Asimov’s Future History Volume 8

by Isaac Asimov

  The robots exchanged a, glance. Derec shook his head. “Couldn’t have been. They’ve been with me all the time.”

  “I chased a robot with a ‘uman shape,” Wolruf said. “I thought it was one of these three.”

  “Couldn’t have been,” Derec repeated. “They were squished down into undifferentiated balls of cells when I found them, brains and powerpacks all dead. And they haven’t left my sight since I revived them.”

  “Well, I chased a robot that looked like a ‘uman, that much I know.”

  “Where was he headed?” Derec asked, sudden excitement in his voice. Ariel thought she knew why.

  “I chased ‘im about fifteen kilometers north of the Compass Tower on the main strip before I lost ‘im.”

  “Did he look like any of us?”

  “No,” Wolruf said. “‘E was taller, and ‘ad brown ‘air and wider shoulders than you or Ariel or Avery.”

  “Aha!” Derec shouted. “He belongs to somebody else, then. Somebody else is here in Robot City with us. And I think I know who it is.”

  “Who?” Ariel asked, more to confirm her own guess than anything else.

  “My mother,” Derec replied. “I think I’m finally going to meet my mother.”

  Ariel sighed. Just what she’d thought. Great. Another quest for Derec to spend his time on. She picked up her book and started reading where she’d left off.

  This time Avery was taking no chances. His new lab didn’t even exist, as far as the city was concerned. He had ordered it built in the forest and equipped with its own power generation and communications equipment, everything completely separate from the main city. He’d also ordered it camouflaged to look like a boulder, just in case. This time he would work uninterrupted until he was finished. After that he didn’t care what Derec or Janet or anybody else did; he wouldn’t be sticking around. Let them have his lab, if they could find it. Let them have the whole city — what was left of it after Derec screwed it up so thoroughly. Avery had no more need of it. It was obsolete anyway.

  The howl of a wolf just beyond the wall sent a shiver up his spine. Obsolete wasn’t the word for it; retrogressed was more like it. Who’d ever heard of tearing a city down to put up a forest? The very idea was an insult to everything Avery believed in.

  Was that why Derec had done it? Had he deliberately chosen the one thing that would most infuriate his father? Well, if that was the case, then he’d certainly succeeded. Avery couldn’t imagine why he’d tried to befriend the boy in the first place. He’d opened himself wide up for disappointment. He should have learned his lesson years ago when Janet left and kept his emotions in check.

  He had kept them in check for years, but evidently he’d grown too confident, let down his guard. Well, it wouldn’t happen again. He would immerse himself in his work, concentrate on upgrading his city concept, and when he did have to interact with human beings again, it would be on his terms.

  Already the work seemed promising. These new robot cells were amazing. They were only three-quarters the size of the previous model, but packed into that small size was easily double the morphallaxis capability. The new cells were stronger, faster, more versatile, and had greater local programming ability than the old ones. A city built with these cells would be much more responsive than his first-generation cities, just as the robots Janet had built with them were more versatile than his own.

  Derec had had a good point about the robots, though: they were ultimately less useful than a regular robot. Avery would have to make sure that the ones he created were more stringently programmed than Janet’s.

  Drat! In his haste to leave his old lab he’d forgotten the memcubes with their recordings. He cursed his momentary lapse, but it really hadn’t been his fault. How could a man work with so many distractions?

  He put the memcubes out of his mind. He didn’t need them anyway. He had no intention of using Janet’s programming; he would create his own when he needed it.

  Janet, though. He wondered why she was here in his city. No doubt to retrieve her robots, but he wondered if that was all. Could she still care about him, after all the bitter accusations they had hurled at one another in parting? It seemed impossible, yet Avery couldn’t help thinking it might still be true. There was evidence to support the idea. She had loosed all three of her robots on planets with his cities on them, after all. If she really were intent on avoiding him, she would have chosen other planets.

  Good grief, were those robots of hers actually spies? They could have been.... Yes, of course, and when he’d shut them off she’d sent another robot spy to take their place. All that business about searching for the Laws of Humanics had just been a smoke screen.

  What was she after? Not his city programming; she could have gotten that anywhere. He hadn’t exactly been discreet in its deployment. No, she’d been following him, and there could only be one reason for that.

  Avery laughed. The thought of Janet harboring affection for him after all this time seemed somehow pathetic. She’d been so careful to let him know how she felt only contempt for him when she’d left — but she’d evidently been fooling herself all along.

  Well, if she expected some kind of reconciliation, she was due for a disappointment. Avery had no intention of including her in any of his future plans. Her underutilized robot material, yes; he would find a use for that, but Janet would have to take care of herself.

  Derec sat alone in his study, contemplating the scenery in the viewscreen. He had instructed it to display a realtime image from directly overhead: what he would see out a real window if the apartment were on the surface instead of underground. It was a peaceful sight, the last few rays of golden light from the setting sun peeking through gaps in the forest canopy, spotlighting leaves or vines or gnarled tree trunks at random — but Derec felt far from peaceful even so.

  He couldn’t get his mind off his mother. She was here; she had to be, but other than that one fact he knew nothing at all. Was she here merely to collect her robots, or did she have more than that in mind? If she did, did he want to help her do whatever it was she had come to do, or not? Was she as cold and cruel as Avery had insinuated in those few moments when Derec had managed to get him talking about her, or was she more... maternal? He didn’t know. He had racked his memory for traces of her, but whatever Avery had done to induce his amnesia had been especially thorough in wiping out references to that part of his life. She was a complete mystery to him. He didn’t even know her name.

  He could probably find her through the computer, but every time he’d made a move to do it; he had stopped, the command dying on his lips. He really didn’t know if he could handle meeting her. Life with Avery was such a struggle, swinging from aloofness to trust to anger to contempt almost at random; he didn’t think he could bear another relationship of that sort. If his mother were just another Avery, then maybe he was better off without her.

  What sort of person would marry a man like Avery, have a son with him, and then leave? What sort of person would create a kind of baby robot and abandon three of them on three different worlds? When he expressed the question like that, he didn’t much like the answer, but he knew those acts didn’t necessarily define the person. She might have had a perfectly good reason for doing them. No doubt she did; she had come back for her robots, after all. That implied a purpose.

  But had she come back for him as well? He didn’t know.

  He might never know if he didn’t make some move to find out. And not knowing was just as bad as knowing she hadn’t.

  “Central,” he said suddenly, swiveling around in his chair to face the monitor. “See if you can find —” He stopped, mouth agape. His desktop was covered in formula again.

  “Find what, Master Derec?”

  “Who did this?”

  “That information is —”

  “Unavailable. Right. I think we’ve gone through this before. Can you record it?”

  “I regret that I may not.” May not, Derec noticed. Someone
had ordered it not to. It was a test, then, to see what he’d do. That smacked of Avery, but somehow this didn’t have the flavor of an Avery test. Avery would have carved the formula on the door to the Personal and ordered it not to let him in until he solved it. No, this had come from someone else, and Derec knew who that someone had to be. She had to be watching him, then, to have known he was in his study.

  Well, he’d already made the decision, right? He looked into the monitor, smiled, and said, “Hi, Mom.”

  Janet couldn’t help laughing. He’d seen right through her little subterfuge in an instant. The way he stared out of the screen at her, she almost thought he could see through that as well, but she knew her earlier order not to allow two-way communication was still in effect.

  “I know you’re watching me,” he said.

  Should she respond? She rejected the idea immediately. She couldn’t bring herself to do it, knowing all the questions and accusations and... emotions... it would lead to.

  “I’ve got your robots here.” He paused, frowning, then said, “I don’t mean that like it sounds. I’m not holding them hostage or anything; this is just where they are.” He rubbed his chin in thought, then added, “They’re really mixed up, you know? They have to follow the Three Laws, but they don’t know what ‘human’ is, so their loyalty varies with every new situation. They’re trying to figure out the rest of the rules, too, but they don’t even know what game they’re playing. I think they’d like to know what you made them for. For that matter, r d like to know what you made them for.”

  Derec looked down at his desktop, still displaying the bas-relief image of the robotics formula, and whispered” And while you’re at it, I’d like to know what you made me for, too.”

  “Oh, spare me,” Janet said. “I’ve seen enough.” Her monitor obediently went gray, and she leaned back in her chair. “See what happens?” she asked Basalom, who stood just to her left. “The minute you get two people together — even when the conversation is one-way — things start to get mushy. People are so... so... biological.”

  “Yes, they are.”

  Janet laughed. “You’ve noticed, eh? And what conclusions have you drawn?”

  Basalom made a great show of pursing his vinyl lips and blinking before he said, “Biological systems are less predictable than electromechanical ones. That can be both a handicap and an asset, depending upon the circumstances.”

  “Spoken like a true philosopher. And which do you think is preferable in the long run? Biological or electromechanical?”

  Basalom attempted a smile. “To quote a popular saying: ‘The grass is always greener on the other side.”

  Janet laughed. “Touché, my friend. Touché.”

  Chapter 5

  HUMAN NATURE

  WOLRUF WOKE TO bright sunlight striking her full in the face. She raised her head, sniffing the air, but it was the same dead, boring, metallic-smelling air she’d come to associate with the city. She squinted into the sunlight and saw that it came from a viewscreen. She growled a curse. She’d been dreaming of home again, a home full of others of her own kind; a busy, happy place full of the noise and smells and sights of people doing things. To wake up here in this silent metal cell was an insult to the senses.

  She stretched her arms and yawned, still tired. Despite the dreams of home, she had slept poorly, as she had for — how long? Months? She hadn’t been counting. Still, she didn’t think she’d ever been so restless in her life. She knew what was causing it: too much time away from her own kind and her recent experiences with a species that was close to her both physically and socially — but knowing the cause didn’t make it go away. And hearing Derec talk about his mother didn’t help, either. His open enthusiasm at the prospect of regaining a bit of his past had only reminded Wolruf of what she still missed.

  But she didn’t need to stay away any longer. Now that Aranimas was out of the picture, and with him her obligation to work off the family debt in his service, she could go back any time she wanted. Her family would welcome her openly, especially so if she brought with her this robot technology of Avery’s.

  That was the problem, the one factor in the equation that refused to come clear for her. Should she take robots home with her and start an economic and social upheaval that would surely disrupt the normal pace of life there, or should she keep them secret, forget about her time among robots, and just go back to the home she remembered so fondly? And what would happen if she did that? Was Ariel right? Would her home become a backward place, an enclave of curiously anachronistic behavior, while the rest of the galaxy developed in ways her people would eventually be unable even to comprehend?

  Wolruf didn’t know what to believe, nor why the choice had to be hers. She had never asked for that kind of power over her own people.

  With a sigh, she got up, showered, and stood under the blow drier until she could feel its heat against her skin. She laughed at her image in the mirror — she looked twice her usual size and puffy as a summer cloud — but a quick brushing restored her coat to its usual smoothness.

  All her thoughts of home made her consider another piece of the puzzle as well, and she turned to the intercom panel beside her bed and said, “Central, what ‘as ‘appened to my ship, the Xerborodezees? ‘Ave you kept it for me?”

  “It has been stored, but can be ready for use with a day’s notice. Do you wish us to prepare it for you?”

  “Not yet. Maybe soon, though. Thanks.”

  “You are welcome, Mistress Wolruf.”

  Wolruf felt a bit of her tension ease. If she decided not to take any of the new technology home with her, she would need the Xerbo, for as far as she knew, it was the only noncellular ship on the planet. She considered going to check on it herself, wherever it might be stored, but decided not to. There was no reason to doubt Central’s word about it.

  She opened the door and padded out into the kitchen to get breakfast. The apartment was silent; Derec and Ariel were still asleep, and the robots were being quiet wherever they were. As Wolruf stood before the automat, trying to decide between her four favorite breakfasts, she realized how much she had grown used to the humanway of doing things. She hadn’t even considered cooking her own meal. She had fallen completely out of the, habit. Nor had she shopped for food — or anything else, for that matter — since she had come into Derec and Ariel’s company.

  Was that necessarily bad? Wolruf’s kind had been hunting and farming their food for millennia, and probably shopping for nearly as long; maybe it was time to move on to other things.

  Maybe. But how could she know for sure?

  From his place in the living room, seated on one of the couches, Lucius was aware of Wolruf entering the dining room with her breakfast. He sensed the others’ awareness as well; their comlink network paused momentarily while each of them gauged the relative degree of threat she presented to them. It was an inconvenience, this constant state of alert; it slowed their rate of exchange; but they were taking no more chances with a complete fugue state.

  Wolruf presented no immediate threat. The silent network continued where it had left off, with Adam speaking.

  Consider the distinction between ‘sufficient’ and ‘necessary’ conditions, he said. We have already concluded that if a being is both intelligent and organic, then it is functionally human, but those are merely sufficient conditions. They are not necessary conditions. They contain an inherent prejudice, the assumption that an organic nature can somehow affect the quality of the intelligence it houses. I call that concept ‘Vitalism,’ from the ancient Terran belief that humans differed from animals through some ‘vital’ spark of intelligence. You should note that while the concept has historically been considered suspect, it has neither been proven nor disproven. Lucius has pointed out that if Vitalism is false, then the only necessary condition for humanity is intelligence. Discussion?

  Eve said, Derec has already hinted that this may be so. On the planet we call Ceremya, he indicated that Lucius could
consider himself human if he wished.

  Mandelbrot had been included in their discussion this time. He said, I believe he was being sarcastic. He often is. But even if he meant what he said, you also remember the outcome of that redefinition. If Lucius considers himself human, then he must still follow the orders of other humans. Functionally, he only increases his burden to include other robots as potential masters.

  That is true; however, I have discovered another consequence, said Lucius. If I consider myself human, then the Third Law becomes equal to the First. I can no more allow harm to myself than to any other intelligent being. I consider that an improvement over the interpretation of the laws wherein a human could order me to dismantle myself, and I would have to obey.

  I don’t believe you would obey such an order anyway, said Mandelbrot.

  I would attempt to avoid it by denying the humanity of the being in question, Lucius admitted. With Avery or Wolruf I would probably succeed, but as things stand, if Derec or Ariel were to order it, the compulsion might force me to obey.

  Perhaps the Zeroth Law would provide an alternative, Mandelbrot said.

  Immediately, both Adam and Eve said, No. Eve continued, saying, Let’s leave the Zeroth Law out of it for now.

  You can’t make it go away by ignoring it, Lucius said. The Zeroth Law applies here. If we consider our duty to humanity in general, then we can easily conclude that dismantling ourselves would be of little use in the long term. However, possible long-term advantage does not outweigh a definite Second Law obligation to obey. Depending upon the value of the human giving the order, we might still be forced to follow it. But if we consider ourselves human, and thus part of humanity, then disobeying an order to self-destruct saves one human life immediately and also allows us to serve humanity in the future. The Second Law obligation to obey is then safely circumvented.

  Safely for whom? Adam asked. What if your destruction would save the human giving the order? Suppose, for instance, the bomb that Avery used to destroy Aranimas’s ship had to be detonated by hand instead of by a timed fuse. We have already agreed that destroying the ship was acceptable under the Zeroth Law, but what if we factor in the humanity of the fuse?