Asimov’s Future History Volume 8

by Isaac Asimov

  “But wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me put this story in linear order, okay?” Derec gave Avery a questioning stare; Avery didn’t respond, so Derec finished off the last of his coffee and caught his breath.

  “Now, this whole thing starts with that asteroid you dumped me on after you wiped my memory. You remember that asteroid?”

  Avery looked down. “I — I was insane then, Derec,” he said softly. “I’m not sure what I remember and what I hallucinated.”

  “Well, I was still trying to figure out your asteroid when Aranimas showed up and started shooting the thing to pieces. You see, there’s three things the Erani don’t have: a fleet of hyperdrive ships, a key to Perihelion, and a glimmer of understanding about robotics. They have a slave culture, you see, and since organic slaves are free for the taking, they’ve had no incentive to develop mechanical ones.

  “On the other hand, while they don’t know a thing about robotics, they apparently know a lot more about hyperwave than we do. Aranimas was able to identify and track the hyperwave interference caused by a key to Perihelion.”

  Derec abruptly realized that he’d been getting excited and lowered his voice. “That’s what brought him to the asteroid. Once there, I guess he saw all those robots and decided to do a little old-fashioned Erani slave-raiding. It’d never occurred to him that the robots would self-destruct instead of surrendering. Capturing me was just an accidental bonus.

  “Not that he was happy about it. Apparently he’s been skulking around human space for a few years, hijacking the occasional ship and trying to pick up robots. When he captured me he was convinced that I’d cheated him out of a good load of slaves, and he —” Derec faltered a moment and winced at the memory of the torture he’d suffered at Aranimas’s hands. “Let’s just leave it at that, okay?” Derec found another cracker, loaded it up with Magellanic fromage, and resumed talking around the mouthful of cheese.

  “Wolruf, as I said, was part of the crew. Ariel was a prisoner, although I didn’t find that out for a while. Mandelbrot was a collection of junk parts in a locker.”

  Avery interrupted again. “Mandelbrot? Isn’t he at least three-quarters Capek, Ariel’s old valet robot from back on Aurora?”

  Derec scowled at Avery. “Beats me. You gave me amnesia, remember?”

  “Sorry. I forgot.” Derec took another bite of the cracker and continued. “Dad, I don’t know what kind of crazy experiment you really had in mind when you dumped me on that asteroid —”

  “I’m not sure I remember either,” Avery muttered, “although I think I remember trying to explain it. But that may have been an hallucination. I was crazy.”

  “— but Aranimas had been doing his share to foul it up. By the time we got away from him, I had no memory, of course, and Ariel was losing hers to the amnemonic plague. I’d cobbled together Mandelbrot and programmed him with a pretty restrictive definition of human, which may have influenced some of the Robot City developments along that line. And Wolruf had finally gotten fed up with the Erani and decided to jump ship. With her help we got away while Aranimas was on a raid on a Spacer station, and then we had to steal the key to Perihelion back from the robots before we could use it to escape — and that’s how we got. to Robot City.”

  Avery was silent. Derec ran his fingers through his greasy hair, leaned forward, and shook his head.

  “Y’know, Dad, as experiments go, yours didn’t go too well.”

  Avery sighed and nodded. “No. No, it didn’t, son, and maybe someday I’ll be able to apologize for putting you through it. But right now it’s just too big, and I have too much trouble coming to grips with the idea that I actually did that to you. I’m sorry.” Then an idea hit Avery, and he frowned.

  “But before I get too sorry, I’d like to remind you that you still haven’t answered my main question: Why is Aranimas still trying to kill you?”

  Derec shrugged. “An Erani never forgets.” He helped himself to the last cracker and then looked at his terminal screen. “Oops. We’re just about done yaccing. Better finish that coffee and get back to work.”

  “Okay.” Avery hurriedly drained the cup, tossed it into the disposal chute, and then slipped into his chair.

  Derec checked his screen again and turned to Avery. “Seriously, Aranimas is desperate for robots. That’s why he follows me, I think; he knows that wherever I go, there are bound to be lots of robots.

  “I don’t think he can comprehend the Three Laws, though. I mean, he understands the words well enough, but I think the idea that robots simply can’t hurt humans is just too alien a concept for him. Maybe it’s too alien for any Erani.” Derec stole a sidelong glance at his terminal, and quickly spun back to Avery to squeeze one last thought in.

  “So here’s an idea: If we ever find out where the Erani home world is, what do you say we drop a half-dozen Robot Cities on it? That ought to drive those ugly clowns just absolutely crazy...

  Avery didn’t have time to respond. The two data terminals chimed simultaneously, then blanked and displayed the final results of the yacc.

  Both Avery and Derec immediately switched into zombie programmer mode.

  “Any lint?”

  “No, it’s clean.”

  “Okay, let’s grep gen_shape.”

  “Grepping.”

  “A053?”

  “15.”

  “A0C0?”

  “AF.”

  “Very good. Nice it.”

  “Niced with a tee.”

  “Thanks, I forgot about that. Iostat?”

  Derec paused a moment to page through several screens of data. “Clean, green, and five by five. I think it worked.”

  “Okay, let’s finish it. Nohup.”

  “Nohupped.”

  “Chown gen-shape.”

  “Chowned.”

  Avery leaned back in his chair and crossed his fingers. “Here goes. I am putting ixform to sleep. Any floating children?”

  Derec scrutinized his screen. “No-no, we’re clear. No children floating in the pipe.”

  Avery suddenly realized that he’d been holding his breath. “Well! I think we’ve got it. Do you want to put it to the test?”

  Derec smiled and waved an open hand at his father. “You, sir, may have the honor.”

  “Okay.” Avery pushed his chair back from the terminal, tented his fingers, and frowned. Then he cleared his throat, raised his eyes to the ceiling, and said in a loud, clear voice: “Gosh, Derec, I think I need to use the Personal.” Both of them locked their stares on Avery’s chair.

  Nothing happened. No softening around the edges; no reconfiguration of the seatpad. For over a minute they both held their breaths, waiting to see if the chair was going to reconfigure itself.

  It remained a chair.

  “Yahoo!” Derec raised his fists in a victorious gesture, and Avery cracked into a broad, beaming smile. “Dad, we did it! We’ve cut out the autonomic shape-changing!”

  Avery allowed himself another smile and then sobered. “We’re halfway there, Derec. We made the changes we wanted. Now let’s make sure that we haven’t done any other

  damage in the process.” He turned away from Derec, looked up at the ceiling, and loudly said, “Ship, make this chair two inches higher.”

  Smoothly and silently, as if it were a robobarber’s chair, the seat rose two inches. Avery looked at Derec with a tight smile on his face and a merry twinkle in his eye. “Son, we’ve cut out the autonomic routines, but we’ve kept the voluntary control intact. Now that is what I call a success.” He hesitated a moment and then impulsively stuck out a hand to Derec.

  For a moment, Avery felt terribly uncertain and insecure. Derec was looking at the hand as if he expected to find a joybuzzer. Then he switched to looking Avery straight in the eye, with an unreadable expression on his face.

  And then he smiled, reached over, and shook his father’s hand. “Congratulations, Dad.”

  “Thanks, son.”

  The moment passed. Th
ey broke off the handshake, both looking a little sheepish about their undisciplined display of raw emotion, and went back to their respective terminal displays.

  “You know,” Derec said at last, “I’m beginning to feel that I really understand this polymorphism business.”

  “That’s just what I was thinking,” Avery agreed.

  “I mean, look at that pipe. It’s totally tubular.”

  “Totally.”

  The two of them studied their displays a while longer, and then Derec spoke up. “You know, as long as we’re on such a good roll, we really should find something else to work on.”

  “I quite agree.”

  “Got any ideas?”

  A wicked smile appeared on Avery’s face. He tried to suppress it, but it could not be denied, so he turned it on Derec. “Where did you say Lucius II was?”

  Derec was aghast. “Dad! You promised you’d leave those robots —” Then he realized that Avery was teasing him and broke into a laugh. Avery joined him.

  “I think maybe we’ve done enough for now,” Avery said when they’d stopped laughing.

  “I think maybe you’re right.” Derec yawned, rubbed his eyes, and gave the robotics lab one more once-over. “What do you say we catch some shut-eye?”

  “An excellent idea.” Avery looked up at the ceiling and raised his voice again. “Ship, convert these chairs into bunks, and then dim the lights.” Smoothly and silently, the chairs flowed into their new shapes.

  Derec didn’t even get out of his chair. He simply kicked off his shoes, loosened his tunic buttons, and stretched out full-length on the bunk. “G’night, Dad,” he mumbled. The lights in the cabin dimmed down, and within a few minutes Derec’s breathing had shifted into the steady rhythm of sleep.

  Dr. Avery watched his son until even the phosphorescent glow of the terminal displays had faded to pitch blackness. Then he kicked off his own shoes, removed his lab coat, and stretched out on his bunk.

  “Nighty-night, Davey,” he whispered.

  Chapter 13

  JANET

  A COOL SPRING morning in Robot City. The black limousine rolled swiftly through the empty streets, nearly silent save for the soft thrumming of its electric motor and the gentle hiss of rubberoid tires on pavement. Inside the vehicle, Janet Anastasi sat in the passenger compartment, her nose buried in a sheaf of fax pages, while Basalom sat in the chauffeur’s compartment, jacked into the vehicle’s master control panel, driving.

  One of the advantages of being a robot with telesensory feeds was that Basalom could rotate his head 180 degrees and still keep an eye on the road. Confident that the vehicle was safely under control, Basalom swiveled around to look at Dr. Anastasi. He allocated every third nanosecond to introspection.

  She certainly seems happier now that she’s stopped sleeping in the lander and has taken an apartment in the city. Briefly switching to thermographic vision, he felt a small glow of satisfaction in the part of his brain that Dr. Anastasi had taken to calling his “mother hen” circuit. Dr. Anastasi’s heat contours were a calm, relaxed study in blues and greens. There were no indicators of unpredictable endocrine activity, no hints of dangerous blood pressure or cardiac rate changes. And it’s been 52 hours since her last emotional outburst, Basalom noted with some pride. Yes, she’s definitely happier now that she’s adapting to the city.

  Sure, mac, the limousine interjected, give the lady all the credit. Why don’cha ever notice how the city is adapting to her?

  Will you kindly keep out of my private thoughts? Basalom asked, not for the first time.

  Can’t help it, Mac, the car answered. You go around jacking your main data bus into other folk’s sensory feeds, your thought stream’s gonna become a party line.

  Still, you could have the decency to pretend that you aren’t listening.

  Yeah, I could, the car said. And on the other tire, if it bugs you that much, you could go back to letting me drive. After all, I am Personal Vehicle One.

  You are a pile of steel and plastic with the simulated personality of a twentieth-century Chicago cabbie, Basalom corrected archly, and I will no longer tolerate your verbal abuse of Dr. Anastasi.

  Suit yourself, Mac. I get recharged no matter who’s driving. The car’s positronic brain went back into idle mode, and Basalom once more resumed the task of trying to create a private security partition in his brain.

  Erecting an encrypted buffer without verbally thinking about how he was doing it was a ticklish job, though. When he thought that he’d succeeded, he moved the stack of pointers that represented his consciousness into the secured partition and initiated a new thought stream. What in the name of Wendell Avery were the supervisors thinking of when they decided to create this mass of argumentative positrons, anyhow?

  They were thinking of what Dr. Anastasi said in Tunnel Station #I 7, Personal Vehicle One answered, as clearly as ever. As she was returning via tunnel to the spaceport after her first meeting with Central, she said-and I quote: “Frost, Basalom, look at what the air blast has done to my hair. Why can’t they have some decent groundcars in this city?” She had but to speak, and voila! I was created.

  Basalom gave up in defeat. Yes, you certainly were. But tell me, whatever possessed them to decide to give you a simulated personality?

  A slight drop in voltage on pin 16-the positronic equivalent of a shrug-came through the data bus. Dunno. Humans are rare here, all right? Guess they thought the doc might be happier with a little simulated companionship.

  “Well,” Basalom said out loud, “they got that wrong.”

  In the back seat, Dr. Anastasi peered over the top edge of the papers she was reading. “Did you say something to me, Basalom?”

  “No, madam. I was exchanging information with the vehicle’s onboard computer.”

  “Oh. Very well.” She looked back to the papers and then glanced out the side window. ‘. Basalom? How much longer ‘til we get to the Compass Tower?”

  Basalom called up an internal image of the city map, plotted their present position, and factored in the rate at which they were traveling.,. Approximately five minutes and twenty-three seconds, madam.”

  I know a shortcut, Personal Vehicle One broke in on the data bus.

  I have had enough of your “shortcuts,” Basalom answered.

  But this one’s really simple, the car protested. All you gotta do is turn east at the gasket factory —

  The Compass Tower is to our south and west, Basalom pointed out.

  Trust me. Hang a left at the gasket factory, go two blocks over, then up the freight ramp and catch the #204 southbound slidewalk —

  You want me to drive on the slidewalk? Basalom’s shock was expressed as a sudden surge in amplitude on bus circuits 24 and 57.

  Ow! Not so loud! Yeah, you drive on the slidewalk. There’s a bend to the west in about two kilometers; you get on here and it’s a nonstop shot to the tower plus you pick up 25 KPH from the moving pavement. What do you think? Neat, eh?

  Basalom managed to redirect what he was thinking into a null buffer and flush it before Personal Vehicle I had a chance to intercept the words.

  The limousine rolled on. A few blocks later, Janet folded the sheet she was reading, pursed her lips, and frowned.

  “Basalom?”

  “Yes, madam?”

  “You’ve been in fairly frequent contact with the city robots over the last few days, haven’t you?”

  “The term ‘frequent’ is an imprecise expression, madam. I have had 124 separate audio and commlink conversations at intervals ranging from 15 picoseconds to 6 hours.”

  “Oh. Well, in your conversations, have you noticed that the robots seem a little... odd?”

  “‘Odd’ is a judgmental term, madam. In order to determine that behavior is odd, you must first establish a base level of normal behavior against which to judge.”

  Janet wrinkled her nose in a frown. “I don’t understand.”

  “Madam, since we have arrived here I have been unab
le to determine what is ‘normal’ behavior for these robots. Hence I am unable to adjudge anything as being ‘odd.’”

  Dr. Anastasi smiled and shook her head. “I see. Serves me right for asking a vague question. Let’s try again.

  “Basalom, in your conversations with the local robots, have you noticed anything that might lead you to believe that the city supervisors have developed a sense of humor?”

  Basalom was silent a moment as he sorted through all his recorded sense impressions, searching for correlating patterns.

  Okay, it’s coming up, the limousine broke in. Left at the next corner. Basalom ignored the data stream and tried to concentrate on carrying out Dr. Anastasi’s instructions.

  “Madam, while I would prefer to build my judgment on a larger experience base —”

  Hey, what’s the matter with you? You’re not slowing down.

  “Based on the observations that I have made to date —”

  It’s this corner. That big circular building is the gasket factory.

  “I must conclude that the city supervisors have not developed a sense of humor —”

  Left! Oh, fer cryin’ out loud, you missed the turn.

  “But I hasten to add that many of the city robots have developed significant aberrations and eccentricities.”

  For a moment there was blessed silence on the data bus. Then the limousine’s thought stream kicked back in. Oh, so I’m eccentric, am I? Well let’s just see how you like handling this rig alone. There was a brief surge of DC voltage accompanied by a drop in positronic potentials across the entire width of the data bus. Basalom tried a few exploratory probe pulses and was surprised to come to an inescapable conclusion: Personal Vehicle One had physically switched itself out of the data bus.

  Basalom fired off one more round of sampling pulses and then allowed himself a moment of pleasure. What a pity 1 didn’t think of this three days ago!

  He checked his realtime clock. Close to a quarter-second had elapsed since he’d delivered his findings to Dr. Anastasi, and she was preparing to make a response.

  “Darn. I was hoping you’d say yes.” She picked up the sheaf of fax pages and waved them at Basalom. “If you’d said that the supervisors were capable of intentional humor, I’d say that this was a pretty good practical joke.”