Asimov’s Future History Volume 6

by Isaac Asimov

  Robots don’t need to breathe, he told himself, concentrating on thoughts as rational as possible to bring himself to a state of calm. You’re the only one using air here.

  After a moment, he realized that it was only the unexpectedness of being pressed in from all sides that was agitating him. An observation had been fitfully forming in his mind, and its elusiveness had been an unobserved factor in his distress. For not even in Rockliffe Station, where Derec diverted the normal robot traffic from a major intersection so that they could steal the Key to Perihelion (which they needed still, in order to escape from the planet), had robots gathered in such close proximity. Hmm. I’m willing to bet that when I regain my memory, I’ ll learn that I’m not used to crowds at all. he thought.

  “Mandelbrot,” he whispered, for some reason not wanting to be overheard, “quickly, give me an estimate. How many robots are here?”

  “Visual scan indicates the court itself is six thousand square meters. Each robot takes up little area, but their natural politeness seems to be ensuring that they maintain a certain distance from one another. I would estimate there are approximately ten thousand robots here.”

  “Counting the ones standing under the building?”

  “Ten thousand four hundred and thirty-two.”

  “I can’t see Ariel or Wolruf. Can you?”

  “Despite my broader visual spectrum, no, I cannot. Shall I try an olfactory scan?”

  “No. I hope they got stuck in the crowd.”

  “Is that an example of human animosity?”

  “No, just a thirst for poetic justice. I’m sure they’ll arrive soon.’.

  Taking a deep breath, Derec grabbed Mandelbrot by the elbow and they worked through the crowd in earnest. Now that they were on foot, the robots made way for them almost without noting their presence.

  Without exception, all stared with their equivalent of rapt fascination at the rotating building, the constant motion of which sent shifting waves of incandescence to every point of the square. Robots of all colors glowed unnaturally, as if in perpetual cool states of internal combustion. The various copper, tungsten, iron, gold, silver, chromium, and aluminum teguments, reflecting the colors from the planes, contributed additional subtle nuances to the scene.

  Derec kept thinking the robots should be burning hot, on the verge of melting like wax, but Mandelbrot’s arm remained cool to his touch, cooler even than the breeze whipping between the buildings into the square.

  As for the tetragonal pyramid itself, the crimson, indigo, magenta, and ocher planes each appeared twice — once on the upper level and once on the lower. As the clouds directly above reflected a particular shade, the square around Derec was awash with another. Derec only noticed this effect in the back of his mind, however. He was completely preoccupied with the shifting nuances of color within each plane.

  Each shade appeared to be composed of semitransparent fields, haphazardly laid on top of one another.

  Vessels of color — some filled with surging liquids, some not — writhed in and out and through the planes like hopelessly intertwined serpents. Though the vessels also possessed quivering vibrissae that only added to the unpredictable textures, the actual number of elements producing variations remained constant, producing the effect of unimaginable forces held strictly, remorselessly under control.

  The crimson planes resembled raging infernos. The indigo planes reminded him of a shifting representation of waters from a hundred worlds, from a thousand seas. The magenta was both fire and water, merged into the contradictory texture of the petals of an easily bruised rose, composed of hardy fibers. And the ocher was the combined colors of wheat reflecting the blazing setting sun, of lava rippling down a scorched mountainside, and of solar flares spitting out in great plumes from the surface of a fluctuating nova. And all those things and more were ambushed and trapped there, in a space possessing two separate and distinct masses: the marble-like mass of the building itself, and the airy mass of eternity itself, seen from the point of view of an eye at the edge of the universe.

  Ultimately, the intent was unclear, even enigmatic. Derec could not be sure what the form of the structure meant, but now that he was seeing it up close, he was convinced more than ever that every inch represented the purposeful activity of a single mind striving to piece together a particular puzzle in a particular way. An independently conceived puzzle.

  Derec had to learn how the actual construction job was accomplished. Obviously, the builder had learned how to reprogram a sector of individual metallic cells in Robot City’s central computer. Perhaps he had introduced a kind of metallic virus into the system, a virus that performed to preconceived specifications. Derec didn’t even know how to begin doing either task. That meant that not only had a robot conceived the building, it had also performed a few scientific breakthroughs in the software department.

  Meaning the robot — if indeed a robot was responsible — had achieved two levels of superior thinking, theoretically beyond the mental scope of positronic science. How many more levels could the robot — no, make that had the robot already achieved?

  He realized that, without having been aware of it, he had been walking beneath the building itself, watching it turn overhead. Right now a sargasso blue was shining down on him. He looked behind to see Mandelbrot, whose metal surface rippled with the reflection of a hundred currents.

  Again he was surprised that, even this close, there was no heat to be felt. And when he reached up to touch the building, the surface was cold, like the thorax of a lightning bug.

  “Master, is this what humans call beauty?” asked Mandelbrot with a curious hesitation between syllables.

  “It’s a form of it,” said Derec after thinking about it for a moment. He glanced at Mandelbrot and sensed the robot had more questions on his mind. “The viewer can always find beauty, provided he searches for it.”

  “Will this building always be so beautiful?”

  “Well, it depends on your point of view. The robots here will probably get completely used to it, provided it remains long enough. It will become increasingly difficult to perceive it freshly, though, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Forgive me, master. I am not sure exactly what I mean.”

  “That’s all right. It’s to be expected in circumstances like this.”

  “So I was correct earlier: newness is an important factor in the human response to beauty.”

  “Yes, but there are no rules as to what constitutes beauty, only guidelines. It’s probably one reason why you robots might sometimes find us humans so frustrating.”

  “That, robots are incapable of doing. We simply accept you, regardless of how illogical you may seem at the moment.” Mandelbrot again turned his optical sensors toward the building. “I think I shall always be similarly impressed by this building. Surely, if it is beautiful once, it shall be beautiful for as long as it exists.”

  “Perhaps. It’s beautiful to me, too; though, for all we know, your positronic pathways might be dealing with it in an entirely different manner.”

  “Master, I detect a shift in your earlier position.”

  “Not at all. I’m just accepting that tomorrow we might sit down and agree perfectly on what it looks like, what colors it has and how they shift, and even what architectural guidelines it subscribes to, and still we might be perceiving the whole thing differently. Cultural conditioning also has much to do with our response. An alien as intelligent as you or I might think this structure the ugliest in the universe.”

  “At the moment I can only categorize that concept as farfetched,” said Mandelbrot, “but I can see an element of logic behind it.”

  Derec nodded. He wondered if he was trying too hard to intellectualize this experience. At the moment it was difficult for him, too, to conceive of an intelligent organism who did not believe this structure the very essence of sublimity, but there he was talking about such an eventuality, just for the sake of making a point. Well, he had to admit he had
a point, even if he wasn’t very sympathetic with it.

  Nor could he help but wonder if all the city’s robots of sufficient intelligence would perceive the building as beautiful. Robots, though constructed in accordance with the same positronic principles, had in actual practice widely varying levels of perspicacities — that is, keenness in mental penetration, dependent upon the complexity of the integrals. Similarly intelligent robots had similar personalities, and tended to filter experience in identical ways. Different robots, with no contact between them, tended to respond to problems in like ways, drawing similar conclusions.

  But here, now, the robots in the square were being confronted with something they could only assimilate into their world-view through subjective means, which could not help but lead to divergent opinions.

  Even if they were all fashioned from the same minimalist resources...

  Especially if none of them had ever before encountered aesthetic beauty in the first place.

  It was no wonder that this building’s unannounced appearance had created such a stir. The intense inner awakening and deeper appreciation for the potentials of existence gripping Mandelbrot at this moment was doubtlessly occurring in some fashion within every single robot in the vicinity.

  Derec glanced about to see M334, Benny, and Harry making their way through the crowd, joining the throng directly below the building.

  “Pardon me!” said Harry in an almost perfunctory tone as it bumped into a chromium-plated bruiser that, if it were so inclined, could have twisted the little robot into scrap metal in five-point-four centads, with barely an erg’s expense. Instead, the bruiser shrugged and returned his attention to the building. So did Harry, but after a decad he turned his head in the bruiser’s direction and clearly, distinctly enunciated,

  “Pardon me if I am inadvertently directing my integrals outside their parameters, but there is certainly sufficient evidence to indicate that your sensors are maladjusted. You should have them tuned.”

  Harry held its gaze on the big robot until it finally deigned to notice and replied, “It seems logical to assume that you are correct, and are directing your integrals outside their parameters. Nothing about you indicates the slightest degree of diagnostic capacity. I suggest you confine yourself to your own sphere.”

  “Reasonable...” Harry replied flatly. He looked away.

  Derec watched them both stare at the building. He replayed the scene of Harry bumping into the bruiser in his mind. Had there been something almost deliberate about the way Harry had committed the deed?

  And about the way it had apologized for it? The utterance of the single idiom —” Pardon me” — was in retrospect almost perfunctory, as if Harry’s politeness had been nakedly derived from mere social custom, rather than from compulsion dictated through programming.

  No — I’ve got to be imagining things, reading too much into what’s just an ordinary incident, Derec thought.

  Then, as Derec watched in amazement, Harry leaned over to the bruiser and asked, in tones that stayed just within the bounds of politeness, “My curiosity integral has been invigorated. What is your designation? Either your real one or the one you go by. They both achieve parity in my cognizance.”

  An elongated pause ensued. In the meantime, the bruiser did not look away from the building. Finally, it answered, “My name is Roburtez.”

  “Roburtez,” said Harry, as if trying out the syllables to hear them positronically. “You are a big robot, you know that?”

  Roburtez then looked at Harry. Again, it may have been only Derec’s imagination, but he sensed a definite challenge of some sort in Roburtez’s posture. Derec couldn’t help but think Harry was deliberately provoking an altercation.

  Harry waited another moment, then said, “Yes, you are very big. Can you be certain your builders were working to the correct scale?”

  “I am certain,” said Roburtez.

  “In that case, I cannot be certain you have chosen an apt name for yourself. Might I venture a suggestion?”

  “What?” asked Roburtez. There was no evidence of irritation or impatience in the robot’s voice, but it was all too easy for Derec to read the qualities into it.

  “Bob,” stated Harry flatly. “Big Bob.”

  Derec tensed himself. He couldn’t guess what would happen next. Was he right in assuming Harry was deliberately provoking the bruiser? And if it was, what form would the ultimate confrontation take?

  Physical combat among robots was unthinkable, totally unprecedented in the history of robotkind; but then again, so was a verbal argument.

  For several moments Roburtez merely stared at Harry. Then it nodded. “Yes, your suggestion has merit.

  Big Bob it is. That is how I shall be designated henceforth.”

  Harry nodded in return. “You are welcome,” it said curtly, as the robot who was now known as Big Bob returned its attention to the building. Harry raised its hand and began pointing its finger as if to make another point, but was detained by Benny, who distracted it by patting it on the shoulder. The rapping of the metal skins echoed softly throughout the square.

  Benny said, “Deal with it more simplistically, comrade, else you shall continue to experience the utmost difficulty in vanquishing this human business.”

  “Yes, you are correct.”

  Derec shook his head. He thought he might clear his ears in the process, but they seemed just the same when he was finished. Had he been hearing correctly? What was this “human business” they were talking about? Was there indeed another human on the planet, or were they talking about the Laws of Humanics? He watched them for a few moments more, to see if anything would happen next. But Benny and Harry joined their friend M334 in gazing at the building, and that was all.

  Surely there had been some significance to that incident, and Derec determined to discover what it was as soon as he had the opportunity. He also resolved to ask Harry and Benny about their manner of speaking, which differed markedly in both rhythm and vocabulary from those of other robots. Something about it Derec found affecting, and he suspected other robots might be reacting the same way. “Big Bob” indeed!

  Derec left Mandelbrot staring at a light-red plane, and crouched down to the base of the building. About a quarter of the base was beneath the surface. Derec crawled to get a closer look at the actual point where the building began. He felt in his fingertips the machinery operating through the plasticrete, but the vibrations were utterly silent.

  Again, he touched the building. It rotated just fast enough that, if he had exerted any pressure with his fingertips, the smooth surface would have rubbed off strips of skin. The surface was cool to the touch. Its composition did appear to differ radically from the rest of the plasticrete cells comprising Robot City. The creator, whoever it was, had analyzed the meta-DNA code and conceived its own variation on it, gauged for exactly the effect it was looking for.

  That by itself proved Derec’s suspicion that the creator had transformed the city’s raw materials in addition to his other accomplishments.

  Was there nothing this robot couldn’t do? Derec felt a chill as the implications of this creature’s abilities began to sink in. Perhaps its only limitations would ultimately prove to be the Three Laws of Robotics.

  The fact that a robot with such potential merely existed in the first place could have a profound impact upon the social and political policies of galactic culture, redefining forever the place of robots in the mind of humanity.

  And Derec’s chill increased several fold as he imagined the remote possibility of robots superseding man in importance, if for no other reason than the art they could create — the emotions and dreams they could inspire — both in robots and in people

  You’re getting ahead of yourself, Derec, he thought. Get a grip on yourself. There’s nothing for you or the race of Man to worry about. Yet. With a sense of renewed concentration, he returned his attention to the inspection at hand.

  But he only got as far as peering into th
e blackness of the crack of two centimeters between the building and the plasticrete of the square. He only heard the gentle hissing of the mighty gears below for a few seconds. A familiar voice interrupted him, demanding his immediate and full attention.

  “There you are. I should have guessed you’d be crawling around where it isn’t necessary.”

  He acquiesced to the demand of Ariel’s presence, reluctantly yet willingly, as always. Despite her words, she bent down on her hands and knees to examine the crack with him. He could not decide whether to be relieved or annoyed that she had finally caught up with him.

  She made the decision for him, for she did not look at the crack or touch the building. She only looked into his eyes.

  “Found anything interesting yet?” she asked eagerly, breathlessly, from deep in her throat.

  He smiled involuntarily. “Much, but nothing definitive.”

  Wolruf’s hair stood on end as she came forward to sniff the area around the crack.

  “What are you looking for?” Derec asked.

  “Forr w’ateverr thiss one can find,” said the alien. “Ssmells, ssounss, w’ateverr.” Wolruf looked up at Derec. “Mosst interesstin’. No ssmell anyt’in’.”

  “Yes, the electric motor turning this building is certainly operating at optimum efficiency,” said Derec.

  “Undoubtedly designed with such unobtrusiveness in mind,” said Ariel.

  “Not’in hass been tak’n for granted,” said Wolruf.

  “Do I detect some semblance of admiration in your voice?” Derec asked her.

  “Yesss. My people would say thiss buildin’ iss ass weightless as tricksterr toy. Itss effect iss ssame, too.”

  “Tricksters?” Derec asked.”

  Wolruf has been trying to explain the concept to me for the last couple of days,” Ariel said. “Before her species became spacefarers, they lived what we at first glance would call a primitive existence. But her people had sophisticated folklore, which existed in part to provide metaphysical explanations for the phenomena of day-to-day existence. Tricksters were a device frequently employed in these explanations.