Asimov's Future History Volume 1 (34 page)

“How close are they to the Hyperatomic Drive?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she replied irritably, “I didn’t ask.”

“Hmm. I wish they’d hurry. Because if they don’t, Consolidated might beat them to it, and beat
us
to it as well.”

“
Consolidated
. What have they got to do with it?”

“Well, we’re not the only ones with calculating machines. Ours may be positronic, but that doesn’t mean they’re better. Robertson is calling a big meeting about it tomorrow. He’s been waiting for you to come back.”

Robertson of U. S. Robot & Mechanical Men Corporation, son of the founder, pointed his lean nose at his general manager and his Adam’s apple jumped as he said, “You start now. Let’s get this straight.”

The general manager did so with alacrity, “Here’s the deal now, chief. Consolidated Robots approached us a month ago with a funny sort of proposition. They brought about five tons of figures, equations, all that sort of stuff. It was a problem, see, and they wanted an answer from The Brain. The terms were as follows-”

He ticked them off on thick fingers: “A hundred thousand for us if there is no solution and we can tell them the missing factors. Two hundred thousand if there is a solution, plus costs of construction of the machine involved, plus quarter interest in all profits derived therefrom. The problem concerns the development of an interstellar engine-”

Robertson frowned and his lean figure stiffened, “Despite the fact that they have a thinking machine of their own. Right?”

“Exactly what makes the whole proposition a foul ball, chief? Levver, take it from there.”

Abe Levver looked up from the far end of the conference table and smoothed his stubbled chin with a faint rasping sound. He smiled:

“It’s this way, sir. Consolidated
had
a thinking machine. It’s broken.”

“What?” Robertson half rose.

“That’s right. Broken! It’s
kaput
. Nobody knows why, but I got hold of some pretty interesting guesses – like, for instance, that they asked it to give them an interstellar engine with the same set of information they came to us with, and that it cracked their machine wide open. It’s scrap – just scrap now.”

“You get it, chief?” The general manager was wildly jubilant. “You get it? There isn’t any industrial research group of any size that isn’t trying to develop a space-warp engine, and Consolidated and U. S. Robots have the lead on the field with our super robot-brains. Now that they’ve managed to foul theirs up, we have a clear field. That’s the nub, the... uh... motivation. It will take them six years at least to build another and they’re sunk, unless they can break ours, too, with the same problem.”

The president of U. S. Robots bulged his eyes, “Why, the dirty rats-”

“Hold on, chief. There’s more to this.” He pointed a finger with a wide sweep, “Lanning, take it!”

Dr. Alfred Lanning viewed the proceedings with faint scorn – his usual reaction to the doings of the vastly better-paid business and sales divisions. His unbelievable gray eyebrows hunched low and his voice was dry:

“From a scientific standpoint the situation, while not entirely clear, is subject to intelligent analysis. The question of interstellar travel under present conditions of physical theory is... uh... vague. The matter is wide open – and the information given by Consolidated to its thinking machine, assuming these we have to be the same, was similarly wide open. Our mathematical department has given it a thorough analysis, and it seems Consolidated has included everything. Its material for submission contains all known developments of Franciacci’s space-warp theory, and, apparently, all pertinent astrophysical and electronic data. It’s quite a mouthful.”

Robertson followed anxiously. He interrupted, “Too much for The Brain to handle?”

Lanning shook his head decisively, “No. There are no known limits to The Brain’s capacity. It’s a different matter. It’s a question of the Robotic Laws. The Brain, for instance, could never supply a solution to a problem set to it if that solution, would involve the death or injury of humans. As far as it would be concerned, a problem with only such a solution would be insoluble. If such a problem is combined with an extremely urgent demand that it be answered, it is just possible that The Brain, only a robot after all, would be presented with a dilemma, where it could neither answer nor refuse to answer. Something of the sort must have happened to Consolidated’s machine.”

He paused, but the general manager urged on, “Go ahead, Dr. Tanning. Explain it the way you explained it to me.”

Lanning set his lips and raised his eyebrows in the direction of Dr. Susan Calvin who lifted her eyes from her precisely folded hands for the first time. Her voice was low and colorless.

“The nature of a robot reaction to a dilemma is startling,” she began. “Robot psychology is far from perfect – as a specialist, I can assure you of that but it can be discussed in qualitative terms, because with all the complications introduced into a robot’s positronic brain, it is built by humans and is therefore built according to human values.

“Now a human caught in an impossibility often responds by a retreat from reality: by entry into a world of delusion, or by taking to drink, going off into hysteria, or jumping off a bridge. It all comes to the same thing – a refusal or inability to face the situation squarely. And so, the robot, a dilemma at its mildest will disorder half its relays; and at its worst it will burn out every positronic brain path past repair.”

“I see,” said Robertson, who didn’t. “Now what about this information Consolidated’s wishing on us?”

“It undoubtedly involves,” said Dr. Calvin, “a problem of a forbidden sort. But The Brain is considerably different from Consolidated’s robot.”

“That’s right, chief. That’s right.” The general manager was energetically interruptive. “I want you to get this, because it’s the whole point of the situation.”

Susan Calvin’s eyes glittered behind the spectacles, and she continued patiently, “You see, sir, Consolidated’s machines, their Super-Thinker among them, are built without personality. They go in for functionalism, you know – they have to, without U. S. Robot’s basic patents for the emotional brain paths. Their Thinker is merely a calculating machine on a grand scale, and a dilemma ruins it instantly.

“However, The Brain, our own machine, has a personality – a child’s personality. It is a supremely deductive brain, but it resembles an
idiot savant
. It doesn’t really understand what it does – it just does it. And because it is really a child, it is more resilient. Life isn’t so serious, you might say.”

The robopsychologist continued: “Here is what we’re going to do. We have divided all of Consolidated’s information into logical units. We are going to feed the units to The Brain singly and cautiously. When
the
factor enters – the one that creates the dilemma – The Brain’s child personality will hesitate. Its sense of judgment is not mature. There will be a perceptible interval before it will recognize a dilemma as such. And in that interval, it will reject the unit automatically – before its brainpaths can be set in motion and ruined.”

Robertson’s Adam’s apple squirmed, “Are you sure, now?”

Dr. Calvin masked impatience, “It doesn’t make much sense, I admit, in lay language; but there is no conceivable use in presenting the mathematics of this. I assure you, it is as I say.”

The general manager was in the breach instantly and fluently, “So here’s the situation, chief. If we take the deal, we can put it through like this. The Brain will tell us which unit of information involves the dilemma. From there, we can figure
why
the dilemma. Isn’t that right, Dr. Bogert? There you are, chief, and Dr. Bogert is the best mathematician you’ll find anywhere. We give Consolidated a ‘No Solution’ answer, with the reason, and collect a hundred thousand. They’re left with a broken machine; we’re left with a whole one. In a year, two maybe, we’ll have a space-warp engine or a hyper-atomic motor some people call it. Whatever you name it, it will be the biggest thing in the world.”

Robertson chuckled and reached out, “Let’s see the contract. I’ll sign it.”

When Susan Calvin entered the fantastically guarded vault that held The Brain, one of the current shift of technicians had just asked it: “If one and a half chickens lay one and a half eggs in one and a half days, how many eggs will nine chickens lay in nine days?”

The Brain had just answered, “Fifty-four.”

And the technician had just said to another, “See, you dope!”

Dr. Calvin coughed and there was a sudden impossible flurry of directionless energy. The psychologist motioned briefly, and she was alone with The Brain.

The Brain was a two-foot globe merely – one which contained within it a thoroughly conditioned helium atmosphere, a volume of space completely vibration-absent and radiation-free – and within that was that unheard-of complexity of positronic brain-paths that was The Brain. The rest of the room was crowded with the attachments that were the intermediaries between The Brain and the outside world – its voice, its arms, its sense organs.

Dr. Calvin said softly, “How are you, Brain?”

The Brain’s voice was high-pitched and enthusiastic, “Swell, Miss Susan. You’re going to ask me something. I can tell. You always have a book in your hand when you’re going to ask me something.”

Dr. Calvin smiled mildly, “Well, you’re right, but not just yet. This is going to be a question. It will be so complicated we’re going to give it to you in writing. But not just yet; I think I’ll talk to you first.”

“All right. I don’t mind talking.”

“Now, Brain, in a little while, Dr. Lanning and Dr. Bogert will be here with this complicated question. We’ll give it to you a very little at a time and very slowly, because we want you to be careful. We’re going to ask you to build something, if you can, out of the information, but I’m going to warn you now that the solution might involve... uh... damage to human beings.”

“Gosh!” The exclamation was hushed, drawn-out.

“Now you watch for that. When we come to a sheet which means damage, even maybe death, don’t get excited. You see, Brain, in this case, we don’t mind – not even about death; we don’t mind at all. So when you come to that sheet, just stop, give it back – and that’ll be all. You understand?”

“Oh, sure. By golly, the death of humans! Oh, my!”

“Now, Brain, I hear Dr. Lanning and Dr. Bogert coming. They’ll tell you what the problem is all about and then we’ll start. Be a good boy, now-”

Slowly the sheets were fed in. After each one came the interval of the queerly whispery chuckling noise that was The Brain in action. Then the silence that meant readiness for another sheet. It was a matter of hours – during which the equivalent of something like seventeen fat volumes of mathematical physics were fed into The Brain.

As the process went on, frowns appeared and deepened. Lanning muttered ferociously under his breath. Bogert first gazed speculatively at his fingernails, and then bit at them in abstracted fashion. It was when the last of the thick pile of sheets disappeared that Calvin, white-faced, said:

“Something’s wrong.”

Lanning barely got the words out, “It can’t be. Is it – dead?”

“Brain?” Susan Calvin was trembling. “Do you hear me, Brain?”

“Huh?” came the abstracted rejoinder. “Do you want me?”

“The solution-”

“Oh, that! I can do it. I’ll build you a whole ship, just as easy – if you let me have the robots. A nice ship, it’ll take two months maybe.”

“There was – no difficulty?”

“It took long to figure,” said The Brain.

Dr. Calvin backed away. The color had not returned to her thin cheeks. She motioned the others away.

In her office, she said, “I can’t understand it. The information, as given, must involve a dilemma – probably involves death. If something has gone wrong-”

Bogert said quietly, “The machine talks and makes sense. It can’t be a dilemma.”

But the psychologist replied urgently, “There are dilemmas
and
dilemmas. There are different forms of escape. Suppose The Brain is only mildly caught; just badly enough, say, to be suffering from the delusion that he can solve the problem, when he can’t. Or suppose it’s teetering on the brink of something really bad, so that any small push shoves it over.”

“Suppose,” said Lanning, “there is no dilemma. Suppose Consolidated’s machine broke down over a different question, or broke down for purely mechanical reasons.”

“But even so,” insisted Calvin, “we couldn’t take chances. Listen, from now on, no one is to as much as breathe to The Brain. I’m taking over.”

“All right,” sighed Lanning, “take over, then. And meanwhile we’ll let The Brain build its ship. And if it
does
build it, we’ll have to test it.”

He was ruminating, “We’ll need our top field men for
that
.”

Michael Donovan brushed down his red hair with a violent motion of his hand and a total indifference to the fact that the unruly mass sprang to attention again immediately.

He said, “Call the turn now, Greg. They say the ship is finished. They don’t know what it is, but it’s finished. Let’s go, Greg. Let’s grab the controls right now.”

Powell said wearily, “Cut it, Mike. There’s a peculiar overripe flavor to your humor at its freshest, and the confined atmosphere here isn’t helping it.”

“Well, listen,” Donovan took another ineffectual swipe at his hair, “I’m not worried so much about our cast-iron genius and his tin ship. There’s the matter of my lost leave. And the monotony! There’s nothing here but whiskers and figures – the wrong kind of figures. Oh, why do they
give
us these jobs?”

“Because,” replied Powell, gently, “we’re no loss, if they lose us. O.K., relax! – Doc Lanning’s coming this way.”

Lanning was coming, his gray eyebrows as lavish as ever, his aged figure unbent as yet and full of life. He walked silently up the ramp with the two men and out into the open field, where, obeying no human master, silent robots were building a ship.