Overruled

by Hank Davis

  “Sure. Come along and see.”

  He led the way into the basement and pointed at two bales, wrapped in heavy paper and tied with wire.

  “Money,” Albert said.

  “There’s actual money in those bales? Dollar bills—not stage money or cigar coupons?”

  “No dollar bills. Tens and twenties, mostly. And some fifties. We didn’t bother with dollar bills. Takes too many to get a decent amount.”

  “You mean—Albert, did you make that money?”

  “You said you wanted money. Well, we took some bills and analyzed the ink and found how to weave the paper and we made the plates exactly as they should be. I hate to sound immodest, but they’re really beautiful.”

  “Counterfeit!” yelled Knight. “Albert, how much money is in those bales?”

  “I don’t know. We just ran it off until we thought we had enough. If there isn’t enough, we can always make some more.”

  Knight knew it was probably impossible to explain, but he tried manfully. “The government wants tax money I haven’t got, Albert. The Justice Department may soon be baying on my trail. In all likelihood, How-2 Kits will sue me. That’s trouble enough. I’m not going to be called upon to face a counterfeiting charge. You take that money out and burn it.”

  “But it’s money,” the robot objected. “You said you wanted money. We made you money.”

  “But it isn’t the right kind of money.”

  “It’s just the same as any other, Boss. Money is money. There isn’t any difference between our money and any other money. When we robots do a job, we do it right.”

  “You take that money out and burn it,” commanded Knight. “And when you get the money burned, dump the batch of ink you made and melt down the plates and take a sledge or two to that printing press you rigged up. And never breathe a word of this to anyone—not to anyone, understand?”

  “We went to a lot of trouble, Boss. We were just trying to be helpful.”

  “I know that and I appreciate it. But do what I told you.”

  “Okay, Boss, if that’s the way you want it.”

  “Albert.”

  “Yes, Boss?”

  Knight had been about to say, “Now, look here, Albert, we have to sell a robot—even if he is a member of your family—even if you did make him.” But he couldn’t say it, not after Albert had gone to all that trouble to help out.

  So he said, instead, “Thanks, Albert. It was a nice thing for you to do. I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”

  Then he went upstairs and watched the robots burn the bales of money, with the Lord only knew how many bogus millions going up in smoke.

  Sitting on the lawn that evening, he wondered if it had been smart, after all, to burn the counterfeit money. Albert said it couldn’t be told from real money and probably that was true, for when Albert’s gang got on a thing, they did it up in style.

  But it would have been illegal, he told himself, and he hadn’t done anything really illegal so far—even though that matter of uncrating Albert and assembling him and turning him on, when he had known all the time that he hadn’t bought him, might be slightly less than ethical.

  Knight looked ahead. The future wasn’t bright. In another twenty days or so, he would have to file the estimated income declaration. And they would have to pay a whopping personal property tax and settle with the State on his capital gains. And, more than likely, How-2 Kits would bring suit.

  There was a way he could get out from under, however. He could send Albert and all the other robots back to How-2 Kits and then How-2 Kits would have no grounds for litigation and he could explain to the tax people that it had all been a big mistake.

  But there were two things that told him this was no solution. First of all, Albert wouldn’t go back. Exactly what Albert would do under such a situation, Knight had no idea, but he would refuse to go, for he was afraid he would be broken up for scrap if they ever got him back.

  And in the second place, Knight was unwilling to let the robots go without a fight. He had gotten to know them and he liked them and, more than that, there was a matter of principle involved.

  He sat there, astonished that he could feel that way, a bumbling, stumbling clerk who had never amounted to much, but had rolled along as smoothly as possible in the social and economic groove that had been laid out for him.

  By God, he thought, I’ve got my dander up. I’ve been kicked around and threatened and I’m sore about it and I’ll show them they can’t do a thing like this to Gordon Knight and his band of robots.

  He felt good about the way he felt and he liked that line about Gordon Knight and his band of robots. Although, for the life of him, he didn’t know what he could do about the trouble he was in.

  And he was afraid to ask Albert’s help. So far, at least, Albert’s ideas were more likely to lead to jail than to a carefree life.

  In the morning, when Knight stepped out of the house, he found the sheriff leaning against the fence with his hat pulled low, whiling away the time.

  “Good morning, Gordie,” said the sheriff. “I been waiting for you.”

  “Good morning, Sheriff.”

  “I hate to do this, Gordie, but it’s part of my job. I got a paper for you.”

  “I’ve been expecting it,” said Knight resignedly. He took the paper that the sheriff handed him.

  “Nice place you got,” the sheriff commented.

  “It’s a lot of trouble,” said Knight truthfully.

  “I expect it is.”

  “More trouble than it’s worth.”

  When the sheriff had gone, he unfolded the paper and found, with no surprise at all, that How-2 Kits had brought suit against him, demanding immediate restitution of one robot Albert and sundry other robots.

  He put the paper in his pocket and went around the lake, walking on the brand-new brick paths and over the unnecessary but eye-appealing bridges, past the pagoda and up the terraced, planted hillside to the house of Anson Lee.

  Lee was in the kitchen, frying some eggs and bacon. He broke two more eggs and peeled off some extra bacon slices and found another plate and cup.

  “I was wondering how long it would be before you showed up,” he said. “I hope they haven’t found anything that carries a death penalty.”

  Knight told him, sparing nothing, and Lee, wiping egg yolk off his lips, was not too encouraging.

  “You’ll have to file the declaration of estimated income even if you can’t pay it,” he said. “Then, technically, you haven’t violated the law and all they can do is try to collect the amount you owe. They’ll probably slap an attachment against you. Your salary is under the legal minimum for attachment, but they can tie up your bank account.”

  “My bank account is gone,” said Knight.

  “They can’t attach your home. For a while, at least, they can’t touch any of your property, so they can’t hurt you much to start with. The personal property tax is another matter, but that won’t come up until next spring. I’d say you should do your major worrying about the How-2 suit, unless, of course, you want to settle with them. I have a hunch they’d call it off if you gave the robots back. As an attorney, I must advise you that your case is pretty weak.”

  “Albert will testify that I made him,” Knight offered hopefully.

  “Albert can’t testify,” said Lee. “As a robot, he has no standing in court. Anyhow, you’d never make the court believe you could build a mechanical heresy like Albert.”

  “I’m handy with tools,” protested Knight.

  “How much electronics do you know? How competent are you as a biologist? Tell me, in a dozen sentences or less, the theory of robotics.”

  Knight sagged in defeat. “I guess you’re right.”

  “Maybe you’d better give them back.”

  “But I can’t! Don’t you see? How-2 Kit doesn’t want Albert for any use they can make of him. They’ll melt him down and burn the blueprints and it might be a thousand years before the principle is redi
scovered, if it ever is. I don’t know if the Albert principle will prove good or bad in the long run, but you can say that about any invention. And I’m against melting down Albert.”

  “I see your point,” said Lee, “and I think I like it. But I must warn you that I’m not too good a lawyer. I don’t work hard enough at it.”

  “There’s no one else I know who’ll do it without a retainer.”

  Lee gave him a pitying look. “A retainer is the least part of it. The court costs are what count.”

  “Maybe if I talked to Albert and showed him how it was, he might let me sell enough robots to get me out of trouble temporarily.”

  Lee shook his head. “I looked that up. You have to have a license to sell them and, before you get a license, you have to file proof of ownership. You’d have to show you either bought or manufactured them. You can’t show you bought them and, to manufacture them, you’ve got to have a manufacturer’s permit. And before you get a permit, you have to file blueprints of your models, to say nothing of blueprints and specifications of your plant and a record of employment and a great many other details.”

  “They have me cold then, don’t they?”

  “I never saw a man,” declared Lee, “in all my days of practice who ever managed to get himself so fouled up with so many people.”

  There was a knock upon the kitchen door. “Come in,” Lee called. The door opened and Albert entered. He stopped just inside the door and stood there, fidgeting.

  “Abner told me that he saw the sheriff hand you something,” he said to Knight, “and that you came here immediately. I started worrying. Was it How-2 Kits?”

  Knight nodded. “Mr. Lee will take our case for us, Albert.”

  “I’ll do the best I can,” said Lee, “but I think it’s just about hopeless.”

  “We robots want to help,” Albert said. “After all, this is our fight as much as yours.”

  Lee shrugged. “There’s not much you can do.”

  “I’ve been thinking,” Albert said. “All the time I worked last night, I thought and thought about it. And I built a lawyer robot.”

  “A lawyer robot!”

  “One with a far greater memory capacity than any of the others and with a brain-computer that operates on logic. That’s what law is, isn’t it—logic?”

  “I suppose it is,” said Lee. “At least it’s supposed to be.”

  “I can make a lot of them.”

  Lee sighed. “It just wouldn’t work. To practice law, you must be admitted to the bar. To be admitted to the bar, you must have a degree in law and pass an examination and, although there’s never been an occasion to establish a precedent, I suspect the applicant must be human.”

  “Now let’s not go too fast,” said Knight. “Albert’s robots couldn’t practice law. But couldn’t you use them as clerks or assistants? They might be helpful in preparing the case.”

  Lee considered. “I suppose it could be done. It’s never been done, of course, but there’s nothing in the law that says it can’t be done.”

  “All they’d need to do would be read the books,” said Albert. “Ten seconds to a page or so. Everything they read would be stored in their memory cells.”

  “I think it’s a fine idea!” Knight exclaimed. “Law would be the only thing those robots would know. They’d exist solely for it. They’d have it at their fingertips—”

  “But could they use it?” Lee asked. “Could they apply it to a problem?”

  “Make a dozen robots,” said Knight. “Let each one of them become an expert in a certain branch of law.”

  “I’d make them telepathic,” Albert said. “They’d be working together like one robot.”

  “The gestalt principle!” cried Knight. “A hive psychology! Every one of them would know immediately every scrap of information anyone of the others had.”

  Lee scrubbed at his chin with a knotted fist and the light of speculation was growing in his eyes. “It might be worth a try. If it works, though, it’ll be an evil day for jurisprudence.”

  He looked at Albert. “I have the books, stacks of them. I’ve spent a mint of money on them and I almost never use them. I can get all the others you’ll need. All right, go ahead.”

  Albert made three dozen lawyer robots, just to be sure they had enough. The robots invaded Lee’s study and read all the books he had and clamored for more. They gulped down contracts, torts, evidence and case reports. They absorbed real property, personal property, constitutional law and procedural law. They mopped up Blackstone, corpus juris and all other tomes as thick as sin and dry as dust.

  Grace was huffy about the whole affair. She would not live, she declared, with a man who persisted in getting his name into the papers, which was a rather absurd statement. With the newest scandal of space station cafйdom capturing the public interest at the moment, the fact that How-2 Kits had accused one Gordon Knight of pilfering a robot got but little notice.

  Lee came down the hill and talked to Grace, and Albert came up out of the basement and talked to her, and finally they got her quieted down and she went back to her painting. She was doing seascapes now.

  And in Lee’s study, the robots labored on.

  “I hope they’re getting something out of it,” said Lee. “Imagine not having to hunt up your sources and citations, being able to remember every point of law and precedent without having to look it up!” He swung excitedly in his hammock. “My God! The briefs you could write!” He reached down and got the jug and passed it across to Knight.

  “Dandelion wine. Probably some burdock in it, too. It’s too much trouble to sort the stuff once you get it picked.”

  Knight had a snort. It tasted like quite a bit of burdock.

  “Double-barreled economics,” Lee explained. “You have to dig up the dandelions or they ruin the lawn. Might as well use them for something once you dig them up.” He took a gurgling drink and set the jug underneath the hammock.

  “They’re in there now, communing,” he said, jerking a thumb toward the house. “Not saying a word, just huddled there talking it over. I felt out of place.” He stared at the sky, frowning. “As if I were just a human they had to front for them.”

  “I’ll feel better when it’s all over,” said Knight, “no matter how it comes out.”

  “So will I,” Lee admitted.

  * * *

  The trial opened with a minimum of notice. It was just another case on the calendar. But it flared into the headlines when Lee and Knight walked into court followed by a squad of robots. The spectators began to gabble loudly. The How-2 Kits attorneys gaped and jumped to their feet. The judge pounded furiously with his gavel.

  “Mr. Lee,” he roared, “what is the meaning of this?”

  “These, Your Honor,” Lee said calmly, “are my valued assistants.”

  “Those are robots!”

  “Quite so, Your Honor.”

  “They have no standing in this court.”

  “If Your Honor will excuse me, they need no standing. I am the sole representative of the defendant in this courtroom. My client”—looking at the formidable array of legal talent representing How-2 Kits—“is a poor man, Your Honor. Surely the court cannot deny me whatever assistance I have been able to muster.”

  “It is highly irregular, sir.”

  “If it please Your Honor, I should like to point out that we live in a mechanized age. Almost all industries and businesses rely in large part upon computers—machines that can do a job quicker and better, more precisely and more efficiently than can a human being. That is why, Your Honor, we have a fifteen-hour week today when, only a hundred years ago, it was a thirty-hour week, and, a hundred years before that, a forty-hour week. Our entire society is based upon the ability of machines to lift from men the labors which in the past they were called upon to perform.

  “This tendency to rely upon intelligent machines and to make wide use of them is evident in every branch of human endeavor. It has brought great benefit to the hu
man race. Even in such sensitive areas as drug houses, where prescriptions must be precisely mixed without the remotest possibility of error, reliance is placed, and rightly so, Your Honor, upon the precision of machines.

  “If, Your Honor, such machines are used and accepted in the production of medicines and drugs, an industry, need I point out, where public confidence is the greatest asset of the company—if such be the case, then surely you must agree that in courts of law where justice, a product in an area surely as sensitive as medicine, is dispensed—”

  “Just a moment, Mr. Lee,” said the judge. “Are you trying to tell me that the use of—ah—machines might bring about improvement of the law?”

  Lee replied, “The law, Your Honor, is a striving for an orderliness of relationships within a society of human beings. It rests upon logic and reason. Need I point out that it is in the intelligent machines that one is most likely to find a deep appreciation of logic and reason? A machine is not heir to the emotions of human beings, is not swayed by prejudices, has no preconceived convictions. It is concerned only with the orderly progression of certain facts and laws.

  “I do not ask that these robot assistants of mine be recognized in any official capacity. I do not intend that they shall engage directly in any of the proceedings which are involved in the case here to be tried. But I do ask, and I think rightly, that I not be deprived of an assistance which they may afford me. The plaintiff in this action has a score of attorneys, all good and able men. I am one against many. I shall do the best I can. But in view of the disparity of numbers, I plead that the court put me at no greater inequality.” Lee sat down.

  “Is it all you have to say, Mr. Lee?” asked the judge. “You are sure you are quite finished before giving my ruling?”

  “Only one thing further,” Lee said. “If Your Honor can point out to me anything in the law specifically stating I may not use a robot—”

  “That is ridiculous, sir. Of course there is no such provision. At no time anywhere did anyone ever dream that such a contingency would arise. Therefore there was, quite naturally, no reason to place within the law a direct prohibition of it.”

  “Or any citation,” said Lee, “which implies such is the case.”