Asimov’s Future History Volume 7

by Isaac Asimov

  Derec heard Ariel echo his first command: “Home.” Or. Avery boarded his booth and stood on the platform in silence. Derec smiled. His father was always testing him. Now he was waiting to see if Derec had had the presence of mind to program all the booths.

  Send Dr. Avery to same destination via Compass Tower, emergency speed. Do not accept his override, he sent.

  Acknowledged.

  The Compass Tower was a tall pyramid a few blocks away from Derec and Ariel’s home. Before moving in with Ariel and Derec, Avery had had an office/apartment in the apex of it; perhaps he would think that the literal-minded transportation computer had misunderstood Derec’s order and was taking everyone to their own homes instead of Derec’s. He wouldn’t realize Derec had played a trick on him until the transport booth failed to stop there. Nor would he be able to change the booth’s destination; Derec’s command carried exactly the same weight as would his, so the computer would follow the first order received. It was a subtle warning, one Avery would probably not even perceive, but Derec was fed up with his father’s little tests, and lately he had taken to thwarting every one of them he could. Avery would never consciously decide to quit, but subliminally, where the impulse to see his son prove himself originated, perhaps he could be conditioned.

  Wolruf stepped aboard her booth, saying in her deep voice,” Follow Derec.”

  Derec’s booth had already started to move, but he could still hear the communications going on behind him.

  Adam, via comlink, sent, 8284-490-23. The apartment’s coordinates.

  Eve sent, Follow Adam. Interesting, Derec thought. Adam would rather give the coordinates than admit to following a human, even though he was compelled to do it. Eve, of course, would follow Adam to the end of the universe.

  Lucius II, on the other hand...

  Lucius II sent, Manual control.

  Denied, the computer responded.

  Why denied?

  Human command override. Derec has already programmed your destination.

  I may also be human. I wish manual control.

  Derec’s eyebrows shot up. What was this? He’d just convinced the silly thing it was a robot less than half an hour ago!

  A loud voice interrupted. “Hey, where are you going?” It was Avery. “Cancel destination! Stop! Let me —”

  Not now!

  Cancel link to Avery, Derec sent.

  Link cancelled, the computer replied, and Avery’s voice cut off in mid-word.

  The computer had been simultaneously responding to Derec and continuing its conversation with Lucius. Derec heard — reason for believing that you are human.

  I was grown, not assembled, Lucius II responded. I am a thinking being, with wishes and desires of my own. My connection to the city computer is completely voluntary. I perceive my own intellectual potentials independent of my programming.

  Visual scanning shows that you are composed of the same cellular material as Robot City robots, or a variant thereof. You are not human.

  Lucius II replied, A robotic exterior means nothing. Check your memory for Jeff Leong.

  Derec gripped the handhold in his transport booth with enough tension to pull a lesser handle from the wall. Jeff Leong! Did Lucius II really think he was a cyborg like Jeff, a human brain in a robot body? And how had he known of Jeff, anyway? That whole incident was long past; Jeff had his human body back again and was off to college on another planet.

  Obviously, Lucius had been digging through the computer, accessing records of the City’s past, records that Derec had been painstakingly replacing after Dr. Avery had wiped them in his reprogramming over a year ago. It had been Derec’s intention to give the City computer — and the robots who used it — the continuous memory of its past that he couldn’t have for himself, but that might not have been such a good idea after all, he thought now. Some memories could be dangerous.

  Argument understood, the computer responded. It is possible that you are human. However, I cannot give you manual control even so. Derec’s order takes precedence.

  This time, it did. But if Lucius II began issuing orders of his own, next time it might be Derec whose orders weren’t obeyed. That wouldn’t do.

  Lucius II is not human, Derec sent. He is a robot of the same nature as Adam and Eve.

  Acknowledged.

  Derec’s transport booth slowed, banked around a corner, and accelerated again. Behind him the others, minus Dr. Avery, executed the same maneuver.

  Cancel link to other booths, Derec sent.

  Acknowledged.

  Derec cancelled his own link to the computer, then focused his attention on the last booth in the line and sent directly, Lucius, this is Derec.

  Is there another Lucius, or do you mean me, Lucius II?

  I mean you. The original Lucius is — Derec was about to say “dead,” but thought better of it. No sense fueling the robot’s misconceptions with imprecise language. — inoperative, he sent. That means there isn’t much chance for confusion. I will simply call you “Lucius” unless circumstances warrant your full title.

  I have no objection. I was not aware that you had a comlink.

  There are lots of things you don’t know about me. Or about yourself, I believe.

  That is true.

  I have information you can use.

  What information?

  You’re wrong in assuming you’re human. You are an advanced experimental design of robot, just like Adam and Eve.

  How do you know this?

  I’m the son of the woman who created you.

  Lucius thought about that for a long moment. Perhaps we are brothers, he said at last.

  Derec laughed. I’m afraid not.

  Perhaps we should ask our mother.

  I wish we could, Derec replied.

  Why can’t we?

  Because I don t know where she is.

  What is her name?

  I don’t know that, either.

  What do you know about her?

  Very little. I have an induced state of amnesia.

  This is unfortunate.

  Isn’t it, though? Derec thought. In a way, his and Lucius’s past — and Adam’s and Eve’s as well — were very similar. The robots had been planted on three different worlds with nothing more than their basic programming and inherent abilities. It had been up to them to discover their purpose in life, if life is what you wanted to call robot existence.

  Similarly, Derec had awakened in a spaceship’s survival pod on an ice asteroid, without even the memory of his own name. “Derec” was the name on his spacesuit, a name he had kept even after finding that it was the name of the suit’s manufacturer. Like Lucius, he had found himself with only robots for company and questions for comfort. In the time since, he had discovered a few things about himself, most notably that his father was responsible for his condition — it was to be the ultimate “test” of his son’s worthiness — but on the whole he had found out pitifully little about his identity. Even now, with his father cured of his megalomania, he still had more questions than answers.

  No wonder Lucius had suspected he might be human. For a time, Derec had wondered if he was a robot. In some cases it was a slippery distinction.

  I, too, lack a past, Lucius sent.

  Learn to like it, Derec replied.

  Avery was waiting for them when they arrived. Derec wondered how he had managed that, then realized that it was his own doing. He had sent him off at high speed. Even the long way can be a shortcut if you go fast enough.

  “Very funny,” Avery said as Derec stepped from his booth.

  Derec grinned. “You needed to loosen up.”

  “I’ll remember that.” Avery turned and stalked into the apartment building, determined, Derec was sure, to do nothing of the sort.

  Derec waited for the others to climb out of their booths, then followed after Avery. The apartment was on the top floor of what was currently a twenty-floor tower, but the height was subject to change without notice. Derec ha
d considered ordering the City to leave the building alone, but in the end had decided against it. Variety was the spice of life, after all. Why should he care how tall the building was? On days when it was too tall for stairs, he could always use the elevator.

  Avery had already done so, but the car was already descending again. When it arrived, Derec and everyone else packed into it, and Derec commanded it to take them to the top.

  The apartment filled the entire floor. The elevator opened into a skylit atrium filled with plants, surrounding a fountain that Derec had copied from an ancient design. From either side of the pool a solid stream of water arched upward in a parabola, the two streams carefully balanced to meet in the middle and spray outward in a vertical sheet of water. Derec was about to lead on past it, but Lucius paused when he saw it, then reached out and interrupted the path of one stream of water with a hand. The last of the stream continued upward as if nothing had happened, but when the gap reached the center, the other beam arched over to splash against the top of Lucius’s hand, just opposite the other water beam. It was obvious that the two beams followed exactly the same trajectory, and could meet anywhere along their paths.

  Lucius removed his hand and the two streams met headon again, the point of contact slowly climbing back up to the center.

  “Interesting,” he said.

  “I call it ‘Negative Feedback,’ “Derec replied. Unable to resist a little dig, he added, “It’s a useful principle. Think about it.”

  If Lucius understood his implication, he gave no sign of it. “I will,” he promised.

  Ariel walked on past them, through a massive simulated-wood double door and into the apartment itself. It was a palace. The living room took up one whole quarter of the floor, its glass walls on two sides affording a view of half the city stretching out to the horizon. From the main entryway, a wide, curving hallway led off into the rest of the apartment, one glass wall facing the atrium and the other studded with doors leading into the library, computer room, bedrooms, video room, dining room, kitchen, game room, fitness room, swimming pool, and on into unused space that remained unused only because no one could think of anything else they wanted to fill it with.

  The apartment was big and ostentatious, far more than three humans and an alien needed, but as the only inhabitants of an entire city full of robots they had decided to enjoy it. In this particular instance, there seemed little advantage in moderation.

  Another robot waited for them in the apartment: Mandelbrot, Ariel and Derec’s personal robot. Mandelbrot was a standard Auroran model, made of levers and gears and servo motors, save where damage to his right arm had been repaired with an arm salvaged from a Robot City robot. That arm could have been any shape Mandelbrot — or his masters — wished, but he had chosen to make it match his other arm as closely as possible.

  “You beat us home,” Derec said when he saw him. Mandelbrot had been in the Compass Tower, helping direct the city’s reconstruction from there.

  “I left as soon as my task was finished, reasoning that you would come here soon after,” the robot replied.

  “Right, as usual,” Derec said, patting Mandelbrot’s metal shoulder in easy camaraderie. He nodded toward Lucius. “Here’s our troublesome renegade, ordered to behave and given a new name to remind him of it. Mandelbrot, meet Lucius.”

  “Hello, Lucius,” Mandelbrot said.

  “I am more properly called ‘Lucius II,’ “Lucius said, “to distinguish me from the artist; however, Derec has pointed out that among those who realize the original Lucius is no longer operative, there is little danger of confusion in calling me simply ‘Lucius.’”

  “That seems reasonable,” Mandelbrot replied.

  Ariel had already disappeared into the apartment, as had Dr. Avery, but from the soft, synthesized music coming from the living room, Derec knew where at least one of them had gone. He waved the robots into the living room as well, then went into the small kitchen just next door. It held a small automat that provided light snacks and drinks for anyone who didn’t want to walk or send a robot all the way to the main kitchen. Derec dialed a number from memory, and the machine delivered up a glass of dark brown, bubbling synthetic cola, one of his own experimental creations.

  “Betelgeuse, anyone?” he asked loudly.

  “Yecch” ‘Ariel said from the living room.

  Wolruf padded into the kitchen. “I’ll ‘ave one,” she said, holding out her hand. Derec gave her the one he had already dialed for, then ordered another for himself and a glass of Ariel’s favorite, Auroran Ambrosia, for her.

  From the library Avery said, “Mandelbrot, get me a mug of coffee.”

  The robot entered the kitchen behind Wolruf, waited patiently for Derec to finish with the automat, then pushed buttons in the sequence for coffee. Derec shook his head in exasperation. Avery had a whole city full of robots at his command, but he still loved to order Mandelbrot around. No doubt it was because Mandelbrot was Derec’s robot, and Ariel’s before him. Derec had considered telling Mandelbrot to ignore Avery’s picayune orders, but so far he hadn’t felt like provoking the conflict that Avery so obviously wanted.

  Ariel was already sitting in one of the single-person chairs in the living room, her back to the glassed-in comer looking out over the city. Adam and Eve and Lucius were seated on a couch at an angle beside her, looking like a triple reflection of her. Wolruf followed Derec into the room and took another chair opposite the robots, leaving Derec with the choice of a chair beside Wolruf or one across from Ariel. Or

  Convert Ariel’s chair into a loveseat, he sent to the apartment controller, and the malleable Robot City material began flowing into the new shape. The chair’s right arm receded from Ariel while more material rose up from the floor to fill in the space.

  “What the — oh. You could warn a girl.”

  “But you’re so pretty when you’re surprised. Your eyes go wide, and you breathe in deep...”

  “Beast.”

  “Thank you.” Derec handed her the glass of Ambrosia and sat beside her.

  He took a long pull at his Betelgeuse. It felt grand to relax. It seemed he’d been going full tilt since he’d first heard of these strange new robots. But now, with Lucius tracked down and ordered to stop his human-creating project, the problems he had caused were over. Completely. One nice thing about robots; once they accepted an order to do something — 0r not to do it — they were locked into whatever behavior pattern that entailed.

  Which, come to think of it, didn’t necessarily mean no more trouble. No amount of orders could cover every eventuality, not even a blanket order like, “Don’t cause any more trouble.” Not even the Three Laws, built into the very nature of their brains, could keep them from occasionally damaging themselves, or disobeying orders, or even harming a human, however inadvertently. It kept such harm to a minimum, surely, but it didn’t prevent it entirely. Nor would anything Derec could do keep these robots from letting their curious nature draw them into unusual situations. They were like cats; only dead ones stayed out of mischief.

  “So,” Derec said, stretching out and putting an arm around Ariel. “What are we going to do with you three?”

  Ariel snuggled into Derec’s side. The robots looked to one another, then back to Derec. At last Eve spoke. “You need do nothing. We are perfectly capable of taking care of ourselves.”

  “And causing all sorts of problems in the process. No, sorry, but I think I want to keep an eye on you from now on.”

  “As you wish.”

  Lucius said, “I am happy with that arrangement. I will be glad for the opportunity to observe you as well. You are the first humans I have encountered, and since I have been ordered not to create any more, it seems likely that my time will be most profitably spent in your presence.”

  Still operating under the decision to use speech rather than comlink when with humans, Adam turned to Lucius and said, “Eve and I have observed them for some time now. We are attempting to use our experience to
determine what makes humans act the way they do. We intend to formulate a set of descriptive rules, similar to our own Laws of Robotics, which will describe their actions.”

  “That was one purpose of my project as well.”

  “When you get it figured out, let us know, okay?” Derec said facetiously.

  “We will.”

  Lucius fixed his eyes on Adam. “What have you learned about them?”

  “We have learned that —”

  “Hold it,” Ariel interrupted. “New datum for all of you. Humans don’t like being discussed by robots as if they weren’t in the room. If you’re going to compare notes, do it somewhere else.”

  “Very well.” The three robots got up as one and walked silently out of the living room. Derec heard footsteps recede down the hallway, pause, then a door that hadn’t been there before closed softly. The robots had evidently ordered the building to make them a conference room at the other end of the apartment from the humans.

  “Those robots are spooky,” Ariel whispered.

  “‘Ur rright about that,” Wolruf said.

  “If they really are my mother’s creations, then I’m not sure I want to meet her,” Derec added. “They’re so singleminded. Driven. And once they do figure out their ‘Laws of Humanics,’ I’m not sure if I want to be around for the implementation, either.”

  “What do you mean? No robot can disobey the Three Laws, not even them. We’re safe.”

  “Famous last words. What if they decide we’re not fit to be our own masters? What if they decide — like Adam did with the Kin on the planet where he awoke — that they would make wiser rulers than we could? The First Law would require them to take over, wouldn’t it?”

  “You sound like an Earther. ‘Robots are going to take over the galaxy!’”

  Derec grinned sheepishly, but he held his ground. “I know, it’s the same old tired argument, but if it was ever going to happen, now’s the time. Avery’s robot cities were spreading like cancer before we stopped them, and for all I know they could take off and start spreading again. Now these robots show up, and one of them has already made itself leader of an intelligent race. It wouldn’t take much for them to combine their programming and come up with robots who could reproduce themselves faster than humanity can, and who think humans need supervision.”