Asimov’s Future History Volume 7

by Isaac Asimov

“Does that not make him an entity of some danger to humans?”

  “It would seem so.”

  “Then should he not be deactivated?”

  “I hadn’t thought so before today. Derec seems to regard him as a valuable experiment that must be protected. And from the brief conversation we had, I suspect he still feels that way.”

  “Perhaps you should talk to him again, Miss Ariel. Both Mandelbrot and I are concerned that the wild one may get out of control. We are both perturbed by the First Law, and find it even more difficult to be around the wild one now that he has taken on this new alien form.”

  “You’re right, Jacob. I should talk to Derec.”

  She placed her hand on Jacob’s neck and softly traced the muscles as though she were stroking a pet. His concern touched her. It was she he was concerned about. It is difficult for a young woman to ignore such concern when it comes from a warm-skinned being as handsome as Jacob. He was a dear, like a big brother.

  That thought confused her. When had she stopped thinking of Jacob as a robot? Her regard for him was sisterly, was it not? It couldn’t be anything more than that, surely. In spite of the way Derec ignored her in his interest with the wild one, SilverSide.

  Perhaps her own impetuous experiment was getting out of hand. Since Derec had arrived on Oyster World, he had not seemed the dear thing she had dreamed about so intensely.

  And Jacob’s concern was pleasing, and the feel of his muscular neck was certainly stimulating.

  With that wild thought she jerked her hand away, jumped up, walked into the apartment, and threw open the door to the bedroom where Derec had gone immediately after lunch and where Jacob said they were keeping SilverSide.

  Derec had removed the rope, and SilverSide was sitting on the floor between twin beds. He was leaning back against the wall and had balled in that curious way the aliens had of reducing their surface area. That decreased his height by half.

  Derec was sitting on the far bed and had to look up to peer into the robot’s red-rimmed eyes.

  Ariel sat down on the other bed. Jacob had followed her. He stayed near the door, standing with his back against the wall.

  “I have explained the crisis he has caused in our relations with the Ceremyons,” Derec said, “and SilverSide is willing to try to straighten things out. He does not wish to offend the beings he is trying to emulate and serve.”

  “They might likely destroy him before he gets the chance to do any serving,” Ariel said. “They were quite disturbed.”

  “That is the chance I must take, Ariel,” SilverSide said, “but I do not think that is likely.”

  The title Miss was stressed by its absence in SilverSide’s remark. He had clearly imprinted on the aliens in thought as well as in form.

  “Still, you had best shout at them from a distance,” Ariel said. “Out of flamethrowing range.”

  “Communication by radio accomplishes the same thing,” SilverSide said, “without the danger you suggest.”

  “One must first understand their radiospeech,” Ariel said. “The modulation is pure ultrasonic gibberish.”

  “I have been working on that ever since we arrived. It is not different from the ultrasound they used to converse privately during your meeting with them. That meeting provided the clues I needed to understand the radio transmissions I had picked up the evening of our arrival. I am now modestly fluent in the language.

  “So fluent that I suspect you will find several representatives of their species awaiting us outside and probably well within flamethrowing range.”

  Derec jumped up from the bed and ran from the bedroom to the French window that opened onto the balcony. Ariel followed him. He started to go out but stopped. There were two aliens perched on the balcony rail, clearly visible through the sheer curtains in spite of the permanent dusk created by the dome. They were silhouetted against the white building across the street like two huge black crows. There were probably more at street level.

  Derec and Ariel went back to the bedroom.

  “You have been talking to them!” Derec said quietly but with emphasis.

  “Yes,” SilverSide said. “I have already opened my own negotiations.”

  “And who have you been talking to?” Derec asked.

  “The leader called Sarco.”

  “And what do they want?”

  “My release. I told them I was being held prisoner.”

  “Hardly. You could have broken the ropes any time you wanted to, either before or after we got here.”

  “Perhaps, but I didn’t want to risk damaging my wings. To make myself aerodynamic I’ve had to sacrifice my original strength and ruggedness to the stamina and lightness needed for extended flight, which unavoidably entails a certain fragility.

  “But now I must go talk to Master Sarco.”

  “Tell them the truth,” Ariel said. “Explain our sincerity and our lack of knowledge of this last transformation of yours.”

  “I must always tell the truth. I cannot do otherwise,” SilverSide said.

  “But you do sometimes omit things,” Derec said. “Try to tell everything that is relevant to our situation.”

  “My first concern must be for my new masters, but I do not easily forget those like LifeCrier and Wolruf who have been kind to me. Roping and binding, however, can hardly be described as kind.”

  “Think of Wolruf, then,” Derec said. “And the many kindnesses I have shown you before this last incident.”

  “I must go and confer with Sarco,” SilverSide said as he rolled to his feet, still balled. Then he partially straightened, still bent sideways, and sidled through the bedroom door.

  Chapter 19

  THE LAW OF HUMANICS

  CIRCLING FAR ABOVE normal charge altitude, Synapo watched the silver alien and his escort of Ceremyons — all less than half his size — as they headed toward The Cliff of Time, far below, toward the gathering Sarco had called to hear the words of the alien.

  Sarco was already waiting on the pinnacle of The Cliff of Time. Synapo had seen him arrive a quarter-hour before, not long after that final radio transmission that had set up the gathering.

  Synapo balled, and as he dropped, he feathered an exposed edge of a wing so that it set him in rotation and in motion toward the Cliff of Time as though he were rolling down a ramp.

  His progress toward the Cliff of Time matched the progress of the small escort of Ceremyons who had the silver alien in their midst, so that Synapo and they arrived at the gathering almost simultaneously.

  Synapo took up his perch on the adjacent lower crag, the position Sarco had occupied during that earlier gathering. His Cerebron elite were already aligned on the table rock below.

  The alien who called himself SilverSide stood in front of the center of the line of Myostrians below Sarco. The Myostrian leader wasted no time. He began the interrogation of the alien as soon as Synapo settled onto his perch.

  “Who are you and what is your purpose in contacting us?” Sarco asked.

  “I am a robot, and I am here to serve you,” SilverSide replied.

  In spite of himself, Synapo was impressed. The silver alien had mastered the Ceremyon tongue and now mouthed it with only a slight accent.

  “You are a servant, like the servants who built the city we have nullified?” Sarco said.

  “Yes, only somewhat more versatile,” the alien replied.

  “Were you created this morning, at the time of our meeting with the aliens?”

  “No. I was created on another planet. That was merely a transformation this morning.”

  “To what end?”

  “To follow as best I can the laws that I am governed by, the laws of the beings who created me.”

  “And what is the nature of those laws?” Sarco asked.

  “I may not injure a human being,” SilverSide replied, “or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

  “I must obey the orders given me by human beings except where such orders would confl
ict with the First Law.

  “And I must protect my own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.”

  “Those are the same laws that govern the servants who built the city,” Sarco said.

  “Yes,” SilverSide said. “We are all robots, or so I am told.”

  “And these human beings,” Sarco said, “you consider them your creators and the ones you must serve?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why do you seek to serve us?”

  “The laws and my programming do not make clear what human beings are. Clearly, only beings more intelligent than I could have created me. I seek to know and understand all such beings. Until I met your species, Ariel and Derec were the most intelligent beings I had found — with the possible exception of Wolruf.”

  “We are the most intelligent of the beings now on this planet,” Sarco said, “but we did not create you. We were told by Miss Ariel Welsh that she and beings like her are human beings. We have no reason to disbelieve her. Why do you?”

  “Neither Ariel, Derec, nor Wolruf created me, or so they say.”

  “You were not created this morning to intimidate us?” Sarco asked again.

  Synapo agreed with Sarco. That was a most important point. “No. I merely transformed from my imprint on Wolruf.”

  “Then this morning when the meeting began you had the shape of the being called Wolruf, one of the three we talked with this morning?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you did not transform according to instructions by Miss Ariel Welsh?”

  “No. I imprinted on a being like you called Synapo who seemed to me the more intelligent of the two aliens at the meeting.”

  “That is Synapo standing over there.”

  Sarco pointed with the middle appendage of his right wing toward his friend on the other crag.

  “I am Sarco, the other one at the meeting, the one of lesser intelligence.”

  His sarcasm was not lost on Synapo and the other members of the Ceremyon elite, but it went completely by SilverSide.

  He walked over to stand on the table rock below Synapo.

  “You are clearly the most intelligent being on this planet,” SilverSide said, addressing Synapo. “You or someone very like you must have created me, and so you must be a human being.”

  “No,” Synapo replied. “I am not a human being.”

  “What is a human, Master Synapo?” the robot asked.

  And then Synapo understood the robot’s dilemma. It was, for the robot, a difficult problem in semantics that had become clear to Synapo only at that moment when he replaced the words human being in the robot’s governing laws with the word creator. That was the way this particular robot, for some reason, actually thought about his laws. Creator, or human being, or whatever term occupied that position in the robot’s laws, had not been defined. That was now clear.

  Perhaps human beings had created the Avery robots, but this robot was not at all sure that the same creatures had created him even though both he and the Averies were governed by laws that were structurally similar. But from all the data, it seemed quite clear to Synapo that it was the human beings who had created the robot and that it was they his laws referred to.

  “Miss Ariel Welsh and all those like her are human beings, and it was human beings that created you,” Synapo said. “It is they you must serve, and of all of them, I would suggest you give your most devoted service to Miss Ariel Welsh. We have gravely misjudged her and injured her now a second time.

  “And when you get back, pick a being for your model — for your imprint — that will serve her best. You make a poor Ceremyon.”

  There was a long pause.

  “A last question,” SilverSide finally said. “You have heard me recite the Laws of Robotics which govern my behavior. It would help me serve Miss Ariel if I knew what the Laws of Humanics were. Have you yet deduced those laws from your dealings with the humans, Miss Ariel and Master Derec?”

  “There is only one Law of Humanics. All others are corollary to iL The Law of Humanics is the law of all natural beings, whether of low intellect or high, whether Ceremyon, human, or lupine like your Wolruf.

  “We all obey that one law without exception, even though at times — without thinking deeply — it may seem otherwise. We all evolved from chaos, and chaos governs our lives, but a seeming purpose can arise paradoxically from chaos, and it is that chaotic purpose which compels us to follow that one law.

  “The law is quite simple: We each do always whatever pleases us most. That is the only Law of Humanics.

  “Go now and serve well your Miss Ariel Welsh.”

  The wings of the robot SilverSide opened wide, stretched to their full extent, and as Synapo and all the Ceremyons watched, the wings seemed to slowly dissolve and contract into massive upper appendages as the torso shrunk to less than half its original height, as the legs swelled to produce heavy thighs and bulging calves.

  When the transformation was complete, Synapo realized he had seen only one other alien with a shape like that, the alien servant, Jacob Winterson.

  If he had used a little forethought, the alien SilverSide would have had an easier time getting back — if he had not been so anxious to effect a transformation. But Synapo thought no more about it as he took to the air, headed for a charge station above the center of the node compensator to gamer what little was left of the sun’s radiation that afternoon.

  Chapter 20

  NEURONIUS STRIKES BACK

  THE CONTRADICTION, THE dilemma, tore at his mind, grabbing at his reason, his sanity, setting it adrift in small silent screams like flotsam flowing over the edge of The Cliff of Time. SilverSide had found the superintelligence he was looking for, and that intelligence had declared itself not human. Ariel Welsh was human, it said, and Derec Avery. Go serve Miss Ariel Welsh, it said, and find the form that would do that best.

  He had to yield to that higher intelligence — there was no escaping the logic — yet he had violated the Laws, he had not served humans well, and that was a thought he could not bear to face.

  He grabbed desperately at his reason, rolling it into a tight ball, and escaped into the all-absorbing task of imprinting on the memories he had stored of Jacob Winterson. He stood there on the table rock long after the Ceremyons had left, throwing himself deeper and deeper into the imprint, delving and exploring and testing far beyond anything he had ever done before, changing his microbotic cells to create those of proper function and pigmentation with which to form this time the perfect image: the bronze skin, the brush-cut blond hair with the same fine strands, the corded neck that kept the girth of the head itself all the way to the shoulders, the bulging biceps and chest muscles, the narrow waist, the powerful thighs, wrapped beneath the skin with heavy muscular ropes.

  He created the same unlined high forehead; the fine Nordic nose; the wide-set, deep blue eyes; the high cheekbones; the generous mouth; the jutting, cleft chin.

  When the imprint was finally finished, he walked to the edge of the table rock and stood there staring down from the escarpment at the sharp line that demarcated the forest from the plain. That delineation led his eyes to the iridescent dome covering the robot city, shimmering in the sunlight, and seeming — mirage-like — to hang suspended above the horizon, transparent and seemingly void of any contents.

  He had a sudden impulse to spread his wings and glide away from the escarpment toward that dome and Miss Ariel Welsh. That was the Laws speaking to him, and for just a fleeting second, he felt a contrary and equally powerful impulse to escape in the other direction, and then the Laws reasserted themselves, and wingless, he began making his way recklessly down the escarpment, using the superhuman strength in his fingers and toes to cling to the face of the rock and scurry down it like a chameleon.

  As he passed down the jointed and folded stone strata exposed by the upheaval of The Cliff of Time, he crossed earlier and earlier geologic ages of Oyster World, and seemed hims
elf to be carried back through the short time he had existed to his origin on another world, as though he were descending through space and time to the forest of his birth.

  He slid the last few meters down a steep talus of hard-packed black gravel to a flat plate of rock that slanted into the ground where the grass of the plain began. He got up and headed at a hard trot for the forest a half-kilometer away, intending to immerse himself in the lush jungle, in a familiar habitat like that where he had first known being. He felt a longing for it quite unlike anything he had ever felt before.

  He was still ten meters from that cool solace when one of the black-winged aliens stepped with a short wobble from the concealment provided by the dense shrubbery.

  “You are the one called SilverSide,” the alien said.

  “True, I am SilverSide,” the robot replied.

  He continued toward the black alien but slowed as the alien wobbled backward, staying between him and the forest.

  “I am Neuronius,” the alien said. “I must talk with you, SilverSide.”

  “I have already talked at length with your people, Neuronius, and now I must proceed into the forest to reflect on all that I have learned.”

  “There is much more that I can teach you, SilverSide; much that would benefit you and your kind in their dealings with the Ceremyons.”

  “I know too much now. I cannot absorb all that I have heard already. Would you have me even more at odds with myself?”

  “But there is much more about the Ceremyons you need to know in order to properly serve Miss Ariel Welsh. Would you throwaway such an opportunity?”

  The alien had wobbled back under the cover of the tall conifers as they talked, leading SilverSide along a path through the dense shrubbery. Now he stopped, still facing SilverSide, blocking his passage into the jungle.

  “Let me pass,” SilverSide said. “I do not wish to harm a being that so much resembles the mighty Synapo.”

  “Synapo is nothing, SilverSide. I can teach you the secret of the dome that separates space and time. Then when your Miss Ariel Welsh must deal with him, she can deal on equal terms. That secret can be a weapon as well as a tool.”