Asimov’s Future History Volume 7

by Isaac Asimov

  Likewise, Eve displayed just a hint of Ariel’s oval face, widely spaced eyes, and gently curvaceous female form, for it had been Ariel upon whom she had first imprinted.

  Lucius, having hatched and imprinted in Robot City, still looked more like a robot than either of the others, and for that reason it was he whom Derec and Avery began examining first. Outward form probably didn’t mean that the inside would be anything like a normal robot’s, or even a normal Robot City robot’s, but there was at least a chance of it, and in any case they could learn more from studying a similar form rather than from something completely different.

  The positronic brain, at least, was universal among robots of any manufacture, and despite Derec’s fear that this might be the exception that proved the rule, the pillow sensor fit itself around Lucius ‘s head without complaint, the indicator light glowing green when the link with the brain had been established.

  That alone told them something. Not all robots kept their brains in their heads; some models kept them inside the more protected chest cavity. Avery had designed his to function as much like humans as they could, which meant putting the brain in their heads so they would develop the same automatic responses concerning it. Injury-avoidance behavior, for instance, might be different in a being who kept its brain in a different part of its anatomy. To find the brains in the heads of these robots meant either that they were such excellent mimics that they could determine where their subject’s internal organs belonged, or that their creator was also concerned with the subtle differences the location of the brain might introduce into her robots’ behavior.

  “Definitely getting mental activity,” Avery said, nodding toward the display screen upon which marched a series of square-edged waveforms. He tapped a button and a different series replaced the first. “Cognition appears undamaged,” he muttered, and switched the display again.

  Derec suddenly felt a burst of recognition reach through the veil surrounding his past. There on the screen was the basic pattern common to all robots: the Three Laws graphically represented as pathway potentials within the positronic brain. He had learned that pattern years ago, probably in school, though just when it had been he couldn’t remember.

  It wasn’t a major revelation. Derec had already known he had training in robotics, but nonetheless it was a welcome shot of deja vu. It was a true memory in a mind mostly devoid of them, and as such it was as precious to Derec as gold.

  Avery switched the display again.

  “Hello, hello, test, test.” With each word spoken, what had been a smooth sine wave erupted into a fit of jagged peaks and troughs: Avery’s voice processed through the robot’s microphone ears.

  Derec let out a sigh. The memory was already fading. To avoid the crushing disappointment that so often came from such a tantalizing glimpse into his past, he focused his attention on what was happening before him. “Looks like he’s hearing us,” he said. “The signal must not be getting processed.”

  “Let’s see.” Avery switched the display again, spoke, “Hello, hello, test, test,” again, and again the waveform — a modulated square wave this time — burst into activity.

  “It’s on the main input line.” Avery sounded puzzled. He switched again, spoke again, but this time the display remained a constant flat line.

  “Aha! Not getting to the command interpreter. Something’s blocking it.” Avery switched the display back to the input line.

  Step by step he focused the monitor deeper and deeper into the brain’s positronic pathways, searching for the block, and finally found it in a combination of potentials from the volition circuitry and the self-awareness logic. Plus, the comlink line was saturated with information. The information transfer rate was so high that no other inputs were being monitored.

  “I tried listening on the comlink before, but there was just static,” Derec said when they discovered the comlink activity. He tried again and heard the same thing as before. “Still there.”

  “Static, or information flow too fast to recognize?” Avery asked. He pressed keys on a signal processor beside the brain display, and the same static that Derec had heard over the comlink filled the room. Avery began slowing the signal down, and eventually, after being slowed by a factor of one hundred, the static resolved into the familiar bleeps of binary data transfer.

  “Sounds like they’re having quite a conversation,” Derec said.

  “Conversation,” Avery said disgustedly. “They’re ignoring us. That’s aberrant behavior. It’s already led them into disobeying orders.”

  “Not really. They only follow the orders they can hear. If they’re really not hearing us, then they’re not disobeying anything.” Derec glanced over at Eve on the next table, and thus Avery’s next move took him completely by surprise. Before he knew what was happening, Avery’s backhand sent him sprawling on the floor.

  “Talk back to me, will you?” Avery screamed. “I’ve had enough of your insolence, boy! Maybe a boot up alongside your head will knock some respect into you! “He leaped around the table and drew back his foot to follow through on his threat.

  Frost, he’s flipped again, Derec thought as he twisted frantically to avoid Avery’s kick.

  Avery screamed in frustration. “Oh, you’re quicker than me, are you? We’ll see how long that lasts when I shoot you in the leg!” He snatched up a cutting laser from the rack of tools beside the examining table and fired toward Derec, but his shot went wide. Derec heard a loud crack of superheated metal vaporizing, but he was already scrambling for the relative shelter of Eve’s table.

  Security Alert, he sent over the comlink. Avery’s laboratory. Help!

  He heard another shot, then Avery’s quiet laughter, followed by, “Wow, they’re really out of it, aren’t they?”

  Derec stayed silent, gauging the distance from his hiding place to the closest doorway, one leading into one of the lab’s other rooms. He was about to make his leap when he heard the scrape of metal sliding on metal, and the laser skidded to a stop beside him.

  “False alarm,” Avery said.

  Derec eyed the laser. Had Avery been playing with him before, or was this just a decoy to get him out into the sights of another laser now? Avery’s first shot had gone wide, but was that significant? Could he afford to guess wrong?

  Well, Derec could play the decoy game as well as Avery. He pulled off his wristcomp and tossed it to his left, over the laser and beyond. The moment it hit the floor he was up and lunging for the tool rack beside Eve’s exam table. It tipped over with a crash, spilling equipment across the floor, but Derec was already rolling to his feet with the laser from the rack before the clatter had even begun to die down.

  Avery stood beside Lucius, his hands held out to his sides, an amused expression on his face. “It really was a false alarm,” he said. “I wanted to test whether or not they’d respond to a First Law imperative.”

  “Test,” Derec spat. “I’m tired of your tests! You’ve been testing me and using me since the day I was born and I’m sick of it! Do you understand me?”

  It was then that the six cargo robots burst into the room. They had already left for their normal duties after carrying the other three into the lab, but they were evidently still the closest robots who could answer Derec’s frantic summons for help. The first one through the door surveyed the scene and reacted immediately, picking up a small circuit analyzer from a bench by the door and hurling it with all its might at Derec. Before Derec could even flinch, the analyzer knocked the laser from his hands, and both fell to the floor to die in a fit of sparks and smoke. The other robots rushed past the first and split up, two of them going for Avery while three more came for Derec and pinned his arms to his sides. Within seconds both humans were held immobile in the grip of the robots.

  “Let me go,” Avery said calmly, but the robots didn’t budge.

  The robot who had knocked the laser from Derec ‘s hands said, “Not until we understand what has happened here. It was master Derec, was it n
ot, who summoned our help?”

  “That’s right,” Derec said. “He was shooting at me with a laser.”

  “Yet you were the one holding the laser when we entered.”

  “I grabbed it in self-defense.”

  “Defense? I fail to see how a weapon can be used for defense.”

  Derec blushed under his father’s sudden onslaught of laughter. “He’s got you there!” Avery said.

  The robot had, Derec realized. If he’d actually used the laser, he would have been guilty of the very action he was defending himself against. In the robot’s eyes, harm to a human was harm to a human, no matter what the provocation.

  It was embarrassing to have such a thing pointed out to him. He should have realized it from the start, should have felt an instinctive, rather than belated, urge to preserve his attacker as well as himself from harm.

  Even if that attacker was his father.

  “I stand corrected,” he said at last. “I should have retreated.”

  “I am glad you realize that,” the robot said. Of Avery it asked, “Why did you shoot at him?”

  “I needed to provoke a First Law response in these robots. I didn’t shoot directly at him, just close.”

  “I see,” the robot said, scanning the room for verification. It probably did see, Derec realized. The heat trails of his path and the path of the laser beam would still be visible in infrared light; it would be easy for the robot to tell how close the beam had come.

  “Do you accept his explanation?” the robot asked Derec.

  “I guess,” Derec said with a sigh.

  “Do either of you wish to continue your hostilities?”

  Derec shook his head. “No.”

  “No,” echoed Avery.

  “Very well.” Derec felt the robots let go of his arms, but the ones holding Avery still held him. The first robot, moving to stand closer to him, said, “You should understand that psychological shock, especially shock concerning fear for one’s life, is still considered harm to a human. You have caused Derec harm. Do you understand this?”

  Avery scowled. “Yeah,” he said. “Let me go.”

  “Only when I am convinced that you will not repeat your offense. Do I have your assurance that you will not?”

  “Okay, okay, I won’t shoot at him again.”

  “You must also endeavor never to scare him in another way, or to harm him either physically or psychologically in any way. Do I have your assurance that you will not?”

  “Yes, you have my assurance. Now let me go.”

  The robot turned to Derec. “Do you accept his assurance as truthful?”

  Derec couldn’t resist laughing. “Hardly,” he said. “But that’s okay. After what he just did, I don’t think he can surprise me anymore. Let him go.”

  The robots did. “We will observe you for a time,” the talkative one said.

  Avery scowled. “I don’t want you to. Go away.”

  “We cannot do that until we are sure that you will not harm one another.”

  Avery evidently realized this was an argument that he couldn’t win. He shrugged and gestured at the mess on the floor. “Make yourselves useful then.”

  The other robots began to pick up the scattered equipment, but the talkative one said to Avery, “A less destructive First Law test would have been to simply state that you were about to fall over without catching yourself. No properly functioning robot would allow that to happen.”

  “Thank you for your profound input,” Avery said with exaggerated politeness.

  “You are welcome.”

  “Now get to work.”

  Chapter 3

  THE BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY

  “I STILL THINK we ought to take one of them apart.” Avery was leaning over Lucius, positioning the internal scanner for yet another cross-section through the robot’s body. It may have resembled a robot on the outside, but that was as far as the similarity went; Lucius’s interior resembled a human body far more than it did a robot’s. It didn’t have any unnecessary internal organs, but those it did need were modeled after the human pattern. It had bunches of cells arranged like muscles, bones, and nerves, at least, rather than the more conventional linkages and cams.

  Interesting as that discovery was, it had been hours since they had made it, and Avery was getting frustrated

  “And I still say it won’t tell us anything we can’t find out indirectly,” Derec replied. He was sitting on a stool on the opposite side of the examination table, watching the screen and getting bored. “They’re obviously comparing notes, probably on their experience with humans. Why not let them go for a while? They might come up with something interesting.”

  “Like some wonderful new way to disturb my cities,” said Avery.

  “Your cities can take care of themselves. And if not, I can take care of them.”

  “You think so. I think you’re just trying to protect your mother’s experiment.”

  Derec considered that possibility. Was he trying to protect her experiment, or was he simply trying to protect three robots from being needlessly destroyed? He had thought it was the latter, but now that Avery mentioned it...

  “Maybe I am,” he said.

  “You don’t even know her.”

  “That’s not my fault.”

  “And it is mine. Guilty. I shouldn’t have wiped your memory. When I think of a good way to make it up to you, I will, but believe me, you’re better off without it.”

  “I’d like to be the judge of that.”

  Avery had been looking at the scanner display, but now he turned his head and looked his son straight in the eyes. “Of course you would. I can understand that. But bear in mind, if you got your memory back, what you’d have memories of. I told you once before that you had a fairly normal childhood, and that’s true enough, but it was a normal childhood in an Auroran family, which is the next best thing to no family at all. Your mother and I hardly saw one another after your birth. You hardly saw either of us. In fact, you spent most of your childhood with robots.”

  “No wonder I fit in so well here,” Derec said drily.

  Avery said nothing, and Derec sensed his embarrassment. At least he’s embarrassed, he thought, then chided himself for feeling vindictive. Learning to live with a recovering psychopath was almost as difficult as being the recoveree. The things his father had done while insane were not his fault, at least not in the sense that he could be held responsible for them, yet Derec still felt that he had been poorly treated. Somebody should feel bad about it, shouldn’t they?

  Or was this another situation like the one they had just gone through with the laser? Was wishing for remorse just another way of mistreating a human?

  No wonder the robots were having such a time trying to understand human interactions. The humans themselves didn’t understand them half the time.

  But the robots were learning. Witness the cargo robots, still standing patiently around the lab, watching for signs of recurring violence. They had already learned not to trust a human’s stated intentions.

  How could that be a good thing? Before long these robots of his father’s would decide that humans were not to be trusted at all, and hence not to be obeyed in any situation where trust was necessary to avoid an internal conflict with the Three Laws. As for his mother’s robots, if they ever came out of their communication fugue, who could predict what conclusions they would draw from their collective experiences? The only prediction Derec was willing to make with any certainty was that they would be even less useful than before.

  That thought made Derec ask, “What were our house robots like?”

  Avery looked up momentarily in surprise. “What do you mean, ‘what were they like?’ Like robots, of course. Old-style robots. I didn’t develop the cellular robot until after you’d left home, and your mother stole her design from me.”

  “That’s what I thought. The point is, they did the mundane work for you, right? Cooking and cleaning and changing diapers and emptying
the trash.”

  “Of course they did,” Avery said. He sounded indignant, as if the very thought that he would have done any of those chores was obscene.

  “They were useful, then.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “I’m getting at the obvious observation that the robots around here, despite their advanced design — maybe because of their advanced design — aren’t as useful as the older models. They’re more trouble. Too much independence.”

  Avery moved the scanner a fraction and keyed the display again. Another view into the nerve and musclelike masses of Lucius’s interior appeared on the screen. “Maybe my definition of useful is different from yours,” he said.

  They had already had that conversation. Avery was simply not interested in immediate utility, and Derec was. There was no sense arguing over it. Derec got up off his stool with a sigh, stretched, and said, “I’m about to fall asleep here. Are you going to keep at it all day?”

  “Probably,” Avery replied. “I think I’ll leave you to it, then.”

  “Fine.”

  “Just don’t cut any of them up, okay?”

  Avery looked pained. “I’ll do with them whatever I please. If that includes cutting them up, then that’s what I’ll do.”

  Derec and Avery stared at one another across the unmoving robot’s body for long, silent seconds. One of the cargo robots near the wall took a step toward them. Derec looked up at the robot, then back to Avery. He considered ordering the robot to keep Avery from harming the others, but decided against it. It would just escalate the war between them. Besides, there were better ways.