Asimov's Future History Volume 4 (66 page)

Baley said, “On Earth, we think of Spacers as all-powerful, as totally self-confident. I cannot believe I’m heating this from one of you.”

“You won’t from any other Spacer. My views are unfashionable. Others would find them intolerable and I don’t often speak of such things to Aurorans. Instead, I simply talk about a new drive for further settlement, without expressing my fears of the catastrophes which will result if we abandon colonization. In that, at least, I have been winning. Aurora has been seriously–even enthusiastically–considering a new era of exploration and settlement.”

“You say that,” said Baley, “without any noticeable enthusiasm. What’s wrong?”

“It’s just that we are approaching my motive for the destruction of Jander Panell.”

Fastolfe paused, shook his head, and continued, “I wish, Mr. Baley, I could understand human beings better. I have spent six decades in studying the intricacies of the positronic brain and I expect to spend fifteen to twenty more on the problem. In this time, I have barely brushed against the problem of the
human
brain, which is enormously more intricate. Are there Laws of Humanics as there are Laws of Robotics? How many Laws of Humanics might there be and how can they be expressed mathematically? I don’t know.

“Perhaps, though, there may come a day when someone will work out the Laws of Humanics and then be able to predict the broad strokes of the future, and
know
what might be in store for humanity, instead of merely guessing as I do, and
know
what to do to make things better, instead of merely speculating. I dream sometimes of founding a mathematical science which I think of as ‘psychohistory,’ but I know I can’t and I fear no one ever will.”

He faded to a halt.

Baley waited, then said softly, “And your motive for the destruction of Jander Panell, Dr. Fastolfe?”

Fastolfe did not seem to hear the question. At any rate, he did not respond. He said, instead, “Daneel and Giskard are again signaling that all is clear. Tell me, Mr. Baley, would you consider walking with me farther afield?”

“Where?” asked Baley cautiously.

“Toward a neighboring establishment. In that direction, across the lawn. Would the openness disturb you?”

Baley pressed his lips together and looked in that direction, as though attempting to measure its effect. “I believe I could endure it I anticipate no trouble.”

Giskard, who was close enough to hear, now approached still closer, his eyes showing no glow in the daylight. If his voice was without human emotion, his words marked his concern. “Sir, may I remind you that on the journey here you suffered serious discomfort on the descent to the planet?”

Baley turned to face him. However he might feel toward Daneel, whatever warmth of past association might paper over his attitude toward robots, there was none here. He found the more primitive Giskard distinctly repellent. He labored to fight down the touch of anger he felt and said, “I was incautious aboard ship, boy, because I was overly curious. I faced a vision I had never experienced before and I had no time for adjustment. This is different.”

“Sir, do you feel discomfort now? May I be assured of that?”

“Whether I do or not,” said Baley firmly (reminding himself that the robot was helplessly in the grip of the First Law and trying to be polite to a lump of metal who, after all, had Baley’s welfare as his only care) “doesn’t matter. I have my duty to perform and that cannot be done if I am to hide in enclosures.”

“Your duty?” Giskard said it as though he had not been programmed to understand the word.

Baley looked quickly in Fastolfe’s direction, but Fastolfe stood quietly in his place and made no move to intervene. He seemed to be listening with abstracted interest, as though weighing the reaction of a robot of a given type to a new situation and comparing it with relationships, variables, constants, and differential equations only he understood.

Or so Baley thought. He felt annoyed at being part of an observation of that type and said (perhaps too sharply, he knew), “Do you know what ‘duty’ means?”

“That which should be done, sir,” said Giskard.

“Your duty is to obey the Laws of Robotics. And human beings have their laws, too–as your master, Dr. Fastolfe, was only this moment saying–which must be obeyed. I must do that which I have been assigned to do. It is important”

“But to go into the open when you are not–”

“It must be done, nevertheless. My son may someday go to another planet, one much less comfortable than this one, and expose himself to the Outside for the rest of his life. And if I could, I would go with him.”

“But why would you do that?”

“I have told you. I consider it my duty.”

“Sir, I cannot disobey the Laws. Can you disobey yours? For I must urge you to–”

“I can choose not to do my duty, but I do not choose to–and that is sometimes the stronger compulsion, Giskard.”

There was silence for a moment and then Giskard said, “Would it do you harm if I were to succeed in persuading you not to walk into the open?”

“Insofar as I would then feel I have failed in my duty, it would.”

“More harm than any discomfort you might feel in the open?”

“Much more.”

“Thank you for explaining this, sir,” said Giskard and Baley imagined there was a look of satisfaction on the robot’s largely expressionless face. (The human tendency to personify was irrepressible.)

Giskard stepped back and now Dr. Fastolfe spoke. “That was interesting, Mr. Baley. Giskard needed instructions before he could quite understand how to arrange the positronic potential response to the Three Laws or, rather, how those potentials were to arrange themselves in the light of the situation. Now he knows how to behave.”

Baley said, “I notice that Daneel asked no questions.”

Fastolfe said, “Daneel knows you. He has been with you on Earth and on Solaria.–But come, shall we walk? Let us move slowly. Look about carefully and, if at any time you should wish to rest, to wait, even to turn back, I will count on you to let me know.”

“I will, but what is the purpose of this walk? Since you anticipate possible discomfort on my part, you cannot be suggesting it idly.”

“I am not,” said Fastolfe. “I think you will want to see the inert body of Jander.”

“As a matter of form, yes, but I rather think it will tell me nothing.”

“I’m sure of that, but then you might also have the opportunity to question the one who was Jander’s quasi-owner at the time of the tragedy. Surely you would like to speak to some human being other than myself concerning the matter.”

22.

F
ASTOLFE
MOVED
SLOWLY
forward, plucking a leaf from a shrub that he passed, bending it in two, and nibbling at it.

Baley looked at him curiously, wondering how Spacers could put something untreated, unheated, even unwashed into their mouths, when they feared infection so badly. He remembered that Aurora was free
(entirely
free?) of pathogenic microorganisms, but found the action repulsive anyway. Repulsion did not have to have a rational basis, he thought defensively–and suddenly found himself on the edge of excusing the Spacers their attitude toward Earthmen.

He drew back! That was different! Human beings were involved there!

Giskard moved ahead, forward and toward the right. Daneel lagged behind and toward the left. Aurora’s orange sun (Baley scarcely noted the orange tinge now) was mildly warm on his back, lacking the febrile heat that Earth’s sun had in summer (but, then, what was the climate and season on this portion of Aurora right now?).

The grass or whatever it was (it looked like grass) was a bit stiffer and springier than he recalled it being on Earth and the ground was hard, as though it had not rained for a while.

They were moving toward the house up ahead, presumably the house of Jander’s quasi-owner.

Baley could hear the rustle of some animal in the grass to the right, the sudden chirrup of a bird somewhere in a tree behind him, the small unplaceable clatter of insects all about. These, he told himself, were all animals with ancestors that had once lived on Earth. They had no way of knowing that this patch of ground they inhabited was not all there was–forever and forever back in time. The very trees and grass had arisen from other trees and grass that had once grown on Earth.

Only human beings could live on this world and know that they were not autochthonous but had stemmed from Earthmen–and yet did the Spacers really know it or did they simply put it out of their mind? Would the time come, perhaps, when they would not know it at all? When they would not remember which world they had come from or whether there was a world of origin at all?

“Dr. Fastolfe,” he said suddenly, in part to break the chain of thought that he found to be growing oppressive, “you still have not told me your motive for the destruction of Jander.”

“True! I have not!–Now why do you suppose, Mr. Baley, I have labored to work out the theoretical basis for the positronic brains of humaniform robots?”

“I cannot say.”

“Well, think. The task is to design a robotic brain as close to the human as possible and that would require, it would seem, a certain reach into the poetic–” He paused and his small smile became an outright grin. “You know it always bothers some of my colleagues when I tell them that, if a conclusion is not poetically balanced, it cannot be scientifically true. They tell me they don’t know what that means.”

Baley said, “I’m afraid I don’t, either.”

“But I know what it means. I can’t explain it, but I feel the explanation without being able to put it into words, which may be why I have achieved results my colleagues have not. However, I grow grandiose, which is a good sign I should become prosaic. To imitate a human brain, when I know almost nothing about the workings of the human brain, needs an intuitive leap–something that feels to me like poetry. And the same intuitive leap that would give me the humaniform positronic brain should surely give me a new access of knowledge about the human brain itself. That was my belief–that through humaniformity I might take at least a small step toward the psychohistory I told you about.”

“I see.”

“And if I succeeded in working out a theoretical structure that would imply a humaniform positronic brain, I would need a humaniform body to place it in. The brain does not exist by itself, you understand. It interacts with the body, so that a humaniform brain in a nonhumaniform body would become, to an extent, itself nonhuman.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“Quite. You have only to compare Daneel with Giskard.”

“Then Daneel was constructed as an experimental device for furthering the understanding of the human brain?”

“You have it. I labored two decades at the task with Sarton. There were numerous failures that had to be discarded. Daneel was the first true success and, of course, I kept him for further study–and out of”–he grinned lopsidedly, as though admitting to something silly–” affection. After all, Daneel can grasp the notion of human duty, while Giskard, with all his virtues, has trouble doing so. You saw.”

“And Daneel’s stay on Earth with me, three years ago, was his first assigned task?”

“His first of any importance, yes. When Sarton was murdered, we needed something that was a robot and could withstand the infectious diseases of Earth and yet looked enough like a man to get around the antirobotic prejudices of Earth’s people.”

“An astonishing coincidence that Daneel should be right at hand at that time.”

“Oh? Do you believe in coincidences? It is my feeling that any time at which a development as revolutionary as the humaniform robot came into being, some task that would require its use would present itself. Similar tasks had probably been presenting themselves regularly in all the years that Daneel did not exist–and because Daneel did not exist, other solutions and devices had to be used.”

“And have your labors been successful, Dr. Fastolfe? Do you now understand the human brain better than you did?”

Fastolfe had been moving more and more slowly and Baley had been matching his progress to the other’s. They were now standing still, about halfway between Fastolfe’s establishment and the other’s. It was the most difficult point for Baley, since it was equally distant from protection in either direction, but he fought down the growing uneasiness, determined not to provoke Giskard. He did not wish by some motion or outcry–or even expression–to activate the inconvenience of Giskard’s desire to save him. He did not want to have himself lifted up and carried off to shelter.

Fastolfe showed no sign of understanding Baley’s difficulty. He said, “There’s no question but that advances in mentology have been carried through. There remain enormous problems and perhaps these will always remain, but there has been progress. Still–”

“Still?”

“Still, Aurora is not satisfied with a purely theoretical study of the human brain. Uses for humaniform robots have been advanced that I do not approve of.”

“Such as the use on Earth.”

“No, that was a brief experiment that I rather approved of and was even fascinated by. Could Daneel fool Earthpeople? It turned out he could, though, of course, the eyes of Earthmen for robots are not very keen. Daneel cannot fool the eyes of Aurorans, though I dare say future humaniform robots could be improved to the point where they would. There are other tasks that have been proposed, however.”

“Such as?”

Fastolfe gazed thoughtfully into the distance. “I told you this world was tame. When I began my movement to encourage a renewed period of exploration and settlement, it was not to the supercomfortable Aurorans–or Spacers generally–that I looked for leadership. I rather thought we ought to encourage Earthmen to take the lead. With their horrid world–excuse me–and short life-span, they have so little to lose, I thought that they would surely welcome the chance, especially if we were to help them technologically. I spoke to you about such a thing when I saw you on Earth three years ago. Do you remember?” He looked sidelong at Baley.

Baley said stolidly, “I remember quite well. In fact, you started a chain of thought in me that has resulted in a small movement on Earth in that very direction.”