Asimov’s Future History Volume 7

by Isaac Asimov

  “Why arre ‘u trrying to hurrt the city?” she said.

  “I must. It must be my city.”

  “Arre ‘u trrying to be leaderr?”

  “I do not know what you mean.”

  “Do you plan to be dictatorr of Rrobot City?”

  “No. I just want things here to be logical. I must control events, and I cannot the way things are.”

  “I don’t underrstand. Why need ‘u contrrol eventss?”

  “I know inside me I have to. I don’t yet know why, but the answer will come. Answers have come to me when I needed them.”

  “‘U talk strrangely.”

  “I am not really used to talking.”

  “Who arre ‘u?”

  “I am me, that’s all I know. I have taken the temporary name, the Watchful Eye. The being whose shape I have taken called me ‘the Big Muddy.’ He did not know I heard him call me that. I don’t know why he did.”

  “Where is he now? Where is Bogie?”

  “I disconnected and dismantled him. It was necessary. Why do you exhibit emotional disturbance?”

  “Am upset at what ‘u ssay. I liked Bogie, and he iss dead.”

  “Why do you say that? He is not dead. All of his component parts still exist and will function again. I may put him together~gain, or his parts will continue as parts of new robots. That is not death, there is no decay in it.”

  “What do ‘u know of death?”

  “Only what I have studied about it in computer files.”

  “That iss no way to know about death.”

  “Perhaps you will tell me more about death. Later, when I have finished with the city. Please attack me no further.”

  The Watchful Eye turned back toward its keyboard. Wolruf, unbound by any robotic laws, sprang up and, howling, rammed against the Watchful Eye’s back as hard as she could. The blow knocked it off balance.

  But not enough.

  It whirled around and clipped Wolruf with a hard, clenched-fist punch to the side of her head.

  She fell, limp, unconscious.

  The Watchful Eye, with some gentleness, picked her up and placed her against the wall, and then it carefully rearranged her body in a way that, according to its observations, should be comfortable for a being that was the shape of the caninoid alien.

  Then it returned to the task of destroying the city...

  As they walked through the new tunnel, everything around them looking spookier than ever in the dim light, Derec asked Avery, “I’ve been wondering: If this new robot is like Adam and Eve, and by that I mean a shape-changer and meddlesome pest, What’ll it be like when all three of them get together?”

  “That’s not the sort of question that occupies my mind at times like this.”

  The snideness in his father’s voice was unmistakable. Derec wondered if the man would always be like that, scornful and sarcastic. Would they ever have a relationship that was anything like what normal fathers and sons had? Probably not.

  “Still,” Derec continued, “I can’t help but wonder. Two of them are bad enough, but we were getting used to them. Three would be worse, unpredictable, possibly disastrous. When we get there and get things in control, it would be nice to find a way to get rid of Pinch Me.”

  “You surprise me, Derec. I wouldn’t have thought you had such murderous thoughts.”

  “Oh, I don’t mean we should kill it or even dismantle it. I’d just like to get it out of the way. Ship it to another planet, or secrete it in an attic, or hide it in a cave, anything to keep it away from Adam and Eve.”

  “Where it would cause trouble for others? Still, dismantling might not be such a bad idea.”

  He stopped talking, for they had reached the entrance to the computer chamber.

  The Watchful Eye now realized that the immensity of Robot City was a hindrance to its destruction. After all the time it’d spent on the project, interrupted only by Wolruf’s attack, there had not been enough progress. Only a small percentage of Robot City had been toppled, collapsed, or removed.

  Since the humans were not as adept in stalking as Wolruf, the Watchful Eye heard them ease open the outside door and come toward the computer.

  It would have to confront them.

  But it was afraid of confronting them. It did not know why.

  The Watchful Eye turned around to face its new intruders. When it saw the three of them, all looking stern and clearly there with the same purpose as Wolruf, to take away its control of the city, it momentarily considered rushing at them, attacking them, hurling them through the air with the same force it had thrown Wolruf. But these were humans; it couldn’t harm them. It seemed as if the First Law of Robotics applied in this situation. But why? Robotics Laws were for robots. It was the Watchful Eye, and it should not be governed by laws governing inferior creatures.

  Derec took a step forward.

  “Dr. Livingstone, I presume,” he said. Of course it did not understand the reference.

  “I am the Watchful Eye,” it responded.

  “Cute name,” Ariel muttered.

  “Perhaps derived from All-Seeing Eye, Eye of Providence, something like that,” Avery commented. “A symbol on currency, I think, signifying, I think, a new age or new order.”

  Ariel saw Wolruf lying unconscious near the wall, and she rushed to her. After touching her and feeling for her life-signs, she nodded to Derec that Wolruf was alive. Derec turned back to the Watchful Eye.

  “I don’t care who you are,” he said. “Why are you destroying my city?”

  “Your city? It’s not your city now. I have taken it over. Look at the screens.” It pointed toward a bank of view-screens on which scenes of Robot City’s destruction were displayed. “Look at what I’ve done, and say it’s your city.”

  “Look on my works, ye mighty...” Avery muttered.

  “Okay,” Derec said. “Right now I don’t care whose city you think it is. Just give me your reasons for demolishing it.”

  “It is... not right for me. I must accommodate it to my needs.”

  “Seems to me you’ve done enough accommodating already, mister. I want you to stop accommodating and give me back control of the computer, so I can correct all the harm you’ve done.”

  “It is not harm. I will improve the city. I cannot obey you, because there is no harm being done.”

  “No harm? That’s just another robot word game. If I say there’s harm, there is harm, buster.”

  “But I am not a robot.”

  Here in the computer room Derec could already feel his chemfets stirring, beginning to move along his bloodstream with a purpose. It was as if they, too, had suffered structural damage from the Watchful Eye’s efforts and were now reestablishing themselves. Derec was sure control was coming back to him. He had only to remove this obstacle standing in front of him, and he thought he knew a way to defeat the Watchful Eye. He could, through his chemfets, sense disorientation in the new robot’s domination of the city.

  “Watchful Eye, if you insist on calling yourself that, I am Derec.”

  “I know that.”

  “I am human. Do you understand? I am human. You must obey me.”

  “I don’t see why that is so.”

  “You have to obey me. It is Second Law. I know you have the Laws of Robotics embedded in your programming. Whatever I say, you must do. I am human.”

  “I don’t know that.”

  “I am telling you. I am human. Obey. Immediately cease your destruction of Robot City.”

  “It is not suitable. It must be changed.”

  “I want it the way it was before we arrived, before you came here and started tampering with it. Do it, robot.”

  “I... I only look like a robot. My disguise. I am not a robot. I am something else. I must be something else.”

  “You must be what you are, a robot. You were created to serve. To serve me. Obey me. It’s Second Law imperative.”

  The Watchful Eye was not sure what to do.

  “Only robots
have to follow the Three Laws,” it said.

  “It is objecting,” Avery whispered. “You can get it on the ropes. It would not have to object if it knew what it was. Did you hear, it said it must be something else. Derec, it doesn’t know what it is.”

  “Watchful Eye,” Derec said, “you are a robot.”

  “No, I am not. I have logically concluded that I am not. I look like one now because I have taken a robot’s shape. That in itself proves I am not a robot. Robots are fixed, immutable, they cannot change their shape.”

  “If only Adam and Eve were here,” Derec mumbled.

  “I thought you didn’t want to get them together,” Ariel remarked.

  “I changed my mind.” Derec took another step forward. He didn’t know if encroaching on a robot’s personal space could unnerve it the way it did humans, but anything was worth a try.

  The Watchful Eye again wondered if it could hurt Derec. But as soon as it thought of the act, something inside it seemed to make him immobile.

  “Watchful Eye,” Derec said, “in spite of any evidence you have manufactured for yourself, you are a robot. There are others like you, and you will meet them.”

  “Others? I know nothing of any others.”

  “Perhaps you have spied on them, too. Adam and Eve are their names.”

  “They cannot be robots. I’ve watched them. If they are of any designation, they are human.”

  “No, we are the humans. The three of us. And you must, as I say, do what we tell you. Second Law. Second Law. Second Law.”

  Derec’s chanting of the terms seemed eccentric behavior to the Watchful Eye. Where was the consistency of behavior that a high intelligence must have? it wondered.

  “Watchful Eye, I order you to move away from that keyboard. We can take care of restoring the city. Do you understand? You must do it. Move away from the keyboard.”

  Something happened in the Watchful Eye’s mind. something positronic, a clicking in, a prodding. It knew suddenly that Derec was right, and it must obey him. It moved away from the keyboard immediately, with no argument.

  Derec felt his chemfets begin to function as they had before the Watchful Eye’s tampering had begun. They seemed to positively roil in his bloodstream. He gestured his father toward the keyboard.

  “You made this city. You fix it.”

  Rubbing his hands together eagerly, Avery went to the keyboard. He was already tapping keys before he sat down.

  “Now, Watchful Eye, and I hope you get a less mouth-filling name very soon,” Derec said, “I want to be sure of everything. I need to be completely in connection with the computer. I order you to relinquish any link, except that of a normal Robot City robot, you may still have with the computer. But, before you do, let me ask you this one question. Can you get rid of the gook that’s allover the computer?”

  Derec gestured toward the mosslike substance that was even thicker now, layers of it hiding most of the machine’s workings.

  “Yes, I can.”

  “Do it.”

  The moss seemed to melt. But, unlike melting substances, there was no residue collecting under it. It merely disappeared, leaving the computer as it was, and in fact much shinier.

  “Now, Watchful Eye, relinquish any computer link.”

  “It is done,” it said immediately.

  Derec, intent on regaining control over his chemfets, did not notice at first what was going on in the new robot’s face. There was much less Bogie in it. For a moment there was a suggestion of Derec, and then there was no face at all.

  “What’s happening with it?” Ariel asked.

  “I wish I knew.”

  Slowly, the Watchful Eye’s body changed shape, but this time it did not change into anyone, did not imprint on anyone. It merely became bloblike, a roundish, amorphous being with stubby legs and little else that was recognizable, except for a single eye on its upper surface. The Watchful Eye, perhaps, Derec thought.

  “Is that what it normally looks like?” Ariel asked.

  “Watchful Eye, is that the shape you were in when you arrived on this planet?”

  A mouth appeared below the eye, apparently just so it could answer Derec’s question.

  “Yes, in nearly every respect. I did not have legs until I needed them, then I grew them.”

  The Watchful Eye backed away on its short legs from Derec and Ariel. It needed to get into its haven.

  Leaning against the compartment where it had hidden the haven, it activated the lock mechanism, keyed to its presence, and the door sprung open. From inside the haven, an ovoid-shaped thing rolled out. The Watchful Eye touched it with one of its legs, and it came open. It crawled inside and the seams of the ovoid thing sealed.

  “What is that?” Ariel said.

  “The capsule it came here in, I suspect,” Derec answered. “The capsule my mother may have sent here, the way she perhaps dispatched the capsules Adam and Eve arrived at their planets in. The ‘eggs,’ as they called them.”

  “Your mother? Why do I always feel I’ve missed something?”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll explain. Let’s tend to Wolruf first.”

  Chapter 20

  THE SECOND CONFRONTATION

  “WELL, MY FRIEND,” Derec said to Wolruf, after she came to, “we owe you a solid vote of thanks.”

  “Forr what, ‘u think?”

  “Your holding action with the Watchful Eye. A successful mission if there ever was one. I told you to keep him occupied so we could get here. You did. Therefore, thank you.”

  “From me, too,” Ariel said. “Even from him.” She pointed toward Avery, whose fingers were furiously flying around the keyboard.

  “I can thank her myself,” Avery said, the kind of grouch in his voice that they had become used to.

  “Yes,” Ariel said, “but would you?”

  “Under the right circumstances.”

  “Do those circumstances come around often?”

  “Not often.”

  “I thought so.”

  Ariel made Wolruf stand up and walk around to make sure she was all right. There was no Wolruflike spring to her walk, but otherwise she seemed normal.

  When she was satisfied with Wolruf’s condition, Ariel walked to the capsule where the Watchful Eye still lay, an unmoving blob.

  “Snug fit,” she said. Derec looked puzzled. “I mean, the way our Watchful Eye fits so neatly into its egg. Must be very constricting and claustrophobic when traveling through space.”

  “At that time it’s not aware of its surroundings. Adam told me he and Eve came to consciousness only after they’d landed. From what it said, I suspect the same was true for this one, too.”

  “Well,” she said, stretching her arms and yawning, “what’s next?”

  “With what?”

  “Well, on the immediate level, I’d like something to eat. I’m starving. And I’d like to sleep for three days. And I’d like to arrange a tap dance recital for Timestep and maybe the partner he mentioned. But what I’d really like to know is what are we going to do with our Watchful Eye here?”

  “I’ve got some ideas,” Avery said.

  “I’ll just bet you have,” Ariel said. “But keep them to yourself for now, okay?”

  “Your girlfriend’s touchy,” Avery remarked.

  Ariel glared at Avery but was too tired to attempt further repartee with him. She wished she had a capsule like the Watchful Eye’s to crawl in and shut out the world.

  “Well,” she said to Derec, “what about the Eye?”

  “I don’t know. If we’d had more success with Adam and Eve, I’d have a better idea. This one may be our chance to find out more about these robots. On the other hand, it might be too corrupted by its flirtation with power to provide the —”

  “Flirtation with power? You sound like you swallowed a textbook on improving verbal skills.”

  “Sorry.”

  “He’s been spending too much time with me,” Avery said as he stared at a schematic diagram on the v
iew-screen. “He’s picking up my tendency toward the bon mot.”

  “You betcha,” Ariel said. “So, Derec, you’re not sure what to do with the Eye?”

  “That’s about it. We’ll question it, observe it, give it a chance to explain itself, but I can’t figure out any more than that at this moment.”

  “Hey, we’ve had a busy day.”

  “That iss a true sstatement if I everr hearrd one,” Wolruf observed.

  Derec walked over to his father and stood behind him. The man’s fingers moved so fast they blurred from time to time.

  “Is Mandelbrot handling things all right at his end?” Derec asked.

  “Excellently. For a robot he’s exceptionally skilled at computer operation.”

  “I schooled him in it.”

  “Should have known. Old Earth saying: Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach; those who shouldn’t, think they are those who can; those who should, generally fake their way through college.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Maybe I didn’t get it right.”

  For a while Derec watched his father labor in silence. He could discern the effectiveness of the work Avery and Mandelbrot were doing by the way his chemfets had resumed their active and comfortable functioning. He felt as if he could just lean against a wall, shut his eyes, and blend with the chemfets as they moved along his bloodstream.

  He asked his father the question he could not stop thinking about. “Could you arrange for me to meet my mother?”

  Avery’s fingers stopped suddenly and rested on the middle row of the keyboard. Derec could tell he was carefully formulating his answer. He knew his father well enough by now to realize that he composed his utterances, even those that appeared to be spoken spontaneously.

  “The proper question, son, is would I arrange it? And, you know, in one of my foolish sentimental moments, of which I have few, practically none, I might arrange it. Fortunately for me, I don’t have to struggle with my conscience about it. I haven’t a snowman’s idea of where she is or how to find her.”

  Derec walked away. Avery called after him, “Derec?”

  “Yes?”

  “You might not like her. I don’t.”