More Tales of Pirx the Pilot

by Stanisław Lem

  “Obviously not to make a sucker out of you. This multi-billion-dollar investment wasn’t only for your sake, you know! It was so no one—the passengers, for example—would ever suspect…”

  “You’re worried about a public boycott?”

  “Not only that. There’s the psychological comfort.”

  “Can you tell which is which?”

  “Only because I know them. OK, there are ways, but… I wouldn’t advise using a hatchet on them.”

  “And no other physiological give-aways? Breathing, coughing, blushing…?”

  “Minimized. There are differences, sure, but, as I said, only ones a doctor would recognize.”

  “Psychological?”

  “Our greatest breakthrough!” said McGuirr with genuine pride. “Until now, the brain was centrally located because of its size. But Inteltron was the first to fit it in the head!”

  “The second, really—nature was the first.”

  “Har-har! OK—second, then. The specs are still hush-hush, but… It’s a monocrystal multistat with sixteen billion binary elements!”

  “Their emotional capabilities—is that also hush-hush?”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “Are they capable, for instance, of telling lies? Can they lose their self-control, control of the situation…?”

  “All possible.”

  “How so?”

  “Technically unavoidable. Any breaks—figuratively, of course—introduced into a neuron or crystal system are relative, can be overridden. If you’re at all up on the latest, you know that a robot that can match man mentally and not be capable of lying or cheating is a fantasy. Either full equivalents or puppets. Nothing in between.”

  “Capable of one, capable of the other, right?”

  “Yes. But the costs are damned prohibitive. For now, anyway. Psychological versatility, to say nothing of anthropoidality, costs a fortune. The models you’ll be getting are experimental prototypes—the price tag per unit is higher than for a supersonic bomber.”

  “No kidding?”

  “That includes the cost of research, of course. We hope to be able to mass-produce, even refine them one day, but for the moment … well, we’re giving you the top of the line. In any case, their fallibility ratio will be lower than for humans in a comparable situation.”

  “Were they experimentally tested?”

  “How else?”

  “With human test subjects for comparison?”

  “That, too.”

  “Under emergency conditions?”

  “Those above all.”

  “And the results?”

  “Humans are more error-prone.”

  “What about their aggression instinct?”

  “Toward humans?”

  “Not only.”

  “No need to worry. They come equipped with special built-in inhibitors, called ‘reverse-discharge systems,’ that cushion the aggression potential.”

  “In every case?”

  “Impossible. Their brain, like ours, is a probability system. The probability of specific responses can be increased, but not raised to a certainty. Though here again they have the edge.”

  “And if I went to crack the skull of one…?”

  “He’d fight back.”

  “To the point of killing me?”

  “In self-defense only.”

  “And if attack was the only defense?”

  “He’d attack.”

  “Hand me those contracts,” said Pirx.

  The pen squeaked in the silence. The engineer folded the legal forms, then tucked them into his portfolio.

  “Are you heading back to the States?” Pirx asked.

  “First thing tomorrow.”

  “You can tell your superiors I’ll try to bring out the worst in them.”

  “That’s the spirit! We’re counting on it! Because even their worst is better than man’s. Only…”

  “You were about to say?”

  “You’re a brave man, Pirx. All the same, I’d recommend caution.”

  “So they don’t gang up on me?” said Pirx, forcing a smile.

  “So you’re not made the fall guy. You see, your humans will be the first to bail out. Your average, decent, good-boy types. Get it?”

  “Get it,” answered Pirx. “I’ll be shoving off now. Time for me to take command of my ship.”

  “My helicopter is on the roof,” said McGuirr, rising to his feet. “Can I give you a lift?”

  “No, thanks. I’ll take the subway. Don’t like to take chances, you know. And you’ll tell them that I intend to play rough?”

  “If you like.”

  McGuirr was searching his pockets for a fresh cigar.

  “Frankly, I find your attitude a bit strange. What do you expect? They’re not human; no one’s claiming they are. They’re highly trained professionals—and conscientious, too, ready to oblige. They’ll do anything for you.”

  “I’ll make sure they do even more,” retorted Pirx.

  Pirx, not about to let Brown off the hook in the God affair, made a point of phoning him the next day—the “nonlinear” pilot’s telephone number was made available courtesy of UNESCO. He dialed and recognized the voice.

  “I was expecting your call.”

  “Well, which is it to be?” asked Pirx. He felt strangely apathetic, not half so blithe as when he had signed McGuirr’s papers. At the time, he’d thought: No big deal. Now he wasn’t so sure.

  “I wasn’t given much time,” said Brown in that flat, purling voice of his. “So all I can say is, I was taught the probability method. I calculate the odds and act accordingly. In this case, I’d say … ninety percent, or even ninety-nine-point-nine percent, it’s no, with less than one chance in a hundred it’s yes.”

  “That there is a God?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fine. You can sign on with the others. See you aboard ship.”

  “Good-bye,” answered the softspoken baritone, and the receiver clicked.

  Pirx was reminded, out of the blue, of this conversation on his way to the spaceport. Somebody—UNESCO? his crew’s “manufacturers”?—had already got clearance from Port Control. No health inspection, no crew certification, with lift-off scheduled for 1445 hours during the afternoon lull. The three fair-sized satellite probes destined for Saturn were already in their bays. The Goliath—a ship of medium tonnage, in the six thousand range, highly computerized, only two years out of the shipyard—had an ultrasmooth, non-oscillating, fast-neutron pile, occupying a mere ten cubic meters in space, with a capacity of forty-five million horsepower, seventy million for quick acceleration.

  Pirx knew nothing of his crew’s Paris accommodations—a hotel? a company-rented apartment? (a grotesque, macabre thought: maybe McGuirr had unplugged them and boxed them away for the past two days)—or even how they’d got to the port.

  They were mustered in a separate room at Port Control, each with suitcase, duffel bag, and a lightweight tote bag with a name tag dangling from the straps. The sight of the duffel bags inspired comic visions of monkey wrenches, cosmetic oilcans, and the like. But he was in no laughing mood as, having said his hellos to everyone, he submitted the flight authorizations and ship’s articles needed for final clearance. Then, two hours ahead of launch time, they stepped onto a floodlit pad and filed out to the snow-white Goliath. It looked a bit like a giant, freshly uncrated wedding cake.

  A routine blast-off. The Goliath needed almost no help in lifting off, thanks to a full array of automatic and semi-automatic sequencers. A half hour later, they were already far above Earth’s nocturnal hemisphere and its fluorescent rash of cities; and Pirx, although a veteran spaceborne observer of Earth’s atmosphere when it was brushed “against the grain” by the sunrise, was now, as always, a willing spectator to this giant sickle of burning rainbow. Minutes later, they passed the last navigational satellite—one of those “electronic bureaucrats of the cosmos,” as Pirx dubbed the diligent machines—in a hail of crack
le and bleeps, and climbed above the ecliptic. After instructing the chief pilot to stay at the controls, Pirx retired to his cabin. Not ten minutes had passed when there was a knock at the door.

  “Yes?”

  It was Brown. Gently closing the door behind him, he went up to Pirx, who was lounging on the edge of his bunk, and said in a subdued voice:

  “I’d like a few words with you.”

  “Take a seat.”

  Brown lowered himself onto a chair, pulled it up closer to cut down the distance between them, kept demurely silent with eyes lowered for a moment, then suddenly looked straight into the CO’s eyes.

  “I have something to tell you. In confidence. Promise you won’t repeat a word?”

  Pirx cocked his eyebrows.

  “A secret?” He deliberated for a few seconds. “OK, you have my word,” he said at last. “I’m all ears.”

  “I’m human,” said Brown, and paused, staring at Pirx to gauge the effect of his words. But Pirx, his eyelids at half mast, his head leaning against the white polyfoam-padded wall, registered no emotion. “I’m coming clean because I want to help you,” the visitor resumed, in the tone of someone reciting a well-rehearsed speech. “When I first applied, I didn’t know what it was all about—they processed us separately, to keep us from getting acquainted. It wasn’t until after I was selected, until after all the flight tests and screenings, that I was briefed. Even then I had to swear absolute secrecy. Look, I have a girl, we want to get married, but financially… Well, here was our big break—a cash advance of eight thousand, with another eight thousand payable on signing off, win or lose. These are the facts; I’m clean, really. How was I supposed to know! Some kind of weirdo experiment, that’s what I thought at the beginning. Then the whole thing started to get to me. I mean, it’s a question of our common cause… Who am I to cover up? I have no right to do that. You agree?”

  Pirx’s silence prompted the visitor to continue, his self-confidence now a trifle shaken.

  “They kept us apart the whole time. Each had his own room, his own john, his own private gym. They even fed us separately, except during the last few days before our departure to Europe. So I can’t tell you which of them is human and which isn’t. I just don’t know. Though I have my suspicions.”

  “Hold on a sec,” Pirx interrupted. “Why did you dodge my question by saying it wasn’t ‘your department’?”

  Brown sat up in his chair, shifted one leg, and, eying his shoe tip, which was doodling something on the floor, said in a hushed voice:

  “Because I’d already decided to clue you in, and, well… I was in the hot seat. I was afraid McGuirr might get wise. So I answered your question in a way that would make him believe I was—”

  “So it was because of McGuirr?”

  “Yes.”

  “And do you believe in God?”

  “I do.”

  “But you didn’t think a robot would, right?”

  “Right.”

  “That a ‘yes’ answer would have been a dead give-away?”

  “Exactly.”

  “But even a robot can believe in God,” said Pirx after a moment’s pause, with a nonchalance that made Brown’s eyes bulge.

  “Come again?”

  “You think not?”

  “It never crossed my mind…”

  “OK, let’s skip it. At least for now. You said something about having your suspicions…”

  “The dark-haired one—Burns—I’m sure he’s not human.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Little things, hard to pinpoint, but they add up. For one thing, when he sits or stands, he doesn’t move a muscle. A regular statue. And you know how hard it is for a human to keep still: you’re uncomfortable, your leg goes to sleep so you shift positions, you stretch, rub your face… But this guy just plain freezes!”

  “All the time?”

  “That’s just it; not all the time. And that seems to me the tip-off.”

  “Why tip-off?”

  “My guess is that when he remembers, he’s all fidgets and bodily motion; but when he forgets, he freezes. With us, it’s the other way around: we have to make a conscious effort to keep still.”

  “You have a point there. What else?”

  “He eats everything.”

  “How so?”

  “Whatever comes along. It makes no difference to him. I noticed it on our flight across the Atlantic. Even back in the States, and at the airport restaurant—eats whatever he’s served, indiscriminately. I mean, everyone has his likes and dislikes!”

  “That doesn’t prove anything.”

  “You’re quite right—it doesn’t. But in combination with the stiffness…? And another thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “He doesn’t write letters. I’m not a hundred percent sure of that … but Burton, now, I saw him drop a letter into the hotel mailbox.”

  “Writing letters is against regs?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re all extremely conscientious, I see,” muttered Pirx. He sat up on his bunk and, breathing practically into Brown’s face, said in a deliberate tone:

  “You broke your oath. Why?”

  “Ouch, that hurt, Commander!”

  “Well, didn’t you swear to keep your identity a secret?”

  “Oh, that! Yes, but … there are situations when a man has a right—no, a duty—to break his word.”

  “Such as?”

  “This one. I mean, they take a bunch of metal dolls, pad them with plastic, add a little make-up, then shuffle them like phony cards into a deck of humans—and hope to make a killing on the deal. No, any honest man would do what I’m doing. Hasn’t anyone else been around to see you?”

  “Not yet. You’re the first. But we’ve just lifted off…” Pirx said with a tonelessness not devoid of irony; the irony was evidently lost on Brown.

  “I’ll do whatever you think advisable.”

  “What for?”

  Brown batted his doll-like lashes.

  “What for? To help you tell the humans from the nonhumans.”

  “Eight thousand, wasn’t it?”

  “So? I was hired on as a pilot, which is what I am. And a damned good one, at that.”

  “And another eight on signing off—all for a few weeks’ work. Brown, no one gets sixteen thousand for a shakedown cruise—not a passenger pilot, not a patrol pilot, not a navigator. You got that money for keeping your mouth shut. They wanted to spare you any temptations.”

  Dismay was written all over Brown’s pretty-boy face.

  “So you’re offended by my coming, by my confiding in you…?”

  “Not at all. What’s your IQ?”

  “My IQ? A hundred twenty.”

  “High enough for you to know what’s what. Tell me, what do I gain by listening to your suspicions about Burns?”

  The young pilot stood up.

  “Sorry, Commander. It was a mistake, a misunderstanding. I meant well, but … it’s obvious what you’re thinking. Let’s forget it. But remember, you gave me—”

  He was silenced by a smile from Pirx.

  “Sit down, Brown. I said, sit down!”

  He sat down.

  “You were about to remind me of my promise, right? Because what would happen if I were to blab? Shh! Don’t interrupt your commanding officer! You see, it’s not so simple. It’s not that I don’t value your trust. But trust is one thing, logic another. Suppose, thanks to you, I know by now who you are and who Burns is. What good does that do me?”

  “That’s up to you. You’re the one who’s supposed to rate the crew’s performance…”

  “Right! The whole crew, Brown! And you don’t expect me to falsify the record, do you? To penalize the robots for not being human?”

  “That’s none of my business,” callously said the pilot, who had been squirming on his chair during this lecture.

  Pirx’s glower stilled him.

  “Stop playing the airman first class who can�
��t see anything beyond his stripes. If you’re human and feel any loyalty toward your fellow humans, then try to—”

  “What do you mean, ‘if’?” Brown flinched. “Don’t you believe me? Do you take me for a—”

  “Whoa there! Just a slip of the tongue!” came Pirx’s quick rejoinder. “Sure, I believe you. In fact, since you’ve told me your identity and I have no intention of judging you, morally or otherwise, I would like you to go on reporting to me.”

  “Now I’m really confused,” said Brown with an unpremeditated sigh. “First you put me down, then you ask me to turn—”

  “No, two different things, Brown. What’s done is done; there’s no backing out now. The money, now, that’s different. Maybe you were right to talk. But if I were you, I wouldn’t take it.”

  “Huh? But, sir…” Brown was desperately searching for a justification. “Then they’d know for sure I broke contract! They might even sue me for breach—”

  “It’s up to you. I’m not insisting you give it back. I gave you my word; I’m not my brother’s keeper. I only told you what I would do if I were you. But you’re not me and I’m not you, and that’s that. Anything else?”

  Brown shook his head, then parted his lips, only to clamp them shut again and shrug. He betrayed more than just disappointment at the outcome of their conversation, but, without uttering another word, he assumed his usual erect bearing and left.

  Pirx took a deep breath. “I shouldn’t have said ‘if you’re human,’” he reproached himself. “What a goddamned guessing game! Either he’s human, or it was all a big act—not just to throw me, but to do a little probing, to see if I would pull anything in violation of the contract… Anyway, I didn’t come off too badly this round. If he was telling the truth, he’ll be in a cold sweat after all that lecturing. If he wasn’t … well, I haven’t really told him anything. Boy, a sweet mess I got myself into this time.”

  Unable to relax, he paced the cabin. The intercom buzzed once; it was Calder up in the control room. They agreed on the course corrections and acceleration for the night. After the call, Pirx sat and stared into space; he was mulling something over, with eyebrows knitted, when someone knocked.

  Now what?

  “Come in!”

  It was Burns, the neurologist, medic, and cyberneticist all in one.