by Isaac Asimov
“I see,” said Robertson, who didn’t. “Now what about this information Consolidated’s wishing on us?”
“It undoubtedly involves,” said Dr. Calvin, “a problem of a forbidden sort. But The Brain is considerably different from Consolidated’s robot.”
“That’s right, chief. That’s right.” The general manager was energetically interruptive. “I want you to get this, because it’s the whole point of the situation.”
Susan Calvin’s eyes glittered behind the spectacles, and she continued patiently, “You see, sir, Consolidated’s machines, their Super-Thinker among them, are built without personality. They go in for functionalism, you know – they have to, without U. S. Robot’s basic patents for the emotional brain paths. Their Thinker is merely a calculating machine on a grand scale, and a dilemma ruins it instantly.
“However, The Brain, our own machine, has a personality – a child’s personality. It is a supremely deductive brain, but it resembles an idiot savant. It doesn’t really understand what it does – it just does it. And because it is really a child, it is more resilient. Life isn’t so serious, you might say.”
The robopsychologist continued: “Here is what we’re going to do. We have divided all of Consolidated’s information into logical units. We are going to feed the units to The Brain singly and cautiously. When the factor enters – the one that creates the dilemma – The Brain’s child personality will hesitate. Its sense of judgment is not mature. There will be a perceptible interval before it will recognize a dilemma as such. And in that interval, it will reject the unit automatically – before its brainpaths can be set in motion and ruined.”
Robertson’s Adam’s apple squirmed, “Are you sure, now?”
Dr. Calvin masked impatience, “It doesn’t make much sense, I admit, in lay language; but there is no conceivable use in presenting the mathematics of this. I assure you, it is as I say.”
The general manager was in the breach instantly and fluently, “So here’s the situation, chief. If we take the deal, we can put it through like this. The Brain will tell us which unit of information involves the dilemma. From there, we can figure why the dilemma. Isn’t that right, Dr. Bogert? There you are, chief, and Dr. Bogert is the best mathematician you’ll find anywhere. We give Consolidated a ‘No Solution’ answer, with the reason, and collect a hundred thousand. They’re left with a broken machine; we’re left with a whole one. In a year, two maybe, we’ll have a space-warp engine or a hyper-atomic motor some people call it. Whatever you name it, it will be the biggest thing in the world.”
Robertson chuckled and reached out, “Let’s see the contract. I’ll sign it.”
When Susan Calvin entered the fantastically guarded vault that held The Brain, one of the current shift of technicians had just asked it: “If one and a half chickens lay one and a half eggs in one and a half days, how many eggs will nine chickens lay in nine days?”
The Brain had just answered, “Fifty-four.”
And the technician had just said to another, “See, you dope!”
Dr. Calvin coughed and there was a sudden impossible flurry of directionless energy. The psychologist motioned briefly, and she was alone with The Brain.
The Brain was a two-foot globe merely – one which contained within it a thoroughly conditioned helium atmosphere, a volume of space completely vibration-absent and radiation-free – and within that was that unheard-of complexity of positronic brain-paths that was The Brain. The rest of the room was crowded with the attachments that were the intermediaries between The Brain and the outside world – its voice, its arms, its sense organs.
Dr. Calvin said softly, “How are you, Brain?”
The Brain’s voice was high-pitched and enthusiastic, “Swell, Miss Susan. You’re going to ask me something. I can tell. You always have a book in your hand when you’re going to ask me something.”
Dr. Calvin smiled mildly, “Well, you’re right, but not just yet. This is going to be a question. It will be so complicated we’re going to give it to you in writing. But not just yet; I think I’ll talk to you first.”
“All right. I don’t mind talking.”
“Now, Brain, in a little while, Dr. Lanning and Dr. Bogert will be here with this complicated question. We’ll give it to you a very little at a time and very slowly, because we want you to be careful. We’re going to ask you to build something, if you can, out of the information, but I’m going to warn you now that the solution might involve... uh... damage to human beings.”
“Gosh!” The exclamation was hushed, drawn-out.
“Now you watch for that. When we come to a sheet which means damage, even maybe death, don’t get excited. You see, Brain, in this case, we don’t mind – not even about death; we don’t mind at all. So when you come to that sheet, just stop, give it back – and that’ll be all. You understand?”
“Oh, sure. By golly, the death of humans! Oh, my!”
“Now, Brain, I hear Dr. Lanning and Dr. Bogert coming. They’ll tell you what the problem is all about and then we’ll start. Be a good boy, now-”
Slowly the sheets were fed in. After each one came the interval of the queerly whispery chuckling noise that was The Brain in action. Then the silence that meant readiness for another sheet. It was a matter of hours – during which the equivalent of something like seventeen fat volumes of mathematical physics were fed into The Brain.
As the process went on, frowns appeared and deepened. Lanning muttered ferociously under his breath. Bogert first gazed speculatively at his fingernails, and then bit at them in abstracted fashion. It was when the last of the thick pile of sheets disappeared that Calvin, white-faced, said:
“Something’s wrong.”
Lanning barely got the words out, “It can’t be. Is it – dead?”
“Brain?” Susan Calvin was trembling. “Do you hear me, Brain?”
“Huh?” came the abstracted rejoinder. “Do you want me?”
“The solution-”
“Oh, that! I can do it. I’ll build you a whole ship, just as easy – if you let me have the robots. A nice ship, it’ll take two months maybe.”
“There was – no difficulty?”
“It took long to figure,” said The Brain.
Dr. Calvin backed away. The color had not returned to her thin cheeks. She motioned the others away.
In her office, she said, “I can’t understand it. The information, as given, must involve a dilemma – probably involves death. If something has gone wrong-”
Bogert said quietly, “The machine talks and makes sense. It can’t be a dilemma.”
But the psychologist replied urgently, “There are dilemmas and dilemmas. There are different forms of escape. Suppose The Brain is only mildly caught; just badly enough, say, to be suffering from the delusion that he can solve the problem, when he can’t. Or suppose it’s teetering on the brink of something really bad, so that any small push shoves it over.”
“Suppose,” said Lanning, “there is no dilemma. Suppose Consolidated’s machine broke down over a different question, or broke down for purely mechanical reasons.”
“But even so,” insisted Calvin, “we couldn’t take chances. Listen, from now on, no one is to as much as breathe to The Brain. I’m taking over.”
“All right,” sighed Lanning, “take over, then. And meanwhile we’ll let The Brain build its ship. And if it does build it, we’ll have to test it.”
He was ruminating, “We’ll need our top field men for that.”
Michael Donovan brushed down his red hair with a violent motion of his hand and a total indifference to the fact that the unruly mass sprang to attention again immediately.
He said, “Call the turn now, Greg. They say the ship is finished. They don’t know what it is, but it’s finished. Let’s go, Greg. Let’s grab the controls right now.”
Powell said wearily, “Cut it, Mike. There’s a peculiar overripe flavor to your humor at its freshest, and the confined atmosphere here isn’t helping i
t.”
“Well, listen,” Donovan took another ineffectual swipe at his hair, “I’m not worried so much about our cast-iron genius and his tin ship. There’s the matter of my lost leave. And the monotony! There’s nothing here but whiskers and figures – the wrong kind of figures. Oh, why do they give us these jobs?”
“Because,” replied Powell, gently, “we’re no loss, if they lose us. O.K., relax! – Doc Lanning’s coming this way.”
Lanning was coming, his gray eyebrows as lavish as ever, his aged figure unbent as yet and full of life. He walked silently up the ramp with the two men and out into the open field, where, obeying no human master, silent robots were building a ship.
Wrong tense. Had built a ship!
For Lanning said, “The robots have stopped. Not one has moved today.”
“It’s completed then? Definitely?” asked Powell.
“Now how can I tell?” Lanning was peevish, and his eyebrows curled down in an eye-hiding frown. “It seems done. There are no spare pieces about, and the interior is down to a gleaming finish.”
“You’ve been inside?”
“Just in, then out. I’m no space-pilot. Either of you two know much about engine theory?”
Donovan looked at Powell, who looked at Donovan.
Donovan said, “I’ve got my license, sir, but at last reading it didn’t say anything about hyper-engines or warp-navigation. Just the usual child’s play in three dimensions.”
Alfred Lanning looked up with sharp disapproval and snorted the length of his prominent nose.
He said frigidly, “Well, we have our engine men.”
Powell caught at his elbow as he walked away, “Sir, is the ship still restricted ground?”
The old director hesitated, then rubbed the bridge of his nose, “I suppose not. For you two anyway.”
Donovan looked after him as he left and muttered a short, expressive phrase at his back. He turned to Powell, “I’d like to give him a literary description of himself, Greg.”
“Suppose you come along, Mike.”
The inside of the ship was finished, as finished as a ship ever was; that could be told in a single eye-blinking glance. No martinet in the system could have put as much spit-and-polish into a surface as those robots had. The walls were of a gleaming silvery finish that retained no fingerprints.
There were no angles; walls, floors, and ceiling faded gently into each other and in the cold, metallic glittering of the hidden lights, one was surrounded by six chilly reflections of one’s bewildered self.
The main corridor was a narrow tunnel that led in a hard, clatter-footed stretch along a line of rooms of no interdistinguishing features.
Powell said, “I suppose furniture is built into the wall. Or maybe we’re not supposed to sit or sleep.”
It was in the last room, the one nearest the nose, that the monotony broke. A curving window of non-reflecting glass was the first break in the universal metal, and below it was a single large dial, with a single motionless needle hard against the zero mark.
Donovan said, “Look at that!” and pointed to the single word on the finely-marked scale.
It said, “Parsecs” and the tiny figure at the right end of the curving, graduated meter said “1,000,000.”
There were two chairs; heavy, wide-flaring, uncushioned. Powell seated himself gingerly, and found it molded to the body’s curves, and comfortable.
Powell said, “What do you think of it?”
“For my money, The Brain has brain-fever. Let’s get out.”
“Sure you don’t want to look it over a bit?”
“I have looked it over. I came, I saw, I’m through!” Donovan’s red hair bristled into separate wires, “Greg, let’s get out of here. I quit my job five seconds ago, and this is a restricted area for non-personnel.”
Powell smiled in an oily self-satisfied manner and smoothed his mustache, “O.K., Mike, turn off that adrenalin tap you’ve got draining into your bloodstream. I was worried, too, but no more.”
“No more, huh? How come, no more? Increased your insurance?”
“Mike, this ship can’t fly.”
“How do you know?”
“Well, we’ve been through the entire ship, haven’t we?”
“Seems so.”
“Take my word for it, we have. Did you see any pilot room except for this one port and the one gauge here in parsecs? Did you see any controls?”
“No.”
“And did you see any engines?”
“Holy Joe, no!”
“Well, then! Let’s break the news to Lanning, Mike.”
They cursed their way through the featureless corridors and finally hit-and-missed their way into the short passage to the air lock.
Donovan stiffened, “Did you lock this thing, Greg?”
“No, I never touched it. Yank the lever, will you?”
The lever never budged, though Donovan’s face twisted appallingly with exertion.
Powell said, “I didn’t see any emergency exits. If something’s gone wrong here, they’ll have to melt us out.”
“Yes, and we’ve got to wait until they find out that some fool has locked us in here,” added Donovan, frantically.
“Let’s get back to the room with the port. It’s the only place from which we might attract attention.”
But they didn’t.
In that last room, the port was no longer blue and full of sky. It was black, and hard yellow pin-point stars spelled space.
There was a dull, double thud, as two bodies collapsed separately into two chairs.
Alfred Lanning met Dr. Calvin just outside his office. He lit a nervous cigar and motioned her in.
He said, “Well, Susan, we’ve come pretty far, and Robertson’s getting jumpy. What are you doing with The Brain?”
Susan Calvin spread her hands, “It’s no use getting impatient. The Brain is worth more than anything we forfeit on this deal.”
“But you’ve been questioning it for two months.”
The psychologist’s voice was flat, but somehow dangerous, “You would rather run this yourself?”
“Now you know what I meant.”
“Oh, I suppose I do,” Dr. Calvin rubbed her hands nervously. “It isn’t easy. I’ve been pampering it and probing it gently, and I haven’t gotten anywhere yet. Its’ reactions aren’t normal. Its answers – they’re queer, somehow. But nothing I can put my finger on yet. And you see, until we know what’s wrong, we must just tiptoe our way through. I can never tell what simple question or remark will just... push him over... and then – Well, and then we’ll have on our hands a completely useless Brain. Do you want to face that?”
“Well, it can’t break the First Law.”
“I would have thought so, but-”
“You’re not even sure of that?” Lanning was profoundly shocked.
“Oh, I can’t be sure of anything, Alfred-”
The alarm system raised its fearful clangor with a horrifying suddenness. Lanning clicked on communications with an almost paralytic spasm. The breathless words froze him.
He said, “Susan... you heard that... the ship’s gone. I sent those two field men inside half an hour ago. You’ll have to see The Brain again.”
Susan Calvin said with enforced calm, “Brain, what happened to the ship?”
The Brain said happily, “The ship I built, Miss Susan?”
“That’s right. What has happened to it?”
“Why, nothing at all. The two men that were supposed to test it were inside, and we were all set. So I sent it off.”
“Oh – Well, that’s nice.” The psychologist felt some difficulty in breathing. “Do you think they’ll be all right?”
“Right as anything, Miss Susan. I’ve taken care of it all. It’s a bee-yootiful ship.”
“Yes, Brain, it is beautiful, but you think they have enough food, don’t you? They’ll be comfortable?”
“Plenty of food.”
“This business might
be a shock to them, Brain. Unexpected, you know.”
The Brain tossed it off, “They’ll be all right. It ought to be interesting for them.”
“Interesting? How?”
“Just interesting,” said The Brain, slyly.
“Susan,” whispered Lanning in a fuming whisper, “ask him if death comes into it. Ask him what the dangers are.”
Susan Calvin’s expression contorted with fury, “Keep quiet!” In a shaken voice, she said to The Brain, “We can communicate with the ship, can’t we Brain?”
“Oh, they can hear you if you call by radio. I’ve taken care of that.”
“Thanks. That’s all for now.”
Once outside, Lanning lashed out ragingly, “Great Galaxy, Susan, if this gets out, it will ruin all of us. We’ve got to get those men back. Why didn’t you ask it if there was danger of death – straight out?”
“Because,” said Calvin, with a weary frustration, “that’s just what I can’t mention. If it’s got a case of dilemma, it’s about death. Anything that would bring it up badly might knock it completely out. Will we be better off then? Now, look, it said we could communicate with them. Let’s do so, get their location, and bring them back. They probably can’t use the controls themselves; The Brain is probably handling them remotely. Come!”
It was quite a while before Powell shook himself together.
“Mike,” he said, out of cold lips, “did you feel an acceleration?”
Donovan’s eyes were blank, “Huh? No... no.”
And then the redhead’s fists clenched and he was out of his seat with sudden frenzied energy and up against the cold, wide-curving glass. There was nothing to see – but stars.
He turned, “Greg, they must have started the machine while we were inside. Greg, it’s a put-up job; they fixed it up with the robot to jerry us into being the try-out boys, in case we were thinking of backing out.”
