Asimov's Future History Volume 1

by Isaac Asimov

  “Of course,” Ashe continued briskly, putting away his pencil, “I’ve got to wait for my vacation. It’s only two weeks off, but this Herbie business has everything up in the air.” His eyes dropped to his fingernails, “Besides, there’s another point – but it’s a secret.”

  “Then don’t tell me.”

  “Oh, I’d just as soon, I’m just busting to tell someone – and you’re just about the best-er-confidante I could find here.” He grinned sheepishly.

  Susan Calvin’s heart bounded, but she did not trust herself to speak.

  “Frankly,” Ashe scraped his chair closer and lowered his voice into a confidential whisper, “the house isn’t to be only for myself. I’m getting married!”

  And then he jumped out of his seat, “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing!” The horrible spinning sensation had vanished, but it was hard to get words out. “Married? You mean-”

  “Why, sure! About time, isn’t it? You remember that girl who was here last summer. That’s she! But you are sick. You-”

  “Headache!” Susan Calvin motioned him away weakly. “I’ve... I’ve been subject to them lately. I want to... to congratulate you, of course. I’m very glad-” The inexpertly applied rouge made a pair of nasty red splotches upon her chalk-white face. Things had begun spinning again. “Pardon me – please-”

  The words were a mumble, as she stumbled blindly out the door. It had happened with the sudden catastrophe of a dream – and with all the unreal horror of a dream.

  But how could it be? Herbie had said-

  And Herbie knew! He could see into minds!

  She found herself leaning breathlessly against the doorjamb, staring into Herbie’s metal face. She must have climbed the two flights of stairs, but she had no memory of it. The distance had been covered in an instant, as in a dream.

  As in a dream!

  And still Herbie’s unblinking eyes stared into hers and their dull red seemed to expand into dimly shining nightmarish globes.

  He was speaking, and she felt the cold glass pressing against her lips. She swallowed and shuddered into a pertain awareness of her surroundings.

  Still Herbie spoke, and there was agitation in his voice – as if he were hurt and frightened and pleading.

  The words were beginning to make sense. “This is a dream,” he was saying, “and you mustn’t believe in it. You’ll wake into the real world soon and laugh at yourself. He loves you, I tell you. He does, he does! But not here! Not now! This is an illusion.”

  Susan Calvin nodded, her voice a whisper, “Yes! Yes!” She was clutching Herbie’s arm, clinging to it, repeating over and over, “It isn’t true, is it? It isn’t, is it?”

  Just how she came to her senses, she never knew – but it was like passing from a world of misty unreality to one of harsh sunlight. She pushed him away from her, pushed hard against that steely arm, and her eyes were wide.

  “What are you trying to do?” Her voice rose to a harsh scream. “What are you trying to do?”

  Herbie backed away, “I want to help”

  The psychologist stared, “Help? By telling me this is a dream? By trying to push me into schizophrenia?” A hysterical tenseness seized her, “This is no dream! I wish it were!”

  She drew her breath sharply, “Wait! Why... why, I understand. Merciful Heavens, it’s so obvious.”

  There was horror in the robot’s voice, “I had to!”

  “And I believed you! I never thought –”

  Loud voices outside the door brought her to a halt. She turned away, fists clenching spasmodically, and when Bogert and Lanning entered, she was at the far window. Neither of the men paid her the slightest attention.

  They approached Herbie simultaneously; Lanning angry and impatient, Bogert, coolly sardonic. The director spoke first.

  “Here now, Herbie. Listen to me!”

  The robot brought his eyes sharply down upon the aged director, “Yes, Dr. Lanning.”

  “Have you discussed me with Dr. Bogert?”

  “No, sir.” The answer came slowly, and the smile on Bogert’s face flashed off.

  “What’s that?” Bogert shoved in ahead of his superior and straddled the ground before the robot. “Repeat what you told me yesterday.”

  “I said that “Herbie fell silent. Deep within him his metallic diaphragm vibrated in soft discords.

  “Didn’t you say he had resigned?” roared Bogert. “Answer me!”

  Bogert raised his arm frantically, but Lanning pushed him aside, “Are you trying to bully him into lying?”

  “You heard him, Lanning. He began to say ‘Yes’ and stopped. Get out of my way! I want the truth out of him, understand!”

  “I’ll ask him!” Lanning turned to the robot. “All right, Herbie, take it easy. Have I resigned?”

  Herbie stared, and Lanning repeated anxiously, “Have I resigned?” There was the faintest trace of a negative shake of the robot’s head. A long wait produced nothing further.

  The two men looked at each other and the hostility in their eyes was all but tangible.

  “What the devil,” blurted Bogert, “has the robot gone mute? Can’t you speak, you monstrosity?”

  “I can speak,” came the ready answer.

  “Then answer the question. Didn’t you tell me Lanning had resigned? Hasn’t he resigned?”

  And again there was nothing but dull silence, until from the end of the room Susan Calvin’s laugh rang out suddenly, high-pitched and semi-hysterical.

  The two mathematicians jumped, and Bogerts eyes narrowed, “You here? What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing’s funny.” Her voice was not quite natural. “It’s just that I’m not the only one that’s been caught. There’s irony in three of the greatest experts in robotics in the world falling into the same elementary trap, isn’t there?” Her voice faded, and she put a pale hand to her forehead, “But it isn’t funny!”

  This time the look that passed between the two men was one of raised eyebrows. “What trap are you talking about?” asked Lansing stiffly. “Is something wrong with Herbie?”

  “No,” she approached them slowly, “nothing is wrong with him – only with us.” She whirled suddenly and shrieked at the robot, “Get away from me! Go to the other end of the room and don’t let me look at you.”

  Herbie cringed before the fury of her eyes and stumbled away in a clattering trot.

  Lanning’s voice was hostile, “What is all this, Dr. Calvin?”

  She faced them and spoke sarcastically, “Surely you know the fundamental First Law of Robotics.”

  The other two nodded together. “Certainly,” said Bogert, Irritably, “a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow him to come to harm”

  “How nicely put,” sneered Calvin. “But what kind of harm?”

  “Why – any kind.”

  “Exactly! Any kind! But what about hurt feelings? What about deflation of one’s ego? What about the blasting of one’s hopes? Is that injury?”

  Lanning frowned, “What would a robot know about-” And then he caught himself with a gasp.

  “You’ve caught on, have you? This robot reads minds. Do you suppose it doesn’t know everything about mental injury? Do you suppose that if asked a question, it wouldn’t give exactly that answer that one wants to hear? Wouldn’t any other answer hurt us, and wouldn’t Herbie know that?”

  “Good Heavens!” muttered Bogert.

  The psychologist cast a sardonic glance at him, “I take it you asked him whether Lanning had resigned. You wanted to hear that he had resigned and so that’s what Herbie told you.”

  “And I suppose that is why,” said Lanning, tonelessly, “it would not answer a little while ago. It couldn’t answer either way without hurting one of us.”

  There was a short pause in which the men looked thoughtfully across the room at the robot, crouching in the chair by the bookcase, head resting in one hand.

  Susan Calvin stared steadfastly at the
floor, “He knew of all this. That... that devil knows everything – including what went wrong in his assembly.” Her eyes were dark and brooding.

  Lanning looked up, “You’re wrong there, Dr. Calvin. He doesn’t know what went wrong. I asked him.”

  “What does that mean?” cried Calvin. “Only that you didn’t want him to give you the solution. It would puncture your ego to have a machine do what you couldn’t. Did you ask him?” she shot at Bogert.

  “In a way.” Bogert coughed and reddened. “He told me he knew very little about mathematics.”

  Lanning laughed, not very loudly and the psychologist smiled caustically. She said, “I’ll ask him! A solution by him won’t hurt my ego” She raised her voice into a cold, imperative, “Come here!”

  Herbie rose and approached with hesitant steps.

  “You know, I suppose,” she continued, “just exactly at what point in the assembly an extraneous factor was introduced or an essential one left out.”

  “Yes,” said Herbie, in tones barely heard.

  “Hold on,” broke in Bogert angrily. “That’s not necessary true. You want to hear that, that’s all.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” replied Calvin. “He certainly knows as much math as you and Lanning together, since he can read minds. Give him his chance.”

  The mathematician subsided, and Calvin continued, “All right, then, Herbie, give! We’re waiting.” And in an aside, “Get pencils and paper, gentlemen.”

  But Herbie remained silent, and there was triumph in the psychologist’s voice, “Why don’t you answer, Herbie?”

  The robot blurted out suddenly, “I cannot. You know I cannot! Dr. Bogert and Dr. Lanning don’t want me to.”

  “They want the solution.”

  “But not from me.”

  Lanning broke in, speaking slowly and distinctly, “Don’t be foolish, Herbie. We do want you to tell us.”

  Bogert nodded curtly.

  Herbie’s voice rose to wild heights, “What’s the use of saying that? Don’t you suppose that I can see past the superficial skin of your mind? Down below, you don’t want me to. I’m a machine, given the imitation of life only by virtue of the positronic interplay in my brain – which is man’s device. You can’t lose face to me without being hurt. That is deep in your mind and won’t be erased. I can’t give the solution.”

  “We’ll leave,” said Dr. Lanning. “Tell Calvin.”

  “That would make no difference,” cried Herbie, “since you would know anyway that it was I that was supplying the answer.”

  Calvin resumed, “But you understand, Herbie, that despite that, Drs. Lanning and Bogert want that solution.”

  “By their own efforts!” insisted Herbie.

  “But they want it, and the fact that you have it and won’t give it hurts them. You see that, don’t you?”

  “Yes! Yes!”

  “And if you tell them that will hurt them, too”

  “Yes! Yes!” Herbie was retreating slowly, and step-by-step Susan Calvin advanced. The two men watched in frozen bewilderment.

  “You can’t tell them,” droned the psychologist slowly, “because that would hurt and you mustn’t hurt. But if you don’t tell them, you hurt, so you must tell them. And if you do, you will hurt and you mustn’t, so you can’t tell them; but if you don’t, you hurt, so you must; but if you do, you hurt, so you mustn’t; but if you don’t, you hurt, so you must; but if you do, you-”

  Herbie was up against the wall, and here he dropped to his knees. “Stop!” he shrieked. “Close your mind! It is full of pain and frustration and hate! I didn’t mean it, I tell you! I tried to help! I told you what you wanted to hear. I had to!”

  The psychologist paid no attention. “You must tell them, but if you do, you hurt, so you mustn’t; but if you don’t, you hurt, so you must; but-”

  And Herbie screamed!

  It was like the whistling of a piccolo many times magnified – shrill and shriller till it keened with the terror of a lost soul and filled the room with the piercingness of itself.

  And when it died into nothingness, Herbie collapsed into a huddled heap of motionless metal.

  Bogert’s face was bloodless, “He’s dead!”

  “No!” Susan Calvin burst into body-racking gusts of wild laughter, “not dead – merely insane. I confronted him with the insoluble dilemma, and he broke down. You can scrap him now – because he’ll never speak again.”

  Lanning was on his knees beside the thing that had been Herbie. His fingers touched the cold, unresponsive metal face and he shuddered. “You did that on purpose.” He rose and faced her, face contorted.

  “What if I did? You can’t help it now.” And in a sudden access of bitterness, “He deserved it.”

  The director seized the paralyzed, motionless Bogert by the wrist, “What’s the difference. Come, Peter.” He sighed, “A thinking robot of this type is worthless anyway.” His eyes were old and tired, and he repeated, “Come, Peter!”

  It was minutes after the two scientists left that Dr. Susan Calvin regained part of her mental equilibrium. Slowly, her eyes turned to the living-dead Herbie and the tightness returned to her face. Long she stared while the triumph faded and the helpless frustration returned – and of all her turbulent thoughts only one infinitely bitter word passed her lips.

  “Liar!”

  Satisfaction Guaranteed

  2023 A.D.

  TONY WAS TALL and darkly handsome, with an incredibly patrician air drawn into every line of his unchangeable expression, and Claire Belmont regarded him through the crack in the door with a mixture of horror and dismay.

  “I can’t, Larry. I just can’t have him in the house.” Feverishly, she was searching her paralyzed mind for a stronger way of putting it; some way that would make sense and settle things, but she could only end with a simple repetition.

  “Well, I can’t!”

  Larry Belmont regarded his wife stiffly, and there was that spark of impatience in his eyes that Claire hated to see, since she felt her own incompetence mirrored in it. “We’re committed, Claire,” he said, “and I can’t have you backing out now. The company is sending me to Washington on this basis, and it probably means a promotion. It’s perfectly safe and you know it. What’s your objection?”

  She frowned helplessly. “It just gives me the chills. I couldn’t bear him.”

  “He’s as human as you or I, almost. So, no nonsense. Come, get out there.”

  His hand was in the small of her back, shoving; and she found herself in her own living room, shivering. It was there, looking at her with a precise politeness, as though appraising his hostess-to-be of the next three weeks. Dr. Susan Calvin was there, too, sitting stiffly in thin-lipped abstraction. She had the cold, faraway look of someone who has worked with machines so long that a little of the steel had entered the blood.

  “Hello,” crackled Claire in general, and ineffectual, greeting.

  But Larry was busily saving the situation with a spurious gaiety. “Here, Claire, I want you to meet Tony, a swell guy. This is my wife, Claire, Tony, old boy.” Larry’s hand draped itself amiably over Tony’s shoulder, but Tony remained unresponsive and expressionless under the pressure.

  He said, “How do you do, Mrs. Belmont.”

  And Claire jumped at Tony’s voice. It was deep and mellow, smooth as the hair on his head or the skin on his face.

  Before she could stop herself, she said, “Oh, my – you talk.”

  “Why not? Did you expect that I didn’t?”

  But Claire could only smile weakly. She didn’t really know what she had expected. She looked away, then let him slide gently into the comer of her eye. His hair was smooth and black, like polished plastic – or was it really composed of separate hairs? And was the even, olive skin of his hands and face continued on past the obscurement of his formally cut clothing?

  She was lost in the shuddering wonder of it, and had to force her thoughts back into place to meet Dr. Calvin’s flat, unemot
ional voice.

  “Mrs. Belmont, I hope you appreciate the importance of this experiment. Your husband tells me he has given you some of the background. I would like to give you more, as the senior psychologist of the U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation.

  “Tony is a robot. His actual designation on the company files is TN-3, but he will answer to Tony. He is not a mechanical monster, nor simply a calculating machine of the type that were developed during World War II, fifty years ago. He has an artificial brain nearly as complicated as our own. It is an immense telephone switchboard on an atomic scale, so that billions of possible ‘telephone connections’ can be compressed into an instrument that will fit inside a skull.

  “Such brains are manufactured for each model of robot specifically. Each contains a precalculated set of connections so that each robot knows the English language to start with and enough of anything else that may be necessary to perform his job.

  “Until now, U.S. Robots has confined its manufacturing activity to industrial models for use in places where human labor is impractical – in deep mines, for instance, or in underwater work. But we want to invade the city and the home. To do so, we must get the ordinary man and woman to accept these robots without fear. You understand that there is nothing to fear.”

  “There isn’t, Claire,” interposed Larry earnestly. “Take my word for it. It’s impossible for him to do any harm. You know I wouldn’t leave him with you otherwise.”

  Claire cast a quick, secret glance at Tony and lowered her voice. “What if I make him angry?”

  “You needn’t whisper,” said Dr. Calvin calmly. “He can’t get angry with you, my dear. I told you that the switchboard connections of his brain were predetermined. Well, the most important connection of all is what we call The First Law of Robotics,’ and it is merely this: ‘No robot can harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.’ All robots are built so. No robot can be forced in any way to do harm to any human. So, you see, we need you and Tony as a preliminary experiment for our own guidance, while your husband is in Washington to arrange for government-supervised legal tests.”