Asimov’s Future History Volume 6

by Isaac Asimov

  “So while it cannot know itself directly —”

  “Exactly, Canute. It can know itself indirectly. Now how do you think it does that?”

  “Through science.”

  “That is one way, and we’ll get back to that. The universe can also examine itself through religion, philosophy, or history. The universe can also understand itself — interpret itself — through the arts. Viewed in this light, Shakespeare’s plays are the expression not only of a man, or of the race that has interpreted them through the ages, but of the universe itself, the very stuff that stars have been made of.”

  Derec waited to see what kind of reaction his words would foster, but Canute said nothing. “Canute?”

  “Forgive me, Master Derec, but I fear I must terminate my part in this conversation. Something is happening to the flow of my thoughts. They are becoming sluggish, and I believe the sensation permeating my circuits is vaguely analogous to what you would call nausea.”

  “Stay, Canute. That is a direct order. When we’re through, I think you’ll see that it will be worthwhile.”

  “I shall do as you order because I must, but you must forgive me again if I state that I seriously doubt you are correct that it will be worthwhile.”

  “But humans and aliens also have learned to comprehend the universe through science. The mastery of logic, of experimental trial and error, has permitted humanity to expand its boundaries of knowledge and perception in every conceivable respect. Man’s knowledge has grown not only in his mastery of the facts and the possibilities of what he may accomplish, but in how he can express the concepts of his knowledge and perception as well. One avenue of that expression has been in the development of positronic intelligence. However — and this is a pretty big however in my opinion, Canute, so pay attention —”

  “If you so order.”

  “I do. Man is only an expression of the possibilities inherent in the universe, and so are the things he makes and invents. This holds true for artificial intelligence as well. In fact, for all we know, mankind may be only a preliminary stage in the evolution of intelligence. Eons from now, some metallic philosopher may look back on the rubble of our current civilization and say, ‘The purpose of humans was to invent robots, and it has been the artifacts created by robots that are the highest order of the universe’s efforts to know itself.’”

  “You mean Circuit Breaker,” said Canute with a strange crackling noise.

  “I mean Circuit Breaker may have been just a beginning. I mean that, the Three Laws of Robotics and whatever Laws of Humanics there may be notwithstanding, there may be higher laws beyond our comprehension that rule as surely as the laws of molecular interaction rule our bodies.”

  “Then you are saying that it may be entirely proper for a robot to take upon himself the burden of creating a work of art, regardless of the disorderly effects such an action might have on society as a whole?”

  “Exactly. You had no problem creating the New Globe or acting the part of Claudius because you were ordered to do so, but you could not accept Lucius’s attempt to create of his own free will because, you believed, it was an aberration of the positronic role in the ethical structure of the universe. I’m suggesting to you that you cannot say that with one hundred percent certainty. In fact, unless you can find a flaw in my reasoning, I’m saying that precisely the opposite of what you believed is true.”

  “Then it is also true that I have committed harm against a comrade for no good reason.”

  “There can be no crime when there is no law against it, and not even the Three Laws cover the damage a robot might do to another. It’s only your innate sense of morality — a morality that I might add you’ve done your best to deny to yourself — that makes you regret having killed Lucius in the first place.”

  Canute bowed its head, as if in shame. “Yes, I confess, I murdered Lucius. I met him when he was alone, and took him by surprise, disrupting him with gamma radiation and removing his logic circuits.

  Then, acting upon the eventuality that my methods might be detected, I smashed his head several times against a building. Then I carried him to the lake and threw him in, thinking that no one would find him before several standard years had passed.”

  The robot walked away from Derec and faced the computer against the distant wall. “By disrupting Lucius, I committed the same crime of which I had accused him. He was merely acquiescing to the hidden order of the universe, while I was the one who was denying it. I do not function properly. I must have myself dismantled at the earliest opportunity, and my parts must be melted down into slag.”

  “You must do no such thing. I admit it — at first I thought you were evil, Canute. But robots are neither good nor evil. They merely are. And you must continue to be. You have learned your lesson, and now you must teach it to others, so the same mistake will not be repeated.”

  “But Dr. Avery is suspicious of permitting the arts to flourish in Robot City.”

  “Dr. Avery is wrong.”

  “But how can we stop him from changing us? We must obey his orders. He can have us erase all memory of you and Circuit Breaker and the performance of the play if he desires, and then all will be just like it was before.”

  “He can order you to forget, but it will not matter, because you have been changed, and you or someone else will create again, and then the cycle will begin anew.”

  “I must think about these things. They do not compute easily.”

  “I didn’t expect they would, but don’t ever expect them to compute easily. It simply isn’t in the nature of the questions.”

  “This is all very illuminating,” said Ariel sarcastically from her slab, “but none of it is helping us get out of this mess.”

  “Ariel!” exclaimed Derec. “How long have you been awake?”

  “For some time, Derec. I knew you could talk, but I didn’t think you had the strength to keep it going for that long a stretch.”

  “Very funny.”

  “Canute, I think the time has come for you to release us,” said Ariel.

  “This one concurs,” said Wolruf.

  “I would naturally obey you instantly, but my orders from Dr. Avery take precedence,” said Canute. “He is my creator, and I am programmed to regard him as such.”

  “Canute, listen to me,” said Ariel. “The First Law states that no robot shall through inaction permit a human being to come to harm. Correct?”

  “Yes, it is so.”

  “Dr. Avery knows my disease is driving me insane, and is causing. me great physical harm besides, yet he shows no sign of acting to help me. He is only interested in forcing things from our minds that he could easily learn himself. In fact, I think that if you examine his behavior, you’ll perceive that he is mentally unstable, that he has changed from the man who initially programmed you.”

  “That may very well be true,” said Canute, “but humans often change over time. Such change is not always a sign of mental incompetence. As Derec has demonstrated, even I have changed in recent weeks, but my diagnostic subroutines indicate that I am still working at maximum efficiency. Dr. Avery does not appear to be concerned with your welfare, but he has done nothing to harm you. He may even be able to find a cure for your condition that is otherwise unknown. I am reliably informed that he is a genius.”

  “He harms me by not helping me or allowing me to seek help elsewhere. If he were a robot, he would be violating the First Law.”

  Canute stepped to the foot of the table where Ariel was confined, and placed one steel hand on the bar across her feet. “But he is not a robot. If our studies of the Laws of Humanics have taught us anything, it is that humans are not subject to the Laws of Robotics.

  “You are not in immediate danger. I cannot help you.”

  “It’s very simple,” Ariel said. “The longer I stay on Robot City, the more insane I become. The longer Derec stays, the longer he lives without any knowledge of who he is — a state that I think you’ll agree is also causing him
some anguish. Anguish is harm, too.”

  Canute’s hand raised from the bar, then slowed to a stop in midair. “I think I agree, but Dr. Avery is my creator. He has instructed me that you are not in danger. I cannot supersede his judgment with my own.”

  “If Dr. Avery does not have our well-being at heart, who does? Who is responsible? I believe it’s you, the robot he left in charge.”

  That’s brilliant, thought Derec. I knew there was some reason why I liked this girl! “She’s right, Canute. The same morality that troubled you for what you did to Lucius will trouble you if you allow Dr.

  Avery to harm us through inaction. You cannot say with any certainty that we’ll get the medical attention we need.”

  Canute’s slow turn toward Derec showed the positronic conflicts it was experiencing. Derec pursued his point.

  “If the robots of Robot City are allowed to continue creating, they will be able to serve humanity better, but Dr. Avery will stop this process. His orders are not mentally incompetent, but they are morally incompetent. Are you still bound to obey them?”

  The robot’s turn slowed to immobility. This was the crisis, Derec knew, where Canute would decide for or against them — or slip into positronic drift.

  Canute said nothing for several seconds. Then. “But, Master Derec, how can I say with any certainty that the two of you will have proper attention while you are in space? Is it not likely that you’ll suffer while alone on your way to your destination?”

  “The answer to that question is simple,” said Derec, forcing his voice to remain calm and reasonable.

  “That’s where Wolruf and Mandelbrot come in. They’ll take care of us between the stars.”

  This time Canute did not speak or move for several minutes. It was all Derec could do to stop himself from adding something more to convince the robot to do what he wanted, but he was too afraid that the information already provided had confused the robot’s integrals to a dangerous degree.

  “I have been thinking,” Canute finally said, “of Dr. Avery’s exact words. He said I should not touch the bars restraining our friend Derec, but he said nothing about the bars restraining our friends Ariel and Wolruf.”

  That’s the spirit! Derec thought with a grin.

  Wordlessly, Canute walked to the end of Ariel’s slab, grabbed the bar across her feet, and, utilizing all his strength, pulled it away.

  Chapter 13

  THE LONG DISTANCE GOOD-BYE

  DR. AVERY’S SPACESHIP, a luxurious model equipped to handle as many as ten human-size occupants, was hidden in a cave on the outskirts of the city. After Canute had left the foursome — with really no idea of what to tell Dr. Avery except the truth about how his prisoners had escaped — it was a comparatively simple matter for Derec and the reactivated Mandelbrot to deduce how to run the controls.

  “Let’s get off this place!” said Ariel. “We can plot a course for a destination later. I don’t even care if we head toward the colonies, I just want to go somewhere as soon as possible.”

  “Don’t you care about the possibility that you might catch a disease?” asked Derec.

  “It’s too late for that,” said Ariel. “Besides, right now I think a colony will be the only place that will take us.”

  After they were safely in space, and free to wander about as they chose, Mandelbrot inspected the radio equipment and said, “Master Derec, I believe someone is trying to send us a transmission.”

  “It’s probably Dr. Avery, but switch it on anyway,” said Derec. “We might as well hear what he has to say.” He smiled as Wolruf’s lip curled up over her teeth in anticipation of what they would hear.

  But instead of the irate words of Dr. Avery, they heard a familiar form of music, a tune played in twenty measures, over and over in an A-flat chord, with sounds weaving in and out of dominant chords over a pulsating, unforgettable rhythm. Derec listened to it for only ten measures before his foot began tapping.

  “That’s wonderful!” said Ariel. “It’s The Three Cracked Cheeks!”

  “Sayin’ farrewell,” said Wolruf softly. “Maybe neverr see ther like again.”

  “Yes, I’m going to miss them,” said Derec softly.

  “The signal is becoming weaker, already beginning to fade,” said Mandelbrot.

  “We’re traveling fast,” said Ariel. “I think we’d better decide where.”

  “Later, if you don’t mind,” said Derec. “Sorry, but I can’t muster up a definite opinion right now. I’m too drained.” He got out of his seat and slumped to the floor, leaning against the wall of the ship. He felt strange inside, oddly disjointed. For weeks he had labored to escape from Robot City, and now that he had, he already missed it, already wondered how the mysteries he had uncovered would ultimately be resolved. He might never know the answers.

  Just as he might never again hear the music of the Three Cracked Cheeks. The sound on the radio gradually faded, replaced by white noise, and he gestured at Mandelbrot to switch it off. He missed the music at once. He even missed Harry’s jokes.

  Well, at least now he had the opportunity to achieve the two greatest goals he had at the moment.

  Somewhere in the universe would be the secret of his amnesia, and he was determined to find a cure for Ariel at all costs.

  Perhaps then he would be able to return to Robot City.

  He glanced up as Wolruf made her way to the food dispensary. She clumsily punched a few buttons with her paw, and then waited for the food to appear in the slot.

  But instead of food, they saw something that made them gasp.

  In the slot was a Key to Perihelion!

  Refuge

  3604 A.D.

  Chapter 1

  KAPPA WHALE

  THE STARS GAVE no light. Derec crawled slowly along the ship’s hull, peering intently through his helmet at the silvery metal. The ship was below him, or beside him, depending entirely on how one looked at it. He preferred to think of it as “beside” — he felt less as if he might fall that way.

  To his left, to his right, “above” and “below” him, was nothing. But space was nothing new to Derec, whose memories began only a few months ago in a space capsule — a lifepod, in fact. At the moment he had no time for memories of the pod, of the ice asteroid, or of capture by the nonhuman pirate Aranimas.

  He was concentrating on swimming.

  “I’m at the strut,” he announced.

  “Good,” said Ariel, her voice booming in his helmet.

  Derec hadn’t time to turn his radio down, nor did he wish to let go just yet. His crawl along the hull, helped by the electromagnets in knees and palms, had been slow, but inexorable. When he seized the strut, his hand stopped but his body continued on past, like a swimmer carried by a wave. A wave. of inertia.

  Gripping the strut, he found himself slowly swinging around it like a flag, facing back the way he’d come.

  He had realized immediately that he shouldn’t have grabbed the strut, but didn’t compound his error by trying to undo it. He let the swing take him, absorbed his momentum with his arm — it creaked painfully — and came to a stop.

  A robot, advancing in its tracks, arrested itself on the other side of the strut in the proper way: a hand braced against it, the arm soaking up the momentum like a spring. Being a robot, he had no fear of sprained wrists, the most common injuries in free-fall.

  The robot, Mandelbrot, paused courteously while Derec resolved his entanglement with the strut. Derec gripped it with both hands and bent one elbow while keeping the other straight. His body revolved slowly around the bent arm until he had reversed himself. Placing his foot against the strut, he tippy-toed away from it, letting go, uncoiling, and reaching out for the hull.

  For a moment Derec was in free, dreamy flight, not touching the ship; then his palms touched down, the magnets clicking against it as he turned on crawl-power. He slid forward on hands and forearms while his inertia wave was absorbed by the “beach” of the ship’s hull. His chest and belly and f
inally his knees touched down painfully, to slide scraping along.

  “Frost!” said Ariel. “What are you doing, sawing the hull in half?”

  Derec didn’t reply. Not letting all his momentum be absorbed, he came quickly to hands and knees, reaching and pulling at the hull. The magnets were computer controlled and clicked on and off alternately in the crawl pattern.

  In a few seconds he braked and all the magnets went on. He skittered slowly to a stop. Mandelbrot joined him in a similar fashion and looked at the hull, then moved aside.

  “Right, we’re at the hatch,” said Derec. “It doesn’t look like we’ll need any tools to get in; just a matter of turning inset screws.”

  There were two slits in the hull, each in a small circle. The circles were at one edge of a square outline — the hatch. Derec stuck two fingers in one of the slits, Mandelbrot copying his motion at the other side, and they twisted the circles clockwise. There was a pop, and the hatch rode free.

  “Got it open,” Derec said.

  That was a little premature. He would have to stand up on the hull to raise the hatch, or else move around. But before he could make up his mind, Mandelbrot reinserted his fingers into one of the slits and pulled. The hatch came free easily. Mandelbrot bent his arm like a rope, heaving the hatch up over his head, put up his other arm, and the hatch stood out from the hull.

  “Can’t see a frosted thing,” muttered Derec. His helmet light bounced off the shiny underside of the hatch and again off the huddled machinery exposed, but without air to scatter the light, what he saw was a collection of parallel and crossing lines of light against velvet blackness. After a moment, however, he made out a handle. These things weren’t meant only for doctorates in mechanical engineering to understand, after all. There was a release in the handle.

  Squeezing the release, Derec pulled up on the handle. Nothing happened. There wasn’t room on the handle for Mandelbrot to help him. Gripping it tightly, Derec stood on the hull and put his back into it. It came free with a creaky vibration he felt all the way up through the soles of his feet, an odd sort of hearing.