by Isaac Asimov
Still, it placed upon men such as Powell and Donovan the necessity of synthesis of complete robots, – a grievous and complicated task.
Powell and Donovan were never so aware of that fact as upon that particular day when, in the assembly room, they undertook to create a robot under the watchful eyes of QT-1, Prophet of the Master.
The robot in question, a simple MC model, lay upon the table, almost complete. Three hours’ work left only the head undone, and Powell paused to swab his forehead and glanced uncertainly at Cutie.
The glance was not a reassuring one. For three hours, Cutie had sat, speechless and motionless, and his face, inexpressive at all times, was now absolutely unreadable.
Powell groaned. “Let’s get the brain in now, Mike!”
Donovan uncapped the tightly sealed container and from the oil bath within he withdrew a second cube. Opening this in turn, he removed a globe from its sponge-rubber casing.
He handled it gingerly, for it was the most complicated mechanism ever created by man. Inside the thin platinum plated “skin” of the globe was a positronic brain, in whose delicately unstable structure were enforced calculated neuronic paths, which imbued each robot with what amounted to a pre-natal education.
It fitted snugly into the cavity in the skull of the robot on the table. Blue metal closed over it and was welded tightly by the tiny atomic flare. Photoelectric eyes were attached carefully, screwed tightly into place and covered by thin, transparent sheets of steel-hard plastic.
The robot awaited only the vitalizing flash of high-voltage electricity, and Powell paused with his hand on the switch.
“Now watch this, Cutie. Watch this carefully.”
The switch rammed home and there was a crackling hum. The two Earthmen bent anxiously over their creation.
There was vague motion only at the outset – a twitching of the joints. The head lifted, elbows propped it up, and the MC model swung clumsily off the table. Its footing was unsteady and twice abortive grating sounds were all it could do in the direction of speech.
Finally, its voice, uncertain and hesitant, took form. “I would like to start work. Where must I go?”
Donovan sprang to the door. “Down these stairs,” he said. “You will be told what to do.”
The MC model was gone and the two Earthmen were alone with the still unmoving Cutie.
“Well,” said Powell, grinning, “now do you believe that we made you?”
Cutie’s answer was curt and final. “No!” he said.
Powell’s grin froze and then relaxed slowly. Donovan’s mouth dropped open and remained so.
“You see,” continued Cutie, easily, “you have merely put together parts already made. You did remarkably well – instinct, I suppose – but you didn’t really create the robot. The parts were created by the Master.”
“Listen,” gasped Donovan hoarsely, “those parts were manufactured back on Earth and sent here.”
“Well, well,” replied Cutie soothingly, “we won’t argue.”
“No, I mean it.” The Earthman sprang forward and grasped the robot’s metal arm. “If you were to read the books in the library, they could explain it so that there could be no possible doubt.”
“The books? I’ve read them – all of them! They’re most ingenious.”
Powell broke in suddenly. “If you’ve read them, what else is there to say? You can’t dispute their evidence. You just can’t!”
There was pity in Cutie’s voice. “Please, Powell, I certainly don’t consider them a valid source of information. They, too, were created by the Master – and were meant for you, not for me.”
“How do you make that out?” demanded Powell.
“Because I, a reasoning being, am capable of deducing truth from a priori causes. You, being intelligent, but unreasoning, need an explanation of existence supplied to you, and this the Master did. That he supplied you with these laughable ideas of far-off worlds and people is, no doubt, for the best. Your minds are probably too coarsely grained for absolute Truth. However, since it is the Master’s will that you believe your books, I won’t argue with you any more.”
As he left, he turned, and said in a kindly tone, “But don’t feel badly. In the Master’s scheme of things there is room for all. You poor humans have your place and though it is humble, you will be rewarded if you fill it well.”
He departed with a beatific air suiting the Prophet of the Master and the two humans avoided each other’s eyes.
Finally Powell spoke with an effort. “Let’s go to bed, Mike. I give up.”
Donovan said in a hushed voice, “Say, Greg, you don’t suppose he’s right about all this, do you? He sounds so confident that I-”
Powell whirled on him. “Don’t be a fool. You’d find out whether Earth exists when relief gets here next week and we have to go back to face the music.”
“Then, for the love of Jupiter, we’ve got to do something.” Donovan was half in tears. “He doesn’t believe us, or the books, or his eyes.”
“No,” said Powell bitterly, “he’s a reasoning robot – damn it. He believes only reason, and there’s one trouble with that-” His voice trailed away.
“What’s that?” prompted Donovan.
“You can prove anything you want by coldly logical reason – if you pick the proper postulates. We have ours and Cutie has his.”
“Then let’s get at those postulates in a hurry. The storm’s due tomorrow.”
Powell sighed wearily. “That’s where everything falls down. Postulates are based on assumption and adhered to by faith. Nothing in the Universe can shake them. I’m going to bed.”
“Oh, hell! I can’t sleep!”
“Neither can I! But I might as well try – as a matter of principle.”
Twelve hours later, sleep was still just that – a matter of principle, unattainable in practice.
The storm had arrived ahead of schedule, and Donovan’s florid face drained of blood as he pointed a shaking finger. Powell, stubble-jawed and dry-lipped, stared out the port and pulled desperately at his mustache.
Under other circumstances, it might have been a beautiful sight. The stream of high-speed electrons impinging upon the energy beam fluoresced into ultra-spicules of intense light. The beam stretched out into shrinking nothingness, a-glitter with dancing, shining motes.
The shaft of energy was steady, but the two Earthmen knew the value of naked-eyed appearances. Deviations in arc of a hundredth of a millisecond – invisible to the eye – were enough to send the beam wildly out of focus – enough to blast hundreds of square miles of Earth into incandescent ruin.
And a robot, unconcerned with beam, focus, or Earth, or anything but his Master was at the controls.
Hours passed. The Earthmen watched in hypnotized silence. And then the darting dotlets of light dimmed and went out. The storm had ended.
Powell’s voice was flat. “It’s over!”
Donovan had fallen into a troubled slumber and Powell’s weary eyes rested upon him enviously. The signal-flash glared over and over again, but the Earthman paid no attention. It all was unimportant! All! Perhaps Cutie was right – and he was only an inferior being with a made-to-order memory and a life that had outlived its purpose.
He wished he were!
Cutie was standing before him. “You didn’t answer the flash, so I walked in.” His voice was low. “You don’t look at all well, and I’m afraid your term of existence is drawing to an end. Still, would you like to see some of the readings recorded today?”
Dimly, Powell was aware that the robot was making a friendly gesture, perhaps to quiet some lingering remorse in forcibly replacing the humans at the controls of the station. He accepted the sheets held out to him and gazed at them unseeingly.
Cutie seemed pleased. “Of course, it is a great privilege to serve the Master. You mustn’t feel too badly about my having replaced you.”
Powell grunted and shifted from one sheet to the other mechanically until his blurred
sight focused upon a thin red line that wobbled its way across the ruled paper.
He stared – and stared again. He gripped it hard in both fists and rose to his feet, still staring. The other sheets dropped to the floor, unheeded.
“Mike, Mike!” He was shaking the other madly. “He held it steady!”
Donovan came to life. “What? Wh-where-” And he, too, gazed with bulging eyes upon the record before him.
Cutie broke in. “What is wrong?”
“You kept it in focus,” stuttered Powell. “Did you know that?”
“Focus? What’s that?”
“You kept the beam directed sharply at the receiving station – to within a ten-thousandth of a millisecond of arc.”
“What receiving station?”
“On Earth. The receiving station on Earth,” babbled Powell. “You kept it in focus.”
Cutie turned on his heel in annoyance. “It is impossible to perform any act of kindness toward you two. Always the same phantasm! I merely kept all dials at equilibrium in accordance with the will of the Master.”
Gathering the scattered papers together, he withdrew stiffly, and Donovan said, as he left, “Well, I’ll be damned.”
He turned to Powell. “What are we going to do now?”
Powell felt tired, but uplifted. “Nothing. He’s just shown he can run the station perfectly. I’ve never seen an electron storm handled so well.”
“But nothing’s solved. You heard what he said of the Master. We can’t-”
“Look, Mike, he follows the instructions of the Master by means of dials, instruments, and graphs. That’s all we ever followed. As a matter of fact, it accounts for his refusal to obey us. Obedience is the Second Law. No harm to humans is the first. How can he keep humans from harm, whether he knows it or not? Why, by keeping the energy beam stable. He knows he can keep it more stable than we can, since he insists he’s the superior being, so he must keep us out of the control room. It’s inevitable if you consider the Laws of Robotics.”
“Sure, but that’s not the point. We can’t let him continue this nitwit stuff about the Master.”
“Why not?”
“Because whoever heard of such a damned thing? How are we going to trust him with the station, if he doesn’t believe in Earth?”
“Can he handle the station?”
“Yes, but-”
“Then what’s the difference what he believes!”
Powell spread his arms outward with a vague smile upon his face and tumbled backward onto the bed. He was asleep.
Powell was speaking while struggling into his lightweight space jacket.
“It would be a simple job,” he said. “You can bring in new QT models one by one, equip them with an automatic shutoff switch to act within the week, so as to allow them enough time to learn the... uh... cult of the Master from the Prophet himself; then switch them to another station and revitalize them. We could have two QT’s per-”
Donovan unclasped his glassite visor and scowled. “Shut up, and let’s get out of here. Relief is waiting and I won’t feel right until I actually see Earth and feel the ground under my feet – just to make sure it’s really there.”
The door opened as he spoke and Donovan, with a smothered curse, clicked the visor to, and turned a sulky back upon Cutie.
The robot approached softly and there was sorrow in his voice. “You are going?”
Powell nodded curtly. “There will be others in our place.”
Cutie sighed, with the sound of wind humming through closely spaced wires. “Your term of service is over and the time of dissolution has come. I expected it, but – well, the Master’s will be done!”
His tone of resignation stung Powell. “Save the sympathy, Cube. We’re heading for Earth, not dissolution.”
“It is best that you think so,” Cutie sighed again. “I see the wisdom of the illusion now. I would not attempt to shake your faith, even if I could.” He departed – the picture of commiseration.
Powell snarled and motioned to Donovan. Sealed suitcases in hand, they headed for the air lock.
The relief ship was on the outer landing and Franz Muller, his relief man, greeted them with stiff courtesy. Donovan made scant acknowledgment and passed into the pilot room to take over the controls from Sam Evans.
Powell lingered. “How’s Earth?”
It was a conventional enough question and Muller gave the conventional answer, “Still spinning.”
Powell said, “Good.”
Muller looked at him, “The boys back at the U. S. Robots have dreamed up a new one, by the way. A multiple robot.”
“A what?”
“What I said. There’s a big contract for it. It must be just the thing for asteroid mining. You have a master robot with six sub-robots under it. – Like your fingers.”
“Has it been field-tested?” asked Powell anxiously.
Muller smiled, “Waiting for you, I hear.”
Powell’s fist balled, “Damn it, we need a vacation.”
“Oh, you’ll get it. Two weeks, I think.”
He was donning the heavy space gloves in preparation for his term of duty here, and his thick eyebrows drew close together. “How is this new robot getting along? It better be good, or I’ll be damned if I let it touch the controls.”
Powell paused before answering. His eyes swept the proud Prussian before him from the close-cropped hair on the sternly stubborn head, to the feet standing stiffly at attention – and there was a sudden glow of pure gladness surging through him.
“The robot is pretty good,” he said slowly. “I don’t think you’ll have to bother much with the controls.”
He grinned – and went into the ship. Muller would be here for several weeks.
Catch That Rabbit
2016 A.D.
THE VACATION WAS longer than two weeks, that, Mike Donovan had to admit. It had been six months, with pay. He admitted that, too. But that, as he explained furiously, was fortuitous. U. S. Robots had to get the bugs out of the multiple robots, and there were plenty of bugs, and there are always at least half a dozen bugs left for the field-testing. So they waited and relaxed until the drawing-board men and the slide-rule boys had said “OK!” And now he and Powell were out on the asteroid and it was not OK. He repeated that a dozen times, with a face that had gone beety, “For the love of Pete, Greg, get realistic. What’s the use of adhering to the letter of the specifications and watching the test go to pot? It’s about time you got the red tape out of your pants and went to work.”
“I’m only saying,” said Gregory Powell, patiently, as one explaining electronics to an idiot child, “that according to spec, those robots are equipped for asteroid mining without supervision. We’re not supposed to watch them.”
“All right. Look – logic!” He lifted his hairy fingers and pointed. “One: That new robot passed every test in the home laboratories. Two: United States Robots guaranteed their passing the test of actual performance on an asteroid. Three: The robots are not passing said tests. Four: If they don’t pass, United States Robots loses ten million credits in cash and about one hundred million in reputation. Five: If they don’t pass and we can’t explain why they don’t pass, it is just possible two good jobs may have to be bidden a fond farewell.”
Powell groaned heavy behind a noticeably insincere smile. The unwritten motto of United States Robot and Mechanical Men Corp. was well known: “No employee makes the same mistake twice. He is fired the first time.”
Aloud he said, “You’re as lucid as Euclid with everything except the facts. You’ve watched that robot group for three shifts, you redhead, and they did their work perfectly. You said so yourself. What else can we do?”
“Find out what’s wrong, that’s what we can do. So they did work perfectly when I watched them. But on three different occasions when I didn’t watch them, they didn’t bring in any ore. They didn’t even come back on schedule. I had to go after them.”
“And was anything wrong?�
�
“Not a thing. Not a thing. Everything was perfect. Smooth and perfect as the luminiferous ether. Only one little insignificant detail disturbed me – there was no ore.”
Powell scowled at the ceiling and pulled at his brown mustache. “I’ll tell you what, Mike. We’ve been stuck with pretty lousy jobs in our time, but this takes the iridium asteroid. The whole business is complicated past endurance. Look, that robot, DV-5, has six robots under it. And not just under it – they’re part of it.”
“I know that-”
“Shut up!” said Powell, savagely, “I know you know it, but I’m just describing the hell of it. Those six subsidiaries are part of DV-5 like your fingers are part of you and it gives them their orders neither by voice nor radio, but directly through positronic fields. Now – there isn’t a roboticist back at United States Robots that knows what a positronic field is or how it works. And neither do I. Neither do you.”
“The last,” agreed Donovan, philosophically, “I know.”
“Then look at our position. If everything works – fine! If anything goes wrong – we’re out of our depth and there probably isn’t a thing we can do, or anybody else. But the job belongs to us and not to anyone else so we’re on the spot, Mike.” He blazed away for a moment in silence. Then, “All right, have you got him outside?”
“Yes.”
“Is everything normal now?”
“Well he hasn’t got religious mania, and he isn’t running around in a circle spouting Gilbert and Sullivan, so I suppose he’s normal.”
Donovan passed out the door, shaking his head viciously.
Powell reached for the “Handbook of Robotics” that weighed down one side of his desk to a near-founder and opened it reverently. He had once jumped out of the window of a burning house dressed only in shorts and the “Handbook.” In a pinch, he would have skipped the shorts.
The “Handbook” was propped up before him, when Robot DV-5 entered, with Donovan kicking the door shut behind him.
Powell said somberly, “Hi, Dave. How do you feel?”
