Asimov’s Future History Volume 7

by Isaac Asimov

  “There seems to be a bruise on her neck,” he said, “a big one.”

  “He strruck me there,” Wolruf said in a raspy voice.

  “Who?” Derec asked. “Who hit you?”

  “The Bogie that iss not Bogie.”

  “All right, Wolruf. I want you to tell me about it. But don’t strain your voice. Speak quietly, slowly.”

  She explained what had happened when she had caught up with Bogie, and how Mandelbrot and Timestep had continued the chase.

  “Okay,” Derec said when she finished, “you rest right here. We’ll get you to the medical facility as soon as we can.”

  “No, Derrec. I will be fine ssoon. You have too much that’ss necessary to do now.”

  “Well, we’ll see.”

  Derec stood up and turned to his father, asking, “What do you make of it?”

  “I have some suspicions, but you tell me what you think first.”

  Derec felt an odd pride in the way Avery solicited his opinion, almost as if they were colleagues now.

  “Well,” he said, “whoever attacked Wolruf, it wasn’t Bogie.”

  “I agree, but why?”

  “It simply wasn’t a Robot City robot. They are all programmed to accept her as a human. That is, although they know she is an alien, they are to apply the Laws of Robotics to her, too. If Bogie was stopped by her, he would have had to allow it, according to First Law. Instead, he retaliated.”

  “Was he reprogrammed perhaps, while you were off-planet?”

  “I don’t think so. He was a proper robot previous to this incident, applying all the Laws to his behavior. No, if Bogie attacked Wolruf, he was not Bogie. I sensed a change in him before I sent him on an errand. I rather liked Bogie, and this one simply did not respond like the Bogie I’d known. And, by the way, all indications are that the robot I ordered to go to Ariel never even tried to get there, another clue that I didn’t give the order to Bogie, who would have been compelled by Second Law to obey it. Furthermore, in responding to Wolruf’s leap upon him, he seems to have been using Third Law, that of protecting himself, but First and Second Law would have prevented him from doing so.”

  “Okay, good. Then if he wasn’t Bogie, who was he?”

  “An alien?”

  “What alien? Except for Wolruf, I haven’t encountered any aliens. You have, what with Aranimas and your erstwhile friends, the blackbodies. None of them have any talent for disguise, nor have the few alien races that have been reported. A human might pull off such a disguise, get into a robot suit and do a fairly accurate imitation, but there is no evidence of any other humans but us on the entire planet. If I were still mad, we might have made out a good case for it being me.” He laughed softly, sardonically, then said reflectively, “I did so want to be a robot. I still say the role would have suited me. So, Derec, who do you think it might be?”

  “How about a robot, one that’s not programmed in the same manner as a Robot City robot?”

  Avery’s eyes raised in admiration. “Very good. You’re right on the line of my thinking. It’s a robot, I’m sure, but not an Avery robot.”

  “Why are you so sure?”

  “It would have to be some kind of rogue robot. Not my style at all. An Avery robot would not have so much confusion about the three laws. No, somebody else made this robot, and I have a sneaking suspicion who.”

  “Who? Tell me.”

  Avery shook his head slowly. “Not now. In a moment. I have some questions to ask you. I need to know about Adam and Eve. Your view of them. I know where they came from, what they’ve done so far. Adam gave me a pretty full history during our marathon sessions together. What do you think of them? Robotically speaking, I mean.”

  “I’m not sure what you want.”

  “Free-associate about them, if you like.”

  “Well, I don’t know.” He paused, trying to collect his thoughts. “Sometimes they don’t seem like robots.”

  “Uh huh. I’ve noticed.”

  “One thing, they can be too mischievous. I know some of it’s curiosity and some of it has to do with their over-meticulous attempts to define some kind of impossible human being, an ideal we apparently fail to live up to. As a result, their hold on the Laws of Robotics is shaky.”

  “That seems to be because they apply them too specifically. Rather than accept us as the perfect humans they seek, they strip us of our humanity in their minds, and the result is that they don’t always jump to our aid according to First Law, or obey us as Second commands.”

  “That’s not all of it, though. They don’t seem to be certain that they are robots, in spite of all evidence. They accept it and don’t accept it simultaneously. It’s as if their mechanisms are so refined, they can’t be ordinary robots like the others.”

  Avery winced. “By ordinary, you mean Avery robots.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t like to think of my creations as somehow second-class models.”

  Derec smiled. “If you say so, but I don’t think it’s a criticism of your skills as a roboticist. At any rate, their behavior is inconsistent. Sometimes they seem to be normal robots, at other times they are excellent copies of whomever they’ve imprinted on. Adam does a mean Wolruf, and Eve’s version of Ariel makes me edgy because it’s too accurate.”

  “It’s this shape-changing ability that fascinates me, Derec. Explain it to me.”

  Under Avery’s sharp questioning, Derec revealed what he had observed about the Silversides, about the differences in their cellular structure, about the sequences of physical transformation during the imprinting process, about the shifts in matter density when they took on the shapes of either smaller or larger beings, about the limits to which they could reduce or enlarge their mass. (Neither could approximate the size of small animals or insects, but could look like enormous versions of them. By the same token, if giants had been available, they could not stretch themselves to that size, either. When they had shaped their mass into a blackbody imprint, they had been about twice the size of that impressive flying alien.)

  Excited by the information, revived by the challenge of a scientific dilemma, Avery seemed more and more his old self. He now stood by a desk, his fingers drumming in a fast, steady rhythm. His other hand kept touching his long white hair or bushy moustache. His eyes glowed again.

  When Derec had related all he could remember, Avery balled up his hand into a fist and rammed it hard against his upper thigh.

  “That’s it!” he cried. “That must be it!”

  “I hope you’ll let me in on it, since I’m thoroughly confused now.”

  “Bogie — the robot posing as Bogie is a Silverside.”

  “You mean Adam or Eve? Really, I don’t think so. They weren’t even here when things started to go wrong. They were with me on —”

  “I don’t mean literally Adam and Eve. I mean Silverside generically. There is another of these robots like Adam and Eve somewhere in Robot City.”

  “Another one?” For a moment, Derec was appalled at the prospect of a third mischievous robot to contend with, but then of course, he said to himself, I’ve been contending with it for days now. “You mean it was being Bogie because it was able to change into his shape, to imprint upon him?”

  Avery nodded and smiled oddly. “I guess we’ve got, as well as Adam and Eve, Pinch Me.”

  Derec wondered if the doctor had slipped back into madness. Avery saw his son’s confusion and quickly explained about the children’s riddle he had tried out on Adam.

  “Adam never really understood it. I tried to tell him it was just a joke, but he didn’t catch on.”

  “I know what you mean. I’ve spent hours attempting to make Mandelbrot understand what humor is all about. But what really is our Pinch Me? For that matter, what are the Silversides?”

  “They’rre demonss, ‘u know,” Wolruf said from the floor. She had been intently listening to the conversation. “‘U should lock them up and hide key until they grrow up. Th
at iss my opinion.”

  “I agree, Wolruf,” Avery said. “I’d like to get them into a cell and take them apart, see what makes them tick.”

  “Don’t ‘u tell Ariel that. Rememberr what she said about dancerss.”

  “Yes, that’s good advice, Wolruf.”

  Derec had no idea what they were talking about, but, with so many immediate problems to deal with, he decided not to ask questions about it.

  “Father, you said you had an idea who the Silversides are.”

  “Yes, and I have a hunch I’m right. Sit down.”

  “I’m too nervous —”

  “Sit down!”

  The tone in Avery’s command was so authoritative, Derec decided there must be a good reason for the order. He pulled up a chair and sat on the edge of it.

  “I hadn’t wanted to talk to you yet about your mother, Derec. If I could avoid it, I’d never tell you about her. Unfortunately, circumstances now make it necessary.”

  Derec realized why his father had told him to sit down. He felt as if the air had been knocked out of him. What could his mother possibly have to do with the crisis on Robot City?

  Avery started to pace. His fingers kept busy as he walked.

  “I’m not going to tell you her name. You can dream that, if you want. Suffice it to say that, like me, like you, she was, is, a roboticist. A very good one, the only one who could really challenge me. Perhaps it was, in fact, competition that kept me going, made me succeed, a competition that continued even after she left me.”

  Wolruf was sitting up now, apparently to hear Avery better. She looked improved. Her eyes were clearer, and a sheen had returned to her fur.

  “When I came back here and found the city deteriorating,” Avery continued, “I knew that somebody or something was behind it. It wasn’t until I had the long talks with Adam that I began to suspect that there might be a third robot like him in the city. However, until our little talk, Derec, I wasn’t sure. Now the evidence seems clear to me. There is another robot, one like Adam and Eve, and the creator of all three of them, I am positive, is your mother.”

  That little piece of information really stunned Derec. He had to struggle to speak again.

  “But how can you be so sure they come from her?”

  “I admit there is some intuition involved, but it’s intuition supported by logic. The Silversides and, presumably, our mysterious controller can only be the work of a robotics expert as skilled as I. That isn’t ego speaking. There just simply isn’t another roboticist as meticulous and creative — and that includes all the incompetents at the Robotics Institute on Aurora — as I am. Except for your mother.”

  Avery stopped to observe the effects of his words upon his son. Derec knew he was not disguising his emotions even though he very much didn’t want his father to see them.

  “I am projecting her intellectual progress, of course. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen her. At that time she was not yet my equal, especially in the fields of positronics and integrals, but in the years since, working in isolation, she may have come up to my level. I don’t like admitting that, but she is younger, and in some ways I’ve slowed down. Plus, I’ve channeled my activities into the planning and development of robot cities, while she has been able, apparently, to concentrate on robots alone. Even knowing her skills and intelligence, these new robots represent an achievement that takes my breath away. Does that seem strange to you, son? That the great egotist can indeed give credit to someone else? You’re thinking that, I can see.”

  “Have you added telepathy to your considerable talents?”

  Avery laughed abruptly. “You may be a chip off the old block after all. That sarcasm was worthy of me. Wonderful!”

  “Why is it that your praise sounds like an insult?”

  “That’ss enough,” Wolruf interjected. “You two can have yourr silly arrgument laterr. There’ss much to be done.”

  Avery nodded toward Wolruf. “She’s bossy for an alien.”

  “I like that in aliens,” Derec said.

  “Pleasse,” Wolruf said.

  “All right,” Derec said. “Assuming that my mother is behind all this, what’s she up to? Why develop this new kind of shape-changing robot and then dump individual ones on different planets?”

  “I can only speculate about that.”

  Avery resumed pacing on the far side of the room. Derec paced a shorter path on his side. Wolruf was amused by the resemblances between the two men when they were pacing.

  “What it might be is that your mother always had a special interest in anthropology. She could go on for hours about tribes, customs, rites, that sort of bilgewater.”

  “You don’t put much stock in anthropology?” Derec asked.

  “Oh, it’s all right, just not in my sphere of interest. I’m a creator, a builder, and I like to stay by myself. Going out and observing sentient creatures go through their dull, daily routines, and analyzing the meanings of courtship and aggressive rituals just simply isn’t my line. It’s a useful minor science, where you can showboat by delivering solemn conclusions without much hard evidence, but it’s for people who are butterfingers in a lab. On the other hand, your mother thought it was fascinating to study cultures, and she’d go off for weeks and months to take a peek at some social grouping or other. She told me I was an old fuddy-duddy whenever I said anything the least bit derogatory about her precious anthropology. I suppose her scorn may have contributed to my present antipathy toward the field.”

  “But I don’t see how anthropology applies to the new-styled robots.”

  “Well, seems to me two factors particularly are clues to the anthropological nature of her experiment. One is that the Silversides seem to have come to consciousness with the urge to define and discover humanity, which they are further convinced is the highest intelligence in the universe. But she has deprived them of any real information about what humans are. Therefore, as you’ve described it, whatever kind of sentient being they discover, they almost desperately try to find its humanity.

  “The real kicker has been that, because they’ve come to believe that humanity represents the highest standards, genuine humans are found wanting by them. Derec, your mother couldn’t have foreseen such a tantalizing irony. When she finds out, she’ll be quite thrilled.

  “See, if another kind of being were to enter the city tomorrow, and it was a shade smarter than us, as those blackbodies you told me about might have been, then they would be convinced the newcomers are the humans, and it’s goodbye, Derec, Ariel, Avery. It wouldn’t matter if the newcomers were covered with slime, smelled like erupting sewers, and killed each other for fingernail scrapings.

  “Anthropologically speaking, the key information that’s been denied them by not being programmed with detailed knowledge of humans is the data which would inform them of the nature of our culture. Another aspect of the denial process would appear to be the absence in their knowledge of our unfortunate tendencies toward emotion. They can’t understand that culture and emotion define humanity as much as intelligence does.

  “Since they don’t know what a human really is, they have the freedom to enter an alien culture and adopt its ways easily. Once they believe that culture is human, then all its customs, rites, behavior patterns become logical. What a fruitful arena for anthropological study this’d make. I mean, do you see, Derec?”

  When Avery stopped pacing, Derec halted a short beat later. They faced each other. Wolruf found an excitement in the way the two of them were now so furiously working together. For the first time she realized they must be father and son.

  “You’re saying that the Silversides and our mystery robot could be catalysts for, say, a study of what happens to cultures when they encounter robots like the Silversides?” Derec asked.

  “Exactly. And also what happens to them when they are introduced to cultures. I think that’s where the shape-changing ability comes in. Once they join a culture, they become like the individuals in it. They
are assimilated, a word dear to social scientists everywhere. Then these robots, sent to discover a culture, become integrated into it. They can become the leader, as Adam did with the kin. Or they can be corrupted by the culture itself, as both Adam and Eve were with the blackbodies. Or they can even disrupt its environment. We and the robots are the ‘culture’ here in Robot City, and our Pinch Me has been studying us, manipulating us.

  “You know what the real clue is? The dancers and all the other little creatures. I suspect they’re some sort of genetic/robotic experiments Pinch Me has been conducting. They are, in a way, its own tiny anthropological studies.

  “Without humans, or any kind of being other than robots, to examine, it started to create its own subjects, restricted cultures that it could study anthropologically. They failed for the most part, I think. At least it seemed to get bored with them and store them away in buildings allover the city. But somehow they are based on its acquired knowledge of humanity, knowledge derived no doubt from the computer.

  “The trouble is, Pinch Me doesn’t know how to deal with applied knowledge, so he combined some robotics data with some genetic experimental information and created the dancers and the other groups. That he could do as well as he did is impressive, but he couldn’t quite get the hang of it all. So his experiments were failures, he couldn’t control the city, and he even messed up his foray among us in disguise.”

  Derec nodded. “That’s all highly speculative, but it does provide some ideas that fit the facts we do know.”

  Avery paced a few steps more, then said, “It’s your mother’s failure really. She’s conceived this intricate anthropological study, probably to study positronic minds in various cultural situations. Like our Pinch Me, her work is theoretical, almost playful. Just the way she was.”

  Even though he felt a twinge of irritation at the mere suggestion that his mother could have botched her experiment, Derec seemed to be gradually getting a picture of her through Avery’s asides. He figured if he could keep his father talking, he’d find out a great deal about her, especially when Avery was in a bitter mood and not guarding his words.