Asimov's Future History Volume 1 (16 page)

Powell jumped at Donovan’s wild shout, and his eyes followed the redhead’s to the visiplate, when they goggled in fixed horror. He whispered, “Holy – howling – Jupiter!”

Donovan scrambled breathlessly to his feet, “Look at them, Greg. They’ve gone nuts.”

Powell said, “Get a pair of suits. We’re going out there.”

He watched the posturings of the robots on the visiplate. They were bronzy gleams of smooth motion against the shadowy crags of the airless asteroid. There was a marching formation now, and in their own dim body light, the roughhewn walls of the mine tunnel swam past noiselessly, checkered with misty erratic blobs of shadow. They marched in unison, seven of them, with Dave at the head. They wheeled and turned in macabre simultaneity; and melted through changes of formation with the weird ease of chorus dancers in Lunar Bowl.

Donovan was back with the suits, “They’ve gone jingo on us, Greg. That’s a military march.”

“For all you know,” was the cold response, “it may be a series of callisthenic exercises. Or Dave may be under the hallucination of being a dancing master. Just you think first, and don’t bother to speak afterward, either.”

Donovan scowled and slipped a detonator into the empty side holster with an ostentatious shove. He said, “Anyway, there you are. So we work with new-model robots. It’s our job, granted. But answer me one question. Why... why does something invariably go wrong with them?”

“Because,” said Powell, somberly, “we are accursed. Let’s go!”

Far ahead through the thick velvety blackness of the corridors that reached past the illuminated circles of their flashlights, robot light twinkled.

“There they are,” breathed Donovan.

Powell whispered tensely, “I’ve been trying to get him by radio but he doesn’t answer. The radio circuit is probably out.”

“Then I’m glad the designers haven’t worked out robots who can work in total darkness yet. I’d hate to have to find seven mad robots in a black pit without radio communication, if they weren’t lit up like blasted radioactive Christmas trees.”

“Crawl up on the ledge above, Mike. They’re coming this way, and I want to watch them at close range. Can you make it?”

Donovan made the jump with a grunt. Gravity was considerably below Earth-normal, but with a heavy suit, the advantage was not too great, and the ledge meant a near ten-foot jump. Powell followed.

The column of robots was trailing Dave single-file. In mechanical rhythm, they converted to double and returned to single in different order. It was repeated over and over again and Dave never turned his head.

Dave was within twenty feet when the play-acting ceased. The subsidiary robots broke formation, waited a moment, then clattered off into the distance – very rapidly. Dave looked after them, then slowly sat down. He rested his head in one hand in a very human gesture.

His voice sounded in Powell’s earphones, “Are you here, boss?”

Powell beckoned to Donovan and hopped off the ledge.

“O.K., Dave, what’s been going on?”

The robot shook his head, “I don’t know. One moment I was handling a tough outcropping in Tunnel 17, and the next I was aware of humans close by, and I found myself half a mile down main-stem.”

“Where are the subsidiaries now?” asked Donovan.

“Back at work, of course. How much time has been lost?”

“Not much. Forget it.” Then to Donovan, Powell added, “Stay with him the rest of the shift. Then, come back. I’ve got a couple of ideas.”

It was three hours before Donovan returned. He looked tired. Powell said, “How did it go?”

Donovan shrugged wearily, “Nothing ever goes wrong when you watch them. Throw me a butt, will you?”

The redhead lit it with exaggerated care and blew a careful smoke ring. He said, “I’ve been working it out, Greg. You know, Dave has a queer background for a robot. There are six others under him in an extreme regimentation. He’s got life and death power over those subsidiary robots and it must react on his mentality. Suppose he finds it necessary to emphasize this power as a concession to his ego.”

“Get to the point.”

“It’s right here. Suppose we have militarism. Suppose he’s fashioning himself an army. Suppose – he’s training them in military maneuvers. Suppose-”

“Suppose you go soak your head. Your nightmares must be in technicolor. You’re postulating a major aberration of the positronic brain. If your analysis were correct, Dave would have to break down the First Law of Robotics: that a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to be injured. The type of militaristic attitude and domineering ego you propose must have as the end-point of its logical implications, domination of humans.”

“All right. How do you know that isn’t the fact of the matter?”

“Because any robot with a brain like that would, one, never have left the factory, and two, be spotted immediately if it ever was. I tested Dave, you know.”

Powell shoved his chair back and put his feet on the desk. “No. We’re still in the position where we can’t make our stew because we haven’t the slightest notion as to what’s wrong. For instance, if we could find out what that dance macabre we witnessed was all about, we would be on the way out.”

He paused, “Now listen, Mike, how does this sound to you? Dave goes wrong only when neither of us is present. And when he is wrong, the arrival of either of us snaps him out of it.”

“I once told you that was sinister.”

“Don’t interrupt. How is a robot different when humans are not present? The answer is obvious. There is a larger requirement of personal initiative. In that case, look for the body parts that are affected by the new requirements.”

“Golly.” Donovan sat up straight, then subsided. “No, no. Not enough. It’s too broad. It doesn’t cut the possibilities much.”

“Can’t help that. In any case, there’s no danger of not making quota. We’ll take shifts watching those robots through the visor. Any time anything goes wrong, we get to the scene of action immediately. That will put them right.”

“But the robots will fail spec anyway, Greg. United States Robots can’t market DV models with a report like that.”

“Obviously. We’ve got to locate the error in make-up and correct it – and we’ve got ten days to do it in.” Powell scratched his head. “The trouble is... well, you had better look at the blueprints yourself.”

The blueprints covered the floor like a carpet and Donovan crawled over the face of them following Powell’s erratic pencil.

Powell said, “Here’s where you come in, Mike. You’re the body specialist, and I want you to check me. I’ve been trying to cut out all circuits not involved in the personal initiative hookup. Right here, for instance, is the trunk artery involving mechanical operations. I cut out all routine side routes as emergency divisions-” He looked up, “What do you think?”

Donovan had a very bad taste in his mouth, “The job’s not that simple, Greg. Personal initiative isn’t an electric circuit you can separate from the rest and study. When a robot is on his own, the intensity of the body activity increases immediately on almost all fronts. There isn’t a circuit entirely unaffected. What must be done is to locate the particular condition – a very specific condition – that throws him off, and then start eliminating circuits.”

Powell got up and dusted himself, “Hmph. All right. Take away the blueprints and burn them.”

Donovan said, “You see when activity intensifies, anything can happen, given one single faulty part. Insulation breaks down, a condenser spills over, a connection sparks, a coil overheats. And if you work blind, with the whole robot to choose from, you’ll never find the bad spot. If you take Dave apart and test every point of his body mechanism one by one, putting him together each time, and trying him out”

“All right. All right. I can see through a porthole, too.”

They faced each other hopelessly, and then Powell said cautiously, “Suppose we interview one of the subsidiaries.”

Neither Powell nor Donovan had ever had previous occasion to talk to a “finger.” It could talk; it wasn’t quite the perfect analogy to a human finger. In fact, it had a fairly developed brain, but that brain was tuned primarily to the reception of orders via positronic field, and its reaction to independent stimuli was rather fumbling.

Nor was Powell certain as to its name. Its serial number was DV-5-2, but that was not very useful.

He compromised. “Look, pal,” he said, “I’m going to ask you to do some hard thinking and then you can go back to your boss.”

The “finger” nodded its head stiffly, but did not exert its limited brainpower on speech.

“Now on four occasions recently,” Powell said, “your boss deviated from brain-scheme. Do you remember those occasions?”

“Yes, sir.”

Donovan growled angrily, “He remembers. I tell you there is something very sinister-”

“Oh, go bash your skull. Of course, the ‘finger’ remembers. There is nothing wrong with him.” Powell turned back to the robot, “What were you doing each time... I mean the whole group”

The “finger” had a curious air of reciting by rote, as if he answered questions by the mechanical pressure of his brainpan, but without any enthusiasm whatever.

He said, “The first time we were at work on a difficult outcropping in Tunnel 17, Level B. The second time we were buttressing the roof against a possible cave-in. The third time we were preparing accurate blasts in order to tunnel farther without breaking into a subterranean fissure. The fourth time was just after a minor cave-in”

“What happened at these times?”

“It is difficult to describe. An order would be issued, but before we could receive and interpret it, a new order came to march in queer formation.”

Powell snapped out, “Why?”

“I don’t know.”

Donovan broke in tensely, “What was the first order... the one that was superseded by the marching directions?”

“I don’t know. I sensed that an order was sent, but there was never time to receive it.”

“Could you tell us anything about it? Was it the same order each time?”

The “finger” shook his head unhappily, “I don’t know.”

Powell leaned back, “All right, get back to your boss.”

The “finger” left, with visible relief.

Donovan said, “Well, we accomplished a lot that time. That was real sharp dialogue all the way through. Listen, Dave and that imbecile ‘finger’ are both holding out on us. There is too much they don’t know and don’t remember. We’ve got to stop trusting them, Greg.”

Powell brushed his mustache the wrong way, “So help me, Mike, another fool remark out of you, and I’ll take away your rattle and teething ring.”

“All right. You’re the genius of the team. I’m just a poor sucker. Where do we stand?”

“Right behind the eight ball. I tried to work it backward through the ‘finger,’ and couldn’t. So we’ve got to work it forward.”

“A great man,” marveled Donovan. “How simple that makes it. Now translate that into English, Master.”

“Translating it into baby talk would suit you better. I mean that we’ve got to find out what order it is that Dave gives just before everything goes black. It would be the key to the business.”

“And how do you expect to do that? We can’t get close to him because nothing will go wrong as long as we are there. We can’t catch the orders by radio because they are transmitted via this positronic field. That eliminates the close-range and the long-range method, leaving us a neat, cozy zero.”

“By direct observation, yes. There’s still deduction.”

“Huh?”

“We’re going on shifts, Mike.” Powell smiled grimly. “And we are not taking our eyes off the visiplate. We’re going to watch every action of those steel headaches. When they go off into their act, we’re going to see what happened immediately before and we’re going to deduce the order.”

Donovan opened his mouth and left it that way for a full minute. Then he said in strangled tones, “I resign. I quit.”

“You have ten days to think up something better,” said Powell wearily.

Which, for eight days, Donovan tried mightily to do. For eight days, on alternate four-hour shifts, he watched with aching and bleary eyes those glinty metallic forms move against the vague background. And for eight days in the four-hour in-betweens, he cursed United States Robots, the DV models, and the day he was born.

And then on the eighth day, when Powell entered with an aching head and sleepy eyes for his shift, Donovan stood up and with very careful and deliberate aim launched a heavy bookend for the exact center of the visiplate. There was a very appropriate splintering noise.

Powell gasped, “What did you do that for?”

“Because,” said Donovan, almost calmly, “I’m not watching it any more. We’ve got two days left and we haven’t found out a thing. DV-5 is a lousy loss. He’s stopped five times since I’ve been watching and three times on your shift, and I can’t make out what orders he gave, and you couldn’t make it out. And I don’t believe you could ever make it out because I know I couldn’t ever.”

“Jumping Space, how can you watch six robots at the same time? One makes with the hands, and one with the feet and one like a windmill and another is jumping up and down like a maniac. And the other two... devil knows what they are doing. And then they all stop. So! So!”

“Greg, we’re not doing it right. We got to get up close. We’ve got to watch what they’re doing from where we can see the details.”

Powell broke a bitter silence. “Yeah, and wait for something to go wrong with only two days to go.”

“Is it any better watching from here?”

“It’s more comfortable.”

“Ah – But there’s something you can do there that you can’t do here.”

“What’s that?”

“You can make them stop – at whatever time you choose and while you’re prepared and watching to see what goes wrong.”

Powell startled into alertness, “Howzzat?”

“Well, figure it out, yourself. You’re the brains you say. Ask yourself some questions. When does DV-5 go out of whack? When did that ‘finger’ say he did? When a cave-in threatened, or actually occurred, when delicately measured explosives were being laid down, when a difficult seam was hit.”