A Century of Science Fiction

by Damon Knight

  Donovan’s muttered curses rose into intelligibility as he sprang to his feet, rusty eyebrows drawn low. “All right, you son of a hunk of iron ore, if we didn’t make you, who did?” Cutie nodded gravely. “Very good, Donovan. That was indeed the next question. Evidently my creator must be more powerful than myself, and so there was only one possibility.” The Earthmen looked blank and Cutie continued. “What is the center of activities here in the station? What do we all serve? What absorbs all our attention?” He waited expectantly.

  Donovan turned a startled look upon his companion. “1*11 bet this tin-plated screwball is talking about the energy converter itself.”

  “Is that right, Cutie?” grinned Powell.

  “I am talking about the Master,” came the cold, sharp answer.

  It was the signal for a roar of laughter from Donovan, and Powell himself dissolved into a half-suppressed giggle.

  Cutie had risen to his feet, and his gleaming eyes passed from one Earthman to the other. “It is so just the same and I don’t wonder that you refuse to believe. You two are not long to stay here, I’m sure. Powell himself said that in early days only men served the Master; that there followed robots for the routine work; and, finally, myself for the executive labor. The facts are no doubt true, but the explanation is entirely illogical. Do you want the truth behind it all?”

  “Go ahead, Cutie. You’re amusing.”

  “The Master created humans first as the lowest type, most easily formed. Gradually, he replaced them by robots, the next higher step, and finally he created me, to take the place of the last humans. From now on, I serve the Master.” “You’ll do nothing of the sort,” said Powell sharply. “You’ll follow our orders and keep quiet, until we’re satisfied that you can run the converter. Get that! The converter— not the Master. If you don’t satisfy us, you will be dismantled. And now—if you don’t mind—you can leave. And take this data with you and file it properly.”

  Cutie accepted the graphs handed him and left without another word. Donovan leaned back heavily in his chair and shoved thick fingers through his hair.

  “There’s going to be trouble with that robot. He’s pure nuts!”

  The drowsy hum of the converter was louder in the control room and mixed with it was the chuckle of the Geiger counters and the erratic buzzing of half a dozen little signal lights.

  Donovan withdrew his eye from the telescope and flashed the luxites on. “The beam from Station Four caught Mars on schedule. We can break ours now.”

  Powell nodded abstractedly. “Cutie’s down in the engine room. I’ll flash the signal and he can take care of it. Look, Mike, what do you think of these figures?”

  The other cocked an eye at them and whistled. “Boy, that’s what I call gamma-ray intensity. Old Sol is feeling his oats, all right.”

  “Yeah,” was the sour response, “and we’re in a bad position for an electron storm, too. Our Earth beam is right in the probable path.” He shoved his chair away from the table pettishly. “Nuts! If it would only hold off till relief got here, but that’s ten days off. Say, Mike, go on down and keep an eye on Cutie, will you?”

  “O.K. Throw me some of those almonds.” Donovan snatched at the bag thrown him and headed for the elevator.

  It slid smoothly downward and opened onto a narrow catwalk in the huge engine room. Donovan leaned over the railing and looked down. The huge generators were in motion, and from the L tubes came the low-pitched whir that pervaded the entire station.

  He could make out Cutie’s large, gleaming figure at the Martian L tube, watching closely as a team of robots worked in close-knit unison. There was a sudden sparking light, a sharp crackle of discord in the even whir of the converter. The beam to Mars had been broken!

  And then Donovan stiffened. The robots, dwarfed by the mighty L tube, lined up before it, heads bowed at a stiff angle, while Cutie walked up and down the line slowly. Fifteen seconds passed, and then, with a clank heard above the clamorous purring all about, they fell to their knees.

  Donovan squawked and raced down the narrow staircase. He came charging down upon them, complexion matching his hair and clenched fists beating the air furiously.

  “What the devil is this, you brainless lumps? Come on! Get busy with that L tube! If you don’t have it apart, cleaned, and together again before the day is out, I’ll coagulate your brains with alternating current.”

  Not a robot moved!

  Even Cutie at the far end—the only one on his feet—remained silent, eyes fixed upon the gloomy recesses of the vast machine before him.

  Donovan shoved hard against the nearest robot.

  “Stand up!” he roared.

  Slowly the robot obeyed. His photoelectric eyes focused reproachfully upon the Earthman. t

  “There is no Master but the Master,” he said, “and QT One is his prophet.”

  “Huh?” Donovan became aware of twenty pairs of mechanical eyes fixed upon him and twenty stiff-timbred voices declaiming solemnly:

  “There is no Master but the Master and QT One is his prophet!” %

  “I’m afraid,” put in Cutie himself at this point, “that my friends obey a higher one than you now.”

  “The hell they do! You get out of here. I’ll settle with you later and with these animated gadgets right now.”

  Cutie shook his heavy head slowly. “I’m sorry, but you don’t understand. These are robots—and that means they are reasoning beings. They recognize the Master, now that I have preached truth to them. All the robots do. They call me the Prophet.” His head drooped. “I am unworthy—but perhaps . . .”

  Donovan located his breath and put it to use. “Is that so? Now, isn’t that nice? Now, isn’t that just fine? Just let me tell you something, my brass baboon. There isn’t any Master and there isn’t any prophet and there isn’t any question as to who’s giving the orders. Understand?” His voice rose to a roar. “Now get out!”

  “I obey only the Master.”

  “Damn the Master!” Donovan spat at the L tube. “That for the Master! Do as I say!”

  Cutie said nothing, nor did any other robot, but Donovan became aware of a sudden heightening of tension. The cold, staring eyes deepened their crimson, and Cutie seemed stiffer than ever.

  “Sacrilege,” he whispered, voice metallic with emotion. Donovan felt the first sudden touch of fear as Cutie approached. A robot could not feel anger—but Cutie’s eyes were unreadable.

  “I am sorry, Donovan,” said the robot, “but you can no longer stay here after this. Henceforth Powell and you are

  barred from the control room and the engine room.”

  His hand gestured quietly and in a moment two robots had pinned Donovan’s arms to his sides.

  Donovan had time for one startled gasp as he felt himself lifted from the floor and carried up the stairs at a pace rather better than a canter.

  Gregory Powell paced up and down the officers’ room, fists tightly balled. He cast a look of furious frustration at the closed door and scowled bitterly at Donovan.

  “Why the devil did you have to spit at the L tube?”

  Mike Donovan, sunk deep in his chair, slammed at its arm savagely. “What did you expect me to do with that electrified scarecrow? I’m not going to knuckle under to any do-jigger I put together myself.”

  “No,” Powell came back sourly, “but here you are in the officers’ room with two robots standing guard at the door. That’s not knuckling under, is it?”

  Donovan snarled, “Wait till we get back to Base. Someone’s going to pay for this. Those robots are guaranteed to be subordinate.”

  “So they are—to their blasted Master. They’ll obey, all right, but not necessarily us. Say, do you know what’s going to happen to us when we get back to Base?” Powell stopped before Donovan’s chair and stared savagely at him.

  “What?”

  “Oh, nothing! Just the mercury mines or maybe Ceres Penitentiary. That’s all! That’s all!”

  “What are you tal
king about?”

  “The electron storm that’s coming up. Do you know it’s heading straight dead center across the Earth beam? I had just figured that out when that robot dragged me out of my chair.”

  Donovan was suddenly pale. “Good heavens!”

  “And do you know what’s going to happen to the beam? Because the storm will be a lulu. It’s going to jump like a flea with the itch. With only Cutie at the controls, it’s going to go out of focus and if it does, heaven help Earth—and us!” Donovan was wrenching at the door wildly, before Powell finished. The door opened, and the Earthman shot through to come up hard against an immovable steel arm.

  The robot stared abstractedly at the panting, struggling Earthman. “The Prophet orders you to remain. Please do!”

  His arm shoved, Donovan reeled backward, and as he did so, Cutie turned the corner at the far end of the corridor. He motioned the guardian robots away, entered the officers’ room and closed the door gently.

  Donovan whirled on Cutie in breathless indignation. “This has gone far enough. You’re going to pay for this farce.” “Please don’t be annoyed,” replied the robot mildly. “It was bound to come eventually, anyway. You see, you two have lost your function.”

  “I beg your pardon.” Powell drew himself up stiffly. “Just what do you mean, we’ve lost our function?”

  “Until I was created,” answered Cutie, “you tended the Master. That privilege is mine now, and your only reason for existence has vanished. Isn’t that obvious?”

  “Not quite,” replied Powell bitterly. “But what do you expect us to do now?”

  Cutie did not answer immediately. He remained silent, as if in thought, and then one arm shot out and draped itself about Powell’s shoulder. The other grasped Donovan’s wrist and drew him closer.

  “I like you two. You’re inferior creatures, with poor reasoning faculties, but I really feel a sort of affection for you. You have served the Master well, and he will reward you for that. Now that your service is over, you will probably not exist much longer, but as long as you do, you shall be provided food, clothing and shelter, so long as you stay out of the control room and the engine room.”

  “He’s pensioning us off, Greg!” yelled Donovan. “Do something about it. It’s humiliating!”

  “Look here, Cutie, we can’t stand for this. We’re the bosses. This station is only a creation of human beings like me— human beings that live on Earth and other planets. This is only an energy relay. You’re only— Aw, nuts!”

  Cutie shook his head gravely. “This amounts to an obsession. Why should you insist so on an absolutely false view of life? Admitted that nonrobots lack the reasoning faculty, there is still the problem of . .

  His voice died into reflective silence, and Donovan said with whispered intensity, “If you only had a flesh-and-blood face, I would break it in.”

  Powell’s fingers were in his mustache, and his eyes were slitted. “Listen, Cutie, if there is no such thing as Earth, how do you account for what you see through a telescope?”

  “Pardon me!”

  The Earthman smiled. “I’ve got you, eh? You’ve made quite a few telescopic observations since being put together, Cutie. Have you noticed that several of those specks of light outside become disks when so viewed?”

  “Oh, that! Why, certainly. It is simple magnification—for the purpose of more exact aiming of the beam.”

  “Why aren’t the stars equally magnified then?”

  “You mean the other dots. Well, no beams go to them, so no magnification is necessary. Really, Powell, even you ought to be able to figure these things out”

  Powell stared bleakly upward. “But you see more stars through a telescope. Where do they come from? Jumping Jupiter, where do they come from?”

  Cutie was annoyed. “Listen, Powell, do you think I’m going to waste my time trying to pin physical interpretations upon every optical illusion of our instruments? Since when is the evidence of our senses any match for the clear light of reason?”

  “Look,” clamored Donovan suddenly, writhing out from under Cutie’s friendly but metal-heavy arm, “let’s get to the nub of the thing. Why the beams at all? We’re giving you a good, logical explanation. Can you do better?”

  “The beams,” was the stiff reply, “are put out by the Master for his own purposes. There are some things—” he raised his eyes devoutly upward—“that are not to be prodded into by us. In this matter, I seek only to serve and not to question.” Powell sat down slowly and buried his face in shaking hands. “Get out of here, Cutie. Get out and let me think.” “I’ll send you food,” said Cutie agreeably.

  A groan was the only answer and the robot left.

  “Greg,” Donovan whispered huskily, “this calls for strategy. We’ve got to get him when he isn’t expecting it and short-circuit him. Concentrated nitric acid in his joints—” “Don’t be a dope, Mike. Do you suppose he’s going to let us get near him with acid in our hands—or that the other robots wouldn’t take us apart if we did manage to get away with it? We’ve got to talk to him, I tell you. We’ve got to argue him into letting us back into the control room inside of forty-eight hours or our goose is broiled to a crisp.” He rocked back and forth in an agony of impotence. “Who the heck wants to argue with a robot? It’s . . . it’s . . “Mortifying,” finished Donovan.

  “Worse!”

  “Say!” Donovan laughed suddenly. “Why argue? Let’s show him! Let’s build us another robot right before his eyes. He’ll have to eat his words then.”

  A slowly widening smile appeared on Powell’s face.

  Donovan continued, “And think of that screwball’s face when he sees us do it!”

  The interplanetary law forbidding the existence of intelligent robots upon the inhabited planets, while sociologically necessary, places upon the offices of the solar stations a burden—and not a light one. Because of that particular law, robots must be sent to the stations in parts and there put together—which is 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 QTI, 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 glance 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 prenatal 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. Then 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 wou
ld like to start work. Where must I go?”

  Donovan sprang to the door. “Down these stairs,” he said. “You’ll 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 it 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.”