Asimov's Future History Volume 1 (19 page)

Lanning sucked at his cigar and nodded gravely. He turned to Ashe; “I think you said you were alone when you first stumbled on this thought-reading business.”

“I’ll say I was alone – I got the scare of my life. RB-34 had just been taken off the assembly table and they sent him down to me. Obermann was off somewheres, so I took him down to the testing rooms myself – at least I started to take him down.” Ashe paused, and a tiny smile tugged at his lips, “Say, did any of you ever carry on a thought conversation without knowing it?”

No one bothered to answer, and he continued, “You don’t realize it at first, you know. He just spoke to me – as logically and sensibly as you can imagine – and it was only when I was most of the way down to the testing rooms that I realized that I hadn’t said anything. Sure, I thought lots, but that isn’t the same thing, is it? I locked that thing up and ran for Lanning. Having it walking beside me, calmly peering into my thoughts and picking and choosing among them gave me the willies.”

“I imagine it would,” said Susan Calvin thoughtfully. Her eyes fixed themselves upon Ashe in an oddly intent manner. “We are so accustomed to considering our own thoughts private.”

Lanning broke in impatiently, “Then only the four of us know. All right! We’ve got to go about this systematically. Ashe, I want you to check over the assembly line from beginning to end – everything. You’re to eliminate all operations in which there was no possible chance of an error, and list all those where there were, together with its nature and possible magnitude.”

“Tall order,” grunted Ashe.

“Naturally! Of course, you’re to put the men under you to work on this – every single one if you have to, and I don’t care if we go behind schedule, either. But they’re not to know why, you understand.”

“Hm-m-m, yes!” The young technician grinned wryly. “It’s still a lulu of a job.”

Lanning swiveled about in his chair and faced Calvin, “You’ll have to tackle the job from the other direction. You’re the robo-psychologist of the plant, so you’re to study the robot itself and work backward. Try to find out how he ticks. See what else is tied up with his telepathic powers, how far they extend, how they warp his outlook, and just exactly what harm it has done to his ordinary RB properties. You’ve got that?”

Lanning didn’t wait for Dr. Calvin to answer.

“I’ll co-ordinate the work and interpret the findings mathematically.” He puffed violently at his cigar and mumbled the rest through the smoke; “Bogert will help me there, of course.”

Bogert polished the nails of one pudgy hand with the other and said blandly, “I dare say. I know a little in the line.”

“Well! I’ll get started.” Ashe shoved his chair back and rose. His pleasantly youthful face crinkled in a grin, “I’ve got the darnedest job of any of us, so I’m getting out of here and to work.”

He left with a slurred, “B’ seein’ ye!”

Susan Calvin answered with a barely perceptible nod, but her eyes followed him out of sight and she did not answer when Lanning grunted and said, “Do you want to go up and see RB-34 now, Dr. Calvin?”

RB-34’s photoelectric eyes lifted from the book at the muffled sound of binges turning and he was upon his feet when Susan Calvin entered.

She paused to readjust the huge “No Entrance” sign upon the door and then approached the robot.

“I’ve brought you the texts upon hyperatomic motors, Herbie – a few anyway. Would you care to look at them?”

RB-34 – otherwise known as Herbie – lifted the three heavy books from her arms and opened to the title page of one:

“Hm-m-m! ‘Theory of Hyperatomics.’ “He mumbled inarticulately to himself as he flipped the pages and then spoke with an abstracted air, “Sit down, Dr. Calvin! This will take me a few minutes.”

The psychologist seated herself and watched Herbie narrowly as he took a chair at the other side of the table and went through the three books systematically.

At the end of half an hour, he put them down, “Of course, I know why you brought these.”

The corner of Dr. Calvin’s lip twitched, “I was afraid you would. It’s difficult to work with you, Herbie. You’re always a step ahead of me.”

“It’s the same with these books, you know, as with the others. They just don’t interest me. There’s nothing to your textbooks. Your science is just a mass of collected data plastered together by makeshift theory – and all so incredibly simple, that it’s scarcely worth bothering about.

“It’s your fiction that interests me. Your studies of the interplay of human motives and emotions” – his mighty hand gestured vaguely as he sought the proper words.

Dr. Calvin whispered, “I think I understand.”

“I see into minds, you see,” the robot continued, “and you have no idea how complicated they are. I can’t begin to understand everything because my own mind has so little in common with them – but I try, and your novels help.”

“Yes, but I’m afraid that after going through some of the harrowing emotional experiences of our present-day sentimental novel” – there was a tinge of bitterness in her voice – “you find real minds like ours dull and colorless.”

“But I don’t!”

The sudden energy in the response brought the other to her feet. She felt herself reddening, and thought wildly, “He must know!”

Herbie subsided suddenly, and muttered in a low voice from which the metallic timbre departed almost entirely. “But, of course, I know about it, Dr. Calvin. You think of it always, so how can I help but know?”

Her face was hard. “Have you – told anyone?”

“Of course not!” This, with genuine surprise, “No one has asked me.”

“Well, then,” she flung out, “I suppose you think I am a fool.”

“No! It is a normal emotion.”

“Perhaps that is why it is so foolish.” The wistfulness in her voice drowned out everything else. Some of the woman peered through the layer of doctorhood. “I am not what you would call – attractive.”

“If you are referring to mere physical attraction, I couldn’t judge. But I know, in any case, that there are other types of attraction.”

“Nor young.” Dr. Calvin had scarcely heard the robot.

“You are not yet forty.” An anxious insistence had crept into Herbie’s voice.

“Thirty-eight as you count the years; a shriveled sixty as far as my emotional outlook on life is concerned. Am I a psychologist for nothing?”

She drove on with bitter breathlessness, “And he’s barely thirty-five and looks and acts younger. Do you suppose he ever sees me as anything but... but what I am?”

“You are wrong!” Herbie’s steel fist struck the plastic-topped table with a strident clang. “Listen to me-”

But Susan Calvin whirled on him now and the hunted pain in her eyes became a blaze, “Why should I? What do you know about it all, anyway, you... you machine. I’m just a specimen to you; an interesting bug with a peculiar mind spread-eagled for inspection. It’s a wonderful example of frustration, isn’t it? Almost as good as your books.” Her voice, emerging in dry sobs, choked into silence.

The robot cowered at the outburst. He shook his head pleadingly. “Won’t you listen to me, please? I could help you if you would let me.”

“How?” Her lips curled. “By giving me good advice?”

“No, not that. It’s just that I know what other people think – Milton Ashe, for instance.”

There was a long silence, and Susan Calvin’s eyes dropped. “I don’t want to know what he thinks,” she gasped. “Keep quiet.”

“I think you would want to know what he thinks”

Her head remained bent, but her breath came more quickly. “You are talking nonsense,” she whispered.

“Why should I? I am trying to help. Milton Ashe’s thoughts of you-” he paused.

And then the psychologist raised her head, “Well?”

The robot said quietly, “He loves you.”

For a full minute, Dr. Calvin did not speak. She merely stared. Then, “You are mistaken! You must be. Why should he?”

“But he does. A thing like that cannot be hidden, not from me.”

“But I am so... so-” she stammered to a halt.

“He looks deeper than the skin, and admires intellect in others. Milton Ashe is not the type to marry a head of hair and a pair of eyes.”

Susan Calvin found herself blinking rapidly and waited before speaking. Even then her voice trembled, “Yet he certainly never in any way indicated-”

“Have you ever given him a chance?”

“How could I? I never thought that-”

“Exactly!”

The psychologist paused in thought and then looked up suddenly. “A girl visited him here at the plant half a year ago. She was pretty, I suppose – blond and slim. And, of course, could scarcely add two and two. He spent all day puffing out his chest, trying to explain how a robot was put together.” The hardness had returned, “Not that she understood! Who was she?”

Herbie answered without hesitation, “I know the person you are referring to. She is his first cousin, and there is no romantic interest there, I assure you.”

Susan Calvin rose to her feet with a vivacity almost girlish. “Now isn’t that strange? That’s exactly what I used to pretend to myself sometimes, though I never really thought so. Then it all must be true.”

She ran to Herbie and seized his cold, heavy hand in both hers. “Thank you, Herbie.” Her voice was an urgent, husky whisper. “Don’t tell anyone about this. Let it be our secret – and thank you again.” With that, and a convulsive squeeze of Herbie’s unresponsive metal fingers, she left.

Herbie turned slowly to his neglected novel, but there was no one to read
his
thoughts.

Milton Ashe stretched slowly and magnificently, to the tune of cracking joints and a chorus of grunts, and then glared at Peter Bogert, Ph.D.

“Say,” he said, “I’ve been at this for a week now with just about no sleep. How long do I have to keep it up? I thought you said the positronic bombardment in Vac Chamber D was the solution.”

Bogert yawned delicately and regarded his white hands with interest. “It is. I’m on the track.”

“I know what
that
means when a mathematician says it. How near the end are you?”

“It all depends.”

“On what?” Ashe dropped into a chair and stretched his long legs out before him.

“On Lanning. The old fellow disagrees with me.” He sighed, “A bit behind the times, that’s the trouble with him. He clings to matrix mechanics as the all in all, and this problem calls for more powerful mathematical tools. He’s so stubborn.”

Ashe muttered sleepily, “Why not ask Herbie and settle the whole affair?”

“Ask the robot?” Bogert’s eyebrows climbed.

“Why not? Didn’t the old girl tell you?”

“You mean Calvin?”

“Yeah! Susie herself. That robot’s a mathematical wiz. He knows all about everything plus a bit on the side. He does triple integrals in his head and eats up tensor analysis for dessert.”

The mathematician stared skeptically, “Are you serious?”

“So help me! The catch is that the dope doesn’t like math. He would rather read slushy novels. Honest! You should see the tripe Susie keeps feeding him: ‘Purple Passion’ and ‘Love in Space.’”

“Dr. Calvin hasn’t said a word of this to us.”

“Well, she hasn’t finished studying him. You know how she is. She likes to have everything just so before letting out the big secret.”

“She’s told
you
.”

“We sort of got to talking. I have been seeing a lot of her lately.” He opened his eyes wide and frowned, “Say, Bogie, have you been noticing anything queer about the lady lately?”

Bogert relaxed into an undignified grin, “She’s using lipstick, if that’s what you mean.”

“Hell, I know that. Rouge, powder and eye shadow, too. She’s a sight. But it’s not that. I can’t put my finger on it. It’s the way she talks – as if she were happy about something.” He thought a little, and then shrugged.

The other allowed himself a leer, which, for a scientist past fifty, was not a bad job, “Maybe she’s in love.”

Ashe allowed his eyes to close again, “You’re nuts, Bogie. You go speak to Herbie; I want to stay here and go to sleep.”

“Right! Not that I particularly like having a robot tell me my job, nor that I think he can do it!”

A soft snore was his only answer.

Herbie listened carefully as Peter Bogert, hands in pockets, spoke with elaborate indifference.

“So there you are. I’ve been told you understand these things, and I am asking you more in curiosity than anything else. My line of reasoning, as I have outlined it, involves a few doubtful steps, I admit, which Dr. Lanning refuses to accept, and the picture is still rather incomplete.”

The robot didn’t answer, and Bogert said, “Well?”

“I see no mistake,” Herbie studied the scribbled figures.

“I don’t suppose you can go any further than that?”

“I daren’t try. You are a better mathematician than I, and – well, I’d hate to commit myself.”

There was a shade of complacency in Bogert’s smile, “I rather thought that would be the case. It is deep. We’ll forget it.” He crumpled the sheets, tossed them down the waste shaft, turned to leave, and then thought better of it.

“By the way-”

The robot waited.

Bogert seemed to have difficulty. “There is something – that is, perhaps you can –” He stopped.

Herbie spoke quietly. “Your thoughts are confused, but there is no doubt at all that they concern Dr. Lanning. It is silly to hesitate, for as soon as you compose yourself, I’ll know what it is you want to ask.”

The mathematician’s hand went to his sleek hair in the familiar smoothing gesture. “Lanning is nudging seventy,” he said, as if that explained everything.

“I know that.”

“And he’s been director of the plant for almost thirty years.” Herbie nodded.

“Well, now,” Bogert’s voice became ingratiating, “you would know whether... whether he’s thinking of resigning. Health, perhaps, or some other-”

“Quite,” said Herbie, and that was all.

“Well, do you know?”

“Certainly.”

“Then-uh-could you tell me?”

“Since you ask, yes.” The robot was quite matter-of-fact about it. “He has already resigned!”

“What!” The exclamation was an explosive, almost inarticulate, sound. The scientist’s large head hunched forward, “Say that again!”