Isaac Asimov: The Robots of Dawn

“Such faith! Why should the Spacers do it? When did they start feeling kindly toward us short-lived Earthpeople?”

“If I could talk to them—”

Ben laughed. “Come on, Dad. You just want to go to Aurora, to see that woman again.”

Baley frowned and his eyebrows beetled over his deep-set eyes. “Woman? Jehoshaphat, Ben, what are you talking about?”

“Now, Dad, just between us—and not a word to Mom what did happen with that woman on Solaria? I’m old enough. You can tell me.”

“What woman on Solaria?”

“How can you look at me and deny any knowledge of the woman everyone on, Earth saw in the hyperwave dramatization? Gladia Delmarre. That woman!”

“Nothing happened. That hyperwave thing was nonsense. I’ve told you that a thousand times. She didn’t look that way. I didn’t look that way. It was all made up and you know it was produced over my protests, just because the government thought it would put Earth in a good light, with the Spacers.—And you make sure you don’t imply anything different to your mother.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it. Still, this Gladia went to Aurora and you keep wanting to go there, too.”

“Are you trying to tell me that you honestly think the reason I want to go to Aurora—Oh, Jehoshaphat!”

His son’s eyebrows raised. “What’s the matter?”

“The robot. That’s R. Geronimo.”

“Who?”

“One of our Department messenger robots. And it’s out here! I’m off-time and I deliberately left my receiver at home because I didn’t want them to get at me. That’s my privilege and yet they send for me by robot.”

“How do you know it’s coming to you, Dad?”

“By very clever deduction—One: there’s no one else here, who has any connection with the Police Department; and two: that miserable thing is heading right toward me. From that I deduce that it wants me. I should get on the other side of the tree and stay there.”

“It’s not a wall, Dad. The robot can walk around the tree.”

And the robot called out, “Master Baley, I have a message for you. You are wanted at Headquarters.”

The robot stopped, waited, then said again, “Master Baley, I have a message for you. You are wanted at Headquarters.”

“I hear and understand,” Baley said tonelessly. He had to say that or the robot would have continued to repeat.

Baley frowned slightly as he studied the robot. It was a new model, a little more humaniform, than the older models were. It had been uncrated and activated only a month before and with some degree of fanfare. The government was always trying for something anything—that might produce more acceptance of robots.

It had a grayish surface with a dull finish and a somewhat resilient touch (perhaps like soft leather). The facial expression, while largely changeless, was not quite as idiotic as that of most robots. It was, though, in actual fact, quite as idiotic, mentally, as all the rest.

For a moment, Baley thought of R. Daneel Olivaw, the Spacer robot, who had been on two assignments with him, one on Earth and one on Solaria, and whom he had last encountered when Daneel had consulted him in the mirror-image case. Daneel was a robot who was so human that Baley could treat him as a friend and could still miss him, even now. If all robots were like that—

Baley said, “This is my day off, boy. There is no necessity for me to go to Headquarters.”

R. Geronimo paused. There was a trifling vibration in his hands. Baley noticed that and was quite aware that it meant a certain amount of conflict in the robot’s positronic pathways.’ They had to obey human beings, but it was quite common for two human beings to want two different types of obedience.

The robot made a choice. It said, “It is your day off, master.—You are wanted at Headquarters.”

Ben said uneasily, “If they want you, Dad—”

Baley shrugged. “Don’t be fooled, Ben. If they really wanted me badly, they’d have sent an enclosed car and probably used a human volunteer, instead of ordering a robot to do the walking and irritate me with one of its messages.”

Ben shook his head. “I don’t think so, Dad. They wouldn’t know where you were or how long it would take to find you. I don’t think they would want to send a human being on an uncertain search.”

“Yes? Well,—let’s see how strong the order is.—R. Geronimo, go back to Headquarters and tell them I’ll be at work at 09:00.” Then I sharply, “Go back! That’s an order!”

The robot hesitated perceptibly, then turned, moved away, turned again, made an attempt to come back toward Baley, and finally remained in one spot, its whole body vibrating.

Baley recognized it for what it was and muttered to Ben, “I may have to go. Jehoshaphat!”

What was troubling the robot, was what the roboticists called an equipotential of contradiction on the second level. Obedience was the Second Law and R. Geronimo was now suffering from two roughly equal and contradictory orders. Robot-block was what the general population called it or, more frequently, roblock for short.

Slowly, the robot turned. Its original order was the stronger, but not by much, so that its voice was slurred. “Master, I was told you might say that. If so I was to say—I—” It paused, then added hoarsely, “I was to say—if you are alone.”

Baley nodded curtly to his son and Ben didn’t wait. He knew when his father was Dad and when he was a policeman. Ben retreated hastily.

For a moment, Baley played irritably with the notion of strengthening his own order and making the roblock more nearly—complete, but that would surely cause the kind of damage that would require positronic analysis and reprogramming. The expense of that would be taken out of his salary and it might easily amount to a year’s pay.

He said, “I withdraw my order. What were you told to say?”

R. Geronimo’s voice at once cleared. “I was told to say that you are wanted in connection with Aurora.”

Baley turned toward Ben and called out, “Give them another half hour and then say I want them back in. I’ve got to leave now.”

And as he walked off with long strides, he said petulantly to the robot, “Why couldn’t they tell you to say that at once? And why can’t they program you to use a car so I wouldn’t have to walk?”

He knew very well why that wasn’t done. Any accident involving a robot-driven car would set off another antirobot riot.

He did not slacken his pace. There were two kilometers to walk before they even got to the City wall and, thereafter, they would have to reach Headquarters through heavy traffic.

Aurora? What kind of crisis was brewing now?

It took half an hour for Baley to reach the entranceway into the city and he stiffened himself for what he suspected ahead. Perhaps—perhaps—it wouldn’t happen this time.

He reached the dividing plane between Outside and City, the wall that marked off chaos from civilization. He placed his hand over the signal patch and an opening appeared, as usual, he didn’t wait for the opening to be completed, but slipped in as soon as it was wide enough. R. Geronimo followed.

The police sentry on duty looked startled, as he always did when someone came in from Outside. Each time there wag the same look of disbelief, the same coming to attention, the same sudden hand upon the blaster, the same frown of uncertainty Baley presented his identity card with a scowl and the sentry saluted. The door closed behind him and it happened.

Baley was inside the City. The walls closed around him and the City became the Universe. He was again immersed in the endless, eternal hum and odor of people and machinery that would soon fade below the threshold of consciousness; in the soft, indirect artificial light that was nothing at all like the partial and varying glare of the Outside, with its green and brown and blue and white and its interruptions of red and yellow. Here there was no erratic wind, no heat, no cold, no threat of rain; here there was instead the quiet permanence of unfelt air currents that kept everything fresh. Here was a designed combination of temperature and humidity so perfectly adjusted to humans it remained unsensed.