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[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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 Lanning. Having
it walking beside me, calmly peering into my thoughts and picking and
choosing among them gave me the willies."
"I imagine it would," said Susan Calvin thoughtfully. Her eyes fixed
themselves upon Ashe in an oddly intent manner. "We are so accustomed to
considering our own thoughts private."
Lanning broke in impatiently, "Then only the four of us know. All right!
We've got to go about this systematically. Ashe, I want you to check over the
assembly line from beginning to end -everything. You're to eliminate all
operations in which there was no possible chance of an error, and list all
those where there were, together with its nature and possible magnitude."
"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 grinned wryly. "It's still a lulu of
a job."
Lanning swiveled about in his chair and faced Calvin, "You'll have to
tackle the job from the other direction. You're the robo-psychologist of the
plant, so you're to study the robot itself and work backward. Try to find out
how he ticks. See what else is tied up with his telepathic powers, how far they
extend, how they warp his outlook, and just exactly what harm it has done to
his ordinary RB properties. You've got that?"
Lanning didn't wait for Dr. Calvin to answer.
"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 Lanning grunted and
said, "Do you want to go up and see RB-34 now, Dr. Calvin?"
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.
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"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 make-shift 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."
"Yes, but I'm afraid that after going through some of the harrowing
emotional experiences of our present-day sentimental novel" - there was a
tinge of bitterness in her voice - "you find real minds like ours dull and
colorless."
"But I don't!"
The sudden energy in the response brought the other to her feet. She
felt herself reddening, and thought wildly, "He must know!"
Herbie subsided suddenly, and muttered in a low voice from which the
metallic timbre departed almost entirely. "But, of course, I know about it, Dr.
Calvin. You think of it always, so how can I help but know?"
Her face was hard. "Have you - told anyone?"
"Of course not!" This, with genuine surprise. "No one has asked me."
"Well, then," she flung out, "I suppose you think I am a fool."
"No! It is a normal emotion."
"Perhaps that is why it is so foolish." The wistfulness in her voice
drowned out everything else. Some of the woman peered through the layer of
doctorhood. "I am not what you would call - attractive."
"If you are referring to mere physical attraction, I couldn't judge. But I
know, in any case, that there are other types of attraction."
"Nor young." Dr. Calvin had scarcely heard the robot.
"You are not yet forty." An anxious insistence had crept into Herbie's
voice.
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"Thirty-eight as you count the years; a shriveled sixty as far as my
emotional outlook on life is concerned. Am I a psychologist for nothing?"
She drove on with bitter breathlessness, "And he's barely thirty-five and
looks and acts younger. Do you suppose he ever sees me as anything but... but
what I am?"
"You are wrong!" Herbie's steel fist struck the plastictopped table with a
strident clang. "Listen to me-"
But Susan Calvin whirled on him now and the hunted pain in her eyes
became a blaze, "Why should I? What do you know about it all, anyway, you...
you machine. I'm just a specimen to you; an interesting bug with a peculiar
mind spread-eagled for inspection. It's a wonderful example of frustration,
isn't it? Almost as good as your books." Her voice, emerging in dry sobs,
choked into silence.
The robot cowered at the outburst. He shook his head pleadingly.
"Won't you listen to me, please? I could help you if you would let me."
"How?" Her lips curled. "By giving me good advice?"
"No, not that. It's just that I know what other people think - Milton
Ashe, for instance."
There was a long silence, and Susan Calvin's eyes dropped. "I don't want
to know what he thinks," she gasped. "Keep quiet."
"I think you would want to know what he thinks"
Her head remained bent, but her breath came more quickly. "You are
talking nonsense," she whispered.
"Why should I? I am trying to help. Milton Ashe's thoughts of you-" he
paused.
And then the psychologist raised her head, "Well?"
The robot said quietly, "He loves you."
For a full minute, Dr. Calvin did not speak. She merely stared. Then,
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