Robots and Empire

by Isaac Asimov

  Giskard said in a low voice, so that only Daneel heard him, "It may not be possible. He may have been ordered into irreversible freeze if the questioning becomes too insistent."

  Daneel's head turned sharply to Giskard. He whispered, "Can you prevent that?"

  "Uncertain," said Giskard. "The brain has been physically damaged by the act of firing a blaster toward human beings."

  Daneel turned back to Gladia. "Madam," he said, "I would suggest you be probing, rather than brutal."

  Gladia said doubtfully, "Well, I don't know." She faced the robot assassin, drew a deep breath, and in a voice that was firm yet soft and gentle, she said, "Robot, how may I address you?"

  The robot said, "I am referred to as R. Ernett Second, madam."

  "Ernett, can you tell that I am an Auroran?"

  "You speak in the Auroran fashion, yet not entirely, madam."

  "I was born on Solaria, but I am a Spacer who has lived for twenty decades on Aurora and I am accustomed to being served by robots. I have expected and received service from robots every day of my life since I was a small child. I have never been disappointed."

  "I accept the fact, madam."

  "Will you answer my questions and accept my orders, Ernett?"

  "I will, madam, if they are not counteracted by a competing order."

  "If I ask you the location of your base on this planet—what portion of it you count as your master's establishment—will you answer that?"

  "I may not do so, madam. Nor any other question with respect to my master. Any question at all."

  "Do you understand that if you do not answer I will be bitterly disappointed and that my rightful expectation of robotic service will be permanently blunted?"

  "I understand, madam," said the robot faintly.

  Gladia looked at Daneel, "Shall I try?"

  Daneel said, "There is no choice but to try, Madam Gladia. If the effort leaves us without information, we are no worse off than now."

  Gladia said, in a voice that rang with authority, "Do not inflect damage on me, Ernett, by refusing to tell me the location of your base on this planet. I order you to tell me."

  The robot seemed to stiffen. His mouth opened but made no sound. It opened again and he whispered huskily, ". . . mile . . ." It opened a third time silently—and then, while the mouth remained open, the gleam went out of the robot assassin's eyes and they became flat and waxen. One arm, which had been a little raised, dropped downward.

  Daneel said, "The positronic brain has frozen."

  Giskard whispered to Daneel only, "Irreversible! I did my best but could not hang on."

  "We have nothing," said Andrev. "We don't know where the other robots might be."

  D.G. said, "It said, 'mile.' "

  "I do not recognize the word," said Daneel. "It is not Galactic Standard as the language is used on Aurora. Does it have meaning on Earth?"

  Andrev said, rather blankly, "He might have been trying to say 'smile' or 'Miles.' I once knew a man whose first name was Miles."

  Daneel said gravely, "I do not see how either word could make sense as an answer—or part of an answer—to the question. Nor did I hear any sibilance, either before or after the sound."

  An elderly Earthman, who till now had remained silent, said, with a certain appearance of diffidence, "I am under the impression a mile may be an ancient measure of distance, robot."

  "How long a measure, sir?" asked Daneel.

  "I do not know," said the Earthman. "Longer than a kilometer, I believe."

  "It isn't used any longer, sir?"

  "Not since the prehyperspatial era."

  D.G. pulled at his beard and he said thoughtfully, "It's still used. At least, we have an old saying on Baleyworld that goes, 'A miss is as good as a mile.' It is used to mean that, in avoiding misfortune, avoidance by a little is as good as avoidance by a great deal. I always thought 'mile' meant 'a great deal.' If it really represents a measure of distance, I can understand the phrase better."

  Gladia said, "If that is so, the assassin may have been trying to say exactly that. He may have indicated his satisfaction that a miss—his deliberately missed shot—would accomplish what he was ordered to accomplish or, perhaps, that his missed shot, doing no harm, was equivalent to his not having fired at all."

  "Madam Gladia," said Daneel, "a robot of Auroran manufacture would scarcely be using phrases that might exist on Baleyworld but have certainly never been heard on Aurora. And, in his damaged condition, he would not philosophize. He was asked a question and he would only be trying to answer the question."

  "Ah," said Andrev, "perhaps he was trying to answer. He was trying to tell us that the base was a certain distance from here, for instance. So many miles."

  "In that case," said D.G., "why should he use an archaic measure of distance? No Auroran would use anything but kilometers in this connection, nor would any robot of Auroran manufacture. In fact," he went on with an edge of impatience, "the robot was rapidly sinking into total inactivity and it might have been making nothing more than random sounds. It is useless to try to extract meaning from something that doesn't contain it. —And now I want to make sure that Madam Gladia gets some rest or that she is at least moved out of this room before the rest of the ceiling comes down.

  They moved out quickly and Daneel, lingering behind for a moment, said softly to Giskard, "Again we fail!"

  82.

  The City never grew entirely quiet, but there were periods when the lights were dimmer, the noise of the ever moving Expressways was subdued, and the endless clatter of machinery and humanity subsided just a bit. In several million apartments people slept.

  Gladia got into bed in the apartment assigned to her, uncomfortable over the missing amenities that she feared might force her out into the corridors during the night.

  Was it night on the surface, she wondered just before falling asleep, or was it merely an arbitrary "sleep period" fixed within this particular cave of steel, in deference to a habit developed over the hundreds of millions of years that human beings and their ancestors had lived on the surface of the land.

  And then she slept.

  Daneel and Giskard did not sleep. Daneel, finding there was a computer outlet in the apartment, spent an absorbed half-hour learning the unfamiliar key combinations by hit-and-miss. There were no instructions of any sort available (who needs instructions for what every youngster learns in grade school?) but, fortunately, the controls, while not the same as those of Aurora, were not wholly different either. Eventually, he was able to tune into the reference section of the City library and call up the encyclopedia. Hours passed.

  At the lowest depth of the humans sleep period, Giskard said, "Friend Daneel."

  Daneel looked up. "Yes, friend Giskard."

  "I must ask for an explanation of your actions on the balcony."

  "Friend Giskard, you looked toward the crowd. I followed your glance, saw a weapon aimed in your direction, and reacted at once."

  Giskard said, "So you did, friend Daneel, and given certain assumptions, I can understand why it was me that you lunged forward to protect. Begin with the fact that the would-be assassin was a robot. In that case, however it might be programmed, it could not aim its weapon at any human being with the intention of hitting him or her. Nor was it likely to aim it's weapon at you, for you look enough like a human being to activate the First Law. Even if the robot had been told that a humanoid robot would be on the balcony, he could not be certain that you were he. Therefore, if the robot intended to destroy someone in the balcony, it could only be me—the obvious robot—and you acted at once to protect me.

  "Or begin with the fact that the assassin was an Auroran—whether human or robot does not matter. Dr, Amadiro is most likely to have ordered such an attack, since he is an extremist in his anti-Earth stand and, we believe, is plotting its destruction. Dr. Amadiro, we can be reasonably certain, has learned of my special abilities from Madam Vasilia and it might be argued that he would give my
destruction top priority, since he would naturally fear me more than anyone else—robot or human. Reasoning this out, it would be logical for you to act as you did to protect me. —And, indeed, had you not knocked me down, I believe the blast would have destroyed me.

  "But, friend Daneel, you could not possibly have known that the assassin was a robot or that he was Auroran. I myself had only just caught the strange anomaly of a robotic brain pattern against the vast blur of human emotion when you struck me—and it was only after that, that I had the chance of informing you. Without my ability, you could only be aware that a weapon was being aimed by what you must naturally have thought of as a human being and an Earthperson. The logical target, then, was Madam Gladia, as, in fact, everyone on the balcony assumed it to be. Why, then, did you ignore Madam Gladia and protect me, instead?"

  Daneel said, "Friend Giskard, consider my line of thought. The Secretary-General had said that a two-man Auroran landing module had come to Earth's surface. I assumed at once that Dr. Amadiro and Dr. Mandamus had come to Earth. For this, there could be only one reason. The plan they have, whatever its nature, is at—or very nearly at—the point of maturity. Now that you have come to Earth, friend Giskard, they have dashed here to see it carried through at once before you have a chance to stop it with your mind adjusting powers. To make matters doubly sure, they would act to destroy you if they could. Therefore, when I saw an aimed weapon, I moved at once to force you out of the line of fire."

  Giskard said, "The First Law should have forced you to move Madam Gladia out of the line of fire. No thought, no reasoning, should have altered that."

  "No, friend Giskard. You are more important than Madam Gladia is. You are, in fact, more important than any human being could be at this moment. If anyone at all can stop the destruction of Earth, you can. Since I am aware of your potential service to humanity, then, when I am, confronted by a choice of action, the Zeroth Law demands that I protect you ahead of anyone else."

  "And you do not feel uncomfortable at your having acted in defiance of the First Law."

  "No, for I acted in obedience to the overriding Zeroth Law."

  "But the Zeroth Law has not been imprinted into you."

  "I have accepted it as a corollary of the First Law, for how can a human being best be kept from injury, if not by ensuring that human society in general is protected and kept functioning?"

  Giskard thought a while. "I see what you are trying to say, but what if—in acting to save me and, therefore, in acting to save humanity—it had turned out that I was not aimed at and that Madam Gladia was killed? How would you have felt then, friend Daneel?"

  Daneel said in a low tone, "I do not know, friend Giskard. Yet, had I leaped to save Madam Gladia and had it turned out that she was, in any case, safe and that I had allowed you to be destroyed and with you, in my opinion, the future of humanity, how could I have survived that blow?"

  The two stared at each other—each, for a while, lost in thought.

  Giskard said finally, "That may be so, friend Daneel, but do you agree, however, that judgment is difficult in such cases?"

  "I agree, friend Giskard."

  "It is difficult enough, when one must choose quickly between individuals, to decide which individual may suffer—or inflict—the greater harm. To choose between an individual and humanity, when you are not sure of what aspect of humanity you are dealing with, is so difficult that the very validity of Robotic Laws comes to be suspect. As soon as humanity in the abstract is introduced, the Laws of Robotics begin to merge with the Laws of Humanics—which may not even exist."

  Daneel said, "I do not understand you, friend Giskard."

  "I am not surprised. I am not certain I understand myself. But consider. —When we think of the humanity we must save, we think of Earthpeople and the Settlers. They are more numerous than the Spacers, more vigorous, more expansive. They show more initiative because they are less dependent on robots. They have a greater potential for biological and social evolution because they are shorter-lived, though long-lived enough to contribute great things individually."

  "Yes," said Daneel, "you put it succinctly."

  "And yet the Earthpeople and the Settlers seem to possess a mystical and even irrational confidence in the sanctity and inviolability of Earth. Might not this mystique be as fatal to their development as the mystiques, of robots and long life that hobble the Spacers?"

  "I had not thought of this," said Daneel. "I do not know."

  Giskard said, "If you were as aware of minds as I am, you would have been unable to avoid thinking of this. —How does one choose?" he went on with sudden intensity. "Think of humanity as divided into two species: the Spacers, with one apparently fatal mystique, and the Earthpeople plus the Settlers, with another possibly fatal mystique. It may be that there will be other species, in the future, with even less attractive properties.

  "It is not sufficient to choose, then, friend Daneel. We must be able to shape. We must shape a desirable species and then protect it, rather than finding ourselves forced to select among two or more undesirabilities. But how can we achieve the desirable unless we have psychohistory, the science I dream of and cannot attain?"

  Daneel said, "I have not appreciated the difficulty, friend Giskard, of possessing the ability to sense and influence minds. Is it possible that you learn too much to allow the Three Laws of Robotics to work smoothly within you?"

  "That has always been possible, friend Daneel, but not until these recent events has the possibility become actual. I know the pathway pattern that produces this mind-sensing and mind-influencing effect within me. I have studied myself carefully for decades in order that I might know it and I can pass it on to you so that you might program yourself to be like me—but I have resisted the urge to do so. It would be unkind to you. It is enough that I bear the burden."

  Daneel said, "Nevertheless, friend Giskard, if ever, in your judgment, the good of humanity would require it, I would accept the burden. Indeed, by the Zeroth Law, I would be obliged to."

  Giskard said, "But this discussion is useless. It seems apparent that the crisis is nearly upon us—and since we have not even managed to work out the nature of the crisis—"

  Daneel interrupted. "You are wrong, there at least, friend Giskard. I now know the nature of the crisis."

  83.

  One would not expect Giskard to show surprise. His face was, of course, incapable of expression. His voice possessed modulation, so that his speech sounded human and was neither monotonous nor unpleasant. That modulation, however, was never altered by emotion in any recognizable way.

  Therefore, when he said, "Are you serious?" it sounded as it would have had he expressed doubt over a remark Daneel had made concerning what the weather would be like the next day. Yet, from the manner in which his head turned toward Daneel, the way in which one hand lifted, there was no doubt that he was surprised.

  Daneel said, "I am, friend Giskard."

  "How did the information come to you?"

  "In part, from what I was told by Madam Undersecretary Quintana at the dinner table."

  "But did you not say that you had obtained nothing helpful from her, that you supposed you had asked the wrong questions?"

  "So it seemed in the immediate aftermath. On further reflection, however, I found myself able to make helpful deductions from what she had said. I have been searching Earth's central encyclopedia through the computer outlet these past few hours—"

  "And found your deductions confirmed?"

  "Not exactly, but I found nothing that would refute them, which is perhaps the next best thing."

  "But is negative evidence sufficient for certainty?"

  "It is not. And therefore I am not certain. Let me tell you, however, my reasoning and if you find it faulty, say so."

  "Please proceed, friend Daneel."

  "Fusion power, friend Giskard, was developed on Earth before the days of hyperspatial travel and, therefore, while human beings were to be found, on
ly on the one planet, Earth. This is well known. It took a long time to develop practical controlled fusion power after the possibility had first been conceived and put on a sound scientific footing. The chief difficulty in converting the concept into practice involved the necessity of achieving a sufficiently high temperature in a sufficiently dense gas for a long enough time to bring about fusion ignition.

  "And yet several decades before controlled fusion power had been established, fusion bombs had existed—these bombs representing an uncontrolled fusion reaction. But controlled or uncontrolled, fusion could not take place without an extremely high temperature in the millions of degrees. If human beings could not produce the necessary temperature for controlled fusion power, how could they do so for an uncontrolled fusion explosion?

  "Madam Quintana told me that before fusion existed on Earth, there was another variety of nuclear reaction in existence—nuclear fission. Energy was derived from the splitting—or fission—of large nuclei, such as those of uranium and thorium. That, I thought, might be one way of achieving a high temperature.

  "The encyclopedia I have this night been consulting gives very little information about nuclear bombs of any sort and, certainly, no real details. It is a taboo subject, I gather, and it must be so on all worlds, for I have never read of such details on Aurora either, even though such bombs still exist. It is a part of history that human beings are ashamed of, or afraid of, or both and I think this is rational. In what I did read of fusion bombs, however, I read nothing about their ignition that would have eliminated the fission bomb as the igniting mechanism. I suspect, then, that based, in part, on this negative evidence, the fission bomb was the igniting mechanism.

  "But, then, how was the fission bomb ignited? Fission bombs existed before fusion bombs and if fission bombs required an ultrahigh temperature for ignition, as fusion bombs did, then there was nothing that existed before fission bombs that would supply a high enough temperature. From this, I conclude—even though the encyclopedia contained no information on the subject—that fission bombs could be ignited at relatively low temperatures, perhaps even at room temperature. There were difficulties involved, for it took several years of unremitting effort after the discovery that fission existed before the bomb was developed. Whatever those difficulties might have been, however, they did not involve the production of ultrahigh temperatures. —Your opinion of all this, friend Giskard?"