“Grrr..,” answered the creature with a bravery born of despair, baring its sharp, white teeth and pressing still more firmly into the corner.
Urm was absorbed by the dog and completely indifferent to the fact that the policemen had deftly barricaded themselves behind the table and filing cabinet and had begun to hurriedly undo their holsters.
Whining piteously, with its tail between its legs, the little dog dashed past Urm. But Urm was far more nimble than a dog. He was more nimble than the most nimble animal in the world. His torso turned a half circle in a lightning-quick and silent motion, and a long extending arm, like a telescope, snatched the dog up by its side. At that moment a shot rang out: one policemen’s nerve had failed him. The bullet rang off the armor that covered Urm’s back, and ricocheted deep into the wall. Plaster rained down.
“Sidorenko, stop shooting!” yelled the other policeman.
Urm released the quivering little dog and set his sights on the humans, pale but very resolute, holding their weapons at the ready. He sniffed the air with curiosity. The unfamiliar smell of smokeless gunpowder was diffusing in the air. The little dog cowered under the policemen’s legs, but Urm had already lost interest in it. He turned and went to the next door, which was adorned with the image of a skull and crossbones pierced by a red lightning bolt. The policemen, struck dumb in wonderment, watched his clawlike fingers fumbling with the ribbed barrel of the lock. The door opened. Then they got a grip on themselves and both raced after him:
“Stop! Get back! You can’t!”
They clung to his armored sides, grabbing his pillar-like legs, hot as a stove, forgetting everything in the world in terror at the single thought of what chaos this iron monster could wreak in the substation. But Urm simply did not notice them. Their efforts made no impression whatever on him; they may as well have been trying to stop a moving tractor. Then one of them, pushing his comrade aside, emptied his entire magazine into Urm’s head, point-blank, from below. The substation chamber, flooded with light, rang with the din of gunshots.
Urm reeled. The ebonite shell of his right acoustic receptor flew apart in splinters. His crooked locator horn broke loose and hung there, dangling on a wire. The sound of broken glass rang from the ceiling.
Urm had never before been subjected to an attack. He lacked an instinct for self-preservation and had no experience fighting with humans. But Urm could put facts together, could make logical conclusions and choose a behavior path that maximally ensured his safety. All these mental operations took him a fraction of a second. In the next moment he turned around and started towards the humans, threateningly displaying his terrible claws.
The policemen split up. One ran behind the panelboard, and the other leapt behind the massive steel housing of the closest transformer, hurriedly reloading his pistol.
“Sidorenko! Run to the watchman’s booth, call them, raise the alarm!” he shouted.
But Sidorenko had no success in running to the door. Urm moved far faster than a human, and the moment the policeman came out from behind the panelboard, Urm took two steps and stood before him. Then the humans resolved to run out simultaneously. This, too, was unsuccessful: Urm zipped from the panelboard to the transformer with the speed of an express train.
The panelboard broke in half from Urm’s ungainly lunging, the wind whistled through the bullet holes in the windows and the glass ceiling.
Finally, Urm got tired of that game, and he resolved to leave the humans in peace. He stopped suddenly in front of the transformer and decisively thrust his hands under the housing. The policemen took this opportunity to go hurtling headlong to the watchman’s booth. At the same instant, a deafening crack rang out, everything around was lit up by a blinding blue flash, and the lights when out. The acrid smell of burnt metal, smoke, and hot varnish poured out of the room. The deafened, dispirited policemen did not comprehend right away what had happened. And then the watchman’s booth shivered from heavy footsteps, and a reedy voice pronounced in the darkness:
“Hello, how do you do?”
The door bolt clicked, and the door opened with a creak. For a moment the outline of the iron monster could be seen in the dim rectangle, and the door closed once again.
Urm walked around the grounds of the Institute, sinking into the snow and lifting his legs high. The Institute was plunged in darkness, and darkness offered little to help even Urm’s infrared vision. He could make out only the weak radiance around his stomach and legs, on which snowflakes melted and vaporized. A few weakly phosphorescent human silhouettes could be glimpsed between the buildings. Urm paid no attention to them and went along, orienting himself by locator readings – though one locator horn had been smashed by the bullet, making it impossible for him to determine distances correctly.
The faraway lights of the village, barely visible gleams through the snowstorm, drew Urm’s attention. Then the bright blue rays of the searchlights blazed on. He went up to the wall, hesitated for a moment and turned left. He was well aware that walls always have doors. And before long he ended up at the gate. It was a large gate, made of iron. The main thing, though, was that it was locked. On the other side of the gate he could hear the alarmed voices of the humans; a bright blue light pierced through the chink.
“Hello,” said Urm, and heaved at the gate. The gate did not give way: it was firmly locked. From somewhere far away he could hear the clank of metal. There, beyond the gate, something very interesting was taking place. Urm pressed harder, then stepped away, threw back his head and struck the gate at a run with his armored chest. The voices beyond the gate fell silent, and then someone yelled uncertainly:
“Back! Hey, careful you don’t shoot that devil!”
“Hello, how do you do?” said Urm, ran back and struck again. The gate collapsed. The bolt turned out to be stronger than the hinges built into the concrete wall, and the gate fell flat as a plank onto the snow. Urm walked over it past the scattered policemen and plunged into the snowstorm that was raging in the open field.
He marched onward, continuously struggling to recover his balance on the dug-up earth covered by a swelling sea of dry snow. Suddenly, an emptiness opened up beneath him, and he fell. The snow sizzled underneath him. He had never fallen before, but an instant later he had already dug his hands into the earth, extended them to their full length, and drew his legs up under him.
He regained his footing and stood for a moment, looking about. The lights of the cottages gleamed before him. To the left, very close by, loomed three human figures; further away vehicles growled, moving towards the gates in a line. Urm turned to the left. Going past the humans, he recognized one of them as the Master. The Master could deprive him of his ability to move. Urm remembered this very well and began to walk faster. The Master dropped out of sight behind him in the whirls of the shifting snow.
He emerged on a flat place where the snow was plowed smooth. A bright light illuminated him from head to foot. Unwieldy metal monsters, carrying heavy shields before them, moved towards him and came to a stop, snorting angrily.
Urm stood five steps from the lead bulldozer, slowly turning his round head to the right and to the left and repeating:
“Hello, how do you do?”
Nikolai Petrovich Korolev jumped down from the tractor. The driver yelled in a panic:
“Comrade engineer, where are you going?”
At that moment, Piskunov appeared on the highway. Disheveled, his hair standing on end (his fur hat was left behind somewhere in the vacant lot), his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his wide-open fur coat, he went around the bulldozer and stopped before Urm. There were not more than five steps between them. Urm loomed like a giant over the engineer, like a tower, his faceted sides gleamed in the headlights, his stomach, wreathed in steam, shone with moisture; his round head with its large glass eyes, splayed-out receptor ears, and locator horn resembled the frightful and ridiculous pumpkin masks that village boys use to scare girls. His head danced smoothly as his eyes follow
ed Piskunov’s every move.
“Urm,” said Piskunov loudly.
Urm’s head froze in place; his articulated arms were glued to his sides.
“Urm, listen to my command!”
Urm answered:
“I am ready.”
Someone laughed nervously.
Piskunov stepped forward and placed his gloved hand on Urm’s chest. His fingers quickly slid along the armor, feeling for what would settle the matter: the switch that linked the computational-analytic portion of Urm’s brain to his power and movement system. And then something unexpected happened, unexpected for everyone except Piskunov, who feared it more than anything. Apparently, Urm’s memory had saved an association linking this movement by the Master to an instant inability to move. Piskunov’s fingers had barely touched the key when Urm turned sharply. His armored hand cut through the air above the head of Piskunov, who just managed to duck, and Urm, in no rush, started back along the highway. Nikolai Petrovich was the first to come to his senses.
“Hey, guys!” he yelled. “Bring the bulldozers around from the right and the left. Cut off his path to the gate… Piskunov, hey, Piskunov!”
But Piskunov did not hear him. While the bulldozers crawled in both directions away from the highway, diving into the clouds of snow, he set off running after Urm.
“Urm, stop!” he yelled in a high, breaking voice. “Stop, you brute! Come back! Back!”
He ran out of breath. Urm was going ever faster, and the distance between them gradually widened. Finally, Piskunov stopped, shoved his hands into his pockets, and, drawing his head into his shoulders, watched him go. Nikolai Petrovich and Ryabkin ran up to him. Kostenko came up last.
“What’s gotten into you?” asked Korolev angrily.
Piskunkov did not answer.
“He’s not obeying,” he said. “You understand, Kolya? He’s not obeying. It’s clearly a spontaneous reflex.”
Nikolai Petrovich nodded.
“I was thinking the same thing.”
“Obviously!” exclaimed Piskunov. “You’d have the same degree of success letting a train pick its own time and itinerary…”
“What’s a spontaneous reflex?” asked Kostenko timidly.
No one answered him.
“And just the same, in spite of everything, this is really something.” Nikolai Petrovich blew his nose and shoved his handkerchief into his inner pocket. “He’s not obeying! Of all things…”
“Let’s go!” said Piskunov decisively.
Meanwhile, the bulldozers had spread out in a half-circle and began to converge around Urm, who was unhurriedly shuffling along the highway. One of the bulldozers crawled out onto the highway ahead of him, with its back end to the gate, another came up at him from behind, the remaining three approached from the sides: two from the left, one from the right. Of course, Urm had long since noticed that he was being surrounded, but he probably thought nothing of it. He continued moving along the highway until his chest ran up against the bulldozer. He pressed, the tractor teetered just a bit; the driver grabbed at the levers with a tense face. Urm took a step back and hit it at a run. Iron clanged against iron, and bright sparks could be seen cutting the snowy darkness under the straight beams of the headlights. At that moment the blade of the rear bulldozer hit Urm’s back. Urm froze stock-still, only his head slowly turned on its axis, just like a school globe. From the right and left approached two more bulldozers and securely closed the remaining avenues of retreat. Urm found himself in captivity.
“Comrade engineers! Comrade Piskunov! What should we do now?” yelled the driver of the first machine.
“Comrade Piskunov has stepped out. Would you like to leave a message?” said Urm.
He took a swing and struck the blade. Then he did so again and again. He hit steadily, like a boxer in a training session, knocked back slightly with every blow, and splashes of sparks hailed from under the clanging of his club-like hands.
Piskunov, accompanied by Nikolai Petrovich, Ryabkin, and Kostenko, approached him.
“We have to do something quickly, or he’ll disable himself,” said Ryabkin anxiously.
Piskunov climbed without speaking onto the tread of the tractor, but Ryabkin grabbed him and pulled him back down.
“What’s the matter?” asked Piskunov with annoyance.
“You’re the only person who knows Urm intimately. If he lays you out… this whole thing could last for months. Someone else should do it.”
“He’s right,” said Nikolai Petrovich hastily. “I’ll go.”
One of the workers who were standing around the engineers broke in:
“Maybe you could choose one of us? We’re younger, quicker…”
“I’ll do it,” said Kostenko somberly.
“That won’t work,” said Nikolai Petrovich. “Don’t let Piskunov go.”
He threw off his fur coat and climbed onto the tractor. Then Piskunov tore loose from Ryabkin’s embrace.
“Let me go, Ryabkin.”
Ryabkin did not answer. Kostenko approached from the other side and firmly gripped Piskunov by the shoulders.
And Urm was raging. The lower half of his body was securely clamped by the bulldozers, but the upper part moved freely, and he turned from side to side with lightening speed, pounding the iron blades with backhanded blows of his steel fists. Shreds of steam circled above him in the snowy darkness. “The force of one blow of his fist is three thousand kilos,” recalled Kostenko.
Nikolai Petrovich, setting his teeth, squatted down between the bulldozers at Urm’s feet and waited for the right moment. His ears hurt from the clanging and crashing. He knew that Urm had noticed him: the glass eyes, now and then glimmering warily, would turn to him.
“Easy, easy,” whispered Nikolai Petrovich soundlessly. “Easy, my dear Urm. Take it easy, you scoundrel!”
Some sort of new sound arose amid the blows, something cracked, either Urm’s steel hand or the blade of the bulldozer. There was no more time to delay. Nikolai Petrovich dove under Urm’s fist and pressed up to his side. And then Urm surprised everyone. His arms fell to his sides. The crashing ceased, and once again they could hear the snowstorm howling over the field and the tractors snorting. Nikolai Petrovich, pale and sweating, straightened up and reached his hand to Urm’s chest. A dry click rang out. The green and red lights on Urm’s shoulders went out.
“It’s over,” Piskunov croaked out and closed his eyes.
People began talking right away in exaggeratedly loud voices; laughter and jokes could be heard. The drivers helped Nikolai Petrovich get out from under Urm and lowered him to the ground. Piskunov embraced and kissed him.
“And now,” he said abruptly, “to the Institute. We will work. It will take a week, a month… We’ll have to beat this nonsense out of him and finally make him an Urm: a Universal Roving Machine.
“But what was it that happened with Urm?” asked Kostenko. And what is a spontaneous reflex?”
Nikolai Petrovich, tired and drawn after the sleepless night, said, “You see, Urm was constructed by order of the Department for Interplanetary Communications. He differs from other highly complex cybernetic machines in that he is intended for work in conditions that cannot be predicted by even the most ingenious programmer. On Venus, for instance. Who knows what the conditions are there? Maybe it is covered by oceans. But maybe by deserts. Or jungles. For the time being people cannot be sent there: it’s too dangerous. Urms will be sent, dozens of Urms. But how should they be programmed? The trouble is that, at the current level of cybernetics, it is still impossible to teach a machine to ‘think’ abstractly…”
“What do you mean?”
“For a machine there is no general dog. There is only this one, that one, a third dog. If it meets a fourth dog that doesn’t resemble the first three, the machine won’t know what to do. Roughly speaking, if Urm is programmed for a definite reaction only in relation to a mutt, he will be unable to react the same way in relation to a pug. It’s a simplist
ic example, of course, but I presume that you understand me. And this is one of the basic differences between the smartest machine and the dumbest person: an inability to operate in abstract categories. Anyway, Piskunov attempted to compensate for this shortcoming by creating a self-programming machine. He gave Urm’s ‘brain’ a reflex chain, the essence of which boils down to filling vacant memory cells in a self-governing fashion. Piskunov calculated that, once he “fills up on impressions,” Urm will be capable of picking the most beneficial line of behavior for every new event. This is the most advanced model of consciousness in the world. But we got an unexpected result. Well, Piskunov had theoretically allowed for such a phenomenon, but in practice… To put it succinctly, the new reflex arc generated dozens of secondary reflexes not anticipated by the programmers. Piskunov has christened them spontaneous reflexes. With their appearance, Urm ceased to function according to his basic programming and began to ‘direct himself.’”
“What do we need to do now?”
“We’ll try a different approach.” Nikolai Petrovich stretched and yawned. “We will perfect the analytic capabilities of the ‘brain,’ the receptor system…”
“But what about the spontaneous reflex? No one is interested in it?”
“Oh, Piskunov has already thought something up… In a word, the first ones on unexplored planets and in unexplored oceans will still be Urms. We will not have to risk people… Listen, Kostenko, let’s get some sleep, OK? You’ll be working here and will learn everything, I give you my word.”
First published in Russian: 1958
Translation by Kevin Reese
MIKHAIL ANCHAROV
1961
SODA-SUN
The author of a hypothesis implicitly acknowledges the possibility of a mistake, so that in the course of rigorous experimentation the hypothesis can be overturned, verified, or transformed into something different.
– Academician N. Semenov
The richest ideas are the most specific and subjective ones. That which is truly individual represents infinity in embryonic form.
Red Star Tales Page 27