Asimov’s Future History Volume 7

by Isaac Asimov

  Standing on the other side of the desk, the Silversides and Wolruf were also entranced by Ariel’s version of the tale, although Eve had to ask frequent questions of Adam that he could not answer. She decided that the fairy godmother must be, like them, a shape-changer, and that was why she could do such marvelous things with pumpkins and farm animals.

  Ariel came to the end of her story and was about to say that the prince and Cinderella lived happily ever after, but she thought of the questions that the Silversides might ask her, especially about how a human pair could possibly live forever, even if they were long-lived Aurorans, and she swallowed the phrase and merely said that everything went nicely for the happy couple for the next few decades.

  When she stopped speaking, the tiny people looked eagerly at her, as if they wanted more. However, now that she had settled their anxieties, it was time to find out something more about them. But what? She had in front of her a bunch of minuscule human beings, apparently sentient, possibly (if Avery was right) android in nature, essentially a sophisticated version of the kind of mechanical toys she had played with as a child. Should she see if they could playa tin drum or walk stiff-legged like tin soldiers? Eve had said she had observed dancing in the ones at the vacant lot, and that this group had been performing some kind of ceremony.

  Ceremony, that was the key. Whatever life they had, whatever “civilization” they could develop in their short lives, it seemed that it all was tied in with ceremony.

  Carefully putting her hand down on the desk at a sufficient distance from where the group was gathered, Ariel began to trace out a small circle with the tip of her index finger. She hummed an old melody, a song about a woman whose lover kept going off to war, was eventually killed, then returned to her as a ghost. It had a plaintive sound, she knew, even when sung in her slightly out-of-tune voice.

  At first the group merely watched Ariel’s finger move around, then the leader stood up and made authoritative gestures to her followers. Joining her, they clasped hands, formed a circle, and began to dance around, slowly, to the rhythm of Ariel’s tune. Tears came to Ariel’s eyes as she watched them dance gracefully and with more than a touch of elegance. It was beautiful, both the dance itself and the fact that they had understood her so quickly and easily.

  She stopped tracing the circle and lifted her hand from the desktop. A moment later the dancers halted, too, looking up expectantly at Ariel, who nodded and returned her hand to the desk, this time tracing out a figure-eight with her finger. She moved her finger faster, and hummed a quicker-tempoed song, one about the happiness of frolicking in Auroran woods. (The Auroran songs made her feel nostalgic for her home, and briefly she wondered when she would ever return there. The way things were going, she might live the rest of her life confronting danger with Derec and desiring a more peaceful time with him.)

  The dancers reformed themselves into a line. With the leader in front, they began a quite lovely quickstep dance following the figure-eight with more precision than Ariel could with her finger. Tears now fell from her eyes, and Eve noticed them.

  “What is it, Mistress Ariel? Are you injured?”

  Ariel was touched by Eve’s First Law reaction. “No, I’m fine. I’ve always done this — bawled like a baby when I see anything done with any artistry. I mean, this is almost like dancing, ballet even, the way they move so delicately. Sometimes people think I’m reacting with sentimentality, but that’s not it at all. It’s just the way I respond to the beauty of it, even more the fact that such beauty is possible. Maybe it’s a kind of sentimentality, but it comes from admiration and not from tender feelings. You don’t understand very much of this, do you, Eve?”

  “No, I do not.”

  “Nor do I,” Dr. Avery said, stepping out — as usual — without warning from a hiding place. He had stepped through the doorway, which had been left open after the Silversides brought the desk through it. Ariel was so startled she didn’t know what to say, although she was already calculating how to make him stay So she could, as ordered, try to cure him.

  “If there is anything to your theories of art, Ariel, or to anybody’s theories, for that matter, it is not in intakes of breath at seeing something well-performed or sighs of admiration at a work well-executed. But that is unimportant to me, actually, since I don’t believe there is anything to theories of art. I believe imagination is a curse, unless it is used for applied science. Works of art are garbage unless they demonstrate a useful theorem.”

  Ariel, recalling Lucius’s sculpture called “Circuit Breaker,” the one authentic piece of art produced by a Robot City robot, and the doctor’s hatred of it, knew that Avery was speaking the truth. He truly despised artistic creations.

  “Was not that idea once called utilitarianism?” Eve asked.

  Avery seemed impressed. “My, she does look amazingly like you, Ariel, doesn’t she? And is, perhaps, smarter. At any rate, that ancient philosophy, utilitarianism, does perhaps vaguely resemble the assumptions behind what I said.”

  He walked to the edge of the desk and stared down at the tiny figures. When he had started speaking and Ariel had stopped singing, they had ended their dancing. Now, they looked up at Avery. Fear had returned to their faces.

  “I can see why playing with them made you feel like God, my dear,” he said.

  “I never said it did.”

  “Oh, but I could see a godlike look in your face. You were looking for ways to send down tablets from the mountain or part a body of water for them, were you not?”

  “No, I was not!”

  “I wasn’t speaking literally. But I think you’re trying to establish a relationship with them that is godlike, studying them and finding ways to improve their meager existence.”

  “I requested Mistress Ariel to study them,” Eve said.

  “Is that so? You continue to amaze me, what’s your name, Eve? You are quite a feat of robotics. While we’re on the subject of gods, who made you?”

  “I do not know that.”

  “Some fancy piece of programming blocking out the information?”

  “No,” Adam interjected. “We do not know our makers. Each of us appeared on a planet in an egglike, embryonic form with no awareness of where we came from.”

  “Embryonic? How did you come to look as you do now? Derec and Ariel did not cause you to be formed in, as it were, their own images.”

  “We imprinted on them and thus resemble them. I have been many other forms.”

  Avery was impressed. “Hmmm, I must pursue all this with you soon, but one experiment at a time. I try not to divide my concentration. It’s destructive to my work. And my work at present is these well-made little toys. I need one to take apart and find out what makes it tick.”

  “Don’t be callous,” Ariel said angrily. “You can’t just take one of these and kill it.”

  “That’s exactly what I plan to do. How are we to discover anything about them otherwise?” He looked around the room. “And this place is ideal, with all the right tools for dissection. I won’t waste time by returning to —”

  “No!” Ariel shouted. “You can’t do it. I won’t let you.”

  “My dear, your tears were sentimental enough. Forget any gallant defenses of these things. They are merely mechanical devices. Fairly sophisticated ones, yes, but —”

  “Can’t you see? Look at them. They are sentient human beings.”

  Ariel’s dislike of Avery had made her choose one side of the issue when, only moments ago, she had been contemplating just the point of view that the doctor was now suggesting.

  “Not at all. They are, I am certain, genetically engineered experimental figures. Some miniaturized human cells have been grown to form an incredibly accurate framework but they are not alive.”

  “They danced. They communicated with me.”

  “I am sure they make decent substitutes for pets, but what you saw was the result of some impulses of cybernetic origin.”

  “I don’t care what the hell i
s inside them or even if they were made in a lab. They are real people with a genuine culture.”

  “Just some anthropological factors put into the design.”

  Moving quickly, Avery reached down and picked up one of the figures, a chubby man with puffy cheeks. It began squirming in his hand, while the others scattered across the desktop.

  Derec wondered why, at a time like this, he so often felt a need to use a Personal. There were none here at the computer center. There was no need for one, since humans did not generally come here. He would have to ascend to the surface to find one (they were in almost all Robot City buildings), but when he got there he no doubt would find out that all the Personals were, like the rest of the city’s systems, out of order. And he dreaded even imagining what a non-working Personal would be like.

  Tentatively he touched a shard of the hanging moss. He was surprised to find it smooth instead of slimy, dry and not wet. It’s fake, he thought, but why would anyone make fake moss and hang it on a computer in big bunches like this?

  “This part’s definitely out,” he said out loud. “Maybe I can juice it up.”

  He looked around for a typer, the kind of keyboard designed to communicate with the core computer. There was a bank of view-screens along one wall, but all the keyboards had been removed.

  “It would take somebody to disconnect them,” he said. “No computer could do this to itself. Somebody’s monkeying with things. But who? If not my father, who? There’s got to be somebody I don’t know about.”

  As he said this, he leaned against the hiding place of the Watchful Eye, who might have been amused by the irony of Derec’s words if it had comprehended irony. It studied Derec closely (the haven did not block out sensory information), discovering much about him that it had not perceived when observing him through the city’s spy systems. There was apparently a musky odor to his body, perhaps caused by the fact that he had not had time to bathe since arriving on the planet. Since none of the spray-bathers worked, the chances were that Derec would get muskier.

  And there was a surprising heft to the young man. He was thicker than he’d appeared, and inside the thickness, there was much more concentrated weight. Derec’s outer shell, what they called skin, was more softly textured than had been expected, at least by the Watchful Eye, who up till now had been knowledgeable only about the hard surfaces of robots.

  It was tempted to reveal itself but was taken aback by Derec’s sudden curse. The man ran to the center of the room and looked up — where the Watchful Eye had hung the keyboards in clumps around cables. There were three clumps, all looking like some odd kind of fruit.

  Derec, swinging around, appeared to address his words to the ceiling. “What’s going on around here? Who are you, you filthy Frosted bag of sewage waste?” The Watchful Eye wondered why Derec’s words made no sense. There had been nothing filthy in the sewer he had traveled through, and sewage waste might indeed be a compliment. “Why are you doing this? Why are you turning my city into a pesthole?”

  It was amazed by Derec’s anger. While that was supposed to be a human characteristic, Derec nevertheless had not seemed the type to lose his composure. Now his face was quite red, and his body was trembling.

  It longed for Derec to leave so that it could restore its haven to its normal shape, slip it into the compartment fashioned behind the wall, where he normally kept it, and shut out Robot City for a while. It had to calculate its next moves, and whether they’d be directed against Derec or elsewhere. It could not harm Derec or any of his companions, nor could it, under most circumstances, injure any of the city’s robots. But it could destroy the city, it thought. It only needed a rationale to begin the process.

  As soon as Avery picked up the tiny creature, Ariel leaped toward him. But she was not quick enough. Eve got to Avery first. She grabbed him from behind and forced his arm slowly down until he released his captive. When the small man had run back to his companions, Eve let Avery go.

  He whirled upon her, fury in his eyes.

  “How dare you attack me?”

  “First Law;” she replied. “Your actions were going to result in the death of the human in your hand.”

  “But that is not a human being! It is an android, a robot like yourself.”

  “That may be true, but it has not been proven. I see a human being. I must not allow him to come to harm. And, sir, wouldn’t Third Law also be applicable to these circumstances?”

  “How?”

  “If the being is, like us, a robot, then shouldn’t we protect our own from harm as we would ourselves?”

  Ariel might have been mistaken, but she thought that Or. Avery nearly choked with rage at Eve’s question. At any rate, he did not respond immediately. He merely stared at Eve, the way he might have if a peer had asked the question.

  “Where in blazes did you get that idea?” he finally asked.

  “It seems natural to me.”

  Avery seemed stumped for a moment, then he addressed Eve slowly and methodically, “Eve, you and Adam are expensive pieces of merchandise. There is no need for you to endanger yourself when a human’s safety is not involved. That is what the Third Law is about. It is not about a community of robots evolving a set of ethics based on this law. You do not, I repeat, do not, have a duty to protect your own as you would yourselves.’;

  “I am not certain about that,” Adam said, coming forward. “Especially since many robotic matters are different for us, for Eve and I. To our knowledge, we are the only beings like us. When a function-robot is deactivated, there are many other function-robots to take its place. If the very existence of either of us is threatened, I believe it the responsibility of the other to perform any act that would protect us.”

  Avery smiled. “That’s almost theological, Adam. You seem to see yourself almost as a separate species, committed to preserve your kind as well as yourself.”

  “Perhaps,” Adam said. “I believe you may be right, but as yet I don’t know why.”

  “We don’t really know who we are, what we are,” Eve said. “It may be that the Three Laws are not the only ones that apply to us, or that our existence may depend on a different way of interpreting them.”

  Avery shook his head several times in confusion. At the same time, Ariel noted, there was some admiration for the Silversides in his eyes.

  “You’re verging on existentialism, Eve,” he said. “But I think you’re dead wrong. Look, humans have a history to preserve, science and philosophy to transmit through generations. They have to be concerned with protecting other humans from harm. They have vital reasons to, even if many of them, perhaps a majority, show no inclination toward such selfless activity. As robots, Adam and Eve, your only real duty is to protect the investment. No sense in letting yourselves be destroyed unnecessarily. But you have no reason to identify yourselves with anything more than that, not a higher calling or some set of philosophical speculations, especially some sort of ethical idea about being the protectors of each other. The important matter is that you harmed me when you should not have.”

  “You were in no harm, and the little man was,” Eve said.

  “All right, all right. I vow to you then: I intend no harm to this tiny creature you fancy so much. The Laws do not apply to this situation, understand?”

  Eve and Adam were not sure what to do. It seemed that the doctor’s vow prevented them from moving against him. Yet... even if he handled the tiny creature gently now, would the future harm he might cause it in his laboratory be sufficient reason to intervene?

  As Avery made another move toward the table, Ariel stepped forward, a surgical knife in her hand. “But I, because there are no effective Laws of Humanics, may stop you, Dr. Avery.”

  “And I,” Wolruf said, “can act without rrestrrictionss, since I am neitherr, rrobot nor ‘uman, and there are no Lawss of Caninoidss.”

  Avery looked from Ariel to Wolruf, then to the two robots. A smile flashed briefly across his face. It was a clue to a smile rather th
an a smile itself. Then he pulled a straight chair away from the nearest wall and sat down hard.

  “Why am I even arguing with you?” he said in a soft, troubled voice. “I’m not a human. I’ve transformed myself into a robot.”

  Ariel started to say that that was just his madness, then an idea came to her. “It’s worked, has it? You’ve got a positronic brain and all the rest?”

  “Of course,” he muttered.

  “Then, as a robot, you must obey me, a human. Correct?”

  “What are you — I’ll never — I can’t —”

  All the anger seemed to go out of his eyes, and he slumped in his chair. “Yes,” he muttered. “I must obey you. Second Law. I will obey you... Mistress Ariel.”

  Ariel rubbed her hands together. She didn’t know how long she could work this new ploy, but it gave her an opportunity to use the doctor for both her projects. His great intelligence could help her to study the tiny creatures, and toying with his delusions might be the answer to curing them.

  “Sit straight, doc — wait, what is your name now?”

  He looked up at her with sad eyes and said weakly, “Name?”

  “Do you have a robot name? Have you chosen one yet?”

  He seemed momentarily puzzled by her questions.

  “Yes, I have,” he said. “Just now.”

  “And what is it?”

  “Ozymandias.”

  “Very good. That’s the name of a poem, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. It’s about a once-mighty king, a ‘king of kings.’ On the pedestal of its statue are inscribed the words, ‘Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’”

  “How nice. You don’t mean them ironically, I hope. Well, I haven’t despaired yet, and neither should you. That, by the way, is an order, Ozymandias.”

  “Yes, Mistress Ariel.”

  “Okay, let’s get to work. I’m not sure where to start.”

  Derec came out of the computer chamber with a hangdog look on his face. “The computer’s been severely tampered with, Mandelbrot,” he said. “We’ve got a pack of work to do.”