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Almaden, if the situation were to get worse. Hydroponics engineers can be
used in Java or in Ceylon, if there are too many at Tientsin. Twenty thousand
long tons of steel won't fill more than a few days of world demand, and the
opening of the Mexican Canal two months later than the planned date is of
little moment. It's the Machines that worry me; I've spoken to your Director
of Research about them already."
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r r
"To Vincent Silver? -He hasn't mentioned anything about it to me."
"I asked him to speak to no one. Apparently, he hasn't."
"And what did he tell you?"
"Let me put that item in its proper place. I want to talk about the
Machines first. And I want to talk about them to you, because you're the only
one in the world who understands robots well enough to help me now. -May I
grow philosophical?"
"For this evening, Stephen, you may talk how you please and of what
you please, provided you tell me first what you intend to prove."
"That such small unbalances in the perfection of our system of supply
and demand, as I have mentioned, may be the first step towards the final
war."
"Hmp. Proceed."
Susan Calvin did not allow herself to relax, despite the designed
comfort of the chair she sat in. Her cold, thin-lipped face and her flat, even
voice were becoming accentuated with the years. And although Stephen
Byerley was one man she could like and trust, she was almost seventy and the
cultivated habits of a lifetime are not easily broken.
"Every period of human development, Susan," said the Co-ordinator,
"has had its own particular type of human conflict - its own variety of
problem that, apparently, could be settled only by force. And each time,
frustratingly enough, force never really settled the problem. Instead, it
persisted through a series of conflicts, then vanished of itself, -what's the
expression,- ah, yes 'not with a bang, but a whimper,' as the economic and
social environment changed. And then, new problems, and a new series of
wars. -Apparently endlessly cyclic.
"Consider relatively modern times. There were the series of dynastic
wars in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, when the most important
question in Europe was whether the houses of Hapsburg or Valois-Bourbon
were to rule the continent. It was one of those 'inevitable conflicts,' since
Europe could obviously not exist half one and half the other.
"Except that it did, and no war ever wiped out the one and established
the other, until the rise of a new social atmosphere in France in 1789 tumbled
first the Bourbons and, eventually, the Hapsburgs down the dusty chute to
history's incinerator.
"And in those same centuries there were the more barbarous religious
wars, which revolved about the important question of whether Europe was to
be Catholic or Protestant. Half and half she could not be. It was 'inevitable'
that the sword decide. -Except that it didn't. In England, a new industrialism
was growing, and on the continent, a new nationalism. Half and half Europe
remains to this day and no one cares much.
"In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there was a cycle of
nationalist-imperialist wars, when the most important question in the world
was which portions of Europe would control the economic resources and
consuming capacity of which portions of non-Europe. All non-Europe
obviously could not exist part English and part French and part German and
so on. -Until the forces of nationalism spread sufficiently, so that non-Europe
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r r
ended what all the wars could not, and decided it could exist quite
comfortably all non European.
"And so we have a pattern-"
"Yes. Stephen, you make it plain," said Susan Calvin. "These are not
very profound observations."
"No. -But then, it is the obvious which is so difficult to see most of the
time. People say 'It's as plain as the nose on your face.' But how much of the
nose on your face can you see, unless someone holds a mirror up to you? In
the twentieth century, Susan, we started a new cycle of wars - what shall I call
them? Ideological wars? The emotions of religion applied to economic
systems, rather than to extra-natural ones? Again the wars were 'inevitable'
and this time there were atomic weapons, so that mankind could no longer
live through its torment to the inevitable wasting away of inevitability. -And
positronic robots came.
"They came in time, and, with it and alongside it, interplanetary travel. -
So that it no longer seemed so important whether the world was Adam Smith
or Karl Marx. Neither made very much sense under the new circumstances.
Both had to adapt and they ended in almost the same place."
"A deus ex machina, then, in a double sense," said Dr. Calvin, dryly.
The Co-ordinator smiled gently, "I have never heard you pun before,
Susan, but you are correct. And yet there was another danger. The ending of
every other problem had merely given birth to another. Our new world wide
robot economy may develop its own problems, and for that reason we have
the Machines. The Earth's economy is stable, and will remain stable, because
it is based upon the decisions of calculating machines that have the good of
humanity at heart through the overwhelming force of the First Law of
Robotics."
Stephen Byerley continued, "And although the Machines are nothing
but the vastest conglomeration of calculating circuits ever invented, they are
still robots within the meaning of the First Law, and so our Earth wide
economy is in accord with the best interests of Man. The population of Earth
knows that there will be no unemployment, no over-production or shortages.
Waste and famine are words in history books. And so the question of
ownership of the means of production becomes obsolescent. Whoever owned
them (if such a phrase has meaning), a man, a group, a nation, or all
mankind, they could be utilized only as the Machines directed. -Not because
men were forced to but because it was the wisest course and men knew it.
"It puts an end to war - not only to the last cycle of wars, but to the next
and to all of them. Unless-"
A long pause, and Dr. Calvin encouraged him by repetition. "Unless-"
The fire crouched and skittered along a log, then popped up.
"Unless," said the Co-ordinator, "the Machines don't fulfill their
function."
"I see. And that is where those trifling maladjustments come in which
you mentioned awhile ago - steel, hydroponics and so on."
"Exactly. Those errors should not be. Dr. Silver tells me they cannot
be."
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r r
"Does he deny the facts? How unusual!"
"No, he admits the facts, of course. I do him an injustice. What he
denies is that any error in the machine is responsible for the so-called (his
phrase) errors in the answers. He
claims that the Machines are self correcting and that it would violate the
fundamental laws of nature for an error to exist in the circuits of relays. And
so I said -"
"And you said, 'Have your boys check them and make sure, anyway.'"
"Susan, you read my mind. It was what I said, and he said he couldn't." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]