Asimov’s Future History Volume 6

by Isaac Asimov

  “Quite, quite down!” Ariel finished enthusiastically.

  “Hmm, it seems my second bit of casting is almost complete,” said Derec.

  “Casting, master?” said Mandelbrot. “You are having a cast made? Have you injured yourself?”

  “No, not at all,” Derec replied, laughing.

  “I must say, it seemed you were hiding your suffering awfully well.”

  “It’s my hobby. Listen, tell me what you would do with the robot that dismantled Lucius.” The sudden shock of the image of the robot lying there, behind the closed door to his office, sent a tremor of loss and grief through Derec’s veins. And of terror, too. He’d never before thought robots were things that could die. He’d always assumed they were immortal in a way that life could never be.

  “Forgive me, master, but I would think nothing of it. I would merely follow your instructions.”

  “And what if I wasn’t around to give you instructions? What if you had to decide when you were on your own?”

  “First, I would solicit the robot’s explanation, and learn of any justifications for its actions, if any, it may have had, particularly as they involved its interpretation of the Three Laws.”

  “But there is no law against a robot harming another robot.”

  “Of course, and the robot in question may have been operating on instructions from a human. But I gather such is not the case here.”

  “Well, yes...”

  “So after having received the explanation, I would take the safest course and have the robot closed down until the proper repairs could be administered, or until instructions could be received from human sources.”

  “That could take a long time, particularly here on Robot City.”

  “No harm would be done. Upon reactivation, if that is what is decided upon, the robot would behave as if it had just been shut down for a tune-up the day before.”

  “Hmm. But what if there was something you needed from the robot?”

  “Then that would depend on what you needed, and how badly you needed it.”

  “I’m glad you feel that way, not that you can feel, I know, but it makes me feel better to know your logic circuits concur with some of this...” And he explained to Mandelbrot his theory that a creative robot with a scientific bent might be able to make a diagnostic breakthrough to help Ariel.

  “But how do you know that Canute possesses scientific talents?”

  “I don’t. But I may be able to use its mind to help me learn more about what’s happening to the robots in this place. And I need to do it — to get Canute to admit to its error without drifting out in the process.

  That’s one reason why I’m putting on this play.”

  “This play?”

  “Hamlet. by William Shakespeare. Quiet; listen.”

  Ariel’s voice came through the door, muffled but quite clear as she repeated and then continued the speech she had rehearsed earlier, this time in louder, more confident cadences. “And I of ladies most deject and wretched, that suck’d the honey of his music vows, now see that noble and most sovereign reason, like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh.”

  “Isn’t that beautiful?” Derec gushed.

  “The words, master, or Miss Ariel saying them?”

  “Have you been talking to Harry?”

  “Master, I do not understand your implication.”

  “Never mind. Anyway, I’m going to use this playas a lightning rod, to draw every robot with creative tendencies to the same place, working on a group project, and then see what develops. I don’t know what’s going on here, but whatever it is, I’m going to bust it wide open!”

  Someone knocked on the door. “Get that, will you?” Derec asked as he turned toward Ariel’s office.

  “Ariel? This is your director speaking! Come out here, will your’

  Ariel came out in a flash, followed by a bounding Wolruf. “Director?” she said. “Then who’s going to be my leading man?”

  “Oh? When you found out about this production, how did you know you were going to be Ophelia?”

  “Because clearly I possess all the mental and physical qualifications. Who better to playa girl who’s going insane than one who really is? Of course, I don’t know who’s going to play Hamlet’s mother, but that’s not my problem, is it?”

  At least she’s keeping her sense of humor about things, Derec thought. “No — it’s your director’s — and your leading man’s.”

  Ariel grinned and bowed. “At your service, Mr. Director.”

  “Master —”

  “Yes, Mandelbrot.”

  “Forgive the intrusion, Master Derec and Mistress Ariel, but Harry, Benny, and M334 are at the door.

  They said they had vibes to present to you.”

  “Vibess?” said Wolruf. “Not ni-ice word on my would.”

  “Yes, but who knows what it means here,” said Ariel. “Send them in, Mandelbrot.”

  “Yes, I suppose we have to begin interviewing for our cast and crew sooner than later,” said Derec.

  In walked the three robots, each carrying brass objects. Each object struck Derec as being rather strange. M334 held a tube with two dozen keys, with what appeared to be a mouthpiece on one end. It was evidently a wind instrument, though what sort of sound it was supposed to make, Derec had no way of imagining.

  Nor did he know what sort of sounds he might expect from the other two instruments held by the other two robots. Benny’s was smaller than M334’s, and could be easily held in one hand; there were three taps on the top, presumably to modulate the sonic textures. Harry’s was the straightest and the longest of the three; it had a sliding device that evidently would lengthen or shorten the tubing to match the player’s will, again presumably to modulate the sound.

  “Good day, sir,” said Benny. “We can only presume we are interrupting your preparations —”

  “Good grief, word travels fast around here!” Ariel exclaimed.

  “You found out, didn’t you?” said Derec. Ariel shrugged. “I heard it from Wolruf.”

  “And how did you hear about it, Wolruf?” Derec asked.

  Wolruf merely shrugged. The effort made her entire body quiver.

  “— and so we thought you might want to see for yourself the results of a project we have been devoting ourselves to instead of closing down in our spare time,” finished Benny, as if no one else had spoken.

  “Ah, and what is the nature of this project?” Derec asked suspiciously.

  “Originally it was purely musical,” said Benny.

  “But when we heard you were planning to engage us in a recreation of human art forms, we performed research and discovered that music was often a significant part of such functions,” said Harry.

  “That struck us as being particularly fortuitous,” said M334. “We thought — perhaps presumptuously, but how could we tell if we refrained from inquiring? — that our music might make a significant contribution to the enterprise.”

  “Uh, what kind of music are we attempting here, with those things?” Ariel asked. “Auroran nouveau fugues? Tantorian ecto-variations?”

  “Something close to period, Terran-style,” said Harry.

  “You mean from Earth?” Ariel asked incredulously. Terran culture was not held in high regard in most Spacer circles.

  “Shakespeare was from Earth,” put in Derec mildly.

  “Yes, but he was lucky enough to be talented,” said Ariel. “You can’t say that about most Terran artists.”

  “Perhaps you judge our aspirations too harshly,” said Benny.

  “Yes, you should judge after you hear us play,” said M334.

  “Yes, you should have plenty of critical ammunition then,” said Harry.

  Ariel stared at Derec. “It was a joke,” Derec said.

  “Close to bein’ good one!” said Wolruf.

  The three robots then magnetically applied computerized, flexible, artificial lips to their speaker grills. The lips were connected by electrical
cords that led into the positronic cavities, and Derec saw at once, by the way the robots exercised the lips and blew air through them, that they responded directly to thought control.

  Just like real lips, thought Derec, biting his lower one as if to make sure. “Excuse me, but before you boys strike up the brass, I’d like to know what names those instruments are supposed to have.”

  “This is a trumpet,” said Benny. “A saxophone,” said M334.

  “And a trombone,” said Harry.

  “And by way of further introduction,” said Benny, “the number we would like to assault for your aural perusal is an ancient composition dating not four hundred years later than Shakespeare’s time. This was already during the age of recorded music, but no tapes are currently available through central, so we can only surmise the manner in which these instruments were played by examining the sheet music.”

  “What there is of it,” said Harry. “Most of this number is improvised.”

  “Uh-oh!” said Ariel to herself, putting her hand protectively on her forehead. “I must be having a delirium!”

  “And the number we would like to assault is what the reference tapes denote as, in the parlance of the day, a snappy little ditty. This song its composer, the human known as Duke Ellington, called ‘Bouncing Buoyancy.”’

  I’ve got a bad feeling about this, Derec thought. He waved his hand. “Play on, McDuffs!”

  The robots did. At least, that’s what the humans and the alien thought they were trying to do. The musical form was so radically unlike anything they’d experienced, the playing so haphazard and odd, so full of accidental spurts and sputters and stops, that exactly what the robots were attempting to do remained a matter of some conjecture.

  Benny’s trumpet played the lead with a blaring succession of notes that occasionally struck the ear as being just right. The noise the instrument made resembled the wail of a siren, recorded backwards. So high was its frequency that Derec became afraid his ears would begin bleeding. Benny’s notes, on the other hand, did seem to possess some kind of internal logic, as if he knew where he was going but wasn’t quite sure how to get there.

  Harry on the trombone and M334 on the saxophone attempted to provide Benny with a solid foundation; awkwardly, they tooted eight measures of unchanging harmony, over and over again. They nearly succeeded, harmony-wise, and perhaps their glitches wouldn’t have been so noticeable if they’d occasionally managed to start and end the eight measures at the same time.

  The trombone itself tended to sound like an exquisitely crafted raspberry, surreally brayed from the mouth of a contemptuous donkey. The saxophone’s sonic attack, meanwhile, resembled nothing so much as a gaggle of geese gurgling underwater. The effect of the three instruments combined was such that Derec wondered momentarily if the robot hadn’t come up with a violation of an interplanetary weapons treaty.

  Derec spent the first minute finding the music absolutely atrocious, utterly without redeeming social value.

  It was the worse kind of noise; that is, noise pretending to be something else. But gradually he began to perceive, vaguely, the equally vague ideal in the robots’ minds. The music itself, regardless of the manner of its playing, possessed a single-minded joy that quickly became infectious. Derec discovered that his toe was tapping in a rhythm akin to that of the music. Ariel was nodding thoughtfully. Wolruf had her head cocked inquisitively, and Mandelbrot was his usual inscrutable self.

  Derec’s mind wandered a second, and he wondered if he could rig up a specimen of those liplike fixtures on the mouths to help robots portray human emotions during the production. The fact that most had immobile faces, incapable of even rudimentary expression, was going to cripple the illusion unless he devised some way to use the very inflexibility to greater effect. He imagined a set of lips twisted in laughter at the play’s cavorting actors, and in fear of the ghost of Hamlet’s father, and in anguish at the sight of all the dead bodies littering the stage. Well, it’s a thought, he figured, and then returned his attention to the music.

  The arrangement of “Bouncing Buoyancy” concluded with all three instruments playing the main theme simultaneously. Theoretically. The robots took the mouthpieces from their lips with a flourish and held out the instruments toward their audience.

  Derec and Ariel looked at one another. Her expression read You’re the director, you do the talking.

  “How did our number bludgeon you, master?” asked Benny.

  “Uh, it was certainly unusual. I think I see what you robots are trying to get at, and I think I may like it if you actually get there. Don’t you agree, Ariel?”

  “Oh, yes, definitely.” She was really saying I seriously doubt it.

  “Iss it Ham-lit?” Wolruf asked.

  “That, I don’t know,” said Derec. “I suppose this Ellington fellow composed other works, though.”

  “In a variety of styles and moods,” said Benny

  “All adaptable to our instruments,” said Harry.

  “I was afraid of that,” Derec said. “But don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll improve with practice. I take it this has been your secret project, Benny?”

  Benny bowed in a manner curiously appreciative for a robot. “I personally crafted the instruments and taught my friends what knowledge I had concerning the art of blowing horns.”

  “Take off those lips, will you? They’re just too weird.”

  As the robots complied, Mandelbrot said, “Master, this performance. Where will it take place? I do not believe the city has theatrical facilities.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ve got it taken care of. I know just the robot who can design us a theatre perfectly suited for the denizens of Robot City. Only he doesn’t know about it yet.”

  “And who is that, master?”

  “Canute. Who else?” Derec smiled. “In fact, get me Canute. Have him come here right away. I want him to hear some of this ‘Bouncing Buoyancy’ brew.”

  “Each age has different terrors and tensions,” said Derec a few days later on the stage of the New Globe, “but they all open on the same abyss.”

  He paused to see what effect his words had on the robots sitting in the chairs before the proscenium. He had thought his words exceedingly profound, but the robots merely stared back at him as though he had recounted the symbols of a meaningless equation, interesting only because a human had happened to say it.

  He cleared his throat. Sitting in seats off to the side of the robots were Ariel and Mandelbrot. Ariel had a notebook in hand, but Mandelbrot, whom Derec had appointed property master, naturally had no need of one; his total recall would keep track of the production’s prop specifications without notes.

  Wolruf sat licking her paw in a chair just behind the pair. She had insisted on being the official prompter, or line coach, and as such had already spent a lot of time prompting Derec and Ariel while they were memorizing their lines — a task that he feared, in his own case, was far from completed.

  Derec cleared his throat again. His awkwardness showed — at least if the knowing smile Ariel directed toward him was any indication. Wolruf just licked her chops; he got the feeling that on an unspoken level, she was finding the shenanigans of humans and robots incredibly amusing.

  “Hmmm. You’re all familiar with the studies some of you have been making concerning the Laws of Humanics. That means you’re also familiar, at least in passing, with the many peculiarities and contradictions of the human condition. Passion and madness, obsession and nihilism — these things don’t exist among you robots, but it’s something we humans have to deal with, in varying degrees, every day.

  “Shortly, we shall boldly go where no robot has gone before. We shall descend into the dense, dark, deep, decrepit abyss of the thirst for revenge, and when we emerge, we’ll have something — something — something really terrific to remember in the days ahead. It’ll be swell. You’ll see.”

  “Get on with it!” Ariel shouted.

  “Forgive me, master, but it is my cons
idered opinion that you should get on to the more theatrical matters,” piped in Mandelbrot. Inan effort to appear natural, he had crossed his legs and held his palms on his knee. He succeeded only in appearing like a bunch of plywood pounded together with rusty nails.

  “It’s all right, Mandelbrot,” said Derec, feeling his face flush. “I’m just getting warmed up.” Returning his attention to the robots, he could not fail to notice their posture was every bit as stiff as his robot Friday’s.

  For a brief instant, he wondered What in the world am I doing here? steeled himself, and promptly got on with it. “Theatre is an art that depends upon the work of many collaborators —” he began.

  Here was the New Globe Theatre, designed by the robot Canute and built under its personal supervision. By following the leads of clues in the central computer that Lucius had left when it had used its programs, Canute was able to tell the city what to build and how long it should stand. Meaning that Canute had done pretty much what Lucius had done, but acting under orders from a human. (While supervising this aspect of his project, Derec realized it was possible that Lucius had, in turn, followed leads suggested by Derec’s establishment of automats in one building out of every ten. But of course Derec would never know for certain.)

  Perhaps the task has been easier, less taxing for Canute because, unlike Lucius, he had had a pattern to follow: that of the old Globe Theatre in the London, Earth, of Shakespeare’s day. But he had added his own specifications, without Derec’s prompting. He had attempted to ascertain the special problems of form and function and how they either augmented or conflicted with his sense of how a theatre should fit in esthetically with the environment of Robot City.

  Derec had pointedly refrained from telling Canute why the ebony, of all the robots in the city, had been appointed to design the second permanent building of Robot City. And he had watched Canute carefully while giving instructions, to see if it was in danger of positronic drift for doing (Derec suspected) exactly what it had harmed another robot for doing.

  But Canute had given no such evidence. All that was needed to satisfy it, apparently, was for the impetus to come from human instructions.