Robots and Empire trs-4

by Isaac Asimov

  The two robots, carrying the massive device between them, renewed their forward movement.

  “Robots, stop!” screamed Gladia and the forward motion stopped. Me robots trembled in place, as though attempting to move forward and yet not quite able to do so.

  Gladia said, “You cannot destroy my human friend Daneel without destroying me—and you yourself admit that I am a human being and therefore must not be harmed.”

  Daneel said in a low voice, “My lady, you must not draw harm upon yourself in an effort to protect me.”

  Landaree said, “This is useless, madam. I can remove you easily from your present position and then destroy the nonhuman being behind you. Since that may harm you, I ask you, with all respect, to move from your present position voluntarily—”

  “You must, my lady,” said Daneel.

  “No, Daneel. I’ll stay here. In the time it will take her to move me, you run!”

  “I cannot run faster than the beam of a blaster—and if I try to run, she will shoot through you rather than not at all. Her instructions are probably that firm. I regret, my lady, that this will cause you unhappiness.”

  And Daneel lifted the struggling Gladia and tossed her lightly to one side.

  Landaree’s finger tightened on the contact, but never completed the pressure. She remained motionless.

  Gladia, who had staggered to a sitting position, got to her feet. Cautiously, D.G., who had remained in place during the last exchanges, approached Landaree. Daneel quite calmly reached out and took the blaster from her unresisting fingers.

  “I believe,” said Daneel, “that this robot is permanently deactivated.”

  He pushed her gently and she fell over in one piece, with her limbs, torso, and head in the relative positions they occupied when she was standing. Her arm was still bent, her hand was holding an invisible blaster, and her finger was pressing on an invisible contact.

  Through the trees to one side of the grassy field on which the drama had played itself out Giskard was approaching, his robotic face showing no signs of curiosity, though his words might have.

  “What has taken place in my absence?” he asked.

  32

  The walk back to the ship was rather anticlimactic. Now that the frenzy of fear and action was over, Gladia felt hot and cross. D.G. limped rather painfully and they progressed slowly, partly because of the limp and partly because the two Solarian robots were still carrying their massive instrument, plodding along under its weight.

  D.G. looked over his shoulder at them. “They obey my orders now that that overseer is out of action.”

  Gladia said through her teeth, “Why didn’t you run at the end and get help? Why did you remain helplessly watching?”

  “Well,” said D.G., with an attempt at the kind of lightness he would have showed easily were he feeling better, “with you refusing to leave Daneel, I rather hesitated to play the coward by comparison.”

  “You fool! I was safe. She would not have harmed me.”

  Daneel said, “Madam, it distresses me to contradict you, but I think she would have done so as her urge to destroy me grew stronger.”

  Gladia turned on him hotly. “And that was a smart thing you did, pushing me out of the way. Did you want to be destroyed?”

  “Rather than see you harmed, madam, yes. My failure to stop the robot through inhibitions set up by her human appearance demonstrated, in any case, an unsatisfactory limit to my usefulness to you.”

  “Even so,” said Gladia, “she would have hesitated to shoot me, since I am human, for a perceptible period of time and you could have had the blaster in your own possession by that time.”

  “I couldn’t gamble your life, madam, on anything as uncertain as her hesitation,” said Daneel.

  “And you,” said Gladia, showing no signs of having heard Daneel and turning to D.G. again, “shouldn’t have brought the blaster in the first place.”

  D.G. said, frowning, “Madam, I am making allowances for the fact that we have all been very close to death. The robots do not mind that and I have grown somehow accustomed to danger. To you, however, this was an unpleasant novelty and you are being childish as a result. I forgive you—a little. But please listen. There was no way I could have known the blaster would be taken from me so easily Had I not brought the weapon, the overseer could have killed me with her bare hands as quickly and as effectively as she could have by blaster. Nor was there any point in my running, to answer an earlier complaint of yours. I could not outrun a blaster. Now please continue if you must still get it out of your system, but I do not intend to reason with you any further.”

  Gladia looked from D.G. to Daneel and back and said in a low voice, “I suppose I am being unreasonable. Very well, no more hind sights.”

  They had reached the ship. Crew members poured out at the sight of them. Gladia noticed they were armed.

  D.G. beckoned to his second-in-command. “Oser, I presume you see that object the two robots are carrying?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, have them carry it on board. Have it put in the security room and kept there. The security room is then to be locked and kept locked.” He turned away for a moment, then turned back. “And Oser, as soon as that is done, we will prepare to take off again.”

  Oser said, “Captain, shall we keep the robots as well?”

  “No. They are too simple in design to be worth much and, under the circumstances, taking them would create undesirable consequences. The device they are carrying is much more valuable than they are.”

  Giskard watched the device being slowly and very carefully maneuvered into the ship. He said, “Captain, I am guessing that that is a dangerous object.”

  “I’m under that impression, too,” said D.G. “I suspect that the ship would have been destroyed soon after we were.”

  “That thing?” said Gladia. “What is it?”

  “I can’t be certain, but I believe it is a nuclear intensifier. I’ve seen experimental models on Baleyworld and this looks like a big brother.”

  “What is a nuclear intensifier?”

  “As the name implies, Lady Gladia, it’s a device that intensifies nuclear fusion.”

  “How does it do that?”

  D.G. shrugged. “I’m not a physicist, my lady. A stream of W particles is involved and they mediate the weak interaction. That’s all I know about it.”

  “What does that do?” asked Gladia.

  “Well, suppose the ship has its power supply as it has right now, for instance. There are small numbers of protons, derived from our hydrogen fuel supply, that are ultrahot and fusing to produce power. Additional hydrogen is constantly being heated to produce free protons, which, when hot enough, also fuse to maintain that power. If the stream of W particles from the nuclear intensifier strikes the fusing protons, these fuse more quickly and deliver more heat. That heat produces protons and sets them to fusing more quickly than they should be and their fusion produces still more heat, which intensifies the vicious cycle. In a tiny fraction of a second, enough of the fuel fuses to form a tiny thermonuclear bomb and the entire ship and everything upon it is vaporized.

  Gladia looked awed. “Why doesn’t everything ignite? Why doesn’t the whole planet blow up?"

  “I don’t suppose there’s danger of that, madam. The protons have to be ultrahot and fusing. Cold protons are so unapt to fuse that even when the tendency is intensified to the full extent of such a device, that still is not enough to allow fusion. At least, that’s what I gathered from a lecture I once attended. And nothing but hydrogen is affected, as far as I know. Even in the case of ultrahot protons, the heat produced does not increase without measure. The temperature cools with distance from the intensifier beam, so that only a limited amount of fusion can be forced. Enough to destroy the ship, of course, but there’s no question of blowing up the hydrogen-rich oceans, for instance, even if part of the ocean were ultraheated—and certainly not if it were cold.”

  “But—if t
he machine gets turned on accidentally in the storage room—”

  “I don’t think it can get turned on.” D.G. opened his hand and in it rested a two—centimeter cube of polished metal. “From what little I—know of such things, this is an activator and the nuclear intensifier can do nothing without it.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Not entirely, but we’ll just have to chance it, since I must get that thing back to Baleyworld. Now let’s get on board.”

  Gladia and her two robots moved up the gangplank and into the ship. D.G. followed and spoke briefly to some of his officers.

  He then said to Gladia, his weariness beginning to show, “It will take us a couple of hours to place all our gear on board and be ready for takeoff and every moment increases the danger.”

  “Danger?”

  “You don’t suppose that fearful woman robot is the only one of its kind that may exist on Solaria, do you? Or that the nuclear intensifier we have captured is the only one of its kind? I suppose it will take time for other humanoid robots and other nuclear intensifiers to be brought to this spot—perhaps considerable time—but we must give them as little as possible. And in the meantime, madam, let us to go your room and conduct some necessary business.”

  “What necessary business would that be, Captain?”

  “Well,” said D.G., motioning them forward, “in view of the fact that I may have been victimized by treason, I think I will conduct a rather informal court-martial.”

  33

  D.G. said, after seating himself with an audible groan, “What I really want is a hot shower, a rubdown, a good meal, and a chance to sleep, but that will all have to wait till we’re off the planet. It will have to wait in your case, too, madam. Some things will not wait, however, my question is this. Where were you, Giskard, while the rest of us were faced with considerable danger?”

  Giskard said, “Captain, it did not seem to me that if robots alone were left on the planet, they would represent any danger. Moreover, Daneel remained with you.”

  Daneel said, “Captain, I agreed, that Giskard would reconnoiter and that I would remain with Madam Gladia and with you.”

  “You two agreed, did you?” said D.G. “Was anyone else consulted?”

  “No, Captain,” said Giskard.

  “If you were certain that the robots were harmless, Giskard, how did you account for the fact that two ships were destroyed?”

  “It seemed to me, Captain, that there must remain human beings on the planet, but that they would do their best not to be seen by you. I wanted to know I where they were and what they were doing. I was in search of them, covering the ground as rapidly as I could. I questioned the robots I met.”

  “Did you find any human beings?”

  “No, Captain.”

  “Did you examine the house out of which the overseer emerged?”

  “No, Captain, but I was certain there were no human beings within it. I still am.”

  “It contained the overseer.”

  “Yes, Captain, but the overseer was a robot.”

  “A dangerous robot.”

  “To my regret, Captain, I did not realize that.”

  “You feel regret, do you?”

  “It is an expression I choose to describe the effect on my positronic circuits. It is a rough analogy to the term as human beings seem to use it, Captain.”

  “How is it you didn’t realize a robot might be dangerous?”

  “By the Three Laws of Robotics—”

  Gladia interrupted, “Stop this, Captain. Giskard only knows what he is programmed to know. No robot is dangerous to human beings, unless there is a deadly quarrel between human beings and the robot must attempt to stop it. In such a quarrel, Daneel and Giskard would undoubtedly have defended us with as little harm to others as possible.”

  “Is that so?” D.G. put two fingers to the bridge of his nose and pinched. “Daneel did defend us. We were fighting robots, not human beings, so he had no problem in deciding whom to defend and to what extent. Yet he showed astonishing lack of success, considering that the Three Laws do not prevent him from doing harm to robots. Giskard remained out of it, returning at the precise moment when it was over. Is it possible that there is a bond of sympathy among robots? Is it possible that robots, when defending human beings against robots, somehow feel what Giskard calls ‘regret’ at having to do so and perhaps fail or absent themselves—”

  “No!” exploded Gladia forcefully.

  “No?” said D.G. “Well, I don’t pretend to be an expert roboticist. Are you, Lady Gladia?”

  “I am not a roboticist of any sort,” said Gladia, “but I have lived with robots all my life. What you suggest is ridiculous. Daneel was quite prepared to give his life for me and Giskard would have done the same.

  “Would any robot have done so?”

  “Of course.”

  “And yet this overseer, this Landaree, was quite ready to attack me and destroy me. Let us grant that, in some mysterious way, she detected that Daneel, despite appearances, was as much a robot as she herself was—despite appearances—and that she had no inhibitions when it came to harming him. How is it, though, that she attacked me when I am unquestionably a human being? She hesitated at you, admitting you were human, but not me. How could a robot discriminate between the two of us? Was she perhaps not really a robot?”

  “She was a robot,” said Gladia. “Of course she was. But—the truth is, I don’t know why she acted as she did. I have never before heard of such a thing. I can only suppose the Solarians, having learned how to construct humanoid robots, designed them without the protection of the Three Laws, though I would have sworn that the Solarians—of all Spacers—would have been the last to do so. Solarians are so outnumbered by their own robots as to be utterly dependent on them—to a far greater extent than any other Spacers are—and for that reason they fear them more. Subservience and even a bit of stupidity were built into all Solarian robots. The Three Laws were stronger on Solaria than anywhere else, not weaker. Yet I can think of no other way of explaining Landaree than to suppose that the First Law was—”

  Daneel said, “Excuse me, Madam Gladia, for interrupting. May I have your permission to attempt an explanation of the overseer’s behavior?”

  D.G. said sardonically, “It comes to that, I suppose. Only a robot can explain a robot.”

  “Sir,” said Daneel, “unless we understand the overseer, we might not be able to take effective measures in the future against the Solarian danger. I believe I have a way of accounting for her behavior.”

  “Go ahead,” said D.G.

  “The overseer,” said Daneel, “did not take instant measures against us. She stood and watched us, for a while, apparently uncertain as to how to proceed. When you, Captain, approached and addressed her, she announced that you were not human and attacked you instantly. When I intervened and cried out that she was a robot, she announced that I was not human and attacked me at once, too. When Lady Gladia came forward, however, shouting at her, the overseer recognized her as human and, for a while, allowed herself to be dominated.”

  “Yes, I remember all that, Daneel. But what does it mean?”

  “It seems to me, Captain, that it is possible to alter a robot’s behavior fundamentally without ever touching the Three Laws, provided, for instance, that you alter the definition of a human being. A human being, after all, is only what it is defined to be.”

  “Is that so? What do you consider a human being to be?”

  Daneel was not concerned with the presence or absence of sarcasm. He said, “I was constructed with a detailed description of the appearance and behavior of human beings, Captain. Anything that fits that description is a human being to me. Thus, you have the appearance and the behavior, while the overseer had the appearance but not the behavior.

  “To the overseer, on the other hand, the key property of a human being was speech, Captain. The Solarian accent is a distinctive one and to the overseer something that looked like a
human being was defined as a human being only if it spoke like a Solarian. Apparently, anything that looked like a human being but did not speak with a Solarian accent was to be destroyed without hesitation. As was any ship carrying such beings.”

  D.G. said thoughtfully, “You may be right.”

  “You have a Settler accent, Captain, as distinctive in its way, as the Solarian accent is, but the two are widely different. As soon as you spoke, you defined yourself as nonhuman to the overseer, who announced that and attacked.”

  “And you speak with an Auroran accent and were likewise attacked.”

  “Yes, Captain, but Lady Gladia spoke with an authentic Solarian accent and so she was recognized as human.”

  D.G. considered the matter silently for a while, then said, “That’s a dangerous arrangement, even for those who would make use of it. If a Solarian, for any reason, at any time addressed such a robot in a way that the robot did not consider an authentic Solarian accent, that Solarian would be attacked at once. If I were a Solarian, I would be afraid to approach such a robot. My very effort to speak pure Solarian might very likely throw me off and get me killed.”

  “I agree, Captain,” said Daneel, “and I would imagine that that is why those who manufacture robots do not ordinarily limit the definition of a human being, but leave it as broad as possible. The Solarians, however, have left the planet. One might suppose that the fact that overseer robots have this dangerous programming is the best indication that the Solarians have really left and are not here to encounter the danger. The Solarians, it appears, are at this moment concerned only that no one who is not a Solarian be allowed to set foot on the planet.”

  “Not even other Spacers?”

  “I would expect, Captain, that it would be difficult to define a human being in such a way as to include the dozen of different Spacer accents and yet exclude the scores of different Settler accents. Keying the definition to the distinctive Solarian accent alone would be difficult enough.”

  D.G. said, “You are very intelligent, Daneel, I disapprove of robots, of course, not in themselves but as an unsettling influence on society. And yet, with a robot such as yourself at my side, as you were once at the Ancestor’s—”