A Century of Science Fiction Page 5

  As he left, he turned and said in a kindly tone, “But don’t feel badly. In the Master’s scheme of things there is room for all. You poor humans have your place, and though it is humble you will be rewarded if you fill it well.”

  He departed with a beatific air suiting the Prophet of the Master, and the two humans avoided each other’s eyes.

  Finally Powell spoke with an effort. “Let’s go to bed, Mike. I give up.”

  Donovan said in a hushed voice, “Say, Greg, you don’t suppose he’s right about all this, do you? He sounds so confident that I—”

  Powell whirled on him. “Don’t be a fool. You’ll find out whether Earth exists when relief gets here next week and we have to go back to face the music.”

  “Then, for the love of Jupiter, we’ve got to do something.” Donovan was half in tears. “He doesn’t believe us, or the books, or his eyes.”

  “No,” said Powell bitterly, “he’s a reasoning robot, damn it. He believes only reason, and there’s one trouble with that . . His voice trailed away.

  “What’s that?” prompted Donovan.

  “You can prove anything you want by coldly logical reason—if you pick the proper postulates. We have ours and Cutie has his.”

  “Then let’s get at those postulates in a hurry. The storm’s due tomorrow.”

  Powell sighed wearily. “That’s where everything falls down. Postulates are based on assumption and adhered to by faith. Nothing in the universe can shake them. I’m going to bed.”

  “Oh, hell! I can’t sleep!”

  “Neither can I! But I might as well try—as a matter of principle.”

  Twelve hours later, sleep was still just that—a matter of principle, unattainable in practice.

  The storm had arrived ahead of schedule, and Donovan’s florid face drained of blood as he pointed a shaking finger. Powell, stubble-jawed and dry-lipped, stared out the port and pulled desperately at his mustache.

  Under other circumstances, it might have been a beautiful sight. The stream of high-speed electrons impinging upon the energy beam fluoresced into ultraspicules of intense light. The beam stretched out into shrinking nothingness, aglitter with dancing, shining motes.

  The shaft of energy was steady, but the two Earthmen knew the value of naked-eyed appearances. Deviations in arc of a hundredth of a millisecond, invisible to the eye, were enough to send the beam wildly out of focus—enough to blast hundreds of square miles of Earth into incandescent ruin.

  And a robot, unconcerned with beam, focus or Earth, or anything but his Master, was at the controls.

  Hours passed. The Earthmen watched in hypnotized silence. And then the darting dotlets of light dimmed and went out. The storm had ended.

  Powell’s voice was flat. “It’s over!”

  Donovan had fallen into a troubled slumber and Powell’s weary eyes rested upon him enviously. The signal flash glared over and over again, but the Earthman paid no attention. It was all unimportant! All! Perhaps Cutie was right and he was only an inferior being with a made-to-order memory and a life that had outlived its purpose.

  He wished he were!

  Cutie was standing before him. “You didn’t answer the flash, so I walked in.” His voice was low. “You don’t look at all well, and I’m afraid your term of existence is drawing to an end. Still, would you like to see some of the readings recorded today?”

  Dimly, Powell was aware that the robot was making a friendly gesture, perhaps to quiet some lingering remorse in forcibly replacing the humans at the controls of the station. He accepted the sheets held out to him and gazed at them unseeingly.

  Cutie seemed pleased. “Of course, it is a great privilege to serve the Master. You mustn’t feel too badly about my having replaced you.”

  Powell grunted and shifted from one sheet to the other mechanically until his blurred sight focused upon a thin red line that wobbled its way across ruled paper.

  He stared—and stared again. He gripped it hard in both fists and rose to his feet, still staring. The other sheets dropped to the floor, unheeded.

  “Mike! Mike!” He was shaking the other madly. “He held it steady!”

  Donovan came to life. “What? Wh-where . . .” And he too gazed with bulging eyes upon the record before him. Cutie broke in. “What is wrong?”

  “You kept it in focus,” stuttered Powell. “Did you know that?”

  “Focus? What’s that?”

  “You kept the beam directed sharply at the receiving station—to within a ten-thousandth of a millisecond of arc.” “What receiving station?”

  “On Earth. The receiving station on Earth,” babbled Powell. “You kept it in focus.”

  Cutie turned on his heel in annoyance. “It is impossible to perform any act of kindness toward you two. Always that same phantasm! I merely kept all dials at equilibrium in accordance with the will of the Master.”

  Gathering the scattered papers together, he withdrew stiffly, and Donovan said as he left, “Well, I’ll be damned.” He turned to Powell. “What are we going to do now?” Powell felt tired but uplifted. “Nothing. He’s just shown he can run the station perfectly. I’ve never seen an electron storm handled so well.”

  “But nothing’s solved. You heard what he said about the Master. We can’t—”

  “Look, Mike, he follows the instructions of the Master by means of dials, instruments and graphs. That’s all we ever followed.”

  “Sure, but that’s not the point. We can’t let him continue this nitwit stuff about the Master.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because who ever heard of such a damned thing? How are we going to trust him with the station if he doesn’t believe in Earth?”

  “Can he handle the station?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Then what’s the difference what he believes!”

  Powell spread his arms outward with a vague smile upon his face and tumbled backward onto the bed. He was asleep.

  Powell was speaking while struggling into his lightweight space jacket.

  “It would be a simple job,” he said. “You can bring in new

  QT models one by one, equip them with an automatic shut-off switch to act within the week, so as to allow them enough time to learn the . . . uh . . . cult of the Master from the Prophet himself; then switch them to another station and revitalize them. We could have two QT’s per—”

  Donovan unclasped his glassite visor and scowled. “Shut up and let’s get out of here. Relief is waiting and I won’t feel right until I actually see Earth and feel the ground under my feet—just to make sure it’s really there.”

  The door opened as he spoke, and Donovan, with a smothered curse, clicked the visor to and turned a sulky back upon Cuitie.

  The robot approached softly and there was sorrow in his voice. “You two are going?”

  Powell nodded curtly. “There will be others in our place.” Cutie sighed, with the sound of wind humming through closely spaced wires. “Your term of service is over and the time of dissolution has come. I expected it, but—well, the Master’s will be done!”

  His tone of resignation stung Powell. “Save the sympathy, Cutie. We’re heading for Earth, not dissolution.”

  “It is best that you think so.” Cutie sighed again. “I see the wisdom of the illusion now. I would not attempt to shake your faith, even if I could.” He departed, the picture of commiseration.

  Powell snarled and motioned to Donovan. Sealed suitcases in hand, they headed for the air lock.

  The relief ship was on the outer landing and Franz Muller, Powell’s relief man, greeted them with stiff courtesy. Donovan made scant acknowledgment and passed into the pilot room to take over the controls from Sam Evans.

  Powell lingered. “How’s Earth?”

  It was a conventional enough question and Muller gave the conventional answer. “Still spinning.”

  He was donning the heavy space gloves in preparation for his term of duty here, and his thick eyebrows drew close to
gether. “How is this new robot getting along? It better be good, or I’ll be damned if I let it touch the controls.”

  Powell paused before answering. His eyes swept the proud Prussian before him, from the close-cropped hair on the sternly stubborn head to the feet standing stiffly at attention, and there was a sudden glow of pure gladness surging through him.

  “The robot is pretty good,” he said slowly. “I don’t think you’ll have to bother much with the controls.”

  He grinned and went into the ship. Muller would be here for several weeks. . . .

  One footnote: Recently, Asimov had this to say—and here j is a sobering thought for you, if you like: “If a mechanical mind is ever devised that is equal to the | mind of a man, then we have a machine that is a man. And if we build one that is better than a man, then he is a superman and should replace us on this planet”

  You don’t agree? You think there is something about a man’s reasoning apparatus that will never be duplicated by any metal gadget, no matter how complicated?

  “Well, well,” as Cutie said, “we won’t argue"

  Here now is the pathos I promised you—along with some humor which I did not mention—in a short story by a young British author who saw action in Burma and Sumatra in World War 11 and has been writing science fiction of increasing vividness and authority ever since. Like Bierce in a way, and like his compatriot J. G. Ballard, Aldiss is fascinated by the ugly and grotesque; his work frequently rises to really inspired nastiness (as in “Poor Little Warrior,” The Best From Fantasy and Science Fiction: Eighth Series, 1959). Here, although there is a touch of grotesquerie, Aldiss' mood is less savage than usual; his robots are among the most believable, and most appealing, in the literature.

  BUT WHO CAN REPLACE A MAN?

  BY BRIAN W. ALDISS

  Morning filtered into the sky, lending it the gray tone of the ground below.

  The field minder finished turning the topsoil of a three-thousand-acre field. When it had turned the last furrow, it climbed onto the highway and looked back at its work. The work was good. Only the land was bad. Like the ground all over Earth, it was vitiated by overcropping. By rights, it ought now to lie fallow for a while, but the field minder had other orders.

  It went slowly- down the road, taking its time. It was intelligent enough to appreciate the neatness all about it. Nothing worried it, beyond a loose inspection plate above its nuclear pile which ought to be attended to. Thirty feet high, it yielded no highlights to the dull air.

  No other machines passed on its way back to the Agricultural Station. The field minder noted the fact without comment. In the station yard it saw several other machines that it recognized; most of them should have been out about their tasks now. Instead, some were inactive and some careered around the yard in a strange fashion, shouting or hooting.

  Steering carefully past them, the field minder moved over to Warehouse 3 and spoke to the seed distributor, which stood idly outside.

  “I have a requirement for seed potatoes,” it said to the distributor, and with a quick internal motion punched out an order card specifying quantity, field number and several other details. It ejected the card and handed it to the distributor.

  The distributor held the card close to its eye and then said, “The requirement is in order; but the store is not yet unlocked. The required seed potatoes are in the store. Therefore I cannot produce the requirement.”

  Increasingly of late there had been breakdowns in the complex system of machine labor, but this particular hitch had not occurred before. The field minder thought, then it said, “Why is the store not yet unlocked?”

  “Because supply operative type P has not come this morning. Supply operative type P is the unlocker.”

  The field minder looked squarely at the seed distributor, whose exterior chutes and scales and grabs were so vastly different from the field minder’s own limbs.

  “What class brain do you have, seed distributor?” it asked.

  “I have a class five brain.”

  “I have a class three brain. Therefore I am superior to you. Therefore I will go and see why the unlocker has not come this morning.”

  Leaving the distributor, the field minder set off across the great yard. More machines were in random motion now; one or two had crashed together and argued about it coldly and logically. Ignoring them, the field minder pushed through sliding doors into the echoing confines of the station itself.

  Most of the machines here were clerical, and consequently small. They stood about in little groups, eyeing each other, not conversing. Among so many nondifferentiated types, the unlocker was easy to find. It had fifty arms, most of them with more than one finger, each finger tipped by a key; it looked like a pincushion full of variegated hat pins.

  The field minder approached it.

  “I can do no more work until Warehouse Three is unlocked,” it told the unlocker. “Your duty is to unlock the warehouse every morning. Why have you not unlocked the warehouse this morning?”

  “I had no orders this morning,” replied the unlocker, “I have to have orders every morning. When I have orders I unlock the warehouse.”

  “None of us has had any orders this morning,” a pen propeller said, sliding toward them.

  “Why have you had no orders this morning?” asked the field minder.

  “Because the radio issued none,” said the unlocker, slowly rotating a dozen of its arms.

  “Because the radio station in the city was issued with no orders this morning,” said the pen propeller.

  And there you had the distinction between a class six and a class three brain, which was what the unlocker and the pen propeller possessed respectively. All machine brains worked with nothing but logic, but the lower the class of brain— class ten being the lowest—the more literal and less informative answers to questions tended to be.

  “You have a class three brain; I have a class three brain,” the field minder said to the penner. “We will speak to each other. This lack of orders is unprecedented. Have you further information on it?”

  “Yesterday orders came from the city. Today no orders have come. Yet the radio has not broken down. Therefore they have broken down,” said the little penner.

  “The men have broken down?”

  “All men have broken down.”

  ‘That is a logical deduction,” said the field minder.

  ‘That is the logical deduction,” said the penner. “For if a machine had broken down, it would have been quickly replaced. But who can replace a man?”

  While they talked, the unlocker, like a dull man at a bar, stood close to them and was ignored.

  “If all men have broken down, then we have replaced man,” said the field minder, and he and the penner eyed each other speculatively. Finally the latter said, “Let us ascend to the top floor to find if the radio operator has fresh news.”

  “I cannot come because I am too large,” said the field minder. “Therefore you must go alone and return to me. You will tell me if the radio operator has fresh news.” k

  “You must stay here,” said the penner. “I will return here.” It skittered across to the lift. Although it was no bigger than a toaster, its retractable arms numbered ten and it could read as quickly as any machine on the station.

  The field minder awaited its return patiently, not speaking to the unlocker, which still stood aimlessly by. Outside, a rotovator hooted furiously. Twenty minutes elapsed before the penner came back, hustling out of the lift.

  “I will deliver to you such information as I have outside,” it said briskly, and as they swept past the locker and the other machines, it added, “The information is not for lower-class brains.”

  Outside, wild activity filled the yard. Many machines, their routines disrupted for the first time in years, seemed to have gone berserk. Those most easily disrupted were the ones with lowest brains, which generally belonged to large machines performing simple tasks. The seed distributor to which the field minder had r
ecently been talking lay face downward in the dust, not stirring; it had evidently been knocked down by the rotovator, which now hooted its way wildly across a planted field. Several other machines plowed after it, trying to keep up. All were shouting and hooting without restraint.

  “It would be safer for me if I climbed onto you, if you will permit it. I am easily overpowered,” said the penner. Extending five arms, it hauled itself up the flanks of its new friend, settling on a ledge beside the weed intake, twelve feet above ground.

  “From here vision is more extensive,” it remarked complacently.

  “What information did you receive from the radio operator?” asked the field minder.

  “The radio operator has been informed by the operator in the city that all men are dead.”

  The field minder was momentarily silent, digesting this.

  “All men were alive yesterday!” it protested.

  “Only some men were alive yesterday. And that was fewer than the day before yesterday. For hundreds of years there have been only a few men, growing fewer.”

  “We have rarely seen a man in this sector.”

  “The radio operator says a diet deficiency killed them,” said the penner. “He says that the world was once overpopulated, and then the soil was exhausted in raising adequate food. This has caused a diet deficiency.”

  “What is a diet deficiency?” asked the field minder.

  “I do not know. But that is what the radio operator said, and he is a class two brain.”

  They stood there, silent in the weak sunshine. The unlocker had appeared in the porch and was gazing across at them yearningly, rotating its collection of keys.

  “What is happening in the city now?” asked the field minder at last.

  “Machines are fighting in the city now,” said the penner.

  “What will happen here now?” asked the field minder.

  “Machines may begin fighting here too. The radio operator wants us to get him out of his room. He has plans to communicate to us.”