by James White
As he left the maintenance storeroom a Cleaner fell in behind him to escort him to the second level and to guard him against any dangers that might threaten, the most likely danger being a sudden suicidal urge on the part of himself, apparently. Ross smiled sardonically and began to question the Cleaner about its duties. Keep the servants happy, he thought.
7
During the month which followed Ross kept the robots very happy indeed. Most of the cleaning and repair robots were engaged in rebuilding the first level and he found jobs of some kind for the others. He was so busy making work for the robots and advancing his grandiose — and essentially hopeless — long-term plans toward completion that he hadn’t time to think about himself, which was exactly how he wanted it.
Gradually the reports he had asked for came in. He found that mechanically the hospital was in perfect working order, but that the contents of the blood bank and other medical supplies which had been in common use had deteriorated. The power supply was atomic and therefore no problem, there were food stores on every level, and although the water supply was low at the moment, more could be processed from the ocean now that it was no longer radioactive. Under its thin coating of ash the soil was rich, but dead.
A diary found in the debris of the first level gave him the explanation.
During the first three days of war more nuclear weapons were exploded on the Earth’s surface than had been believed to be in possession of the combined armories of the world, and during the first month there was little slackening off. By that time nothing lived on the surface. Animal life perished first, then insects and finally the plants. Despite their high radiation tolerance, the bombs were too many and too dirty and the fallout claimed them. The fantastic number and frequency of the explosions made it plain that the bombs were being manufactured and launched from hour to hour, that the work was being performed by servomechanisms and that the bombardment would continue until those servos were knocked out or their available sources of raw material ran out. And so the radiation pushed deeper, sterilizing all life from the soil — the earthworms, the larger microorganisms, the deepest, most tenacious roots, all perished.
Outwardly there was very little change in the areas not directly affected by the explosions. The long grass waved in the wind and trees still stood proudly against the sky, but the greenery had taken on a September hue and it was only mid-April. And at sea the war was less spectacular even though as many nuclear devices were exploded underwater as had been loosed on the surface — many of the launching bases were on the sea bed and the oceans teemed with unmanned submarines. A lot of dead fish were washed up and lay on the beaches for a long time, not rotting exactly, because the organisms responsible for the process of putrefaction were dead also, but simply drying up or falling apart until they were washed or blown away.
The sea was dying of radioactive poisoning, the land was dead already and at night the air glowed. There were too few survivors underground to check what happened next, even had they been willing to sacrifice their lives in trying.
The fires started by lightning or still-smoldering debris took hold and spread, everywhere. Dead vegetation does not retain moisture for long, so that even a heavy rainfall served only to slow that fiery advance. Across fronts hundreds of miles wide the conflagrations raged, sweeping first through countries and then continents with a complete disregard for natural and national barriers alike, and spewing great masses of ash and smoke into the upper atmosphere. The offshore islands held out briefly, until deluged with sparks from a mainland firestorm, and in the Southern Hemisphere the fire was slow to take hold. It was winter there and in the equatorial regions the vegetation grew in swampland or was kept wet by the rainy season. But the great tracts of once-lush jungle were dead and, above the waterline, drying. When the dry season came they went the way of all the other combustibles on the surface of the planet.
Having died, Ross thought grimly, the Earth had cremated herself.
He did not feel as bad as he had expected to after reading that diary, and realized that discovering the scientific explanation for the surface conditions came as an anticlimax to his first sight of them two months ago. Remembering that constant fog of ash and soot, which had been less dense over the sea and when rain fell, Ross began to form certain conclusions.
Although very finely divided, the ash was heavier than air and its fall was sometimes helped by the rain. When it fell on land it formed a sticky, mud, which, when it had dried out, was blown into the air again. Any that fell into the sea remained there, so that eventually the oceans would absorb it all. Probably the process would take many centuries, but in the end the air would be clear again. The ocean would stay dirty, and there was nothing that Ross could do about it. His final conclusion was that he should return his mind to circumstances over which he had some control, and the sooner the better.
There were three hundred and seventy-two robots, three large repair shops and a considerable variety of spares at his disposal. For Ross’s purpose it wasn’t nearly enough, and so he put the matter to Sister. Because it was only a robot he used simple language, cool logic, and took his argument forward in easy steps. At least, he started that way…
“I am the only human being left in a hospital whose robot staff is trained to care for thousands of patients,” Ross began quietly, “and it follows that, with the exception of yourself and a few Cleaners, the staff will have nothing to do, medically speaking. I have been assured, both by you people and from my reading, that a robot with nothing to do is a very unhappy hunk of machinery indeed. But if I am to keep you busy, if you are to do the jobs I have planned for you, the robot nursing staff will have to learn new skills and subject themselves to drastic physical modifications. They must learn these skills in addition to their existing medical training, because there would be the possibility, a very slim one, I admit, that their medical skill might suddenly be required. Before I go into details, however, are these alterations in structure and programming feasible?”
The robot was silent for about three seconds; then it said, “I have communicated your question to the senior maintenance robot. Structural modifications are no problem, but the ability to learn is governed by the capacity of the memory banks. A full answer is possible only if we know the details of the work you require done.”
“Very well,” said Ross. “Get that maintenance robot down here. I know you can transmit vision as well as sound, but I’d feel more comfortable if he was right here. I’ve some sketches and illustration I want you both to see.”
He went across to his desk, opened the big ledger, which over the months had grown into a cross between a diary and a scrapbook, and sat down. The Ward Sister stood behind him and shortly afterward the maintenance robot squeezed through the door, its blocky, multijointed body making the room seem suddenly crowded.
“What I have in mind is this,” Ross began, without further preamble. “Robots of the Cleaner and Ward Sister type to have their wheels replaced by treads similar to those on the diggers, also whatever modifications necessary added to protect them against rain or drifting ash, so that they can operate for long periods on the surface. I know that they have infrared vision, so that working at night or in bad visibility will not hamper them. In addition I want them fitted with a means of detecting metal, digging it out and transporting it back here. These sketches will show you what I have in mind. But this is only the first step.
“The metal is to build more robots,” Ross continued quickly, “who will go looking for metal to build yet more robots. For my purpose I will require thousands of robots, working hard and continuously, and the metal available in the ruins of the nearer cities will not be sufficient. Eventually we may be forced to mine and process the raw ore. But before that stage is reached I want to have robots searching the ocean bed, and the search extended into other countries by amphibious and airborne models…”
Ross was becoming excited in spite of himself. He was turning pages and jabbing his finger
at sketches which he had not meant to discuss at this early stage, and babbling about submarines, helicopters, Archimedes and jet engines. He was leaving his audience behind, yet he couldn’t stop himself. In a disjointed and nearly incoherent way Ross was outlining what was to be his life’s work, the goal which would keep him sane and make him as happy as it was possible to be in his position, and suddenly he could no longer keep his hopes bottled up.
“…I want the whole damned planet searched!” he went on wildly. “Every square foot of it. Somewhere there are other hospitals like this one, perhaps with patients still in Deep Sleep, or undersea bases which survived the war. It happened here so it could happen somewhere else! That is why the search robots must retain their medical knowledge, and extend it wherever possible. The descendants of those survivors are likely to be in bad shape.
“And if you should come on another Deep Sleep patient, I will supervise the awakening…”
Both the robots were ticking at him, a sure sign that they were hopelessly confused. Ross broke off awkwardly, then, in a more subdued voice, began to question the robots regarding the problems of converting his nursing staff to heavy industry.
And there were problems, all right. They lay solidly, one on top of the other, like a brick wall. One of the chief difficulties lay in the limited capacity of the robot brains to store new data. After basic programming a robot possessed the ability to learn by experience — in a very narrow sense, of course — because a small proportion of its memory bank was deliberately left unfilled. But this tiny fraction was not enough to contain data on a whole new specialty, and the result would be a cross between a very smart nurse and a hopelessly stupid miner. The answer was to cancel a large part of its medical programming, but Ross did not want to do that.
Another problem was the difficulty in putting ideas across to the repair robot. To it an illustration was just so many lines on paper; it had no understanding of perspective or of the solidity which they represented. Ross had to go over every line individually, explaining that this one was the radio antenna, that this particular squiggle was the towing hook and this series of parallel lines represented part of the caterpillar treads. Even then he could not make it understand properly. His frustration increased to the point where he felt like shaking it until its insides rattled or going at it with the two-foot wrench in an attempt to beat some sense into it, even though he knew that either course was likely to have the opposite effect. Finally he lost his temper completely and intemperately told it to get out of his sight.
In its maddeningly emotionless voice it requested clarification on the term “hell” and directions for getting there.
Ross closed his notebook and gently thumped the side of his head with a fist. “Why are you so stupid?” he said wearily. “You’re supposed to be the mechanical wizard here, yet Sister, who is only a nurse, seems to get what I’m driving at better than you do—”
“It is a matter of programming, sir,” the Ward Sister broke in. “Maintenance robots cannot abstract data from lines on a chart, such as pulse and temperature graphs, or from X-ray pictures as are the nursing robots—”
“I read circuit diagrams…” began the repair robot.
“Let’s not start a fight,” said Ross drily. “Just tell me why one of you seems more intelligent than the other.”
There were two reasons, and as Ross listened to the Ward Sister’s reply he realized that he should have seen one of them without being told. Ward Sister 5B was the last, most recent modification built by the great Court-land. Robots were not supposed to be able to think creatively, but Ross could not forget that this particular Sister, when faced with the dilemma of possibly killing the last human being, had achieved something remarkably like creative thought. It had been too little and too late, but an achievement nonetheless. The second reason was simply a matter of increased capacity for memory storage, as represented by the large box riveted to Sister’s ovoid body just above the rear wheel struts.
Which meant, among other things, that Ross could have his nurse-miner or even nurse-mining-and-repair robot combinations, merely by increasing the memory-storage capacity. To be sure, he put the idea to the senior maintenance robot, and received the reply that there was nothing against such combinations providing the memory bank was of sufficient capacity.
“Then what’s all the fuss about?” Ross demanded angrily. “Why didn’t you tell me it was only a matter of—”
“The normal type of robot,” put in Sister at that point, “is not capable of volunteering information.”
Listening to her, Ross had to remind himself that machines were not supposed to be capable of smugness, either.
“Then it’s time we had a few more super-normal robots,” he said seriously. “I’ve read Courtland’s notes on the 5B modification, and from the little I understand of them it appears that Sister here has had a small change in circuitry which, when she is faced with a problem, makes available data on all similar problems which have been solved previously… No, that isn’t what I meant. Courtland says that she has a choice of answers to any problem, and if she makes the wrong answer that error is filed as a datum and she will never make exactly the same mistake again.
“Anyway,” he ended, “is it possible for 5B’s modification to be reproduced in the other robots?”
The answer was yes, provided the senior maintenance robot was allowed to dismantle 5B to do so. When he heard that Ross felt oddly concerned about the Sister. Like any lay friend of a patient, he wanted to ask if the operation was likely to prove fatal, and similar anxious queries. He realized that Sister had come to mean a lot to him in the past few weeks. Whether deliberate or otherwise, her refusal to grant him a moment’s privacy either day or night, while infuriating and at first downright embarrassing, had kept him from feeling too badly the loneliness of his position, and she was the smartest robot he had. The fact that her concern for him was an artificial, built-in feeling did not seem to matter.
Ross had difficulty in phrasing his next question, but the Sister answered it without trouble.
“The directives against harming another robot are only slightly less strict than those against damaging a human being,” she said. “During the dismantling and reassembly I should incur no loss of memory or function.”
“Good,” said Ross, “then here is what I want done. First, all robots, both existing and those which are to be built, to have the capacity to store data on at least three specialties, with provision for further learning. Next, all robots are to be made capable of abstracting data by every aural and visual means. That includes the spoken word, radio, photographs, circuit diagrams, charts, graphs, contour maps, astronomical observations and the meteorological phenomena encountered in air and sea navigation. And when they are capable of doing this I want them to absorb data in all fields until they can’t hold any more, then extend their memory banks and go on learning, indefinitely. Do you understand my instructions?”
“Yes, sir,” said the maintenance robot.
“You require a robot which is unspecialized,” said Ward Sister, and added, “Such a mechanism may be too large to operate inside the hospital.”
Ross hadn’t considered that angle, but it wasn’t important. He said, “I’ll require hundreds of such robots, and we can stable them on the surface. Any other objections?”
The repair robot said, “The building program as outlined is possible, but I require a breakdown of your instructions and the sequence in which you want them carried out.”
Ross groaned inwardly; he hadn’t considered details himself yet. But he was becoming expert at talking with authority on subjects about which he knew very little…
A few hours later he was present when the senior maintenance robot and another of the same type scattered pieces of Sister all over the machine-shop floor. Ross wasn’t squeamish about dismantled machines, but the way 5B kept carrying on a conversation while lying about in that condition gave him the creeps. In a surprisingly short time the s
enior had succeeded in doing for the other repair robot what Courtland had done for Sister, and in an even shorter time the newly enlightened one had returned the compliment. They put Sister together again in no time at all.
Ross now had three robot geniuses on call, and he knew that within a few weeks the Courtland modification would have been extended to all the robots. It should have been a great moment for him, but instead he felt strangely let down, for despite his recent intensive reading on cybernetics, he had not understood a single thing which he had seen done.
Analyzing his feelings, Ross came to the conclusion that it was simply a matter of his pride being hurt. He did not want to feel that a machine could be smarter in any subject than he was, although it was plain, when he thought about it more deeply, that every robot in the hospital would soon be smarter than he was on any subject. He had to remind himself forcefully that they were only tools. Complex, of course, but still only gadgets designed for his use or convenience. The idea was to use, not try to compete against, the things.
Only briefly did he wonder, with that uneasy fluttering in the pit of his stomach, if he knew what he was doing. The first obvious change was that every robot acquired a trailer. Mounted on two wheels and joined to the main robot body by a flexible coupling which also carried a bundle of connecting cable, this was the housing for the extra data banks Ross had ordered. His idea had been to raise the general intelligence level of the robots in order to make his later, and more complex, instructions understandable to them. Instead, he often found himself having to explain the simplest, most obvious things — obvious to a human being, that is — while they fairly romped through items which to Ross had seemed extremely difficult. Gradually he found himself being forced into the position of a coordinator rather than a teacher, but that did not mean that he had less work to do.