Foundation’s Friends

by Ben Bova

  “You have it wrong,” Doc told her, and began to try to set her straight.

  I wouldn’t have bothered, though the facts were simple enough. Albert Einstein had written to the President claiming that Hitler’s people were on the verge of inventing what he called “an atomic bomb,” and he wanted FDR to start a project so the U.S.A. could build one first. Dr. Alexis Carrel heard about it. He was a biochemist and he didn’t want to see America wasting its time on some atomic-power will-o’-the-wisp. So he persuaded his friend Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh to take a quite different letter to President Roosevelt.

  It wasn’t that easy for Lindbergh, because there was a political problem. Lindbergh was certainly a famous man. He was the celebrated Lone Eagle, the man who had flown the Atlantic in nineteen twenty-something all by himself, first man ever to do it. But a decade and a bit later things had changed for Lindbergh. He had unfortunately got a reputation for being soft on the Nazis, and besides he was deeply involved in some right-wing Republican organizations-the America First Committee, the Liberty League, things like that-which had as their principal objective in life leaving Hitler alone and kicking that satanic Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt out of the White House.

  All the same, Lindbergh had a lot of powerful friends. It took two months of pulling hard on a lot of strings to arrange it, but he finally got an appointment for five minutes of the President’s time on a slow Thursday morning in Warm Springs, Georgia. And the President actually read Carrel’s letter.

  Roosevelt wasn’t a scientist and didn’t even have any scientists near him-scientists weren’t a big deal, back in the thirties. So FDR didn’t really know the difference between a fissioning atomic nucleus and a disease organism, except that he could see that it was cheaper to culture germs in Petri dishes than to build billion-dollar factories to make this funny-sounding, what-do-you-call-it, nuclear explosive stuff, plutonium. And FDR was a little sensitive about starting any new big-spending projects for a while. So Einstein was out, and Carrel was in.

  By the time Isaac got drafted and assigned to the secret research facility it was called the Pasadena Project; but by the time Doc got to that point the Saturday Evening Post woman was beginning to fidget. “That’s very interesting, Mr. Lowndes?” she said, glancing at her notes. “But I think my editors would want me to get this sort of thing from Dr. Asimov himself. Excuse me,” she finished, already turning away, with the stars of hero worship beginning to shine in her eyes.

  Doc looked at me ruefully. “Reporters,” he said.

  I nodded. Then I couldn’t resist the temptation any longer. “Let’s listen to what he does tell her,” I suggested, and we trailed after her.

  It wasn’t easy to get near Isaac. Apart from the reporters, there were all the public relations staffs of our various publishers and institutes-Don Wollheim ‘s own publishing company, Cyril’s publishers, Bob Lowndes’s, The New York Times, because Damon was the editor of their Book Review. Even my own publisher had chipped in, as well as the galleries that sold Hannes Bok’s paintings and Johnny Michel’s weird silk screens of tomato cans and movie stars’ faces. But it was the U.S. Information Agency that produced most of the muscle, because Isaac was their boy. What was surrounding Isaac was a mob. The reporter was a tough lady, though. An elbow here, a side-slither there, and she was in the front row with her hand up. “Dr. Asimov? Weren’t you the one who wrote the letter to President Roosevelt that started the Pasadena Project?”

  “Good lord, no!” Isaac said, “No, it was a famous biochemist of the time, Dr. Alexis Carrel. He was responding to a letter Albert Einstein had written, and-What is it?”

  The man from the Daily News had his hand up. “Could you spell that, please, Dr. Asimov?”

  “E-I-N-S-T-E-I-N. He was a physicist, very well known at the time. Anyway, the President accepted Dr. Carrel’s proposal and they started the Pasadena Project. I happened to be drafted into it, as a very young biochemist, just out of school.”

  “But you got to be pretty important,” the woman said loyally. Isaac shrugged. Someone from another videopaper asked him to say more about his experiences, and Isaac, giving us all a humorously apologetic look, did as requested.

  “Well,” he said, “I don’t want to dwell on the weapons systems. Everybody knows that it was our typhus bomb that made the Japanese surrender, of course. But it was the peacetime uses that I think are really important. Look around at my old friends here.” He swept a generous arm around the dais, including us all. “If it hadn’t been for the Pasadena Project some of us wouldn’t be here now-do you have any idea how much medicine advanced as a result of what we learned? Antibiotics in 1944, antivirals in 1948, the cancer cure in 1950, the cholesterol antagonist in 1953?”

  A California woman got in: “Are you sure the President made the right decision? There are some people who still think that atomic power is a real possibility.”

  “Ah, you’re talking about old Eddy Teller.” Isaac grinned. “He’s all right. It’s just that he’s hipped on this one subject. It’s really too bad. He could have done important work, I think, if he’d gone in for real science in 1940, instead of fooling around with all that nuclear stuff.”

  There wasn’t any question that Isaac was the superstar, with Cyril getting at least serious second-banana attention, but it wasn’t all the superstars. Quite. Each one of the rest of us got a couple of minutes before the cameras, saying how much each of us had influenced each other and how happy we all were to be seeing each other again. I was pretty sure that most of us would wind up as faces on the cutting-room floor, but what we said, funnily enough, was all pretty true.

  And then it was over. People began to leave.

  I saw Isaac coming out of the men’s room as I was looking for the woman with my coat. He paused at the window, gazing out at the darkling sky. A big TWA eight-engined plane was coming in, nonstop, probably from someplace like Havana. It was heading toward Idlewild, hardly higher than we were, as I tapped him on the shoulder.

  “I didn’t know celebrities went to the toilet,” I told him.

  He looked at me tolerantly. “Matter of fact, I was just calling Janet,” he said. “Anyway, how are things going with you, Fred? You’ve been publishing a lot of books. How many, exactly?”

  I gave him an honest answer. “I don’t exactly know. I used to keep a list. I’d write the name and date and publisher for each new book on the wall of my office-but then my wife painted over the wall and I lost my list.”

  “Approximately how many?”

  “Over a hundred, anyway. Depends what you count. The novels, the short-story collections, the nonfiction books”

  “Over a hundred,” he said. “And some of them have been dramatized, and book-clubbed, and translated into foreign languages?” He pursed his lips and thought for a moment. “I guess you’re happy about the way your life has gone?”

  “Well, sure,” I said. “Why wouldn’t I be?” And then I gave him another look, because there was something about his tone that startled me. “What are you saying, Eye? Aren’t you?”

  “Of course I am!” he said quickly. “Only-well, to tell you the truth, there’s just one thing. Every once in a while I find myself thinking that if things had gone a different way, I might’ve been a pretty successful writer.”

  Plato’s Cave

  by Poul Anderson

  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.

  The message reached Earth as a set of shortwave pulses. A communications satellite relayed it, along with hundreds more, to a groundside clearing station. Since it designated itself private, the station passed it directly on to its recipient, the global headquar
ters of the United States Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation. There a computer programmed with its highly secret code converted digital signals to sight and sound. An image leaped into being, so three-dimensionally complete that startlement brought a gasp from Henry Matsumoto.

  The robot shown was no surprise-humanoid but large, bulkily armored, intended for hard labor under tricky conditions. The background, though, was spectacular. Nothing blocked that from view but a couple of structural members. Needing no air, drink, food, little of anything except infrequent refuelings, robots when by themselves traveled in spacecraft quite accurately describable as “barebones. “ At one edge of the screen, a slice of Jupiter’s disc glowed huge, its tawniness swirled with clouds and spotted with storms that could have swallowed Earth whole. Near the lower edge was a glimpse of Io. The sights flitted swiftly past, for the ship was in close orbit around the moon, but the plume of one volcanic outburst upon it dominated the desolation for just this instant, geyserlike above a furious sulfury spout.

  The young technician was doubly shaken because the apparition was so unexpected. He had merely been taking his turn as monitor, relieving the tedium with a book. No message had come in for weeks other than regular “All’s well” tokens. What the hell had gone wrong?

  A deep voice rolled over him. It was synthesized; in airlessness, the speaker directly modulated a radio wave. “Robot DGR-36 reporting from Io. Robot JK-7 has suspended operations-prospecting, mining, transportation, beneficiation, all work. When my crew and I landed to take on the next load of ore, we found every machine and subordinate robot idle. JK-7 himself was not present, but spoke to me from the hills behind the site. He declared that he was acting under strict orders from a human, to the effect that this undertaking is dangerous and must be terminated. I deemed it best that we return to orbit and await instructions. “

  “M-m-my God,” Matsumoto stammered. “Hold on. Stay quiet. “

  At the present configuration of the planets, his order would take some forty minutes to arrive. However, anticipating that the first person he reached would be a junior, DGR-36 had already gone immobile. Matsumoto swung about in his chair and frantically punched the intercom.

  He needed an outside line, local time being well past ordinary working hours, but soon Philip Hillkowitz, technological chief of Project Io, was in the little office. Hillkowitz in his turn had called Alfred Lanning, general director of research, who arrived almost on his heels. The two men stared at the image of the robot, and then at each other, for what seemed to Matsumoto a very long while.

  “Has it happened in spite of everything?” Hillkowitz whispered. “Can the radiation really have driven Jack insane?”

  Lanning’s tufted brows drew together. “I shouldn’t have to remind you,” he snapped, “tests showed his shielding adequate against a hundred years of continuous exposure.”

  “Yes, yes, yes. But those hellish conditions-” Hillkowitz addressed the robot. “Edgar, did you notice any other abnormality when you were on the ground? For example, did metal seem pitted or corroded?”

  “Not a bad question,” Lanning said. “But in the eighty minutes till we hear the answer, we’d better think up a system for learning more, faster. “

  The officers dismissed Matsumoto, enjoining him to let out no hint of trouble; and they canceled subsequent vigils. Inevitably, this would start rumors by itself. While they waited, they sent out after coffee, speculated fruitlessly, paced, overloaded the air conditioning with smoke.

  “No, sir,” DGR-36 replied. “I took it upon myself to examine equipment and robots that were present. No trace of mechanical, chemical, or radiation damage was apparent to my sensors.“

  “Good lad,” Lanning muttered. He had helped design a considerable degree of initiative into yonder model.

  “I spoke with the other robots,” DGR-36 continued, “but they could only tell me that JK-7 had directed them to stop work. I had no authority to order them back, and in any event, as I understand the situation, only JK-7 can successfully supervise them. I urged him to resume operations, but he stated that he was under directions that took precedence over all others, whereupon he broke contact. “ Again he turned into a statue.

  “Have you observed any activity since?” Hillkowitz asked.

  “This settles it,” Lanning said to him. “We’ve got to get hold of Susan Calvin.”

  “What, already? Uh, yes, she can better judge derangement than either of us, no doubt, but-I mean, this time lag, and Jack himself out of touch-we can’t dispatch her to the scene.”

  “No, I expect we’ll want, hm, Powell and Donovan; they’re probably our best field operatives. But Calvin is the one to decide that. “

  Lanning keyed for her home. Presently a voice emerged waspish: “Well, what do you want? Who is there? If your reason for rousing me out of bed isn’t excellent, you will regret it.”

  “Phil Hillkowitz and myself,” Lanning said. “Look, you’ve got to get down here right away. We have a crisis on Io. I don’t dare tell you more except in person. “

  “Afraid of electronic eavesdroppers? How melodramatic!”

  “Well, maybe unlikely, but Project Io is in trouble. You know how much it means, and how determined the opposition is.”

  “I also know how that room you’re in must smell by now,” retorted the robopsychologist. “Whistle up some of your technies and have me patched in on a properly sealed circuit. Full audiovisual, and direct access to the main databank. Given the transmission lag, they’ll have ample time if they go about it competently.”

  Thus, after a while, the men saw her image, primly erect in a straight-backed chair, sipping tea, across from the robot’s.

  “We are not equipped to follow the actions of individuals when we are in space,” DGR-36 answered. “We have noticed no obvious movements, at least thus far.”

  “I realize you don’t have perfect memory either,” Calvin said, “but I want you, Edgar, to tell me, as best you can-don’t be in a hurry; examine your recollections carefully-tell me precisely what motivation JK-7 gave you. In particular, what did he tell you about this human who allegedly appeared to him and ordered him to halt work?”

  She signaled for a break in transmission to Jupiter and turned her attention back Earthward. “ ‘Appeared to’ is the right wording,” Hillkowitz said, sighing. His own gaze went elsewhere, as if to look through walls and across space. He might have been thinking, reviewing, though he had lived with this from its origins: None of us can survive there. Io is deep in Jupiter’s magnetosphere. The trapped charged particles would doom us within minutes, unless we were inside shielding so thick as to leave us helpless. Not to mention the cold, or vacuum barely softened by poisonous volcanic spewings. We can make robots immune to these and even guard the positronic brain so well that the radiation does not ruin it. Or so we thought. Lanning and I, our team, we labored long on the task. And afterward our engineers did, for two years in the safer outer reaches of the Jovian System, patiently guiding the construction on Io and the beginning of operations. But they could only communicate with Jake, and he with them, by radio and laser. At such times he perceived them and whatever they wished to show him; his communicator decoded the signals and he saw the images, heard the voices, inside that head of his. What now has he seen and heard, what new ghost came to him in that inferno where he toiled?

  “Precision is obviously essential,” Calvin declared. “Now, gentlemen, I shall call up the files on this project and study them for about one hour.” Her screen went blank…

  “I might do the same,” Lanning said. “You needn’t, Phil. Io’s been your exclusive concern. Why don’t you catch a catnap?”

  “Lord,” mumbled Hillkowitz, “I wish I could.”

  The simulacrum of Calvin was back when promised, but told the men simply, “No comment, yet,” and waited with hands folded in lap. Even when that of the robot stirred, hers did not. But his speech brought her too out of her chair.

  “Yes, ma ‘m. See
ing the site idled, hardly any ore waiting, and JK-7 absent, I broadcast a call and got an audio reply which I sensed as emanating from somewhere in the hills. He maintained that he had stopped work on command of a human who explained that it threatened the entire human race. He declined to go into detail, except that when I asked if he would at least identify this human, he told me it was the Emperor Napoleon.”

  As low in mass and high in power as was compatible with life support, courier ship De/fin could have made Jupiter in less than four days. Svend Borup would have medicated himself against the effects of such an acceleration and spent much of the time happily contemplating the hardship bonus due him. Unfortunately, Gregory Powell and Michael Donovan would not have arrived fit to get busy. At a steady one gravity, boost and deboost, the crossing still took under a week, and meanwhile U.S. Robots’s ace troubleshooters could become familiar with the vast store of background material given them.

  When first they came up for air, at the first meal en route, Borup naturally asked them what was going on. “I was told almost nothing,” he said in his soft Danish accent. “The whole went so fast. They waved a contract at me, but it also says no more than that I take you to Jupiter and there help you as is needed. “ The owner-captain was a stocky, balding man whose waistline might be due in part to frequent indulgence in pretzel-shaped sugar cookies from his homeland.

  “Well, they had plenty reason to hurry,” Donovan answered. “Explanations could wait. Whatever’s the matter, maybe we can fix it-unless we get there too late. Anyhow, the government can’t afford-” He broke off, uncertain whether he should reveal more. Ole, one of the two robots that were the crew, helped him by entering the saloon and setting bowls of pea soup before the men. Knud, the other, was on watch, slight though the chance was of anything happening which the ship’s automatics couldn’t handle.