Foundation’s Friends

“Resist the will of the humans who sent you?” Powell purred. After a minute he saw the moonscape jerk, and went on quickly, hoping the robot would not cut him off, “Our purpose is to show you that we are indeed humans, ourselves, whatever Napoleon may be, and therefore you must, under Code Upsilon, accept that Earth is not endangered and you should resume work. Pay close attention. “

Did a sentient machine afar in space tune himself high as the words reached him?

Powell turned his gaze on Donovan. “Now, Mike,” he said, “I want you to tell me truthfully-truthfully, mind you-that you’re neither a human nor a robot.”

Donovan shivered with eagerness. “I am neither,” he responded. “Now you, Greg, tell me truthfully that you are neither human nor robot. “

“I am neither.” Powell looked straight before him again, into the vision whose eyes he could not see. “Did you hear, Jack? Think about it. The order was to answer the question truthfully. No threat to a human was involved, therefore any robot must obey to the extent possible. However, the single possible answer for him is, ‘I ca

Wire-tense, the men waited.

Did something whisper unrelayed from the deeps, of did Jack’s own intelligence see the fallacy? The reply took longer than transmission would account for. “That is correct if…if the questioner is human. But if…he is a robot…then another robot can…perfectly well, disobediently, lie-especially if he has been so directed beforehand. The same…holds good for…every such dialogue. It proves nothing. Stop pestering me!”

Powell and Donovan sat mute. “Napoleon, have you any comment?” Borup attempted. Silence answered him.

Jack blanked the screen.

Not even fried herring with potatoes consoled.

The men chewed unspeaking. It was as if they saw, they felt, the immensity and the cold outside this hull. The failure of a venture, the death of many hopes, what were those that the stars were mindful of them?

When Ole at last brought coffee, it revived his master a little. “If Yack is pure crazy, he still has a good logical noodle,” he opined. “You keep after him. Make him t’ink. For instance, would not those viroids make Io have different rocks from what it does?”

Powell shook his head. “No doubt, but what they educated him in was Ionian geology as it is. His job was practical, not scientific. Whenever he noticed anomalies, he was to get on the beam and query the specialists back home. We don’t have time to teach him. Couldn’t you hear how agitated he was?” Powell looked up. “Yes. Each contact has made his condition worse. Unless we can invent a scheme we know will be productive, we’d better quit. Maybe Susan Calvin can generate an idea.”

“That won’t do anything productive for our careers,” Donovan muttered.

“To hell with our careers…But I don’t expect the old lady can solve our problem from her armchair on Earth. Otherwise we wouldn’t have been dispatched. With the kind of transmission delay involved, she couldn’t work her slick robopsych tricks.”

“I s’pose.” Donovan gusted a sigh. “I can’t think how to lure Napoleon into talking to us, and maybe he doesn’t exist anyway. What say we assume he doesn’t, assume Jack is demented, and try figuring out how to get him to board a ship, or at least keep from sniping at new arrivals? If there’ll ever be any.”

“We’ll give our wits a few days to work, and hope for a script that he won’t see through.”

“I wonder if you can,” Borup said. “I am no expert, but I have known people wit’ strange notions, and they can be very smart, yes, brilliant about defending those notions. They sit in their Plato caves till deat’ comes and kicks them in the behind-”

He broke off. Donovan had smacked fist into palm. Powell drew a whistling breath.

“Hello, Jack.”

The scene was not the base. Rubble lay dark under waxing Jupiter, beneath gashed heights. Volcano fumes lifted dirty white and yellow beyond a ridge. Jack was in the field, readying his caches and strongpoints for war.

The view swayed giddyingly as he straightened. “What do you want now?” It was nearly a shriek. “I told you to leave me alone. I need not listen to you. I can switch off.”

“Just wait. Just wait. “ Until these waves wing out to Napoleon, wherever he is, if he is. “Be calm,” Powell urged. “You’ve demanded positive proof that my companions and I are human. Well, we have it for you. “

Empty time.

“You have tried. What is the certainty? If…you are robots…you are acting under orders. Your… masters…can have foreseen…many…contingencies.”

“Then our masters are human,” Donovan said. “Shouldn’t you hear what they tell you through us?”

He was taking a risk. The suspense was like a slow fire before they heard Jack utter a raw noise. But it was desirable to perturb Napoleon too, if Napoleon was there to be troubled in his own sureness.

“We are human,” Powell said quickly. “You force us, in this emergency, to demonstrate it, no matter what that costs us. Then maybe you ‘II be sorry and obey the surviving member of our party. “

“Remember, if what Napoleon has told you is true,” Donovan joined in-if what Napoleon had been told was true-”we can’t be human. We must be robots, pretending. We must be what he sees on his screen. But if we are human, then Napoleon has told you wrong. Correct?”

Probably Jack never noticed the sweat on the two faces. “Pay close attention,” Powell directed.

Rising, he lifted a detonol stick and brandished it like a sword. Donovan got up too and said, “Greg, I hereby, uh, well, this is the time for you to do what I told you you’d have to do if matters got this desperate. Destroy yourself.”

Powell pulled out the firing pin. It wobbled in his right hand, the stick in his left. “Mike,” he replied, “I order you to destroy yourself.”

Donovan brought his explosive into view and, having yanked the pin free, held the stick dramatically against his throat. The men faced each other. In a proper gravity field their knees might have given way, but here they could somehow keep standing, after a fashion. They breathed hard and raggedly.

“Stop!” Jack’s cry came loud, yet as if from across light-years. “Return those disarmers!”

“If we are robots,” Donovan grated, “why should you care?”

Empty time.

“Third Law! You must!”

“We, we have our orders,” Powell stammered.

Each minute was forever.

At four and a half, Borup entered, halted, stared. “What is this?” he shouted. “Are you crazy too?”

“We have our orders,” Powell repeated.

“I countermand them!” Borup said. “Disarm those stickst”

For an instant it seemed that Donovan wouldn’t manage it, as badly as his hand was shaking. He did, though. Powell’s pin had already snicked home. They sank limply into their chairs and waited.

After a sixth minute, the swaying image of what Jack saw abruptly had another in it, that of a short, stout man in a cocked hat and epauletted greatcoat. The representation was lifeless, practically a caricature-good enough for an unsophisticated robot-and the audio conveyed little of the torment behind the words.

“Masters, masters! Forgive me! I must have been mistaken, deceived-Are you on Himalia? I shall come straight to you and do whatever you want. Hear me, judge me, forgive me!”

Ole was preparing a victory feast. Borup would not tell his passengers what it was. “ A surprise, somet’ing special and delicious,” he averred, “wit’ red cabbage. Meanwhile, we have our akvavit and, yes, a case of beer I keep for emeryencies. Or for celebrations, no?”

Powell and Donovan didn’t accept at once. They were amply elated as they sat before the station communicator and sent their encoded message homeward.

“…yes, he’s here, thoroughly penitent. Still bewildered, of course, poor devil. After all, he was obeying the humans who’d trained him. No, we aren’t leaning on him about them. We’ve given him the impression we agree they were doubtless simply misguided, and once we reach Earth, everything will soon be straightened out. In case Napoleon does get rambunctious en route, well, he’s a little one, and we have two husky crewrobots to keep him in hand.

“No, we haven’t played detective and tried to find out who the guilty parties are. That’s for the police, or for Dr. Calvin. We can’t help making some pretty shrewd guesses.

“Jack will need a bit of therapy. He’s more than willing to go back to work, but he’s been through a nightmare and ought to be restabilized first. Any smart young robopsychologist should be able to come out here and take care of that in short order.

“We look forward to seeing what this sensation will do to the political picture!”

Powell had been talking. He glanced at Donovan. “Okay, pal,” he invited. “Your turn to bask in the glory.”

Donovan beamed, cleared his throat, and began: “The problem was, what could we do that humans could but robots not, under the circumstances?

“Well, uh, suppose we ordered each other to self-destruct. There was no clear reason for that. How could it help our purpose? Jack would still suppose we were play-acting. So if we were both robots, we’d disobey the order.

“If one of us was a robot and the other not, the robot would obey; the human might or might not.

“If we were both human, probably neither of us would obey, but we both could if we chose to.

“We both chose to. At the last instant, Captain Borup came in and countermanded the orders. Now if he were a robot, that wouldn’t have changed the situation. Whether we were robot or human, neither of us was bound to obey him. Therefore, if either or both of us did, he must be human.”

Donovan’s laugh was nervous. “Obviously, we never meant to go all the way, whatever happened. We certainly intended to heed Captain Borup-and sweated that out, I can tell you! But we had to show that this was not mere play-acting.

“Jack might be too stressed to think fast, but if Napoleon was watching, he’d know that a robot can only tell a human to suicide if the robot knows in advance that this is a charade-whether or not the robot’s own suicide is part of the deal. If the human then actually pulls the pin, endangers himself, he’ll have to intervene. Maybe not at once, but in plenty of time to make sure the explosive won’t go off. But the two of us stood tight till the moment was only seconds away and the third man arrived.