Isaac Asimov: Utopia

“Nor do I, Dr. Leving,” Donald 111 announced. “The danger represented by the presence of those two pseudorobots is far greater than you believe.”

“Donald, I built both of those pseudo-robots, as you insist on calling them,” Fredda said, feeling as much amusement as irritation. “I understand fully what they are capable of.”

“I am not at all sure that is the case, Dr. Leving,” Donald said. “But if you will insist on meeting them when I am not present, there is nothing I can do to prevent you from doing so. I would urge you once again to exercise extreme caution when you deal with them.”

“I will, Donald, I will,” Fredda said, her voice a bit tired. She had built Donald, too, of course. She knew as well as anyone that the First Law forced Donald to mention the potential danger to her at every opportunity. For all of that, it was still tedious to hear the same warning over and over again. Donald, and most other Three-Law robots, referred to Caliban and Prospero—and all New Law robots—as pseudo-robots because they did not possess the Three Laws. By definition, a robot was a sentient being imbued with the Three Laws. Prospero was possessed of the New Laws, and Caliban had no laws at all. They might look like robots, and in some ways act like robots, but they were not robots. Donald saw them as a perversion, as unnatural beings that had no proper place in the universe. Well, perhaps he would not phrase it in quite that way, but Fredda knew she was not far off the mark.

“Why is it, exactly, that they need to come here anyway?” Alvar asked as he leaned back in his chair. “They have passes that give them the freedom of the city.”

“Don’t get too comfortable,” Fredda warned. “Dinner in just a few minutes.”

“Fine,” Kresh said, leaning forward again. “I’ll be as uncomfortable as you like. But answer my question.”

Fredda laughed, leaned over and kissed Alvar on the forehead. “Once a policeman, always a policeman,” she said.

The robot Oberon chose that moment to appear. “Dinner is served,” it announced.

“Always a policeman,” Alvar said to his wife. “So don’t think this little interruption is going to get you off the hook.”

He stood up, and husband and wife went in to dinner, Oberon leading the way, Donald trailing behind. Donald took up his usual wall niche, and Oberon set about serving the meal.

Fredda decided it would all go a bit smoother if she didn’t force her husband to prompt her for an answer. Oberon set a plate before her and she picked up her fork. “They come here to have a safe place to meet,” she said. “That’s the main answer. There aren’t many places in Hades where they aren’t in some sort of danger of an NL basher gang, passes or no passes.” There had been Settler robot-bashing gangs in the past, though most of them had faded away by now. But certain Spacers had learned the bashing game from the Settlers. There were still radicals, extremists even beyond the pale of the Ironheads, who were always itching to do in a New Law robot, given the chance. “New Law robots aren’t safe in this city. I’ve told you that before, even if you don’t quite believe it.”

“Then why come here? If Hades is so dangerous, it seems to me they ought to be safe enough on the other side of the planet, in Utopia. In that underground city of theirs. They ought to be,” he said again, as if he was not sure they truly were.

One of Alvar Kresh’s first acts as governor was to issue an order, banishing the New Law robots from the inhabited parts of the planet. If that was not the exact wording of the order, it was certainly the effect—and, for that matter, the intent. Fredda could not fault her husband too much for the decision. It had been a choice between banishment and destroying the New Law robots altogether. “They are safe enough in Valhalla, though I don’t think I’d call it a city, exactly,” she said. “It’s more like a huge bunker complex than anything else.”

“Well, I’ll take your word for it,” Alvar said. “You’ve been there, and I haven’t.”

“They may be safe there,” Fredda said, “but they don’t have everything they need. They have to come here to trade.”

“What could a bunch of robots need?”

Fredda wanted to let out a sigh, but she forced herself to hold it back. The two of them had had this argument too many times before. By now each of them had rehearsed his or her part to perfection. But that didn’t make the argument end. They had a good marriage, a solid marriage—but the issue of the New Law robots was one they seemed unlikely to settle between themselves any time soon. “Spare parts, if nothing else,” Fredda said, “as you know perfectly well. They have to keep themselves in repair. Supplies and equipment to maintain and expand Valhalla. Information of all sorts. Other things. This time they were after biological supplies.”

“That’s a new one,” said Alvar. “What do they want with bio supplies?”

“Terraforming projects, I suppose,” said Fredda. “They’ve made a great deal of progress reviving the climate in their part of the world.”

“And trained themselves in some highly marketable skills at the same time. Don’t try to make them into tin saints for me,” said Kresh.

The New Laws were allowed off the Utopia reservation under certain circumstances. The most common reason was to do skilled labor. Every terraforming project on the planet was short of labor, and many project managers were willing—if only reluctantly so—to hire New Law robots for the jobs. The New Laws charged high rates for their work, but they gave good value for money. “What’s wrong with their doing honest work?” Fredda asked. “And what is wrong with their getting paid for it? If a private company needs temporary robot labor, it rents them, and pays the robot rental agent or the owner of the robots for the use of his property. The same applies here. It’s just that these robots own themselves.”

“There’s nothing wrong with it,” Alvar said, moodily stabbing his fork at his vegetables. “But there’s nothing all that noble about it, either. You always try to make them sound like heroes.”

“Not everything they do is for money or gain,” Fredda said, “No one pays them for the terraforming work they do in the Utopia reservation. They do it because they want to do it.”

“Why is that, do you think?” asked Alvar. “Why is it that is what they want to do? I know you’ve been studying the question. Have you come up with anything new on it?”

Fredda looked at her husband in some surprise. The moment she praised anything about the New Laws was normally the point in their well-rehearsed argument when her husband glared at her and suggested that she go the whole distance in making the damned New Laws into angels and rivet wings to their backs, or said something else to the same effect. But not tonight. Fredda realized that Alvar was… different tonight. The New Law robots were on his mind—but usually the subject simply got him angry. This time there was something more thoughtful about him. Almost, impossibly enough, as if he were worried about them. “Do you really want to know?” she asked, her voice uncertain.

“Of course I do,” he replied gently. “Why else would I ask? I’m always interested in your work.”

“Well,” she said, “the short answer is that I don’t know. There is no question that they have a—a drive for beauty. I can’t think of what else to call it. Though perhaps it might be more accurate to call it an impulse to put things right. Where, exactly, it comes from, I can’t say. But it’s not all that surprising that it’s there. When you construct something as complex as a robotic brain, and introduce novel programming—like the New Laws—there are bound to be unexpected consequences of one sort or another. One reason I’m so interested in Prospero is that the programming of his gravitonic brain was still half-experimental. He’s different from the other New Laws in some unexpected ways. He has a much less balanced personality than Caliban, for one thing.”