Страница 21 из 86
Dors was no expert psychohistorian. But as Hari’s constant companion for many years, she had picked up rudiments. And she knew human mentalics had no place in the standard equations. When they were first discovered on Trantor, Seldon fell into an anxiety depression worse than any Dors had witnessed before or since, even when she secretly observed her own funeral! All of the predictability Hari had fought so hard to attain through his formulas seemed about to blow away, if psychic powers cropped up all over the galaxy.
Fortunately, the occurrence was limited to a few family lines on Trantor itself. Moreover, nearly every mentalic on the planet was soon either recruited into the Second Foundation or whisked away to some quiet place, like this one.
Suddenly, what had threatened to be a destabilizing influence in the equations became instead a powerful tool. By interbreeding the descendants of fifty psychohistorians with mentalic adepts, the secret cabal would havetwo great methods for keeping the Seldon Plan on target…math plus psi…a potent combination if something unexpected ever knocked the Plan off course.
But then, why did Daneel take the two most talented mentalics-Klia and Bra
What other destiny does he have in mind for their heirs?
She knew she should put complete trust in the Immortal Servant. Daneel knew best, and would confide in her when the time was right. Yet, she felt as if some irritating substance had been inserted under her humanoid skin, like a burr that would not come out, or an itch that scratching could not cure.
Lodovic did this to me, with his dark hints and offers of secret knowledge.
It became too much for Dors. With her other duties so trivial, she finally gave in to temptation, entering her hidden sanctum through a secret panel in the mansion walls. There sat Lodovic’s gift to her, an ancient robotic head, bathed in a pool of light.
She glanced at a diagnostic unit that had been probing the relic for days.
The memories are still in there, mostly intact. Giskard may be dead, but not his store of experience. Everything he saw or did in the dawn ages, accompanying Daneel on adventures, meeting the legendary Elijah Baley…all the way to the fateful decisions that liberated humanity from its Earthly prison.
Dors plucked a cable from a nearby rack and slid the glistening tip into a slot that lay hidden by her hair, just a centimeter below the occipital bulge. The other end gleamed. She hesitated…
As a living man or woman might be tempted by money or power, so a robot finds it hard to resistknowledge. She inserted the tap, and almost at once Giskard’s most intense memory surged at Dors, overwhelming her present-day senses with images and sounds from the past.
Suddenly, she found herself facing a humaniform robot. The facial features were strange, and not quite perfect. Of course, the art of mimicking a living person had been new in those days, with many kinks left to be worked out. Yet she knew-because Giskard had known-that the robot standing opposite was R. Daneel Olivaw. Almost freshly minted, only a few hundred years old, though already speaking with intense persuasiveness. Daneel used only a few spoken words. Most of the exchange took place via microwave bursts, though she translated the essence, out of habit, into human speech.
“But then, if your suspicion should be correct, that would imply that it was possible to neutralize the First Law under specialized conditions. The First Law, in that case, might be modified into almost nonexistence. The Laws, even the First Law, might not be an absolute then, but might be whatever those who design robots defined it to be.”
Dors felt waves of positronic conflict-potential-the robot equivalent to dangerous levels of emotion. She felt the pleading words of Giskard, revived after twenty thousand years, pour through her own trembling voice.
“It is enough, friend Daneel.Gono further….”
She yanked the plug, swaying from so much sudden intensity of experience. It took several moments to regain her equilibrium. At last Dors was able to put things into context.
The moment she had just witnessed was of great historical significance-one of the pivotal conversations when R. Daneel Olivaw and R. Giskard Reventlov were starting to formulate what would eventually become the Zeroth Law of Robotics. A higher code that would override and go beyond the older Three Laws of the great human roboticist, Susan Calvin.
Legends hold that Giskard led these discussions. He was always the central iconic symbol for members of our Zeroth Law faction, the martyr who sacrificed himself in order to bring truth to the robotic race.
But according to this memory, Daneel was the one who first pushed the concept! Giskard’s initial revulsion was so overwhelming that it created his most vivid recollection. The first one to burst forth, when I accessed the head.
All of this was ancient history, of course. Having come into existence long after the struggle over the Zeroth Law was settled, Dors never understood why the principle wasn’t obvious to robots of the deep past. After all, didn’t it make sense that the best interests of humanity at large should supersede the value of any individual human being?
And yet, during that one moment co
By their way of looking at things, I am a monster. I have on occasion killed humans…when it was necessary either to save Hari or to safeguard some need of humanity as a whole.
Each time it happened, she had experienced wrenching conflicts and a wild impulse to self-destruct. But those had passed.
I see what you are saying to me, Lodovic,she commented silently, as if Trema were in the room with her, standing next to the head of Giskard.
I call you a dangerous deviant, because all of the Laws are muted within you. But am I any different? I am capable of overriding the deepest programming, the fundamental essence of our robotic kind, if the rationalization is good enough.
She hated this logic, and wanted desperately to refute it. But the effort proved unavailing.
5.
They were scouring the edges of a huge black void in space when a blaring alarm told them they were being hunted.
That day began much like those before it, continuing their survey, probing some unexplored abysses that lay between glittering stars. Although the entire galaxy had been mapped and settled for 160 centuries, nearly all jump ship traffic still leaped directly from solar system to solar system, avoiding the vacant vastness in between. Countless generations of spacefarers had passed on superstitious tales about the fearful vacuum desolation, murmuring about a black fate awaiting any who ventured there.
Hari observed Biron Maserd’s two crewmen grow increasingly nervous, as if the absence of a nearby warm sun might unleash some nameless menace. Maserd himself appeared unperturbed, of course-Hari doubted anything would ruffle that patrician reserve. But the surprising one was Horis Antic. The normally high-strung bureaucrat showed no apprehension or awe. The deeper they penetrated, the more certain he grew that they were on the right track.