Isaac Asimov - The Robots of Dawn

Fastolfe said, “It is a childish display to the scientific mind and the effort is totally disproportionate to the end, which is, of course, a pinch of salt, but the good Auroran host is proud of being able to put on a display. There are some experts who can keep the spicer in the air for a minute and a half, moving their hands almost more rapidly than the eye can follow.

“Of course,” he added thoughtfully, “Daneel can perform such actions with greater skill and speed than any human. I have tested him in this manner in order to check on the workings of his brain paths, but it would be totally wrong to have him display such talents in public. It would needlessly humiliate human spicists—a popular term for them, you understand, though you won’t find it in dictionaries.”

Baley grunted.

Fastolfe sighed. “But we must get back to business.”

“You brought me through several parsecs of space for that purpose,”

“Indeed, I did.—Let us proceed!”

Baley said, “Was there a reason for that display of yours, Dr. Fastolfe?”

Fastolfe said, “Well, we seem to have come to an impasse. I’ve brought you here to do something that can’t be done. Your face was rather eloquent and, to tell you the truth, I felt no better. It seemed, therefore, that we could use a breathing space. And now—let us proceed.”

“On the impossible task?”

“Why should it be impossible for you, Mr. Baley? Your reputation is that of an achiever of the impossible.”

“The hyperwave drama? You believe that foolish distortion of what happened on Solaria?”

Fastolfe spread his arms. “I have no other hope.”

Baley said, “And I have no choice. I must continue to try; I cannot return to Earth a failure. That has been made clear to me.—Tell me, Dr. Fastolfe, how could Jander have been killed? What sort of manipulation of his mind would have been required?”

“Mr. Baley don’t know how I could possibly explain that, even to another roboticist, which you certainly are not, and even if I were prepared to publish my theories, which I certainly am not. However, let me see if I can’t explain something.—You know, of course, that robots were invented on Earth.”

“Very little concerning robotics is dealt with on Earth—”

“Earth’s strong antirobot bias is well-known on the Spacer worlds. But the Earthly origin of robots is obvious to any person on Earth who thinks about it. It is well-known that hyperspatial travel was developed with the aid of robots and, since the Spacer worlds could not have been settled without hyperspatial travel, it follows that robots existed before settlement had taken place and while Earth was still the only inhabited planet. Robots were therefore invented on Earth by Earthpeople.”

“Yet Earth feels no pride in that, does it?”

“We do not discuss it,” said Baley shortly.

“And Eartlipeople know nothing about Susan Calvin?”

“I have come across her name in a few old books. She was one of the early pioneers in robotics.”

“Is that all you know of her?”

Baley made a gesture of dismissal. “I suppose I could find out more if I searched the records, but I have had no occasion to do so.”

“How strange,” said Fastolfe. “She’s a demigod to all Spacers, so much so that I imagine that few Spacers who are not actually roboticists think of her as an Earthwoman. It would seem a profanation. They would refuse to believe it if they were told that she died after having lived scarcely more than a hundred metric years. And yet you know her only as an early pioneer.”

“Has she got something to do with all this, Dr. Fastolfe?”

“Not directly, but in a way. You must understand that numerous legends cluster about her name. Most of them are undoubtedly untrue, but they cling to her, nonetheless. One of the most famous legends—and one of the least likely to be true — concerns a robot manufactured in those primitive days that, through some accident on the production lines, turned out to have telepathic abilities—”

“What!”

“A legend! I told you it was a legend—and undoubtedly untrue! Mind you, there is some theoretical reason for supposing this might be possible, though no one has ever presented a plausible design, that could even begin to incorporate such an ability. That it could have appeared in positronic brains as crude and simple as those in the prehyperspatial era is totally unthinkable. That is why we are quite certain that this particular tale is an invention. But let me go on anyway, for it points out a moral.

“By all means, go on.”

“The robot, according to the tale, could read minds. And when asked questions, he read the questioner’s mind and told the questioner what he wanted to hear. Now the First Law of Robotics states quite clearly that a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a person to come to harm, but to robots generally that means physical harm. A robot who can read minds, however, would surely decide that disappointment or anger or any violent emotion would make the human being feeling those emotions unhappy and, the robot would interpret the inspiring of such emotions under the heading of ‘harm.’ If, then, a telepathic robot knew that the truth might disappoint or enrage a questioner or cause that person to feel envy or unhappiness, he would tell a pleasing lie, instead. Do you see that?”

“Yes, of course.”

“So the robot lied even to Susan Calvin herself. The lies could not long continue, for different people were told different things that were not only inconsistent among themselves but unsupported by the gathering evidence of reality, you see. Susan Calvin discovered she had been lied to and realized that those lies had led her into a position of considerable embarrassment. What would have disappointed her somewhat to begin with had now, thanks to false hopes, disappointed her unbearably.—You never heard the story?”

“I give you my word.”

“Astonishing! Yet it certainly wasn’t invented on Aurora, for it is equally current on all the worlds.—In any case, Calvin took her revenge. She pointed out to the robot that, whether he told the truth or told a lie, he would equally harm the person with whom he dealt. He could not obey the First Law, whatever action he took. The robot, understanding this, was forced to take refuge in total inaction. If you want to put it colorfully, his positronic pathways burned out. His brain was irrecoverably destroyed. The legend goes on, to say that Calvin’s last word to the destroyed robot was ‘Liar!’”

Baley said, “And something like this, I take it, was what happened to Jander Panell. He was faced with a contradiction in terms and his brain burned out?”

“It’s what appears to have happened, though that is not as easy to bring about as it would have been in Susan Calvin’s day. Possibly because of the legend, roboticists have always been careful to make it as difficult as possible for contradictions to arise. As the theory of positronic brains has grown more subtle and as the practice of positronic brain design has grown more intricate, increasingly successful systems have been devised to have all situations that might arise resolve into nonequality, so that some action can always be taken that will be interpreted as obeying the First Law.”

“Well, then, you can’t bum out a robot’s brain. Is that what you’re saying? Because if you are, what happened to Jander?”

“It’s not what I’m saying. The increasingly successful systems I speak of are never completely successful. They cannot be. No matter how subtle and intricate a brain might be, there is always some way of setting up a contradiction. That is a fundamental truth of mathematics. It will remain forever impossible to produce a brain so subtle and intricate as to reduce the chance of contradiction to zero. Never quite to zero. However, the systems have been made so close to zero that to bring about a mental freeze-out by setting up a suitable contradiction would require a deep understanding of the particular positionic brain being dealt with—and that would take a clever theoretician.”