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Liar!
Alfred La
“It reads minds all right-damn little doubt about that! But why?” He looked at Mathematician Peter Bogert, “Well?”
Bogert flattened his black hair down with both hands, “That was the thirty-fourth RB model we’ve turned out, La
The third man at the table frowned. Milton Ashe was the youngest officer of U. S. Robot amp; Mechanical Men, Inc., and proud of his post.
“Listen, Bogert. There wasn’t a hitch in the assembly from start to finish. I guarantee that.”
Bogert’s thick lips spread in a patronizing smile, “Do you? If you can answer for the entire assembly line, I recommend your promotion. By exact count, there are seventy-five thousand, two hundred and thirty-four operations necessary for the manufacture of a single positronic brain, each separate operation depending for successful completion upon any number of factors, from five to a hundred and five. If any one of them goes seriously wrong, the ‘brain’ is ruined. I quote our own information folder, Ashe.”
Milton Ashe flushed, but a fourth voice cut off his reply.
“If we’re going to start by trying to fix the blame on one another, I’m leaving.” Susan Calvin’s hands were folded tightly in her lap, and the little lines about her thin, pale lips deepened, “We’ve got a mind-reading robot on our hands and it strikes me as rather important that we find out just why it reads minds. We’re not going to do that by saying, ‘Your fault! My fault!’ “
Her cold gray eyes fastened upon Ashe, and he gri
La
His voice became suddenly crisp, “Here’s everything in pill-concentrate form. We’ve produced a positronic brain of supposedly ordinary vintage that’s got the remarkable property of being able to tune in on thought waves. It would mark the most important advance in robotics in decades, if we knew how it happened. We don’t, and we have to find out. Is that clear?”
“May I make a suggestion?” asked Bogert.
“Go ahead!”
“I’d say that until we do figure out the mess – and as a mathematician I expect it to be a very devil of a mess – we keep the existence of RD-34 a secret. I mean even from the other members of the staff. As heads of the departments, we ought not to find it an insoluble problem, and the fewer know about it-”
“Bogert is right,” said Dr. Calvin. “Ever since the Interplanetary Code was modified to allow robot models to be tested in the plants before being shipped out to space, antirobot propaganda has increased. If any word leaks out about a robot being able to read minds before we can a
La
“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. Oberma
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 La
“I imagine it would,” said Susan Calvin thoughtfully. Her eyes fixed themselves upon Ashe in an oddly intent ma
La
“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 gri
La
La
“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 La
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.”