Robot and the Man - [Adventures in Science Fiction 04]

by Edited by Martin Greenburg

  ~ * ~

  Van Damm gripped the engineer’s shoulders and shook him. Harnahan sobered, though a wry smile still quirked his lips. “O.K.,” he said at last. “I ... I couldn’t help it. It’s so funny!”

  “What is?” the other demanded. “If you can see something funny about this-”

  Harnahan gulped. “It—well, it’s a deadlock. Haven’t you guessed yet what the gadget was for?” “Death ray of some sort?”

  “You missed the point of what Thor II said—that there was only one way to tell whether the gadget could do what it was intended to do.”

  “Well? What was that?”

  Harnahan giggled feebly. “Logic—use logic. Remember the first robots we made? They were all sabotaged, so we built supposedly indestructible ones of duraloy. And the robots were made to solve problems—that was their reason for existence. Everything went along swell until those robots went crazy.”

  “I know that,” Van Damm said impatiently. “What’s it got to do with the gadget?”

  “They went crazy,” Harnahan said, “because they were faced with an insurmountable problem. That’s elementary psychology. Thor I faced the same problem, but he solved it.”

  Slow realization was dawning on Van Damm’s face. “Indestructible—no!”

  “Sure! Sooner or later, all the duraloy robots thought of a perfectly obvious problem for them—how they themselves could be destroyed. We made ‘em that way, so they’d more or less think for themselves. That was the only way to make them satisfactory thinking machines. The robots buried out in the cement faced the problem of their own destruction, couldn’t solve it, and went crazy. Thor I was cleverer. He found the answer. But there was only one possible way to test it—on himself!”

  “But . . . Thor II-”

  “The same thing. He knew the gadget had worked on Thor I, but he didn’t know whether it would work on him. Robots are coldly logical. They have no instinct of self-preservation. Thor II simply tried out the gadget to see if it would solve his problem.” Harnahan swallowed. “It did.”

  “What are we going to tell Twill?” Van Damm asked blankly.

  “What can we tell him? The truth—that we’ve run into a blind alley. The only usable robots we can make are duraloy thinking machines, and they’ll destroy themselves as soon as they begin to wonder if they’re really indestructible. Each one we make will need the ultimate proof—self-destruction. If we cut down their intelligence, they’re useless. If we don’t use duraloy, Luxingham or some other company will sabotage ‘em. Robots are wonderful, sure; but they’re born with suicidal tendencies. Van Damm, I very much fear we must tell Twill that the Company’s run up a blind alley.”

  The trouble-shooter groaned. “So that was the real purpose of the gadget, eh? And all those other manifestations were just by-products of an uncontrolled machine.”

  “Yeah-” Harnahan moved toward the door, skirting the half-melted remains of the robot. He looked down sadly on the ruined creature and sighed.

  “Some day, maybe, we can do better. But right now it seems to be a deadlock. We shouldn’t have called him Thor,” Harnahan added, as he went out into the hall. “Somehow, I think Achilles would have been more appropriate.”

  <>

  ~ * ~

  Now that earth was unified by a world government and the fear of sabotage gone, Robots, Inc., the last of the great corporations, was able to develop a functioning robot after the discovery of the Verhaeren Factor. This gave the robot mobility, but he was still subject to the commands of man.

  ROBINC

  by H. H. Holmes

  Y

  OU’D think maybe it meant clear sailing after we’d got the Council’s O.K. You’d maybe suppose that’d mean the end of our troubles and the end of android robots for the world.

  That’s what Dugg Quinby thought, anyway. But Quinby may have had a miraculous gift of looking straight at problems and at things and at robots and getting the right answer; but he was always too hopeful about looking straight at people. Because, like I kept saying to him, people aren’t straight, not even to themselves. And our future prospects weren’t anywhere near as good as he thought.

  That’s what the Head of the Council was stressing when we saw him that morning just after the Council had passed the bill. His black face was sober—no trace of that flashing white grin that was so familiar on telecasts. “I’ve put your bill through, boys,” he was saying. “God knows I’m grateful—the whole Empire should be grateful to you for helping me put over the renewal of those Martian mining concessions, and the usuform barkeep you made me is my greatest treasure; but I can’t help you any more. You’re on your own now.”

  That didn’t bother Quinby. He said, “The rest ought to be easy. Once people understand what usuform robots can do for them-”

  “I’m afraid, Mr. Quinby, it’s you who don’t quite understand. Your friend here doubtless does; he has a more realistic slant on things. But you—I wouldn’t say you idealize people, but you flatter them. You expect them to see things as clearly as you do. I’m afraid they usually don’t.”

  “But surely when you explained to the Council the advantages of usuforms-”

  “Do you think the Council passed the bill only because they saw those advantages? They passed it because I backed it, and because the renewal of the Martian concessions have for the moment put me in a powerful position. Oh, I know, we’re supposed to have advanced immeasurably beyond the political corruption of the earlier states; but let progress be what it may, from the cave man on up to the illimitable future, there are three things that people always have made and always will make: love, and music, and politics. And if there’s any difference between me and an old-time political leader, it’s simply that I’m trying to put my political skill at the service of mankind.”

  I wasn’t listening too carefully to all this. The service of mankind wasn’t exactly a hobby of mine. Quinby and the Head were all out for usuforms because they were a service to man and the Empire of Earth; I was in it because it looked like a good thing. Of course you can’t be around such a mixture of a saint, a genius, and a moron as Quinby without catching a little of it; but I tried to keep my mind fixed clear on what was in it for me.

  And that was plenty. For the last couple of centuries our civilization had been based on robots—android robots. Quin-by’s usuform robots—Q.U.R.—robots shaped not as mechanical men, but as independently thinking machines formed directly from their intended function—threatened the whole robot set-up. They were the biggest thing since Zwergenhaus invented the mechanical brain, and I was in on the ground floor.

  With the basement shaking under me.

  It was an android guard that interrupted the conference here. We hadn’t really got started on usuform manufacture yet, and anyway, Quinby was inclined to think that androids might be retained in some places for guards and personal attendants. He said, “Mr. Grew says that you will see him.”

  The Head frowned. “Robinc has always thought it owned the Empire. Now Mr. Grew thinks he owns me. Well, show him in.” As the guard left, he added to us, “This Grew-Quinby meeting has to take place some time. I’d rather like to see it.”

  ~ * ~

  The president-owner of Robinc—Robots Incorporated, but nobody ever said it in full—was a quiet old man with silvery hair and a gentle sad smile. It seemed even sadder than usual today. He greeted the Head and then spoke my name with a sort of tender reproach that near hurt me.

  “You,” he said. “The best trouble-shooter that Robinc ever had, and now I find you in the enemy’s camp.”

  But I knew his technique, and I was armed against being touched by it. “In the enemy’s camp?” I said. “I am the enemy. And it’s because I was your best trouble-shooter that I learned the real trouble with Robinc’s androids: They don’t work, and the only solution is to supersede them.”

  “Supersede is a kind word,” he said wistfully. “But the unkind act is destruction. Murder. Murder of Ro
binc itself, draining the lifeblood of our Empire.”

  The Head intervened. “Not draining, Mr. Grew, but transfusing. The blood stream, to carry on your own metaphor, is tainted; we want fresh blood, and Mr. Quinby provides it.”

  “I am not helpless, you know,” the old man murmured gently.

  “I’m afraid possibly you are, sir, and for the first time in your life. But you know the situation: In the past few months there has been an epidemic of robot breakdowns. Parts unnecessary and unused, but installed because of our absurd insistence on an android shape, have atrophied. Sometimes even the brain has been affected; my own confidential crypt-analyst went totally mad. Quinby’s usuforms forestall any such problem.”

  “The people will not accept them. They are conditioned to androids.”

  “They must accept them. You know, better than most, the problems of supply that the Empire faces. The conservation of mineral resources is one of our essential aims. And usuforms will need variously from seventy to only thirty per cent of the metal that goes into your androids. This is no mere matter of business rivalry; it is conflict between the old that depletes the Empire and the new that strengthens it.”

  “And the old must be cast aside and rejected?”

  “You,” I began, “have, of course, always shown such tender mercy to your business compet-” but Quinby broke in on me.

  “I realize, Mr. Grew, that this isn’t fair to you. But there are much more important matters than you involved.”

  “Thank you.” The gentle old voice was frigid.

  “But I wouldn’t feel right if you were simply, as you put it, cast aside and rejected. If you’ll come to see us and talk things over, I’m pretty sure we can-”

  “Sir!” Sanford Grew rose to his full short height. “I do not ask favors from puppies. I have only one request.” He turned to the Head. “The repeal of this ridiculous bill depriving Robinc of its agelong monopoly which has ensured the safety of the Empire.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Grew. That is impossible.”

  The hair was still silvery and the smile was still sad and gentle. But the words he addressed to us were, “Then you understand that this is war?”

  Then he left. I didn’t feel too comfortable. Saving the Empire is all very well. Being a big shot in a great new enterprise is swell. But a war with something the size of Robinc is not what the doctor usually orders.

  “The poor man,” said Quinby.

  The Head flashed an echo of the famous grin. “No wonder he’s upset. It’s not only the threatened loss of power, I heard that yesterday his android cook broke down completely. And you know how devoted he is to unconcentrated food.”

  Quinby brightened. “Then perhaps we-”

  The Head laughed. “Your only hope is that a return to a concentrated diet will poison him. You’ve no chance of winning over Sanford Grew alive.”

  ~ * ~

  We went from there to the Sunspot. “It’s funny,” Quinby used to say. “I don’t much like to drink, but a bar’s always good for heavy thinking.” And who was I to argue?

  Guzub, that greatest of bartenders, spotted us as we came in and had one milk and one straight whiskey poured by the time we reached our usual back table. He served them to us himself, with a happy flourish of his tentacles.

  “What are you so beamish about?” I asked gruffly.

  Guzub shut his middle eye in the Martian expression of happiness. “Begauze you boys are going to 5ave a gread zugzezz with your uxuvorm robods and you invended them righd ‘ere in the Zunzbod.” He produced another tentacle holding a slug of straight vuzd and downed it. “Good lugg!”

  I glowered after him. “We need luck. With Grew as our sworn enemy, we’re on the-”

  Quinby had paper spread out before him. He looked up now, took a sip of milk, and said, “Do you cook?”

  “Not much. Concentrates do me most of the time.”

  “I can sympathize with Grew. I like old-fashioned food myself and I’m fairly good at cooking it. I just thought you might have some ideas.”

  “For what?”

  “Why, a usuform cook, of course. Grew’s android cook broke down. We’ll present him with a usuform, and that will convert him, too-”

  “Convert hell!” I snorted. “Nothing can convert that sweetly smiling old-But maybe you have got something there; get at a man through his hobby—Could work.”

  “Now usually,” Quinby went on, “androids break down because they don’t use all their man-shaped body. But an android cook would go nuts because man’s body isn’t enough. I’ve cooked; I know. So we’ll give the usuform more. For instance, give him Martoid tentacles instead of arms. Maybe instead of legs give him an automatic sliding height adjustment to avoid all the bending and stooping, with a roller base for quick movement. And make the tentacles functionally specialized.”

  I didn’t quite get that last, and I said so.

  “Half your time in cooking is wasted reaching around for what you need next. We can build in a lot of that stuff. For instance, one tentacle can be a registering thermometer. Tapering to a fine point—stick it in a roast and-One can end in a broad spoon for stirring—heat-resistant, of course. One might terminate in a sort of hand, of which each of the digits was a different-sized measuring spoon. And best of all—why the nuisance of bringing food to the mouth to taste? Install taste-buds in the end of one tentacle.”

  I nodded. Quinby’s pencil was covering the paper with tentative hookups. Suddenly he paused. “I’ll bet I know why android cooks were never too successful. Nobody ever included the Verhaeren factor in their brains.”

  The Verhaeren factor, if you’ve studied this stuff at all, is what makes robots capable of independent creative action. For instance, it’s used in the robots that turn out popular fiction— in very small proportion, of course.

  “Yes, that’s the trouble. They never realized that a cook is an artist as well as a servant. Well, we’ll give him in his brain what he needs for creation, and in his body the tools he needs to carry it out. And when Mr. Grew has had his first meal from a usuform cook-”

  It was an idea, I admitted, that might have worked on any-body but Sanford Grew—get at a man and convert him through what’s dearest to his heart. But I’d worked for Grew. I knew him. And I knew that no hobby, not even his passion for unconcentrated food, could be stronger than his pride in his power as president of Robinc.

  So while Quinby worked on his usuform cook and our foreman Mike Warren got our dowser ready for the first big demonstration, I went ahead with the anti-Robinc campaign.

  “We’ve got four striking points,” I explained to Quinby. “Android robots atrophy or go nuts; usuforms are safe. Android robots are almost as limited as man in what they can do without tools and accessories; usuforms can be constructed to do anything. Android robots are expensive because you’ve got to buy an all-purpose one that can do more than you need; usuforms save money because they’re specialized. Android robots use up mineral resources; usuforms save them.”

  “The last reason is the important one,” Quinby said.

  I smiled to myself. Sure it was, but can you sell the people on anything as abstract as conservation? Hell no. Tell ‘em they’ll save credits, tell ‘em they’ll get better service, and you’ve got ‘em signed up already. But tell ‘em they’re saving their grandchildren from a serious shortage and they’ll laugh in your face.

  So as usual, I left Quinby to ideas and followed my own judgment on people, and by the time he’d sent the cook to Grew I had all lined up the campaign that could blast Grew and Robinc out of the Empire. The three biggest telecommentators were all sold on usuforms. A major solly producer was set to do a documentary on them. Orders were piling up about twice as fast as Mike Warren could see his way clear to turning them out.

  So then came the day of the big test.

  We’d wanted to start out with something big and new that no android could possibly compete with, and we’d had the luck to run onto Mike’s broth
er-in-law, who’d induced in robot brains the perception of that nth sense that used to enable dowsers to find water. Our usuform dowser was God’s gift to explorers and fresh exciting copy. So the Head had arranged a big demonstration on a specially prepared field, with grandstands and fireworks and two bands—one human, one android —and all the trimmings.

  We sat in our box, Mike and Quinby and I. Mike had a shakerful of Three Planet cocktails mixed by our usuform bar-keep; they aren’t so good when they stand, but they were still powerful enough to keep him going. I was trying to get along on sheer will power, but little streams of sweat were running down my back and my nails were carving designs in my palms.

  Quinby didn’t seem bothered. He kept watching the android band and making notes. “You see,” he explained, “it’s idiotic waste to train a robot to play an instrument, when you could make an instrument that was a robot. Your real robot band would be usuforms, and wouldn’t be anything but a flock of instruments that could play themselves. You could even work out new instruments, with range and versatility and flexibility beyond the capacity of human or android fingers and lungs. You could-”