Asimov's Future History Volume 5

by Isaac Asimov

  “An enclosed room?” Katherine said. “I’ve never heard about this. How could he get trapped like that in this place?”

  “The room grew around him.” Eve said. They reached street level and the robot headed west, away from the Compass Tower. “It sealed him in and wouldn’t let him leave.”

  “Why?”

  “I do not know.”

  “Does anyone know?”

  “I do not know.”

  “All right,” Katherine said, watching a team of robots carry what looked to be gymnasium equipment into one of the buildings. “Just report what you saw.”

  “Gladly. I was called upon to witness the attempt to free Friend David from the sealed room. When I arrived, Supervisor Dante was already on the scene . . . ”The robot stopped moving and for several seconds stared up into the sun. “Precisely here.” Eve pointed to a section of the street. “Friend David was caught inside the structure and we could hear him shouting to be let out.”

  “Who?”

  “Myself, Supervisor Dante, a utility robot with a torch, and another household utility robot who first discovered Friend David’s problem.”

  “What happened then?”

  “Then Supervisor Dante asked Utility Robot #237-5 if the laser torch was safe to use in such close proximity to a human being, and Utility Robot #237-5 assured him that it was. At that point, Supervisor Dante tried to reason with the room to release Friend David, and failing that, he requested that the room be cut into with the torch.”

  “And that request was complied with?”

  “Yes. Supervisor Dante, in fact, asked Utility Robot #237-5 to complete the project quickly.”

  “Why?”

  “I do not know.”

  Katherine thought about the nature of the witness and asked another question. “Were there any other events that coincided with this event?”

  “Yes,” Eve said. “Food Services complained that Friend David could not be served lunch on time and inquired if that would be dangerous to his health; several of the supervisors were meeting in the Compass Tower to discuss ways in which Friend David might have come to the city without their knowledge; and the city itself was put on general security alert.”

  “Does a general security alert alter the way in which functions are performed?” she asked.

  “Yes. We were all called to other emergency duties, and were here only because of the danger to Friend David and the need to release him.”

  “Which you did.”

  “Not me,” Eve said. “I only witnessed. But Friend David was freed from the enclosed room.”

  “Did you notice anything odd at that point?”

  “Odd? Friend Katherine, I can only . . . ”

  “I know,” she interrupted, a touch frustrated. “You only witness. Then tell me exactly what happened.”

  “Supervisor Dante asked Friend David to return to his apartment because a security alert had been called. Friend David said that he was not ready to return to his apartment, that he had business to do. Then he complained of a headache. Then he started laughing and walked away. Utility Robot #237-5 then asked Supervisor Dante if Friend David should be apprehended, and Supervisor Dante said he had weighed the priorities and had decided that the security alert took precedence and ordered us to proceed to our emergency duties, which, in my case, involved witnessing something that I am not at liberty to discuss with you.”

  “Then what?” Katherine asked, anxious.

  “Then I performed the security duty that I had been assigned.”

  “No, no,” Katherine said. “What happened then in regard to David?”

  “Approximately nine decads later, I was again called upon.” Eve began moving quickly down the street, Katherine right behind, having to run to keep up. “I am taking you to the approximate place of the second incident,” the robot called from a speaker set in the back of its dome. “I was called here, along with Supervisor Euler this time, by Utility Robot #716-14, who had discovered several waste control robots trying to take the body of Friend David away.”

  Eve moved quickly around a corner, then stopped abruptly, Katherine nearly running into the robot.

  “Here,” Eve said, “is the approximate place where the body was alleged to have fallen.”

  “Alleged?”

  “It was no longer here upon my arrival.”

  “What story did the utility robot tell?”

  “Utility Robot #716-14 said that he sent the waste control robots away, then examined Friend David for signs of life without success. During the course of the examination another room began to grow around the body and enclose it, at which point Utility Robot #716-14 removed himself before becoming trapped, and put in an emergency call to us. We returned to the scene together, but the body was gone. That is the last time anyone has seen Friend David.”

  “Were there signs of violence on the body?”

  “Utility Robot #716-14 reported that the body appeared perfectly normal except for a small cut on the left foot. Since I can only report hearsay in this regard, I am unable to render this as an accurate examination.”

  Katherine leaned against the wall of a one-story parts depot, the wall giving slightly under her pressure. It seemed more than coincidence that David’s plight in the sealed room and the alert conditions of the city happened concurrently—but how were they connected?

  “Do you feel, then, that the body moved simply because the city moved it?” she asked.

  “I cannot speculate on such a theory,” the witness said, “but I heard Supervisor Euler make a pronouncement similar to yours—hearsay again.”

  “Given the growth rate of the city,” Katherine said, “calculate how far and in what direction the body of David could have traveled if, indeed, the movement of the city took him from this place.”

  “Approximately ten and one-half blocks,” Eve said without hesitation, “in any direction. The city works according to a plan that is not known to me.”

  “Ten and a half blocks,” Katherine said low. “Well, it’ll sure give me something to do to fill in the time.” She looked at Eve’s bristling dome. “Let’s take a walk.”

  “That is your decision,” the robot replied, as Katherine picked a direction at random and began walking, looking for what, she didn’t know.

  ACCESS DENIED was written in bold letters across the CRT, and it was a phrase Derec had run into over a dozen times in as many minutes.

  He stood at a small counter set beside a large, open window. Through the billowing clouds of iron-red dust floating into the sky, he could see the long line of earthmovers inching their way along the rocky ground, the teeth of their heavy front diggers easily chewing up the ground to a depth of 70 centimeters, then laying out the mulch in a flat, even plain behind, holes filling, rises falling, the ground absolutely uniform behind. A series of heavy rollers completed the unique vehicles, packing the ground hard for the slab base of the city to push its way into that section as it was completed.

  After leaving the reservoir and its tragedy behind, he had asked Rec to take him to the edge of the city. He had wanted to see for himself the creation of the cloud dust and also to try and find access to a terminal far out of the reach of the supervisors. The robot had been hesitant at first, but after Derec had assured him that he’d go no farther than city’s edge, Rec had readily agreed.

  But now that he was here, Derec resented the time it had taken to come this far out. The terminal had been a complete bust. He’d found himself able to access any amount of information when it came to this part of the city operation: troubleshooting info, repair info, time references, equipment specs, personnel delineation, and SOPs of all kinds; but beyond that, access was impossible.

  He had tried various methods of obtaining passwords, but it seemed he was stymied before he got started. He came away with the impression that once the city was on alert, terminals became place-oriented, only able to pick up specific data as it related to their possible function in a given location
. He found this difficult to believe, for if the robots were in total charge of access and passwords it belied the nature of their “perfect human world.” It struck him that access would have to be humanly possible for very basic philosophical reasons.

  But not here; not at this terminal.

  So, where did that leave him? The rains still came, with or without his presence; the central core was still denied to him, and with it any answers it might possess; he was still a prisoner (a fact he did take seriously, despite Katherine’s feelings); and he still knew nothing about his origins or reasons for being in Robot City.

  That thought returned him to the basics. When he had visited the Compass Tower, Avernus had been pointed out as the first supervisor robot, the one that had initiated the construction of the other supervisors. Derec had been successful in determining the origin and destination of the water; now he would work on the origin of the city itself. The only place to start was with Avernus and the underground. The mining was needed to produce the raw materials to build the city. Everything else sprang from that foundation. He would go to the source—to Avernus.

  He shut down the useless terminal and walked out of the otherwise bare room to find Rec intently studying the rising dust clouds, taking readings. It was his obsession.

  “I want to go into the mines and speak with Avernus,” he told the robot. “Is that acceptable?”

  “I will take you to the mines, Friend Derec,” Rec answered, “but from that point on, the decision will belong to Avernus.”

  “Fair enough,” Derec said, and prepared for another long walk. Then he spotted one of the trams parked near the excavation and walked toward it. “Let’s ride this time.”

  “We were not given this machine,” Rec said. “It is not ours to take.”

  “Were you told not to let me take the machine?” Derec countered.

  “No, but . . . ”

  “Then let’s go.”

  Derec jumped in the front, but saw no controls with which to drive it. He knew that this was probably the means by which the robots working the movers got here, but the witness was unable to make that speculation and consequently folded up. “How does it work?”

  “You speak your destination into the microphone,” Rec said.

  “The underground,” Derec said, then shrugged at Rec. Within seconds, the car lurched forward and moved speedily away from the digs.

  They traveled quickly, moving through an entire section full of nothing but robot production facilities that were running full tilt, furiously trying to keep up with the record-setting building pace. As the number of buildings increased, so, too, did the number of robots to service those buildings and the people who didn’t live in them. They passed vehicle after vehicle jammed full of new, functionally designed robots who stared all around, seeing their world for the first time.

  They also passed other small forests and what seemed to be large sections of hydroponic greenhouses, for when large-scale food production became a reality. Then they whizzed past a large, open area that seemed to serve no function.

  “What’s that?” Derec asked.

  “Nothing,” Rec answered.

  “I don’t mean now,” Derec said. “What’s it going to be?”

  “I do not often deal in potential,” the robot replied, several red lights on his dome blinking madly, “but I recall Supervisor Euler once referring to this place as a future spaceport.”

  Derec was a bit taken aback. Robot City was absolutely unable to deal with incoming or outgoing ships in any form. It led him down another avenue.

  “If the spaceport hasn’t been constructed yet,” he said, “where do you keep your hyperwave transmitters?”

  He asked the question casually, knowing full well that Rec would undoubtedly tell him the information was classified; but he was totally unprepared for the answer he received.

  “I do not know what a hyperwave transmitter is,” the robot replied.

  “A device designed for communication over long distances in space,” Derec said. “Perhaps you call it something else.”

  “I have witnessed nothing designed to communicate beyond our atmosphere,” Rec answered.

  “You don’t send and receive information from off-planet?”

  “I know of no such instance,” Rec replied. “We are self-contained here.”

  The tram jerked to a stop, jerking Derec’s thoughts along with it. Somehow, it had never occurred to him that they really were trapped on this planet. The Key and its proper use suddenly became of paramount importance to him.

  “We have arrived, Friend Derec,” Rec said.

  “So we have,” Derec replied, getting slowly out of the car. What was going on here? Who created this place? And why? It was a pristine civilization removed from contact with anything beyond itself, yet its Spacer roots were obvious. Could David, the dead man, have been the creator?

  He walked past the lines of robots carrying their damaged equipment, past the huge extruder and its never-ending ribbon of city, and stood at the entrance to the underground. He turned to see Rec standing beside him.

  “Find Avernus,” he said. “Tell him I want to speak with him. I don’t want to break protocol by going somewhere off-limits to humans.”

  “Yes, Friend Derec,” the robot answered and moved aside to commune with its net of radio communications.

  Derec sat on the ground beside the doorway and watched the robots walking back and forth past him. He was beginning to feel like a useless appendage with nothing to do. He felt guilty even ordering the robots around; they had more important things to do.

  He glanced at his watch. It was two in the afternoon, and soon they’d be approaching another night of rain, another useless night of speculation as the water level rose higher and higher. “We will have failed,” Euler had said, and in that sentence the robot had spoken volumes. Like Derec, the supervisor knew that Robot City was a test, a test designed for all of then. If Euler and the others were unable to solve the problem of the rain, they would have failed in their attempt to build a workable world. He also knew that the salvation of this world would take a creative form of thought that most people felt robots incapable of. Perhaps that’s where Derec fit in. Synnoetics, they had called it, the whole greater than the sum of the parts. For that to take place, Derec would have to begin by convincing the robots they had to confide in him despite their security measures.

  “I’m extremely busy, Friend Derec,” the voice said loudly. “What do you want of me?”

  Derec looked up to see Avernus’s massive form bending to fit in the door space.

  “We need to speak of saving this place,” Derec said. “We need to approach one another as equals, and not adversaries.”

  “You may have done murder, Derec,” Avernus said. “I am not the equal of that.”

  “Neither is Euler,” Derec replied, “but his inattention caused a robot to die today.”

  “You were also present.”

  Derec looked at the ground. “Y-yes,” he said. “I had no right to bring that up.”

  “Tell me what you want of me.”

  “Answers,” Derec said. “Understanding. I want to help with the city . . . the rains. I want someone to know and appreciate that.”

  The robot looked at him for a long moment, then motioned him inside. They walked down the stairs together and into the holding area, Rec following behind at a respectable distance. Avernus then took him aside, away from the activity, and made a seat for him by piling up a number of broken machines of various kinds.

  Derec climbed atop the junk pile and sat, Avernus standing nearby. “We are in an emergency situation, and my programming limits my communication with you.”

  “I understand that,” Derec replied. “I also know that many situations require judgment calls that you must sift through your logic circuits. I ask only that you think synnoetically.”

  “If you ask that of me,” the robot said, “I must tell you something. The concept of death holds mor
e weight with me than with the others. My logic circuits are different because of my work.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The robot’s stock-in-trade is efficiency,” Avernus answered, “and in jobs requiring labor, cost efficiency. But in the mines cost efficiency isn’t necessarily cost efficient.”

  “Now I’m really confused.”

  “The most cost-effective way to approach mine work may be the most dangerous way to approach it, but the most dangerous way to approach it may result in the loss of a great many workers because of the nature of the mines. So, the most effective way to work the mines may not be the most cost-efficient in the long run. Consequently, I am programmed to have a respect for life—even robotic life—that far and away exceeds what one could consider normal. The lives of my workers are of prime importance to me beyond any concept of efficiency.”

  “What has that got to do with me?” Derec asked.

  “If you have killed, Derec, you will be anathema to me. The fact that you are accused and could be capable of such an action is almost more than I can bear. I voted against your freedom when we met on this issue.”

  “I swear to you that I am innocent,” Derec said.

  “Humans lie,” the robot answered. “Now, do you still wish me to be the one to ‘appreciate’ your position?”

  “Yes,” Derec answered firmly. “I ask only that I be given the opportunity to show you that I have the best interests of Robot City at heart. I am innocent, and the truth will free me.”

  “Well said. What do you want to know.”

  “You are the first supervisor,” Derec said. “What are your first recollections?”

  “I was awakened by a utility robot we call 1-1,” Avernus said, his red photocells fixed on Derec. “1-1 had already awakened fifty other utility machines. I awakened with a full knowledge of who and what I was: a semi-autonomous robot whose function was to supervise the mines for city building, and to supervise the building of other supervisors to fulfill various tasks.”

  “Were you programmed to serve humans?”

  “No,” Avernus said quickly. “We were programmed with human information, both within us and within the core unit, which was also operational when I was awakened. Our decision to service was one we arrived at independently.”