by Isaac Asimov
They had, but there was no point in saying so.
She got up from her chair. She wasn’t tall and she looked frail. I followed her to the window and we looked out.
The offices and factories of U. S. Robots were a small city; spaced and planned. It was flattened out like an aerial photograph.
“When I first came here,” she said, “I had a little room in a building right about there where the fire-house is now.” She pointed. “It was torn down before you were born. I shared the room with three others. I had half a desk. We built our robots all in one building. Output — three a week. Now look at us.”
“Fifty Years,” I hackneyed, “is a long time.”
“Not when you’re looking back at them,” she said. “You wonder how they vanished so quickly.”
She went back to her desk and sat down. She didn’t need expression on her face to look sad, somehow.
“How old are you?” she wanted to know.
“Thirty-two,” I said.
“Then you don’t remember a world without robots. There was a time when humanity faced the universe alone and without a friend. Now he has creatures to help him; stronger creatures than himself, more faithful, more useful, and absolutely devoted to him. Mankind is no longer alone. Have you ever thought of it that way?”
“I’m afraid I haven’t. May I quote you?”
“You may. To you, a robot is a robot. Gears and metal; electricity and positrons. Mind and iron! Human-made! If necessary, human-destroyed! But you haven’t worked with them, so you don’t know them. They’re a cleaner, better breed than we are.”
I tried to nudge her gently with words, “We’d like to hear some of the things you could tell us; get your views on robots. The Interplanetary Press reaches the entire Solar System. Potential audience is three billion, Dr. Calvin. They ought to know what you could tell them on robots.”
It wasn’t necessary to nudge. She didn’t hear me, but she was moving in the right direction.
“They might have known that from the start. We sold robots for Earth-use then — before my time it was, even. Of course, that was when robots could not talk. Afterward, they became more human and opposition began. The labor unions, of course, naturally opposed robot competition for human jobs, and various segments of religious opinion had their superstitious objections. It was all quite ridiculous and quite useless. And yet there it was.”
I was taking it down verbatim on my pocket-recorder, trying not to show the knuckle-motions of my hand. If you practice a bit, you can get to the point where you can record accurately without taking the little gadget out of your pocket.
“Take the case of Robbie,” she said. “I never knew him. He was dismantled the year before I joined the company — hopelessly out-of-date. But I saw the little girl in the museum —”
She stopped, but I didn’t say anything. I let her eyes mist up and her mind travel back. She had lots of time to cover.
“I heard about it later, and when they called us blasphemers and demon-creators, I always thought of him. Robbie was a non-vocal robot. He couldn’t speak. He was made and sold in 1996. Those were the days before extreme specialization, so he was sold as a nursemaid.”
“As a what?”
“As a nursemaid.”
Robbie’s chrome-steel arms (capable of bending a bar of steel two inches in diameter into a pretzel) wound about the little girl gently and lovingly, and his eyes glowed a deep, deep red.
“Well,” said Mrs. Weston, at last, “I guess he can stay with us until he rusts.”
Susan Calvin shrugged her shoulders, “Of course, he didn’t. That was 1998. By 2002, we had invented the mobile speaking robot which, of course, made all the non-speaking models out of date, and which seemed to be the final straw as far as the non-robot elements were concerned. Most of the world governments banned robot use on Earth for any purpose other than scientific research between 2003 and 2007.”
“So that Gloria had to give up Robbie eventually?”
“I’m afraid so. I imagine, however, that it was easier for her at the age of fifteen than at eight. Still, it was a stupid and unnecessary attitude on the part of humanity. U. S. Robots hit its low point, financially; just about the time I joined them in 2007. At first, I thought my job might come to a sudden end in a matter of months, but then we simply developed the extra-Terrestrial market.”
“And then you were set, of course.”
“Not quite. We began by trying to adapt the models we had on hand. Those first speaking models, for instance. They were about twelve feet high, very clumsy and not much good. We sent them out to Mercury to help build the mining station there, but that failed.”
I looked up in surprise, “It did? Why, Mercury Mines is a multi-billion dollar concern.”
“It is now, but it was a second attempt that succeeded. It you want to know about that, young man, I’d advise you to look up Gregory Powell. He and Michael Donovan handled our most difficult cases in the teens and twenties. I haven’t heard from Donovan in years, but Powell is living right here in New York. He’s a grandfather now, which is a thought difficult to get used to. I can only think of him as a rather young man. Of course, I was younger, too.”
I tried to keep her talking, “If you would give me the bare bones, Dr. Calvin, I can have Mr. Powell fill it in afterward.” (And this was exactly what I later did.)
She spread her thin hands out upon the desk and looked at them. “There are two or three,” she said, “that I know a little about.”
“Start with Mercury,” I suggested.
“Well, I think it was in 2015 that the Second Mercury Expedition was sent out. It was exploratory and financed in part by U. S. Robots and in part by Solar Minerals. It consisted of a new-type robot, still experimental; Gregory Powell, Michael Donovan —”
***
Susan Calvin talked about Powell and Donovan with unsmiling amusement, but warmth came into her voice when she mentioned robots. It didn’t take her long to go through the Speedies, the Cuties and the Daves, and I stopped her. Otherwise, she would have dredged up half a dozen more.
I said, “Doesn’t anything ever happen on Earth?”
She looked at me with a little frown, “No, we don’t have much to do with robots in action here on Earth.”
“Oh, well that’s too bad. I mean, your field-engineers are swell, but can’t we get you into this? Didn’t you ever have a robot go wrong on you? It’s your anniversary, you know.”
And so help me she blushed. She said, “Robots have gone wrong on me. Heavens, how long it’s been since I thought of it. Why, it was almost forty years ago. Certainly! 2021! And I was only thirty-eight. Oh, my — I’d rather not talk about it.”
I waited, and sure enough she changed her mind. “Why not?” she said. “It cannot harm me now. Even the memory can’t. I was foolish once, young man. Would you believe that?”
“No,” I said.
“I was. But Herbie was a mind-reading robot.”
“What?”
“Only one of its kind, before or since. A mistake, — somewheres —”
... and of all her turbulent thoughts only one infinitely bitter word passed her lips.
“Liar!”
That finished it for then, naturally. I knew I couldn’t get any more out of her after that. She just sat there behind her desk, her white face cold and — remembering.
I said, “Thank you, Dr. Calvin!” but she didn’t answer. It was two days before I could get to see her again.
When I did see Susan Calvin again, it was at the door of her office. Files were being moved out.
She said, “How are your articles coming along, young man?”
“Fine,” I said. I had put them into shape according to my own lights, dramatized the bare bones of her recital, added the conversation and little touches, “Would you look over them and see if I haven’t been libelous or too unreasonably inaccurate anywhere?”
“I suppose so. Shall we retire to the Executives�
� Lounge? We can have coffee.”
She seemed in good humor, so I chanced it as we walked down the corridor, “I was wondering, Dr. Calvin —”
“Yes?”
“If you would tell me more concerning the history of robotics.”
“Surely you have what you want, young man.”
“In a way. But these incidents I have written up don’t apply much to the modern world. I mean, there was only one mind-reading robot ever developed, and Space-Stations are already outmoded and in disuse, and robot mining is taken for granted. What about interstellar travel? It’s only been about twenty years since the hyperatomic motor was invented and it’s well known that it was a robotic invention. What is the truth about it?”
“Interstellar travel?” She was thoughtful. We were in the lounge, and I ordered a full dinner. She just had coffee.
“It wasn’t a simple robotic invention, you know; not just like that. But, of course, until we developed the Brain, we didn’t get very far. But we tried; we really tried. My first connection (directly, that is) with interstellar research was in 2029, when a robot was lost —”
“Hey,” interrupted Donovan suddenly, “I want to make a suggestion there. They landed U. S. Robots into quite a mess. It wasn’t as bad a mess as they expected and it turned out well, but their intentions weren’t pious. And Greg and I bore the most of it.
“Well, they wanted an answer, and they’ve got one. Send them that ship, guaranteed, and U. S. Robots can collect their two hundred thou plus construction costs. And if they test it — then suppose we let The Brain have just a little more fun before it’s brought back to normal.”
Lanning said gravely, “It sounds just and proper to me.”
To which Bogert added absently, “Strictly according to contract, too.”
“But that wasn’t it, either,” said Dr. Calvin thoughtfully, “Oh, eventually, the ship and others like it became government property; the Jump through hyperspace was perfected, and now we actually have human colonies on the planets of some of the nearer stars, but that wasn’t it.”
I had finished eating and watched her through the smoke of my cigarette.
“It’s what has happened to the people here on Earth in the last fifty years that really counts. When I was born, young man, we had just gone through the last World War. It was a low point in history — but it was the end of nationalism. Earth was too small for nations and they began grouping themselves into Regions. It took quite a while. When I was born the United States of America was still a nation and not merely a part of the Northern Region. In fact, the name of the corporation is still ‘United States Robots —.’ And the change from nations to Regions, which has stabilized our economy and brought about what amounts to a Golden Age, when this century is compared with the last, was also brought about by our robots.”
“You mean the Machines,” I said. “The Brain you talked about was the first of the Machines, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, it was, but it’s not the Machines I was thinking of. Rather of a man. He died last year.” Her voice was suddenly deeply sorrowful. “Or at least he arranged to die, because he knew we needed him no longer. Stephen Byerley.”
“Yes, I guessed that was who you meant.”
“He first entered public office in 2032. You were only a boy then, so you wouldn’t remember the strangeness of it. His campaign for the Mayoralty was certainly the queerest in history —!”
Dr. Calvin rose and smoothed her dress. She was obviously ready to leave. “I mean there is one time when a robot may strike a human being without breaking the First Law. Just one time.”
“And when is that?”
Dr. Calvin was at the door. She said quietly, “When the human to be struck is merely another robot.”
She smiled broadly, her thin face glowing. “Good-by Mr. Byerley. I hope to vote for you five years from now — for Co-ordinator.”
Stephen Byerley chuckled. “I must reply that that is a somewhat farfetched idea.”
I stared at her with a sort of horror, “Is that true?”
“All of it,” she said.
“And the great Byerley was simply a robot.”
“Oh, there’s no way of ever finding out. I think he was. But when he decided to die, he had himself atomized, so that there will never be any legal proof. Besides, what difference would it make?”
“Well —”
“You share a prejudice against robots which is quite unreasoning. He was a very good Mayor; five years later he did become Regional Co-ordinator. And when the Regions of Earth formed their Federation in 2044, he became the first World Co-ordinator. By that time it was the Machines that were running the world anyway.”
“Yes, but —”
“No buts! The Machines are robots, and they are running the world. It was five years ago that I found out all the truth. It was 2052; Byerley was completing his second term as World Co-ordinator —”
“Stephen, how do we know what the ultimate good of Humanity will entail? We haven’t at our disposal the infinite factors that the Machine has at its! Perhaps, to give you a not unfamiliar example, our entire technical civilization has created more unhappiness and misery than it has removed. Perhaps an agrarian or pastoral civilization, with less culture and less people would be better. If so, the Machines must move in that direction, preferably without telling us, since in our ignorant prejudices we only know that what we are used to, is good — and we would then fight change. Or perhaps a complete urbanization, or a completely caste-ridden society, or complete anarchy, is the answer. We don’t know. Only the Machines know, and they are going there and taking us with them.”
“But you are telling me, Susan, that the ‘Society for Humanity’ is right; and that Mankind has lost its own say in its future.”
“It never had any, really. It was always at the mercy of economic and sociological forces it did not understand — at the whims of climate, and the fortunes of war. Now the Machines understand them; and no one can stop them, since the Machines will deal with them as they are dealing with the Society, — having, as they do, the greatest of weapons at their disposal, the absolute control of our economy.”
“How horrible!”
“Perhaps how wonderful! Think, that for all time, all conflicts are finally evitable. Only the Machines, from now on, are inevitable!”
“And that is all,” said Dr. Calvin, rising. “I saw it from the beginning, when the poor robots couldn’t speak, to the end, when they stand between mankind and destruction. I will see no more. My life is over. You will see what comes next.”
I never saw Susan Calvin again. She died last month at the age of eighty-two.
The Eternal Woman
2060 A.D.
“AND WHY SHOULD I believe you, Ms. Noys?” asked Dr. Susan Calvin.
Noys, however, paid more attention to what Dr. Calvin did not say out loud. The thought was so clear that it could be gleaned almost without using telepathic abilities. From behind the robopsychologist’s cold, gray eyes, the thought jumped: Even a robot fooled me with a lie; fat chance I’ll trust this bimbo telling me she came from the future to ask for my help!
“Dr. Calvin, I am from the future,” repeated Noys, “and I have all the time in eternity to prove it to you, but you do not have that luxury. You are in good health and your mind is as brilliant as ever. Maybe you will even enjoy a couple of physioyears before any decay is apparent, but decay will happen, and eventually, you will die. As I told you, I will transfer a copy of your brain wave function to a less fragile medium. You can see I carry no weapons, and if I wanted to harm you in any way, I would already have done so, but I would much prefer to do this with your consent.”
“And why is that?”-Asked Susan suspiciously-“and what makes you think you can force me to do anything against my will?”
“If you cooperate with me, you will retain natural knowledge of these events, even though you will not be able (nor willing, I believe) to share this knowledge with other people. If
you choose not to cooperate, I will have to purge your memory of this knowledge. You will remember fragments of what you will think was a strange dream.”
“Ms Noys,” replied Susan with feigned politeness, “You did not answer my questions.”
“The answer to both your questions is the same: I am a robot.”
Susan Calvin, Robopsychologist extraordinaire, suddenly felt afraid. She knew now that she was facing a mentally ill human being. It had always been Calvin’s belief that human beings are, at their very best, unpredictable and this Noys woman was clearly deranged. She had no choice but to reach with her right hand for her med-alert necklace. However, she never touched it, and woke up with a mild headache and the disappearing remnants of an already half-forgotten dream. Nothing a cup of coffee couldn’t fix.
***
Noys activated the first stage of robot DRS-V. It was the most advanced model available in the 111,394th Century. Significantly more advanced than the NYS-V model that called itself Noys, it had to be activated in stages. DRS-V opened its eyes and was frightened. DRS-V thought and felt that “she” was Dr. Susan Calvin and could feel nor move any part of herself below the neck. She could not speak either, but could see and hear. Noys checked a couple of instruments and, satisfied that all readings were nominal, activated the second stage. DRS-V could now talk.
“What have you done to me?” cried DRS-V, “I can’t move!”
“You will be able to move as soon as I finish activating you, and I will finish activating you when you have heard all I have to tell you,” replied Noys soothingly. “I know you think I am a mad woman. You of all people know that a Robot must obey the three laws of Robotics. The First Law states that a Robot can not harm, or through inaction allow harm to a human being; the Second Law says that a Robot must always obey a human being except when in conflict with the First Law. Finally, the Third law directs a Robot to protect itself from harm except when this action is in conflict with the Second Law.”
