy, he thrust out his chin at an angle. "Hit me! You say you're not a robot. Prove it. You can't hit a human, you monster."
There was a queer, flat, dead silence. Byerley's voice punctured it. "I have no reason to hit you."
The thin man was laughing wildly. "You can't hit me. You won't hit me. You're not a human. You're a monster, a make-believe man."
And Stephen Byerley, tight-lipped, in the face of thousands who watched in person and the millions, who watched by screen, drew back his fist and caught the man crackingly upon the chin. The challenger went over backwards in sudden collapse, with nothing on his face but blank, blank surprise.
Byerley said, "I'm sorry. Take him in and see that he's comfortable. I want to speak to him when I'm through."
And when Dr. Calvin, from her reserved space, turned her automobile and drove off, only one reporter had recovered sufficiently from the shock to race after her, and shout an unheard question.
Susan Calvin called over her shoulder, "He's human."
That was enough. The reporter raced away in his own direction.
The rest of the speech might be described as "Spoken but not heard."
Dr. Calvin and Stephen Byerley met once again – a week before he took the oath of office as mayor. It was late – past midnight.
Dr. Calvin said, "You don't look tired."
The mayor-elect smiled. "I may stay up for a while. Don't tell Quinn."
"I shan't. But that was an interesting story of Quinn's, since you mention him. It's a shame to have spoiled it. I suppose you knew his theory?"
"Parts of it."
"It was highly dramatic. Stephen Byerley was a young lawyer, a powerful speaker, a great idealist – and with a certain flare for biophysics. Are you interested in robotics, Mr. Byerley?"
"Only in the legal aspects."
"This Stephen Byerley was. But there was an accident. Byerley's wife died, he himself, worse. His legs were gone; his face was gone; his voice was gone. Part of his mind was bent. He would not submit to plastic surgery. He retired from the world, legal career gone – only his intelligence, and his hands left. Somehow he could obtain positronic brains, even a complex one, one which had the greatest capacity of forming judgments in ethical problems – which is the highest robotic function so far developed.
"He grew a body about it. Trained it to be everything he would have been and was no longer. He sent it out into the world as Stephen Byerley, remaining behind himself as the old, crippled teacher that no one ever saw-"
"Unfortunately," said the mayor-elect, "I ruined all that by hitting a man. The papers say it was your official verdict on the occasion that I was human."
"How did that happen? Do you mind telling me? It couldn't have been accidental."
"It wasn't entirely. Quinn did most of the work. My men started quietly spreading the fact that I had never hit a man; that I was unable to hit a man; that to fail to do so under provocation would be sure proof that I was a robot. So I arranged for a silly speech in public, with all sorts of publicity overtones, and almost inevitably, some fool fell for it. In its essence, it was what I call a shyster trick. One in which the artificial atmosphere which has been created does all the work. Of course, the emotional effects made my election certain, as intended."
The robopsychologist nodded. "I see you intrude on my field – as every politician must, I suppose. But I'm very sorry it turned out this way. I like robots. I like them considerably better than I do human beings. If a robot can be created capable of being a civil executive, I think he'd make the best one possible. By the Laws of Robotics, he'd be incapable of harming humans, incapable of tyranny, of corruption, of stupidity, of prejudice. And after he had served a decent term, he would leave, even though he were immortal, because it would be impossible for him to hurt humans by letting them know that a robot had ruled them. It would be most ideal."
"Except that a robot might fail due to the inherent inadequacies of his brain. The positronic brain has never equaled the complexities of the human brain."
"He would have advisers. Not even a human brain is capable of governing without assistance."
Byerley considered Susan Calvin with grave interest. "Why do you smile, Dr. Calvin?"
"I smile because Mr. Quinn didn't think of everything."
"You mean there could be more to that story of his."
"Only a little. For the three months before election, this Stephen Byerley that Mr. Quinn spoke about, this broken man, was in the country for some mysterious reason. He returned in time for that famous speech of yours. And after all, what the old cripple did once, he could do a second time, particularly where the second job is very simple in comparison to the first."
"I don't quite understand."
Dr. Calvin rose and smoothed her dress. She was obviously ready to leave. "I mean there is one time when a robot may strike a human being without breaking the First Law. Just one time."
"And when is that?"
Dr. Calvin was at the door. She said quietly, "When the human to be struck is merely another robot."
She smiled broadly, her thin face glowing. "Good-by Mr. Byerley. I hope to vote for you five years from now – for Co-ordinator."
Stephen Byerley chuckled. "I must reply that that is a somewhat farfetched idea."
The door closed behind her.
THE CO-ORDINATOR, IN HIS PRIVATE STUDY, HAD that medieval curiosity, a fireplace. To be sure, the medieval man might not have recognized it as such, since it had no functional significance. The quiet, licking flame lay in an insulated recess behind clear quartz.
The logs were ignited at long distance through a trifling diversion of the energy beam that fed the public buildings of the city. The same button that controlled the ignition first dumped the ashes of the previous fire, and allowed for the entrance of fresh wood. – It was a thoroughly domesticated fireplace, you see.
But the fire itself was real. It was wired for sound, so that you could hear the crackle and, of course, you could watch it leap in the air stream that fed it.
The Co-ordinator's ruddy glass reflected, in miniature, the discreet gamboling of the flame, and, in even further miniature, it was reflected in each of his brooding pupils.
And in the frosty pupils of his guest, Dr. Susan Calvin of U. S. Robots amp; Mechanical Men Corporation.
The Co-ordinator said, "I did not ask you here entirely for social purposes, Susan."
"I did not think you did, Stephen," she replied.
"-And yet I don't quite know how to phrase my problem. On the one hand, it can be nothing at all. On the other, it can mean the end of humanity."
"I have come across so many problems, Stephen, that presented the same alternative. I think all problems do."
"Really? Then judge this – World Steel reports an overproduction of twenty thousand long tons. The Mexican Canal is two months behind schedule. The mercury mines at Almaden have experienced a production deficiency since last spring, while the Hydroponics plant at Tientsin has been laying men off. These items happen to come to mind at the moment. There is more of the same sort."
"Are these things serious? I'm not economist enough to trace the fearful consequences of such things."
"In themselves, they are not serious. Mining experts can be sent to Almaden, if the situation were to get worse. Hydroponics engineers can be used in Java or in Ceylon, if there are too many at Tientsin. Twenty thousand long tons of steel won't fill more than a few days of world demand, and the opening of the Mexican Canal two months later than the planned date is of little moment. It's the Machines that worry me; I've spoken to your Director of Research about them already."
"To Vincent Silver? – He hasn't mentioned anything about it to me."
"I asked him to speak to no one. Apparently, he hasn't."
"And what did he tell you?"
"Let me put that item in its proper place. I want to talk about the Machines first. And I want to talk about them to you, because you're the only one in the world who understands robots well enough to help me now. – May I grow philosophical?"
"For this evening, Stephen, you may talk how you please and of what you please, provided you tell me first what you intend to prove."
"That such small unbalances in the perfection of our system of supply and demand, as I have mentioned, may be the first step towards the final war."
"Hmp. Proceed."
Susan Calvin did not allow herself to relax, despite the designed comfort of the chair she sat in. Her cold, thin-lipped face and her flat, even voice were becoming accentuated with the years. And although Stephen Byerley was one man she could like and trust, she was almost seventy and the cultivated habits of a lifetime are not easily broken.
"Every period of human development, Susan," said the Co-ordinator, "has had its own particular type of human conflict – its own variety of problem that, apparently, could be settled only by force. And each time, frustratingly enough, force never really settled the problem. Instead, it persisted through a series of conflicts, then vanished of itself, – what's the expression, – ah, yes 'not with a bang, but a whimper,' as the economic and social environment changed. And then, new problems, and a new series of wars, – apparently endlessly cyclic.
"Consider relatively modern times. There were the series of dynastic wars in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, when the most important question in Europe was whether the houses of Hapsburg or Valois-Bourbon were to rule the continent. It was one of those 'inevitable conflicts,' since Europe could obviously not exist half one and half the other.
"Except that it did, and no war ever wiped out the one and established the other, until the rise of a new social atmosphere in France in 1789 tumbled first the Bourbons and, eventually, the Hapsburgs down the dusty chute to history's incinerator.
"And in those same centuries there were the more barbarous religious wars, which revolved about the important question of whether Europe was to be Catholic or Protestant. Half and half she could not be. It was 'inevitable' that the sword decide. – Except that it didn't. In England, a new industrialism was growing, and on the continent, a new nationalism. Half and half Europe remains to this day and no one cares much.
"In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there was a cycle of nationalist-imperialist wars, when the most important question in the world was which portions of Europe would control the economic resources and consuming capacity of which portions of non-Europe. All non-Europe obviously could not exist part English and part French and part German and so on. – Until the forces of nationalism spread sufficiently, so that non-Europe ended what all the wars could not, and decided it could exist quite comfortably all non-European.
"And so we have a pattern-"
"Yes. Stephen, you make it plain," said Susan Calvin. "These are not very profound observations."
"No. – But then, it is the obvious which is so difficult to see most of the time. People say 'It's as plain as the nose on your face.' But how much of the nose on your face can you see, unless someone holds a mirror up to you? In the twentieth century, Susan, we started a new cycle of wars – what shall I call them? Ideological wars? The emotions of religion applied to economic systems, rather than to extra-natural ones? Again the wars were 'inevitable' and this time there were atomic weapons, so that mankind could no longer live through its torment to the inevitable wasting away of inevitability. – And positronic robots came.
"They came in time, and, with it and alongside it, interplanetary travel. – So that it no longer seemed so important whether the world was Adam Smith or Karl Marx. Neither made very much sense under the new circumstances. Both had to adapt and they ended in almost the same place."
"A deus ex machina, then, in a double sense," said Dr. Calvin, dryly.
The Co-ordinator smiled gently, "I have never heard you pun before, Susan, but you are correct. And yet there was another danger. The ending of every other problem had merely given birth to another. Our new worldwide robot economy may develop its own problems, and for that reason we have the Machines. The Earth's economy is stable, and will remain stable, because it is based upon the decisions of calculating machines that have the good of humanity at heart through the overwhelming force of the First Law of Robotics."
Stephen Byerley continued, "And although the Machines are nothing but the vastest conglomeration of calculating circuits ever invented, they are still robots within the meaning of the First Law, and so our Earth-wide economy is in accord with the best interests of Man. The population of Earth knows that there will be no unemployment, no over-production or shortages. Waste and famine are words in history books. And so the question of ownership of the means of production becomes obsolescent. Whoever owned them (if such a phrase has meaning), a man, a group, a nation, or all mankind, they could be utilized only as the Machines directed. – Not because men were forced to but because it was the wisest course and men knew it.
"It puts an end to war – not only to the last cycle of wars, but to the next and to all of them. Unless-"
A long pause, and Dr. Calvin encouraged him by repetition. "Unless-"
The fire crouched and skittered along a log, then popped up.
"Unless," said the Co-ordinator, "the Machines don't fulfill their function."
"I see. And that is where those trifling maladjustments come in which you mentioned awhile ago – steel, hydroponics and so on."
"Exactly. Those errors should not be. Dr. Silver tells me they cannot be."
"Does he deny the facts? How unusual!"
"No, he admits the facts, of course. I do him an injustice. What he denies is that any error in the machine is responsible for the so-called (his phrase) errors in the answers. He claims that the Machines are self-correcting and that it would violate the fundamental laws of nature for an error to exist in the circuits of relays. And so I said -"
"And you said, 'Have your boys check them and make sure, anyway.'"
"Susan, you read my mind. It was what I said, and he said he couldn't."
"Too busy?"
"No, he said that no human could. He was frank about it. He told me, and I hope I understand him properly, that the Machines are a gigantic extrapolation. Thus, a team of mathematicians work several years calculating a positronic brain equipped to do certain similar acts of calculation. Using this brain they make further calculations to create a still more complicated brain, which they use again to make one still more complicated and so on. According to Silver, what we call the Machines are the result of ten such steps."
"Ye-es, that sounds familiar. Fortunately, I'm not a mathematician. Poor Vincent. He is a young man. The Directors before him, Alfred Lanning and Peter Bogert, are dead, and they had no such problems. Nor had I. Perhaps roboticists as a whole should now die, since we can no longer understand our own creations."
"Apparently not. The Machines are not super-brains in Sunday supplement sense, – although they are so pictured in the Sunday supplements. It is merely that in their own particular province of collecting and analyzing a nearly infinite number of data and relationships thereof, in nearly infinitesimal time, they have progressed beyond the possibility of detailed human control.
"And then I tried something else. I actually asked the Machine. In the strictest secrecy, we fed it the original data involved in the steel decision, its own answer, and the actual developments since, -the overproduction, that is, – and asked for an explanation of the discrepancy."
"Good, and what was its answer?"
"I can quote you that word for word: 'The matter admits of no explanation.' "
"And how did Vincent interpret that?"
"In two ways. Either we had not given the Machine enough data to allow a definite answer, which was unlikely. Dr. Silver admitted that. – Or else, it was impossible for the Machine to admit that it could give any answer to data which implied that it could harm a human being. This, naturally, is implied by the First Law. And then Dr. Silver recommended that I see you."
Susan Calvin looked very tired, "I'm old, Stephen. When Peter Bogert died, they wanted to make me Director of Research and I refused. I wasn't young then, either, and I did not wish the responsibility. They let young Silver have it and that satisfied me; but what good is it, if I am dragged into such messes.
"Stephen, let me state my position. My researches do indeed involve the interpretation of robot behavior in the light of the Three Laws of Robotics. Here, now, we have these incredible calculating machines. They are positronic robots and therefore obey the Laws of Robotics. But they lack personality; that is, their functions are extremely limited. Must be, since they are so specialized. Therefore, there is very little room for the interplay of the Laws, and my one method of attack is virtually useless. In short, I don't know that I can help you, Stephen."
The Co-ordinator laughed shortly, "Nevertheless, let me tell you the rest. Let me give you my theories, and perhaps you will then be able to tell me whether they are possible in the light of robopsychology."
"By all means. Go ahead."
"Well, since the Machines are giving the wrong answers, then, assuming that they cannot be in error, there is only one possibility. They are being given the wrong data! In other words, the trouble is human, and not robotic. So I took my recent planetary inspection tour-"
"From which you have just returned to New York."
"Yes. It was necessary, you see, since there are four Machines, one handling each of the Planetary Regions. And all four are yielding imperfect results."
"Oh, but that follows, Stephen. If any one of the Machines is imperfect, that will automatically reflect in the result of the other three, since each of the others will assume as part of the data on which they base their own decisions, the perfection of the imperfect fourth. With a false assumption, they will yield false answers."
"Uh-huh. So it seemed to me. Now, I have here the records of my interviews with each of the Regional Vice-Coordinators. Would you look through them with me? – Oh, and first, have you heard of the 'Society for Humanity'?"
"Umm, yes. They are an outgrowth of the Fundamentalists who have kept U. S. Robots from ever employing positronic robots on the grounds of unfair labor competition and so on. The 'Society for Humanity' itself is anti-Machine, is it not?"
"Yes, yes, but – Well, you will see. Shall we begin? We'll start with the Eastern Region."
"As you say-"
The Eastern Region
1. Area: 7,500,000 square miles
2. Population: 1,700,000,000
3. Capital: Shanghai
Ching Hso-lin's great-grandfather had been killed in the Japanese invasion of the old Chinese Republic, and there had been no one beside his dutiful children to mourn his loss or even to know he was lost. Ching Hso-lin's grandfather had survived the civil war of the late forties, but there had been no one beside his dutiful children to know or care of that.
And yet Ching Hso-lin was a Regional Vice-Co-ordinator, with the economic welfare of half the people of Earth in his care.
Perhaps it was with the thought of all that in mind, that Ching had two maps as the only ornaments on the wall of his office. One was an old hand-drawn affair tracing out an acre or two of land, and marked with the now outmoded pictographs of old China. A little creek trickled aslant the faded markings and there were the delicate pictorial indications of lowly huts, in one of which Ching's grandfather had been born.
The other map was a huge one, sharply delineated, with all markings in neat Cyrillic characters. The red boundary that marked the Eastern Region swept within its grand confines all that had once been China, India, Burma, Indo-China, and Indonesia. On it, within the old province of Szechuan, so light and gentle that none could see it, was the little mark placed there by Ching which indicated the location of his ancestral farm.
Ching stood before these maps as he spoke to Stephen Byerley in precise English, "No one knows better than you, Mr. Co-ordinator, that my job, to a large extent, is a sinecure. It carries with it a certain social standing, and I represent a convenient focal point for administration, but otherwise it is the Machine! – The Machine does all the work. What did you think, for instance, of the Tientsin Hydroponics works?"
"Tremendous!" said Byerley.
"It is but one of dozens, and not the largest. Shanghai, Calcutta, Batavia, Bangkok – They are widely spread and they are the answer to feeding the billion and three quarters of the East."
"And yet," said Byerley, "you have an unemployment problem there at Tientsin. Can you be over-producing? It is incongruous to think of Asia as suffering from too much food."
Ching's dark eyes crinkled at the edges. "No. It has not come to that yet. It is true that over the last few months, several vats at Tientsin have been shut down, but it is nothing serious. The men have been released only temporarily and those who do not care to work in other fields have been shipped to Colombo in Ceylon, where a new plant is being put into operation."
"But why should the vats be closed down?"
Ching smiled gently, "You do not know much of hydroponics, I see. Well, that is not surprising. You are a Northerner, and there soil farming is still profitable. It is fashionable in the North to think of hydroponics, when it is thought of at all, as a device of growing turnips in a chemical solution, and so it is – in an infinitely complicated way.
"In the first place, by far the largest crop we deal with (and the percentage is growing) is yeast. We have upward of two thousand strains of yeast in production and new strains are added monthly. The basic food-chemicals of the various yeasts are nitrates and phosphates among the inorganics together with proper amounts of the trace metals needed, down to the fractional parts per million of boron and molybdenum which are required. The organic matter is mostly sugar mixtures derived from the hydrolysis of cellulose, but, in addition, there are various food factors which must be added.
"For a successful hydroponics industry – one which can feed seventeen hundred million people – we must engage in an immense reforestation program throughout the East; we must have huge wood-conversion plants to deal with our southern jungles; we must have power, and steel, and chemical synthetics above all."
"Why the last, sir?"
"Because, Mr. Byerley, these strains of yeast have each their peculiar properties. We have developed, as I said, two thousand strains. The beefsteak you thought you ate today was yeast. The frozen fruit confection you had for dessert was iced yeast. We have filtered yeast juice with the taste, appearance, and all the food value of milk.
"It is flavor, more than anything else, you see, that makes yeast feeding popular and for the sake of flavor we have developed artificial, domesticated strains that can no longer support themselves on a basic diet of salts and sugar. One needs biotin; another needs pteroylglutamic acid; still others need seventeen different amino acids supplied them as well as all the Vitamins B, but one (and yet it is popular and we cannot, with economic sense, abandon it) -"
Byerley stirred in his seat, "To what purpose do you tell me all this?"
"You asked me, sir, why men are out of work in Tientsin. I have a little more to explain. It is not only that we must have these various and varying foods for our yeast; but there remains the complicating factor of popular fads with passing time; and of the possibility of the development of new strains with the new requirements and new popularity. All this must be foreseen, and the Machine does the job-"
"But not perfectly."
"Not very imperfectly, in view of the complications I have mentioned. Well, then, a few thousand workers in Tientsin are temporarily out of a job. But, consider this, the amount of waste in this past year (waste that is, in terms of either defective supply or defective demand) amounts to not one-tenth of one percent of our total productive turnover. I consider that-"
"Yet in the first years of the Machine, the figure was nearer one-thousandth of one percent."
"Ah, but in the decade since the Machine began its operations in real earnest, we have made use of it to increase our old pre-Machine yeast industry twenty-fold. You expect imperfections to increase with complications, though-"
"Though?"
"There was the curious instance of Rama Vrasayana."
"What happened to him?"
"Vrasayana was in charge of a brine-evaporation plant for the production of iodine, with which yeast can do without, but human beings not. His plant was forced into receivership."
"Really? And through what agency?"
"Competition, believe it or not. In general, one of the chiefest functions of the Machine's analyses is to indicate the most efficient distribution of our producing units. It is obviously faulty to have areas insufficiently serviced, so that the transportation costs account for too great a percentage of the overhead. Similarly, it is faulty to have an area too well serviced, so that factories must be run at lowered capacities, or else compete harmfully with one another. In the case of Vrasayana, another plant was established in the same city, and with a more efficient extracting system."
"The Machine permitted it?"
"Oh, certainly. That is not surprising. The new system is becoming widespread. The surprise is that the Machine failed to warn Vrasayana to renovate or combine. – Still, no matter. Vrasayana accepted a job as engineer in the new plant, and if his responsibility and pay are now less, he is not actually suffering. The workers found employment easily; the old plant has been converted to – something or other. Something useful. We left it all to the Machine."
"And otherwise you have no complaints."
"None!" The Tropic Region: a. Area: 22,000,000 square miles b. Population: 500,000,000 c. Capital: Capital City
The map in Lincoln Ngoma's office was far from the model of neat precision of the one in Ching's Shanghai dominion. The boundaries of Ngoma's Tropic Region were stenciled in dark, wide brown and swept about a gorgeous interior labeled "jungle" and "desert" and "here be Elephants and all Manner of Strange Beasts."
It had much to sweep, for in land area the Tropic Region enclosed most of two continents: all of South America north of Argentina and all of Africa south of the Atlas. It included North America south of the Rio Grande as well, and even Arabia and Iran in Asia. It was the reverse of the Eastern Region. Where the ant hives of the Orient crowded half of humanity into 15 percent of the land mass, the Tropics stretched its 15 per cent of Humanity over nearly half of all the land in the world.
But it was growing. It was the one Region whose population increase through immigration exceeded that through births. – And for all who came it had use.
To Ngoma, Stephen Byerley seemed like one of these immigrants, a pale searcher for the creative work of carving a harsh environment into the softness necessary for man, and he felt some of that automatic contempt of the strong man born to the strong Tropics for the unfortunate pallards of the colder suns.
The Tropics had the newest capital city on Earth, and it was called simply that: "Capital City," in the sublime confidence of youth. It spread brightly over the fertile uplands of Nigeria and outside Ngoma's windows, far below, was life and color; the bright, bright sun and the quick, drenching showers. Even the squawking of the rainbowed birds was brisk and the stars were hard pinpoints in the sharp night.
Ngoma laughed. He was a big, dark man, strong faced and handsome.
"Sure," he said, and his English was colloquial and mouth-filling, "the Mexican Canal is overdue. What the hell? It will get finished just the same, old boy."
"It was doing well up to the last half year."
Ngoma looked at Byerley and slowly crunched his teeth over the end of a big cigar, spitting out one end and lighting the other, "Is this an official investigation, Byerley? What's going on?"
"Nothing. Nothing at all. It's just my function as Coordinator to be curious."
"Well, if it's just that you are filling in a dull moment, the truth is that we're always short on labor. There's lots going on in the Tropics. The Canal is only one of them-"
"But doesn't your Machine predict the amount of labor available for the Canal, – allowing for all the competing projects?"
Ngoma placed one hand behind his neck and blew smoke rings at the ceiling, "It was a little off."
"Is it often a little off?"
"Not oftener than you would expect. – We don't expect too much of it, Byerley. We feed it data. We take its results. We do what it says. – But it's just a convenience, just a laborsaving device. We could do without it, if we had to. Maybe not as well, maybe not as quickly, but we'd get there.
"We've got confidence out here, Byerley, and that's the secret. Confidence! We've got new land that's been waiting for us for thousands of years, while the rest of the world was being ripped apart in the lousy fumblings of pre-atomic time. We don't have to eat yeast like the Eastern boys, and we don't have to worry about the stale dregs of the last century like you Northerners.
"We've wiped out the tsetse fly and the Anopheles mosquito, and people find they can live in the sun and like it, now. We've thinned down the jungles and found soil; we've watered the deserts and found gardens. We've got coal and oil in untouched fields, and minerals out of count.
"Just step back. That's all we ask the rest of the world to do. – Step back, and let us work."
Byerley said, prosaically, "But the Canal, – it was on schedule six months ago. What happened?"
Ngoma spread his hands, "Labor troubles." He felt through a pile of papers skeltered about his desk and gave it up.
"Had something on the matter here," he muttered, "but never mind. There was a work shortage somewhere in Mexico once on the question of women. There weren't enough women in the neighborhood. It seemed no one had thought of feeding sexual data to the Machine."
He stopped to laugh, delightedly, then sobered, "Wait a while. I think I've got it. – Villafranca!"
"Villafranca?"
"Francisco Villafranca. – He was the engineer in charge. Now let me straighten it out. Something happened and there was a cave-in. Right. Right. That was it. Nobody died, as I remember, but it made a hell of a mess. – Quite a scandal."
"Oh?"
"There was some mistake in his calculations. – Or at least, the Machine said so. They fed through Villafranca's data, assumptions, and so on. The stuff he had started with. The answers came out differently. It seems the answers Villafranca had used didn't take account of the effect of a heavy rainfall on the contours of the cut. – Or something like that. I'm not an engineer, you understand.
"Anyway, Villafranca put up a devil of a squawk. He claimed the Machine's answer had been different the first time. That he had followed the Machine faithfully. Then he quit! We offered to hold him on – reasonable doubt, previous work satisfactory, and all that – in a subordinate position, of course – had to do that much – mistakes can't go unnoticed – bad for discipline – Where was I?"
"You offered to hold him on."
"Oh yes. He refused. – Well, take all in all, we're two months behind. Hell, that's nothing."
Byerley stretched out his hand and let the fingers tap lightly on the desk, "Villafranca blamed the Machine, did he?"
"Well, he wasn't going to blame himself, was he? Let's face it; human nature is an old friend of ours. Besides, I remember something else now – Why the hell can't I find documents when I want them? My filing system isn't worth a damn – This Villafranca was a member of one of your Northern organizations. Mexico is too close to the North! that's part of the trouble."
"Which organization are you speaking of?'
"The Society of Humanity, they call it. He used to attend the annual conference in New York, Villafranca did. Bunch of crackpots, but harmless. – They don't like the Machines; claim they're destroying human initiative. So naturally Villafranca would blame the Machine. – Don't understand that group myself. Does Capital City look as if the human race were running out of initiative?"
And Capital City stretched out in golden glory under a golden sun, – the newest and youngest creation of Homo metropolis. The European Region a. Area: 4,000,000 square miles b. Population: 300,000,000 c. Capital: Geneva
The European Region was an anomaly in several ways. In area, it was far the smallest, not one-fifth the size of the Tropic Region in area, and not one-fifth the size of the Eastern Region in population. Geographically, it was only somewhat similar to pre-Atomic Europe, since it excluded what had once been European Russia and what had once been the British Isles, while it included the Mediterranean coasts of Africa and Asia, and, in a queer jump across the Atlantic, Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay as well.
Nor was it likely to improve its relative status vis-…-vis the other regions of Earth, except for what vigor the South American provinces lent it. Of all the Regions, it alone showed a positive population decline over the past half century. It alone had not seriously expanded its productive facilities, or offered anything radically new to human culture.
"Europe," said Madame Szegeczowska, in her soft French, "is essentially an economic appendage of the Northern Region. We know it, and it doesn't matter."
And as though in resigned acceptance of a lack of individuality, there was no map of Europe on the wall of the Madame Co-ordinator's office.
"And yet," pointed out Byerley, "you have a Machine of your own, and you are certainly under no economic pressure from across the ocean."
"A Machine! Bah!" She shrugged her delicate shoulders, and allowed a thin smile to cross her little face as she tamped out a cigarette with long fingers. "Europe is a sleepy place. And such of our men as do not manage to immigrate to the Tropics are tired and sleepy along with it. You see for yourself that it is myself, a poor woman, to whom falls the task of being Vice-Co-ordinator. Well, fortunately, it is not a difficult job, and not much is expected of me.
"As for the Machine – What can it say but 'Do this and it will be best for you.' But what is best for us? Why, to be an economic appendage of the Northern Region.
"And is it so terrible? No wars! We live in peace – and it is pleasant after seven thousand years of war. We are old, monsieur. In our borders, we have the regions where Occidental civilization was cradled. We have Egypt and Mesopotamia; Crete and Syria; Asia Minor and Greece. – But old age is not necessarily an unhappy time. It can be a fruition-"
"Perhaps you are right," said Byerley, affably. "At least the tempo of life is not as intense as in the other Regions. It is a pleasant atmosphere."
"Is it not? – Tea is being brought, monsieur. If you will indicate your cream and sugar preference, please. Thank you.
She sipped gently, then continued, "It is pleasant. The rest of Earth is welcome to the continuing struggle. I find a parallel here, a very interesting one. There was a time when Rome was master of the world. It had adopted the culture and civilization of Greece, a Greece which had never been united, which had ruined itself with war, and which was ending in a state of decadent squalor. Rome united it, brought it peace and let it live a life of secure non-glory. It occupied itself with its philosophies and its art, far from the clash of growth and war. It was a sort of death, but it was restful, and it lasted with minor breaks for some four hundred years."
"And yet," said Byerley, "Rome fell eventually, and the opium dream was over."
"There are no longer barbarians to overthrow civilization."
"We can be our own barbarians. Madame Szegeczowska. – Oh, I meant to ask you. The Almaden mercury mines have fallen off quite badly in production. Surely the ores are not declining more rapidly than anticipated?"
The little woman's gray eyes fastened shrewdly on Byerley, "Barbarians – the fall of civilization – possible failure of the Machine. Your thought processes are very transparent, monsieur."
"Are they?" Byerley smiled. "I see that I should have had men to deal with as hitherto. – You consider the Almaden affair to be the fault of the Machine?"
"Not at all, but I think you do. You, yourself, are a native of the Northern Region. The Central Co-ordination Office is at New York. – And I have noticed for quite a while that you Northerners lack somewhat of faith in the Machine."
"We do?"
"There is your 'Society for Humanity' which is strong in the North, but naturally fails to find many recruits in tired, old Europe, which is quite willing to let feeble Humanity alone for a while. Surely, you are one of the confident North and not one of the cynical old continent."
"This has a connection with Almaden?"
"Oh, yes, I think so. The mines are in the control of Consolidated Cinnabar, which is certainly a Northern company, with headquarters at Nikolaev. Personally, I wonder if the Board of Directors have been consulting the Machine at all. They said they had in our conference last month, and, of course, we have no evidence that they did not, but I wouldn't take the word of a Northerner in this matter – no offense intended – under any circumstances. – Nevertheless, I think it will have a fortunate ending."
"In what way, my dear madam?"
"You must understand that the economic irregularities of the last few months, which, although small as compared with the great storms of the past, are quite disturbing to our peace-drenched spirits, have caused considerable restiveness in the Spanish province. I understand that Consolidated Cinnabar is selling out to a group of native Spaniards. It is consoling. If we are economic vassals of the North, it is humiliating to have the fact advertised too blatantly. – And our people can be better trusted to follow the Machine."
"Then you think there will be no more trouble?"
"I am sure there will not be – In Almaden, at least." The Northern Region a. Area: 18,000,000 square miles b. Population: 800,000,000 c. Capital: Ottawa
The Northern Region, in more ways than one, was at the top. This was exemplified quite well by the map in the Ottawa office of Vice-Co-ordinator Hiram Mackenzie, in which the North Pole was centered. Except for the enclave of Europe with its Scandinavian and Icelandic regions, all the Arctic area was within the Northern Region.
Roughly, it could be divided into two major areas. To the left on the map was all of North America above the Rio Grande. To the right was included all of what had once been the Soviet Union. Together these areas represented the centered power of the planet in the first years of the Atomic Age. Between the two was Great Britain, a tongue of the Region licking at Europe. Up at the top of the map, distorted into odd, huge shapes, were Australia and New Zealand, also member provinces of the Region.
Not all the changes of the past decades had yet altered the fact that the North was the economic ruler of the planet.
There was almost an ostentatious symbolism thereof in the fact that of the official Regional maps Byerley had seen, Mackenzie's alone showed all the Earth, as though the North feared no competition and needed no favoritism to point up its pre-eminence.
"Impossible," said Mackenzie, dourly, over the whiskey. "Mr. Byerley, you have had no training as a robot technician, I believe."
"No, I have not."
"Hmp. Well, it is, in my opinion, a sad thing that Ching, Ngoma and Szegeczowska haven't either. There is too prevalent an opinion among the peoples of Earth that a Co-ordinator need only be a capable organizer, a broad generalizer, and an amiable person. These days he should know his robotics as well, no offense intended."
"None taken. I agree with you."
"I take it, for instance, from what you have said already, that you worry about the recent trifling dislocation in world economy. I don't know what you suspect, but it has happened in the past that people – who should have known better – wondered what would happen if false data were fed into the Machine."
"And what would happen, Mr. Mackenzie?"
"Well," the Scotsman shifted his weight and sighed, "all collected data goes through a complicated screening system which involves both human and mechanical checking, so that the problem is not likely to arise. – But let us ignore that. Humans are fallible, also corruptible, and ordinary mechanical devices are liable to mechanical failure.
"The real point of the matter is that what we call a 'wrong datum' is one which is inconsistent with all other known data. It is our only criterion of right and wrong. It is the Machine's as well. Order it for instance, to direct agricultural activity on the basis of an average July temperature in Iowa of 57 degrees Fahrenheit. It won't accept that. It will not give an answer. – Not that it has any prejudice against that particular temperature, or that an answer is impossible; but because, in the light of all the other data fed it over a period of years, it knows that the probability of an average July temperature of 57 is virtually nil. It rejects that datum.
"The only way a 'wrong datum' can be forced on the Machine is to include it as part of a self-consistent whole, all of which is subtly wrong in a manner either too delicate for the Machine to detect or outside the Machine's experience. The former is beyond human capacity, and the latter is almost so, and is becoming more nearly so as the Machine's experience increases by the second."
Stephen Byerley placed two fingers to the bridge of his nose, "Then the Machine cannot be tampered with – And how do you account for recent errors, then?"
"My dear Byerley, I see that you instinctively follow that great error – that the Machine knows all. Let me cite you a case from my personal experience. The cotton industry engages experienced buyers who purchase cotton. Their procedure is to pull a tuft of cotton out of a random bale of a lot. They will look at that tuft and feel it, tease it out, listen to the crackling perhaps as they do so, touch it with their tongue, and through this procedure they will determine the class of cotton the bales represent. There are about a dozen such classes. As a result of their decisions, purchases are made at certain prices; blends are made in certain proportions. – Now these buyers cannot yet be replaced by the Machine."
"Why not? Surely the data involved is not too complicated for it?"
"Probably not. But what data is this you refer to? No textile chemist knows exactly what it is that the buyer tests when he feels a tuft of cotton. Presumably there's the average length of the threads, their feel, the extent and nature of their slickness, the way they hang together, and so on. – Several dozen items, subconsciously weighed, out of years of experience. But the quantitative nature of these tests is not known; maybe even the very nature of some of them is not known. So we have nothing to feed the Machine. Nor can the buyers explain their own judgment. They can only say, 'Well, look at it. Can't you tell it's class-such-and-such?' "
"I see."
"There are innumerable cases like that. The Machine is only a tool after all, which can help humanity progress faster by taking some of the burdens of calculations and interpretations off its back. The task of the human brain remains what it has always been, that of discovering new data to be analyzed, and of devising new concepts to be tested. A pity the Society for Humanity won't understand that."
"They are against the Machine?"
"They would be against mathematics or against the art of writing if they had lived at the appropriate time. These reactionaries of the Society claim the Machine robs man of his soul. I notice that capable men are still at a premium in our society; we still need the man who is intelligent enough to think of the proper questions to ask. Perhaps if we could find enough of such, these dislocations you worry about, Coordinator, wouldn't occur." Earth (Including the uninhabited continent, Antarctica) a. Area: 54,000,000 square miles (land surface) b. Population: 3,300,000,000 c. Capital: New York
The fire behind the quartz was weary now, and sputtered its reluctant way to death.
The Co-ordinator was somber, his mood matching the sinking flame.
"They all minimize the state of affairs." His voice was low. "Is it not easy to imagine that they all laugh at me? And yet Vincent Silver said the Machines cannot be out of order, and I must believe him. Hiram Mackenzie says they cannot be fed false data, and I must believe him. But the Machines are going wrong, somehow, and I must believe that, too; and so there is still an alternative left."
He glanced sidewise at Susan Calvin, who, with closed eyes, for a moment seemed asleep.
"What is that?" she asked, prompt to her cue, nevertheless.
"Why, that correct data is indeed given, and correct answers are indeed received, but that they are then ignored. There is no way the Machine can enforce obedience to its dictates."
"Madame Szegeczowska hinted as much, with reference to Northerners in general, it seems to me."
"So she did."
"And what purpose is served by disobeying the Machine? Let's consider motivations."
"It's obvious to me, and should be to you. It is a matter of rocking the boat, deliberately. There can be no serious conflicts on Earth, in which one group or another can seize more power than it has for what it thinks is its own good despite the harm to Mankind as a whole, while the Machines rule. If popular faith in the Machines can be destroyed to the point where they are abandoned, it will be the law of the jungle again. – And not one of the four Regions can be freed of the suspicion of wanting just that.
"The East has half of humanity within its borders, and the Tropics more than half of Earth's resources. Each can feel itself the natural rulers of all Earth, and each has a history of humiliation by the North, for which it can be human enough to wish a senseless revenge. Europe has a tradition of greatness, on the other hand. It once did rule the Earth, and there is nothing so eternally adhesive as the memory of power.
"Yet, in another way, it's hard to believe. Both the East and the Tropics are in a state of enormous expansion within their own borders. Both are climbing incredibly. They cannot have the spare energy for military adventures. And Europe can have nothing but its dreams. It is a cipher, militarily."
"So, Stephen," said Susan, "you leave the North."
"Yes," said Byerley, energetically, "I do. The North is now the strongest, and has been for nearly a century, or its component parts have been. But it is losing relatively, now. The Tropic Regions may take their place in the forefront of civilization for the first time since the Pharaohs, and there are Northerners who fear that.
"The 'Society for Humanity' is a Northern organization, primarily, you know, and they make no secret of not wanting the Machines. – Susan, they are few in numbers, but it is an association of powerful men. Heads of factories; directors of industries and agricultural combines who hate to be what they call 'the Machine's office-boy' belong to it. Men with ambition belong to it. Men who feel themselves strong enough to decide for themselves what is best for themselves, and not just to be told what is best for others."
"In short, just those men who, by together refusing to accept the decisions of the Machine, can, in a short time, turn the world topsy-turvy; just those belong to the Society.
"Susan, it hangs together. Five of the Directors of World Steel are members, and World Steel suffers from overproduction. Consolidated Cinnabar, which mined mercury at Almaden, was a Northern concern. Its books are still being investigated, but one, at least, of the men concerned was a member. Francisco Villafranca, who, single-handed, delayed the Mexican Canal for two months, was a member, we know already – and so was Rama Vrasayana, I was not at all surprised to find out."
Susan said, quietly, "These men, I might point out, have all done badly-"
"But naturally," interjected Byerley. "To disobey the Machine's analyses is to follow a non-optimal path. Results are poorer than they might be. It's the price they pay. They will have it rough now but in the confusion that will eventually follow-"
"Just what do you plan doing, Stephen?"
"There is obviously no time to lose. I am going to have the Society outlawed, every member removed from any responsible post. And all executive and technical positions, henceforward, can be filled only by applicants signing a non-Society oath. It will mean a certain surrender of basic civil liberties, but I am sure the Congress-"
"It won't work!"
"What! – Why not?"
"I will make a prediction. If you try any such thing, you will find yourself hampered at every turn. You will find it impossible to carry out. You will find your every move in that direction will result in trouble."
Byerley was taken aback, "Why do you say that? I was rather hoping for your approval in this matter."
"You can't have it as long as your actions are based on a false premise. You admit the Machine can't be wrong, and can't be fed wrong data. I will now show you that it cannot be disobeyed, either, as you think is being done by the Society."
"That I don't see at all."
"Then listen. Every action by any executive which does not follow the exact directions of the Machine he is working with becomes part of the data for the next problem. The Machine, therefore, knows that the executive has a certain tendency to disobey. He can incorporate that tendency into that data, – even quantitatively, that is, judging exactly how much and in what direction disobedience would occur. Its next answers would be just sufficiently biased so that after the executive concerned disobeyed, he would have automatically corrected those answers to optimal directions. The Machine knows, Stephen!"
"You can't be sure of all this. You are guessing."
"It is a guess based on a lifetime's experience with robots. You had better rely on such a guess, Stephen."
"But then what is left? The Machines themselves are correct and the premises they work on are correct. That we have agreed upon. Now you say that it cannot be disobeyed. Then what is wrong?"
"You have answered yourself. Nothing is wrong! Think about the Machines for a while, Stephen. They are robots, and they follow the First Law. But the Machines work not for any single human being, but for all humanity, so that the First Law becomes: 'No Machine may harm humanity; or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.'
"Very well, then, Stephen, what harms humanity? Economic dislocations most of all, from whatever cause. Wouldn't you say so?"
"I would."
"And what is most likely in the future to cause economic dislocations? Answer that, Stephen."
"I should say," replied Byerley, unwillingly, "the destruction of the Machines."
"And so should I say, and so should the Machines say. Their first care, therefore, is to preserve themselves, for us. And so they are quietly taking care of the only elements left that threaten them. It is not the 'Society for Humanity' which is shaking the boat so that the Machines may be destroyed. You have been looking at the reverse of the picture. Say rather that the Machine is shaking the boat-very slightly-just enough to shake loose those few which cling to the side for purposes the Machines consider harmful to Humanity.
"So Vrasayana loses his factory and gets another job where he can do no harm – he is not badly hurt, he is not rendered incapable of earning a living, for the Machine cannot harm a human being more than minimally, and that only to save a greater number. Consolidated Cinnabar loses control at Almaden. Villafranca is no longer a civil engineer in charge of an important project. And the directors of World Steel are losing their grip on the industry – or will."
"But you don't really know all this," insisted Byerley, distractedly. "How can we possibly take a chance on your being right?"
"You must. Do you remember the Machine's own statement when you presented the problem to him? It was: 'The matter admits of no explanation.' The Machine did not say there was no explanation, or that it could determine no explanation. It simply was not going to admit any explanation. In other words, it would be harmful to humanity to have the explanation known, and that's why we can only guess – and keep on guessing."
"But how can the explanation do us harm? Assume that you are right, Susan."
"Why, Stephen, if I am right, it means that the Machine is conducting our future for us not only simply in direct answer to our direct questions, but in general answer to the world situation and to human psychology as a whole. And to know that may make us unhappy and may hurt our pride. The Machine cannot, must not, make us unhappy.
"Stephen, how do we know what the ultimate good of Humanity will entail? We haven't at our disposal the infinite factors that the Machine has at its! Perhaps, to give you a not unfamiliar example, our entire technical civilization has created more unhappiness and misery than it has removed. Perhaps an agrarian or pastoral civilization, with less culture and less people would be better. If so, the Machines must move in that direction, preferably without telling us, since in our ignorant prejudices we only know that what we are used to, is good – and we would then fight change. Or perhaps a complete urbanization, or a completely caste-ridden society, or complete anarchy, is the answer. We don't know. Only the Machines know, and they are going there and taking us with them."
"But you are telling me, Susan, that the 'Society for Humanity' is right; and that Mankind has lost its own say in its future."
"It never had any, really. It was always at the mercy of economic and sociological forces it did not understand – at the whims of climate, and the fortunes of war. Now the Machines understand them; and no one can stop them, since the Machines will deal with them as they are dealing with the Society, – having, as they do, the greatest of weapons at their disposal, the absolute control of our economy."
"How horrible!"
"Perhaps how wonderful! Think, that for all time, all conflicts are finally evitable. Only the Machines, from now on, are inevitable!"
And the fire behind the quartz went out and only a curl of smoke was left to indicate its place.
The Three Laws of Robotics:
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
For the first time in the history of United States Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation, a robot had been destroyed through accident on Earth itself.
No one was to blame. The air vehicle had been demolished in mid-air and an unbelieving investigating committee was wondering whether they really dared announce the evidence that it had been hit by a meteorite. Nothing else could have been fast enough to prevent automatic avoidance; nothing else could have done the damage short of a nuclear blast and that was out of the question.
Tie that in with a report of a flash in the night sky just before the vehicle had exploded-and from Flagstaff Observatory, not from an amateur-and the location of a sizable and distinctly meteoric bit of iron freshly gouged into the ground a mile from the site and what other conclusion could be arrived at?
Still, nothing like that had ever happened before and calculations of the odds against it yielded monstrous figures. Yet even colossal improbabilities can happen sometimes.
At the offices of United States Robots, the hows and whys of it were secondary. The real point was that a robot had been destroyed.
That, in itself, was distressing.
The fact that JN-5 had been a prototype, the first, after four earlier attempts, to have been placed in the field, was even more distressing.
The fact that JN-5 was a radically new type of robot, quite different from anything ever built before, was abysmally distressing.
The fact that JN-5 had apparently accomplished something before its destruction that was incalculably important and that that accomplishment might now be forever gone, placed the distress utterly beyond words.
It seemed scarcely worth mentioning that, along with the robot, the Chief Robopsychologist of United States Robots had also died.
Clinton Madarian had joined the firm ten years before. For five of those years, he had worked uncomplainingly under the grumpy supervision of Susan Calvin.
Madarian's brilliance was quite obvious and Susan Calvin had quietly promoted him over the heads of older men. She wouldn't, in any case, have deigned to give her reasons for this to Research Director Peter Bogert, but as it happened, no reasons were needed. Or, rather, they were obvious.
Madarian was utterly the reverse of the renowned Dr. Calvin in several very noticeable ways. He was not quite as overweight as his distinct double chin made him appear to be, but even so he was overpowering in his presence, where Susan had gone nearly unnoticed. Madarian's massive face, his shock of glistening red-brown hair, his ruddy complexion and booming voice, his loud laugh, and most of all, his irrepressible self-confidence and his eager way of announcing his successes, made everyone else in the room feel there was a shortage of space.
When Susan Calvin finally retired (refusing, in advance, any cooperation with respect to any testimonial dinner that might be planned in her honor, with so firm a manner that no announcement of the retirement was even made to the news services) Madarian took her place.
He had been in his new post exactly one day when he initiated the JN project.
It had meant the largest commitment of funds to one project that United States Robots had ever had to weigh, but that was something which Madarian dismissed with a genial wave of the hand.
"Worth every penny of it, Peter," he said. "And I expect you to convince the Board of Directors of that."
"Give me reasons," said Bogert, wondering if Madarian would. Susan Calvin had never given reasons.
But Madarian said, "Sure," and settled himself easily into the large armchair in the Director's office.
Bogert watched the other with something that was almost awe. His own once-black hair was almost white now and within the decade he would follow Susan into retirement. That would mean the end of the original team that had built United States Robots into a globe-girdling firm that was a rival of the national governments in complexity and importance. Somehow neither he nor those who had gone before him ever quite grasped the enormous expansion of the firm.
But this was a new generation. The new men were at ease with the Colossus" They lacked the touch of wonder that would have them tiptoeing in disbelief. So they moved ahead, and that was good.
Madarian said, "I propose to begin the construction of robots without constraint."
"Without the Three Laws? Surely-"
"No, Peter. Are those the only constraints you can think of? Hell, you contributed to the design of the early positronic brains. Do I have to tell you that, quite aside from the Three Laws, there isn't a pathway in those brains that isn't carefully designed and fixed? We have robots planned for specific tasks, implanted with specific abilities."
"And you propose-"
"That at every level below the Three Laws, the paths be made open-ended. It's not difficult."
Bogert said dryly, "It's not difficult, indeed. Useless things are never difficult. The difficult thing is fixing the paths and making the robot useful."
"But why is that difficult? Fixing the paths requires a great deal of effort because the Principle of Uncertainty is important in particles the mass of positrons and the uncertainty effect must be minimized. Yet why must it? If we arrange to have the Principle just sufficiently prominent to allow the crossing of paths unpredictably-"
"We have an unpredictable robot."
"We have a creative robot," said Madarian, with a trace of impatience. "Peter, if there's anything a human brain has that a robotic brain has never had, it's the trace of unpredictability that comes from the effects of uncertainty at the subatomic level. I admit that this effect has never been demonstrated experimentally within the nervous system, but without that the human brain is not superior to the robotic brain in principle."
"And you think that if you introduce the effect into the robotic brain, the human brain will become not superior to the robotic brain in principle."
"That, " said Madarian, "is exactly what I believe." They went on for a long time after that.
The Board of Directors clearly had no intention of being easily convinced.
Scott Robertson, the largest shareholder in the firm, said, "It's hard enough to manage the robot industry as it is, with public hostility to robots forever on the verge of breaking out into the open. If the public gets the idea that robots will be uncontrolled…Oh, don't tell me about the Three Laws. The average man won't believe the Three Laws will protect him if he as much as hears the word 'uncontrolled.' "
"Then don't use it, " said Madarian. "Call the robot-call it 'intuitive.' "
"An intuitive robot, " someone muttered. "A girl robot?" A smile made its way about the conference table.
Madarian seized on that. "All right. A girl robot. Our robots are sexless, of course, and so will this one be, but we always act as though they're males. We give them male pet names and call them he and him. Now this one, if we consider the nature of the mathematical structuring of the brain which I have proposed, would fall into the JN-coordinate system. The first robot would be JN-1, and I've assumed that it would be called John-10…I'm afraid that is the level of originality of the average roboticist. But why not call it Jane-1, damn it? If the public has to be let in on what we're doing, we're constructing a feminine robot with intuition."
Robertson shook his head, "What difference would that make? What you're saying is that you plan to remove the last barrier which, in principle, keeps the robotic brain inferior to the human brain. What do you suppose the public reaction will be to that?"
"Do you plan to make that public?" said Madarian. He thought a bit and then said, "Look. One thing the general public believes is that women are not as intelligent as men."
There was an instant apprehensive look on the face of more than one man at the table and a quick look up and down as though Susan Calvin were still in her accustomed seat.
Madarian said, "If we announce a female robot, it doesn't matter what she is. The public will automatically assume she is mentally backward. We just publicize the robot as Jane-1 and we don't have to say another word. We're safe."
"Actually," said Peter Bogert quietly, "there's more to it than that. Madarian and I have gone over the mathematics carefully and the JN series, whether John or Jane, would be quite safe. They would be less complex and intellectually capable, in an orthodox sense, than many another series we have designed and constructed. There would only be the one added factor of, well, let's get into the habit of calling it 'intuition.' "
"Who knows what it would do?" muttered Robertson.
"Madarian has suggested one thing it can do. As you all know, the Space Jump has been developed in principle. It is possible for men to attain what is, in effect, hyper-speeds beyond that of light and to visit other stellar systems and return in negligible time-weeks at the most."
Robertson said, "That's not new to us. It couldn't have been done without robots."
"Exactly, and it's not doing us any good because we can't use the hyper-speed drive except perhaps once as a demonstration, so that U. S. Robots gets little credit. The Space Jump is risky, it's fearfully prodigal of energy and therefore it's enormously expensive. If we were going to use it anyway, it would be nice if we could report the existence of a habitable planet. Call it a psychological need. Spend about twenty billion dollars on a single Space Jump and report nothing but scientific data and the public wants to know why their money was wasted. Report the existence of a habitable planet, and you're an interstellar Columbus and no one will worry about the money."
"So?"
"So where are we going to find a habitable planet? Or put it this way-which star within reach of the Space Jump as presently developed, which of the three hundred thousand stars and star systems within three hundred light-years has the best chance of having a habitable planet? We've got an enormous quantity of details on every star in our three-hundred-light-year neighborhood and a notion that almost every one has a planetary system. But which has a habitable planet? Which do we visit?…We don't know."
One of the directors said, "How would this Jane robot help us?"
Madarian was about to answer that, but he gestured slightly to Bogert and Bogert understood. The Director would carry more weight. Bogert didn't particularly like the idea; if the JN series proved a fiasco, he was making himself prominent enough in connection with it to insure that the sticky fingers of blame would cling to him. On the other hand, retirement was not all that far off, and if it worked, he would go out in a blaze of glory. Maybe it was only Madarian's aura of confidence, but Bogert had honestly come to believe it would work.
He said, "It may well be that somewhere in the libraries of data we have on those stars, there are methods for estimating the probabilities of the presence of Earth-type habitable planets. All we need to do is understand the data properly, look at them in the appropriate creative manner, make the correct correlations. We haven't done it yet. Or if some astronomer has, he hasn't been smart enough to realize what he has.
"A JN-type robot could make correlations far more rapidly and far more precisely than a man could. In a day, it would make and discard as many correlations as a man could in ten years. Furthermore, it would work in truly random fashion, whereas a man would have a strong bias based on preconception and on what is already believed."
There was a considerable silence after that Finally Robertson said, "But it's only a matter of probability, isn't it? Suppose this robot said, 'The highest-probability habitable-planet star within so-and-so light-years is Squidgee-17" or whatever, and we go there and find that a probability is only a probability and that there are no habitable planets after all. Where does that leave us?"
Madarian struck in this time. "We still win. We know how the robot came to the conclusion because it-she-will tell us. It might well help us gain enormous insight into astronomical detail and make the whole thing worthwhile even if we don't make the Space Jump at all. Besides, we can then work out the five most probable sites of planets and the probability that one of the five has a habitable planet may then be better than 0.95. It would be almost sure-"
They went on for a long time after that.
The funds granted were quite insufficient, but Madarian counted on the habit of throwing good money after bad. With two hundred million about to be lost irrevocably when another hundred million could save everything, the other hundred million would surely be voted.
Jane-1 was finally built and put on display. Peter Bogert studied it -her-gravely. He said, "Why the narrow waist? Surely that introduces a mechanical weakness?"
Madarian chuckled. "Listen, if we're going to call her Jane, there's no point in making her look like Tarzan."
Bogert shook his head. "Don't like it. You'll be bulging her higher up to give the appearance of breasts next, and that's a rotten idea. If women start getting the notion that robots may look like women, I can tell you exactly the kind of perverse notions they'll get, and you'll really have hostility on their part."
Madarian said, "Maybe you're right at that. No woman wants to feel replaceable by something with none of her faults. Okay."
Jane-2 did not have the pinched waist. She was a somber robot which rarely moved and even more rarely spoke.
Madarian had only occasionally come rushing to Bogert with items of news during her construction and that had been a sure sign that things were going poorly. Madarian's ebullience under success was overpowering. He would not hesitate to invade Bogert's bedroom at 3 A.M. with a hot-flash item rather than wait for the morning. Bogert was sure of that.
Now Madarian seemed subdued, his usually florid expression nearly pale, his round cheeks somehow pinched. Bogert said, with a feeling of certainty, "She won't talk."
"Oh, she talks." Madarian sat down heavily and chewed at his lower lip. "Sometimes, anyway," he said.
Bogert rose and circled the robot. "And when she talks, she makes no sense, I suppose. Well, if she doesn't talk, she's no female, is she?"
Madarian tried a weak smile for size and abandoned it. He said, "The brain, in isolation, checked out."
"I know," said Bogert. "But once that brain was put in charge of the physical apparatus of the robot, it was necessarily modified, of course."
"Of course," agreed Bogert unhelpfully. "But unpredictably and frustratingly. The trouble is that when you're dealing with n-dimensional calculus of uncertainty, things are-"
"Uncertain?" said Bogert. His own reaction was surprising him. The company investment was already most sizable and almost two years had elapsed, yet the results were, to put it politely, disappointing. Still, he found himself jabbing at Madarian and finding himself amused in the process.
Almost furtively, Bogert wondered if it weren't the absent Susan Calvin he was jabbing at. Madarian was so much more ebullient and effusive than Susan could ever possibly be-when things were going well. He was also far more vulnerably in the dumps when things weren't going well, and it was precisely under pressure that Susan never cracked. The target that Madarian made could be a neatly punctured bull's-eye as recompense for the target Susan had never allowed herself to be.
Madarian did not react to Bogert's last remark any more than Susan Calvin would have done; not out of contempt, which would have been Susan's reaction, but because he did not hear it
He said argumentatively, "The trouble is the matter of recognition. We have Jane-2 correlating magnificently. She can correlate on any subject, but once she's done so, she can't recognize a valuable result from a valueless one. It's not an easy problem, judging how to program a robot to tell a significant correlation when you don't know what correlations she will be making."
"I presume you've thought of lowering the potential at the W-21 diode junction and sparking across the-"
"No, no, no, no-" Madarian faded off into a whispering diminuendo. "You can't just have it spew out everything. We can do that for ourselves. The point is to have it recognize the crucial correlation and draw the conclusion. Once that is done, you see, a Jane robot would snap out an answer by intuition. It would be something we couldn't get ourselves except by the oddest kind of luck."
"It seems to me," said Bogert dryly, "that if you had a robot like that, you would have her do routinely what, among human beings, only the occasional genius is capable of doing."
Madarian nodded vigorously. "Exactly, Peter. I'd have said so myself if I weren't afraid of frightening off the execs. Please don't repeat that in their hearing."
"Do you really want a robot genius?"
"What are words? I'm trying to get a robot with the capacity to make random correlations at enormous speeds, together with a key-significance high-recognition quotient. And I'm trying to put those words into positronic field equations. I thought I had it, too, but I don't. Not yet."
He looked at Jane-2 discontentedly and said, "What's the best significance you have, Jane?"
Jane-2's head turned to look at Madarian but she made no sound, and Madarian whispered with resignation, "She's running that into the correlation banks."
Jane-2 spoke tonelessly at last. "I'm not sure." It was the first sound she had made.
Madarian's eyes rolled upward. "She's doing the equivalent of setting up equations with indeterminate solutions."
"I gathered that," said Bogert. "Listen, Madarian, can you go anywhere at this point, or do we pull out now and cut our losses at half a billion?"
"Oh, I'll get it, " muttered Madarian.
Jane-3 wasn't it. She was never as much as activated and Madarian was in a rage.
It was human error. His own fault, if one wanted to be entirely accurate. Yet though Madarian was utterly humiliated, others remained quiet. Let he who has never made an error in the fearsomely intricate mathematics of the positronic brain fill out the first memo of correction.
Nearly a year passed before Jane-4 was ready. Madarian was ebullient again. "She does it," he said. "She's got a good high-recognition quotient."
He was confident enough to place her on display before the Board and have her solve problems. Not mathematical problems; any robot could do that; but problems where the terms were deliberately misleading without being actually inaccurate.
Bogert said afterward, "That doesn't take much, really."
"Of course not. It's elementary for Jane-4 but I had to show them something, didn't I?"
"Do you know how much we've spent so far?"
"Come on, Peter, don't give me that. Do you know how much we've got back? These things don't go on in a vacuum, you know. I've had over three years of hell over this, if you want to know, but I've worked out new techniques of calculation that will save us a minimum of fifty thousand dollars on every new type of positronic brain we design, from now on in forever. Right?"
"Well-"
"Well me no wells. It's so. And it's my personal feeling that n-dimensional calculus of uncertainty can have any number of other applications if we have the ingenuity to find them, and my Jane robots will find them. Once I've got exactly what I want, the new JN series will pay for itself inside of five years, even if we triple what we've invested so far."
"What do you mean by 'exactly what you want'? What's wrong with Jane-4?"
"Nothing. Or nothing much. She's on the track, but she can be improved and I intend to do so. I thought I knew where I was going when I designed her. Now I've tested her and I know where I'm going. I intend to get there."
Jane-5 was it. It took Madarian well over a year to produce her and there he had no reservations; he was utterly confident.
Jane-5 was shorter than the average robot, slimmer. Without being a female caricature as Jane-1 had been, she managed to possess an air of femininity about herself despite the absence of a single clearly feminine feature.
"It's the way she's standing," said Bogert. Her arms were held gracefully and somehow the torso managed to give the impression of curving slightly when she turned.
Madarian said, "Listen to her…How do you feel, Jane?"
"In excellent health, thank you," said Jane-5, and the voice was precisely that of a woman; it was a sweet and almost disturbing contralto.
"Why did you do that, Clinton?" said Peter, startled and beginning to frown.
"Psychologically important," said Madarian. "I want people to think of her as a woman; to treat her as a woman; to explain."
"What people?" Madarian put his hands in his pockets and stared thoughtfully at Bogert. "I would like to have arrangements made for Jane and myself to go to flagstaff."
Bogert couldn't help but note that Madarian didn't say Jane-5. He made use of no number this time. She was the Jane. He said doubtfully, "To flagstaff? Why?"
"Because that's the world center for general planetology, isn't it? It's where they're studying the stars and trying to calculate the probability of habitable planets, isn't it?"
"I know that, but it's on Earth."
"Well, and I surely know that."
"Robotic movements on Earth are strictly controlled. And there's no need for it. Bring a library of books on general planetology here and let Jane absorb them."
"No! Peter, will you get it through your head that Jane isn't the ordinary logical robot; she's intuitive."
"So?"
"So how can we tell what she needs, what she can use, what will set her off? We can use any metal model in the factory to read books; that's frozen data and out of date besides. Jane must have living information; she must have tones of voice, she must have side issues; she must have total irrelevancies even. How the devil do we know what or when something will go click-click inside her and fall into a pattern? If we knew, we wouldn't need her at all, would we?"
Bogert began to feel harassed. He said, "Then bring the men here, the general planetologists."
"Here won't be any good. They'll be out of their element. They won't react naturally. I want Jane to watch them at work; I want her to see their instruments, their offices, their desks, everything about them that she can. I want you to arrange to have her transported to flagstaff. And I'd really like not to discuss it any further."
For a moment he almost sounded like Susan. Bogert winced, and said, "It's complicated making such an arrangement. Transporting an experimental robot-"
"Jane isn't experimental. She's the fifth of the series."
"The other four weren't really working models."
Madarian lifted his hands in helpless frustration. "Who's forcing you to tell the government that?"
"I'm not worried about the government. It can be made to understand special cases. It's public opinion. We've come a long way in fifty years and I don't propose to be set back twenty-five of them by having you lose control of a-"
"I won't lose control. You're making foolish remarks. Look! U. S. Robots can afford a private plane. We can land quietly at the nearest commercial airport and be lost in hundreds of similar landings. We can arrange to have a large ground car with an enclosed body meet us and take us to Flagstaff. Jane will be crated and it will be obvious that some piece of thoroughly non-robotic equipment is being transported to the labs. We won't get a second look from anyone. The men at Flagstaff will be alerted and will be told the exact purpose of the visit. They will have every motive to cooperate and to prevent a leak."
Bogert pondered. "The risky part will be the plane and the ground car. If anything happens to the crate-"
"Nothing will."
"We might get away with it if Jane is deactivated during transport. Then even if someone finds out she's inside-"
"No, Peter. That can't be done. Uh-uh. Not Jane-5. Look, she's been free-associating since she was activated. The information she possesses can be put into freeze during deactivation but the free associations never. No, sir, she can't ever be deactivated."
"But, then, if somehow it is discovered that we are transporting an activated robot-"
"It won't be found out." Madarian remained firm and the plane eventually took off. It was a late-model automatic Computo-jet, but it carried a human pilot-one of U. S. Robots' own employees-as backup. The crate containing Jane arrived at the airport safely, was transferred to the ground car, and reached the Research Laboratories at Flagstaff without incident.
Peter Bogert received his first call from Madarian not more than an hour after the latter's arrival at Flagstaff. Madarian was ecstatic and, characteristically, could not wait to report.
The message arrived by tubed laser beam, shielded, scrambled, and ordinarily impenetrable, but Bogert felt exasperated. He knew it could be penetrated if someone with enough technological ability-the government, for example-was determined to do so. The only real safety lay in the fact that the government had no reason to try. At least Bogert hoped so.
He said, "For God's sake, do you have to call?"
Madarian ignored him entirely. He burbled, "It was an inspiration. Sheer genius, I tell you."
For a while, Bogert stared at the receiver. Then he shouted incredulously, "You mean you've got the answer? Already?"
"No, no! Give us time, damn it. I mean the matter of her voice was an inspiration. Listen, after we were chauffeured from the airport to the main administration building at Flagstaff, we uncrated Jane and she stepped out of the box. When that happened, every man in the place stepped back. Scared! Nitwits! If even scientists can't understand the significance of the Laws of Robotics, what can we expect of the average untrained individual? For a minute there I thought: This will all be useless. They won't talk. They'll be keying themselves for a quick break in case she goes berserk and they'll be able to think of nothing else."
"Well, then, what are you getting at?"
"So then she greeted them routinely. She said, 'Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am so glad to meet you.' And it came out in this beautiful contralto…That was it. One man straightened his tie, and another ran his fingers through his hair. What really got me was that the oldest guy in the place actually checked his fly to make sure it was zipped. They're all crazy about her now. All they needed was the voice. She isn't a robot any more; she's a girl."
"You mean they're talking to her?"
"Are they talking to her! I should say so. I should have programmed her for sexy intonations. They'd be asking her for dates right now if I had. Talk about conditioned reflex. Listen, men respond to voices. At the most intimate moments, are they looking? It's the voice in your ear-"
"Yes, Clinton, I seem to remember. Where's Jane now?"
"With them. They won't let go of her."
"Damn! Get in there with her. Don't let her out of your sight, man."
Madarian's calls thereafter, during his ten-day stay at Flagstaff, were not very frequent and became progressively less exalted.
Jane was listening carefully, he reported, and occasionally she responded. She remained popular. She was given entry everywhere. But there were no results.
Bogert said, "Nothing at all?"
Madarian was at once defensive. "You can't say nothing at all. It's impossible to say nothing at all with an intuitive robot. You don't know what might not be going on inside her. This morning she asked Jensen what he had for breakfast."
"Rossiter Jensen the astrophysicist?"
"Yes, of course. As it turned out, he didn't have breakfast that morning. Well, a cup of coffee."
"So Jane's learning to make small talk. That scarcely makes up for the expense."
"Oh, don't be a jackass. It wasn't small talk. Nothing is small talk for Jane. She asked because it had something to do with some sort of cross-correlation she was building in her mind."
"What can it possibly-"
"How do I know? If I knew, I'd be a Jane myself and you wouldn't need her. But it has to mean something. She's programmed for high motivation to obtain an answer to the question of a planet with optimum habitability/distance and-"
"Then let me know when she's done that and not before. It's not really necessary for me to get a blow-by-blow description of possible correlations."
He didn't really expect to get notification of success. With each day, Bogert grew less sanguine, so that when the notification finally came, he wasn't ready. And it came at the very end.
That last time, when Madarian's climactic message came, it came in what was almost a whisper. Exaltation had come complete circle and Madarian was awed into quiet.
"She did it," he said. "She did it. After I all but gave up, too. After she had received everything in the place and most of it twice and three times over and never said a word that sounded like anything…I'm on the plane now, returning. We've just taken off."
Bogert managed to get his breath. "Don't play games, man. You have the answer? Say so, if you have. Say it plainly."
"She has the answer. She's given me the answer. She's given me the names of three stars within eighty light-years which, she says, have a sixty to ninety percent chance of possessing one habitable planet each. The probability that at least one has is 0.972. It's almost certain. And that's just the least of it. Once we get back, she can give us the exact line of reasoning that led her to the conclusion and I predict that the whole science of astrophysics and cosmology will-"
"Are you sure-"
"You think I'm having hallucinations? I even have a witness. Poor guy jumped two feet when Jane suddenly began to reel out the answer in her gorgeous voice"
And that was when the meteorite struck and in the thorough destruction of the plane that followed, Madarian and the pilot were reduced to gobbets of bloody flesh and no usable remnant of Jane was recovered.
The gloom at U. S. Robots had never been deeper. Robertson attempted to find consolation in the fact that the very completeness of the destruction had utterly hidden the illegalities of which the firm had been guilty.
Peter shook his head and mourned. "We've lost the best chance U. S. Robots ever had of gaining an unbeatable public image; of overcoming the damned Frankenstein complex. What it would have meant for robots to have one of them work out the solution to the habitable-planet problem, after other robots had helped work out the Space Jump. Robots would have opened the galaxy to us. And if at the same time we could have driven scientific knowledge forward in a dozen different directions as we surely would have…Oh, God, there's no way of calculating the benefits to the human race, and to us of course."
Robertson said, "We could build other Janes, couldn't we? Even without Madarian?"
"Sure we could. But can we depend on the proper correlation again? Who knows how low-probability that final result was? What if Madarian had had a fantastic piece of beginner's luck? And then to have an even more fantastic piece of bad luck? A meteorite zeroing in…It's simply unbelievable-"
Robertson said in a hesitating whisper, "It couldn't have been meant. I mean, if we weren't meant to know and if the meteorite was a judgment-from-"
He faded off under Bogert's withering glare. Bogert said, "It's not a dead loss, I suppose. Other Janes are bound to help us in some ways. And we can give other robots feminine voices, if that will help encourage public acceptance-though I wonder what the women would say. If we only knew what Jane-5 had said!"
"In that last call, Madarian said there was a witness." Bogert said, "I know; I've been thinking about that. Don't you suppose I've been in touch with flagstaff? Nobody in the entire place heard Jane say anything that was out of the ordinary, anything that sounded like an answer to the habitable-planet problem, and certainly anyone there should have recognized the answer if it came -or at least recognized it as a possible answer."
"Could Madarian have been lying? Or crazy? Could he have been trying to protect himself-"
"You mean he may have been trying to save his reputation by pretending he had the answer and then gimmick Jane so she couldn't talk and say, 'Oh, sorry, something happened accidentally. Oh, darn!' I won't accept that for a minute. You might as well suppose he had arranged the meteorite."
"Then what do we do?" Bogert said heavily, "Turn back to flagstaff. The answer must be there. I've got to dig deeper, that's all. I'm going there and I'm taking a couple of the men in Madarian's department. We've got to go through that place top to bottom and end to end."
"But, you know, even if there were a witness and he had heard, what good would it do, now that we don't have Jane to explain the process?"
"Every little something is useful. Jane gave the names of the stars; the catalogue numbers probably-none of the named stars has a chance. If someone can remember her saying that and actually remember the catalogue number, or have heard it clearly enough to allow it to be recovered by Psycho-probe if he lacked the conscious memory-then we'll have something. Given the results at the end, and the data fed Jane at the beginning, we might be able to reconstruct the line of reasoning; we might recover the intuition. If that is done, we've saved the game-"
Bogert was back after three days, silent and thoroughly depressed. When Robertson inquired anxiously as to results, he shook his head. "Nothing!"
"Nothing?"
"Absolutely nothing. I spoke with every man in flagstaff-every scientist, every technician, every student-that had had anything to do with Jane; everyone that had as much as seen her. The number wasn't great; I'll give Madarian credit for that much discretion. He only allowed those to see her who might conceivably have had planetological knowledge to feed her. There were twenty-three men altogether who had seen Jane and of those only twelve had spoken to her more than casually.
"I went over and over all that Jane had said. They remembered everything quite well. They're keen men engaged in a crucial experiment involving their specialty, so they had every motivation to remember. And they were dealing with a talking robot, something that was startling enough, and one that talked like a TV actress. They couldn't forget."
Robertson said, "Maybe a Psycho-probe-"
"If one of them had the vaguest thought that something had happened, I would screw out his consent to Probing. But there's nothing to leave room for an excuse, and to Probe two dozen men who make their living from their brains can't be done. Honestly, it wouldn't help. If Jane had mentioned three stars and said they had habitable planets, it would have been like setting up sky rockets in their brains. How could anyone of them forget?"
"Then maybe one of them is lying," said Robertson grimly. "He wants the information for his own use; to get the credit himself later."
"What good would that do him?" said Bogert. "The whole establishment knows exactly why Madarian and Jane were there in the first place. They know why I came there in the second. If at any time in the future any man now at Flagstaff suddenly comes up with a habitable-planet theory that is startlingly new and different, yet valid, every other man at Flagstaff and every man at U. S. Robots will know at once that he had stolen it. He'd never get away with it."
"Then Madarian himself was somehow mistaken."
"I don't see how I can believe that either. Madarian had an irritating personality-all robopsychologists have irritating personalities, I think, which must be why they work with robots rather than with men-but he was no dummy. He couldn't be wrong in something like this."
"Then-" But Robertson had run out of possibilities. They had reached a blank wall and for some minutes each stared at it disconsolately.
Finally Robertson stirred. "Peter-"
"Well?"
"Let's ask Susan."
Bogert stiffened. "What!"
"Let's ask Susan. Let's call her and ask her to come in."
"Why? What can she possibly do?"
"I don't know. But she's a robopsychologist, too, and she might understand Madarian better than we do. Besides, she-Oh, hell, she always had more brains than any of us."
"She's nearly eighty."
"And you're seventy. What about it?"
Bogert sighed. Had her abrasive tongue lost any of its rasp in the years of her retirement? He said, "Well, I'll ask her."
Susan Calvin entered Bogert's office with a slow look around before her eyes fixed themselves on the Research Director. She had aged a great deal since her retirement. Her hair was a fine white and her face seemed to have crumpled. She had grown so frail as to be almost transparent and only her eyes, piercing and uncompromising, seemed to remain of all that had been.
Bogert strode forward heartily, holding out his hand. "Susan!"
Susan Calvin took it, and said, "You're looking reasonably well, Peter, for an old man. If I were you, I wouldn't wait till next year. Retire now and let the young men get to it…And Madarian is dead. Are you calling me in to take over my old job? Are you determined to keep the ancients till a year past actual physical death?"
"No, no, Susan. I've called you in-" He stopped. He did not, after all, have the faintest idea of how to start.
But Susan read his mind now as easily as she always had. She seated herself with the caution born of stiffened joints and said, "Peter, you've called me in because you're in bad trouble. Otherwise you'd sooner see me dead than within a mile of you."
"Come, Susan-"
"Don't waste time on pretty talk. I never had time to waste when I was forty and certainly not now. Madarian's death and your call to me are both unusual, so there must be a connection. Two unusual events without a connection is too low-probability to worry about. Begin at the beginning and don't worry about revealing yourself to be a fool. That was revealed to me long ago."
Bogert cleared his throat miserably and began. She listened carefully, her withered hand lifting once in a while to stop him so that she might ask a question.
She snorted at one point. "Feminine intuition? Is that what you wanted the robot for? You men. Faced with a woman reaching a correct conclusion and unable to accept the fact that she is your equal or superior in intelligence, you invent something called feminine intuition."
"Oh, yes, Susan, but let me continue-"
He did. When she was told of Jane's contralto voice, she said, "It is a difficult choice sometimes whether to feel revolted at the male sex or merely to dismiss them as contemptible."
Bogert said, "Well, let me go on-"
When he was quite done, Susan said, "May I have the private use of this office for an hour or two?"
"Yes, but-"
She said, "I want to go over the various records-Jane's programming, Madarian's calls, your interviews at flagstaff. I presume I can use that beautiful new shielded laser-phone and your computer outlet if I wish."
"Yes, of course."
"Well, then, get out of here, Peter."
It was not quite forty-five minutes when she hobbled to the door, opened it, and called for Bogert.
When Bogert came, Robertson was with him. Both entered and Susan greeted the latter with an unenthusiastic "Hello, Scott."
Bogert tried desperately to gauge the results from Susan's face, but it was only the face of a grim old lady who had no intention of making anything easy for him.
He said cautiously, "Do you think there's anything you can do, Susan?"
"Beyond what I have already done? No! There's nothing more." Bogert's lips set in chagrin, but Robertson said, "What have you already done, Susan?"
Susan said, "I've thought a little; something I can't seem to persuade anyone else to do. For one thing, I've thought about Madarian. I knew him, you know. He had brains but he was a very irritating extrovert. I thought you would like him after me, Peter."
"It was a change," Bogert couldn't resist saying.
"And he was always running to you with results the very minute he had them, wasn't he?"
"Yes, he was."
"And yet," said Susan, "his last message, the one in which he said Jane had given him the answer, was sent from the plane. Why did he wait so long? Why didn't he call you while he was still at flagstaff, immediately after Jane had said whatever it was she said?"
"I suppose," said Peter, "that for once he wanted to check it thoroughly and-well, I don't know. It was the most important thing that had ever happened to him; he might for once have wanted to wait and be sure of himself."
"On the contrary; the more important it was, the less he would wait, surely. And if he could manage to wait, why not do it properly and wait till he was back at U. S. Robots so that he could check the results with all the computing equipment this firm could make available to him? In short, he waited too long from one point of view and not long enough from another."
Robertson interrupted. "Then you think he was up to some trickery-"
Susan looked revolted. "Scott, don't try to compete with Peter in making inane remarks. Let me continue…A second point concerns the witness. According to the records of that last call, Madarian said, 'Poor guy jumped two feet when Jane suddenly began to reel out the answer in her gorgeous voice.' In fact, it was the last thing he said. And the question is, then, why should the witness have jumped? Madarian had explained that all the men were crazy about that voice, and they had had ten days with the robot-with Jane. Why should the mere act of her speaking have startled them?"
Bogert said, "I assumed it was astonishment at hearing Jane give an answer to a problem that has occupied the minds of planetologists for nearly a century."
"But they were waiting for her to give that answer. That was why she was there. Besides, consider the way the sentence is worded. Madarian's statement makes it seem the witness was startled, not astonished, if you see the difference. What's more, that reaction came 'when Jane suddenly began'-in other words, at the very start of the statement. To be astonished at the content of what Jane said would have required the witness to have listened awhile so that he might absorb it. Madarian would have said he had jumped two feet after he had heard Jane say thus-and-so. It would be 'after' not 'when' and the word 'suddenly' would not be included."
Bogert said uneasily, "I don't think you can refine matters down to the use or non-use of a word."
"I can," said Susan frostily, "because I am a robopsychologist. And I can expect Madarian to do so, too, because he was a robopsychologist. We have to explain those two anomalies, then. The queer delay before Madarian's call and the queer reaction of the witness."
"Can you explain them?" Asked Robertson. "Of course," said Susan, "since I use a little simple logic. Madarian called with the news without delay, as he always did, or with as little delay as he could manage. If Jane had solved the problem at Flagstaff, he would certainly have called from Flagstaff. Since he called from the plane, she must clearly have solved the problem after he had left Flagstaff."
"But then-"
"Let me finish. Let me finish. Was Madarian not taken from the airport to Flagstaff in a heavy, enclosed ground car? And Jane, in her crate, with him?"
"Yes."
"And presumably, Madarian and the crated Jane returned from Flagstaff to the airport in the same heavy, enclosed ground car. Am I right?"
"Yes, of course!"
"And they were not alone in the ground car, either. In one of his calls, Madarian said, 'We were chauffeured from the airport to the main administration building,' and I suppose I am right in concluding that if he was chauffeured, then that was because there was a chauffeur, a human driver, in the car."
"Good God!"
"The trouble with you, Peter, is that when you think of a witness to a planetological statement, you think of planetologists. You divide up human beings into categories, and despise and dismiss most. A robot cannot do that. The First Law says, 'A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.' Any human being. That is the essence of the robotic view of life. A robot makes no distinction. To a robot, all men are truly equal, and to a robopsychologist who must perforce deal with men at the robotic level, all men are truly equal, too.
"It would not occur to Madarian to say a truck driver had heard the statement. To you a truck driver is not a scientist but is a mere animate adjunct of a truck, but to Madarian he was a man and a witness. Nothing more. Nothing less."
Bogert shook his head in disbelief. "But you are sure?"
"Of course I'm sure. How else can you explain the other point; Madarian's remark about the startling of the witness? Jane was crated, wasn't she? But she was not deactivated. According to the records, Madarian was always adamant against ever deactivating an intuitive robot. Moreover, Jane-5, like any of the Janes, was extremely non-talkative. Probably it never occurred to Madarian to order her to remain quiet within the crate; and it was within the crate that the pattern finally fell into place. Naturally she began to talk. A beautiful contralto voice suddenly sounded from inside the crate. If you were the truck driver, what would you do at that point? Surely you'd be startled. It's a wonder he didn't crash."
"But if the truck driver was the witness, why didn't he come forward-"
"Why? Can he possibly know that anything crucial had happened, that what he heard was important? Besides, don't you suppose Madarian tipped him well and asked him not to say anything? Would you want the news to spread that an activated robot was being transported illegally over the Earth's surface."
"Well, will he remember what was said?"
"Why not? It might seem to you, Peter, that a truck driver, one step above an ape in your view, can't remember. But truck drivers can have brains, too. The statements were most remarkable and the driver may well have remembered some. Even if he gets some of the letters and numbers wrong, we're dealing with a finite set, you know, the fifty-five hundred stars or star systems within eighty light-years or so-I haven't looked up the exact number. You can make the correct choices. And if needed, you will have every excuse to use the Psycho-probe-"
The two men stared at her. Finally Bogert, afraid to believe, whispered, "But how can you be sure?"
For a moment, Susan was on the point of saying: Because I've called Flagstaff, you fool, and because I spoke to the truck driver, and because he told me what he had heard, and because I've checked with the computer at Flagstaff and got the only three stars that fit the information, and because I have those names in my pocket.
But she didn't. Let him go through it all himself. Carefully, she rose to her feet, and said sardonically, "How can I be sure?…Call it feminine intuition."