Robot and the Man - [Adventures in Science Fiction 04] Read online

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  The Robot and the Man

  [Adventures in Science Fiction 04]

  Ed by Martin Greenburg

  No copyright 2012 by MadMaxAU eBooks

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  CONTENTS

  FOREWORD

  MECHANICAL ANSWER

  John D. MacDonald

  SELF PORTRAIT

  Bernard. Wolfe

  DEADLOCK

  Lewis Padgett

  ROBINC

  H. H. Holmes

  BURNING BRIGHT

  John S. Browning

  FINAL COMMAND

  A. E. van Vogt

  THOUGH DREAMERS DIE

  Lester del Rey

  RUST

  Joseph E. Kelleam

  ROBOTS RETURN

  Robert Moore Williams

  INTO THY HANDS

  Lester del Rey

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  FOREWORD

  The Robot and the Man is the fourth volume in the Gnome Press Adventures in Science Fiction series. Continuing the outline of its predecessors, Men Against the Stars, Journey to Infinity, and Travelers of Space, a group of stories has been selected to illustrate and trace the development of a specific science fictional theme. As the title indicates, the theme of The Robot and the Man is the genesis and evolution of the robot as depicted by science fiction.

  The term “robot” is generally accepted as having first appeared in print with the publication of Karel Capek’s play, R.U.R., in 1923. The idea of a mechanical man, however, was not original with Capek; references to it are scattered throughout earlier literature. Probably the most familiar example is Edgar Allan Poe’s article, “Maelzel’s Chess-Player,” which was prompted by an actual so-called robot chessplayer that was dumfounding the world at the time. Although the mechanical Capablanca was eventually exposed as a fraud, this ready acceptance of the hoax indicated that the concept of a robot was not overly incredible for the people of the age.

  Contemporary society is served by a host of robots if the definition of the term is strictly adhered to. A robot has been defined as “a mechanism contrived to do human or superhuman tasks.” [Travelers of Space (Gnome Press, 1951), P- 25.] Such familiar everyday devices as the refrigerator, air conditioning units with thermostatic controls, electric timing devices, and countless other automatic mechanisms would fit into the definition of the term. Another example, although hardly a commonplace one, of these precursors of the android-type robot is the “waldos,” those wonderfully dexterous mechanical limbs used in atomic energy plants to handle highly radioactive and dangerous substances.

  In recent times the Voder robot exhibited at the World’s Fair of 1939 in New York was more recognizable, in crude outline at least, as the fictional type of mechanical man. This curiosity, of course, could only be thought of as the most rudimentary of robots since it was not capable of independent action, but controlled by an operator.

  It was only with the growth of science fiction in the modern period that the notion of a robot was elaborated and more fully developed. This anthology attempts to trace the course of that fascinating evolution.

  “Mechanical Answer” and “Self Portrait,” the first two stories in this volume, which tell of the problems encountered in developing a mechanical brain and artificial limbs, set the stage for the appearance of the mobile robot. The theme is continued in “Deadlock” and “Robinc” where construction of the actual robot has been attained. In the succeeding stories the “growth” of the robot continues until he ultimately achieves acceptance as an entity by his creators. The final phase in the inevitable ascent of “man’s servant” is reached when man has disappeared and only a robotic civilization remains. A new cycle is begun in “Into Thy Hands” when man is re-created by the beings he himself gave birth to.

  Attempting to adhere to the outline of the theme was extremely difficult since the stories were written by different authors. It was necessary, therefore, for the editor, and he takes full responsibility for the measure, to make some minor modifications in the details of the selections.

  I wish to thank Groff Conklin for his invaluable suggestions and the consideration he showed in delaying his own anthology, on a similar theme, to avoid any conflict which might take place if such overlapping anthologies were to appear simultaneously.

  Martin Greenberg

  New York, N.Y.

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  The construction of the first “thinking machine” paved the way for the eventual development of a functional robot. The essential problem was to create a brain that could reason for itself.

  MECHANICAL ANSWER

  by John D. MacDonald

  J

  ANE Kayden, the traces of dried tears on her pretty face, said, in a hopeless tone for the hundredth time, “But why does it have to be you, Joe?”

  Joseph Kayden, Director of Automatic 81, paced back and forth through the room of their apartment that they called the Main Lounge. After they were married, when permission was given for Jane to live on the premises at Automatic 81, she had designed the apartment. Automatic 81 was in the Mesilla Valley, eighteen miles from Albuquerque.

  The two opposite walls of the Main Lounge were of clear glass. One wall looked out across the valley. The other looked out across the vast production floor of Automatic 81, where the humming machine tools fabricated the portable tele sets. Automatic 81 was a nearly average government facility, with all unloading and sorting of incoming raw materials, all intraplant transportation of semifabricated and completed parts, all assembly and all inspection, all packing and labeling accomplished by the prehensile steel fingers of automatic equipment. Joe Kayden, lean and moody, was the director and only employee.

  On the end wall was the warning panel. With any breakdown, a buzzer and flashing lights indicated the department and the specific piece of equipment. That portion of operations dependent on the breakdown stopped automatically until the production break was repaired. Kayden was responsible for the complete operation and maintenance. Each month his production quota figures were radioed from Washington and he adjusted his production to fit the quota.

  He stopped by her chair and looked down at her, his bleak look softening. “Honey, I can’t say no. The government spent eight years and a lot of money filling my thick head with electronics, quantum mechanics and what all. I’m their boy and when they say jump, Joe jumps.”

  “I know all that, Joe. I know that you can’t quit. But why do they have to pick you? They’ve got what they call their high-level people, the theorists and all. People all wound up in the philosophy of mathematics. You’re one of the workers. Why does it have to be you?”

  He held his hands out in a helpless gesture. “I don’t know. But I can make a guess. They’ve been appropriated two hundred million a year for the past four years on the project and they aren’t getting anywhere. So I guess that some congressman has told them to bring in one of the practical boys from the Department of Civilian Production. They picked me.”

  “Out of over two hundred men they picked you? Why, Joe? Why?”

  “Because I’ve never missed a quota. Because I’ve cut the warning board down to less lights than any other outfit. Because I rigged up a new standby system and because I shifted more maintenance over to automatic equipment than anybody else. They just stuck the two hundred and something cards in the sorter and sorted for the guy with the most practical imagination and the best ratio of accomplishment. My card dropped out. So they called me up and said, ‘Come on down here to Poughkeepsie, Joseph, and take over the Thinking Machine.’”

&nbs
p; Out of the midst of her distress, she looked at him proudly and said, “You have done a good job, Joe.”

  He kicked a small stool closer to her chair, sat on it and took her hand. “Here is the big trouble, Jane. They don’t know it and I don’t think you do either. But by myself I couldn’t have done these things. You’re the guy who has…what do they say? . . . given me pause to think. You don’t know a thing about production or about electronics, honey, but you’ve got a terrific quotient of horse sense. You’ve made me see things about this place I’d never have seen by myself. The board is small now because you did so much griping about how much of my time answering the board took. Remember all the times you’ve started a sentence with, ‘Why don’t you-?’ “

  “Yes, but-”

  “You’ve brought the simple outlook of a child to this problem and all I’ve ever done is take your direct ideas and put them into shape. They don’t want me, they want us.”

  She brightened visibly. “Then why can’t-”

  “No. They won’t do it. They’ve surrounded the whole project with a batch of phony secrecy. Back in the days when it was called a Project to Develop a Selective Mechanical, Numerical, Semantic and Psychic Integrator and Calculator, we could have both gone on the job. But then, after the press got hold of it and labeled it the Thinking Machine and stated that in the field of warfare it would give better, quicker answers than any General Staff, the War Department made it Top Secret and that’s the way it stands. For you it would be no soap.”

  The quick tears came again. “Joe, I’ll be so lonesome!”

  “So will I,” he said quietly.

  “And I’ll be afraid, Joe, darling. Remember when you met Toby Wanderer in El Paso? Remember what he said?”

  Kayden nodded. He remembered. Toby had just been fired from the Thinking Machine Project. Not fired, really, but retired with a pension for life. Poor Toby. Toby had got a bit tight and talked more than he should have. He talked about the tremendous strain of the Project, of the strange mental breakdown of the men who worked on it. Something about a machine to duplicate the processes of the human mind. When Toby had cracked the first time, they had given him shock treatments and put him back to work. Finally the interval between the necessary shock treatments grew too small and Toby was given his pension. Toby had cursed the Project with cold fury and said that it was impossible—that the most they’d ever accomplish was a machine which could duplicate the mental processes of a four-year-old child, emotionally unstable, with a limited I.Q. for its years.

  Unfortunately Joseph Kayden had told Jane the entire story, never believing for a moment that he would be selected to join the Project, that political expediency would result in his being placed in charge. It was obvious to him that his appointment had been made out of desperation.

  “Will you be able to write me?” Jane asked.

  “Probably. With censorship. And out of the goodness of their heart they give me two days chaperoned leave every two months.”

  It was time to leave. The shuttle aircraft was due. Joe packed moodily while Jane wept some more. The shuttle would bring the new man for Automatic 81. He’d live outside until Jane could find a place to move their possessions to.

  At last he was packed and they stood, his arms tight around her, her fair hair brushing his cheek. He whispered, “I’ll probably make a blob of it, honey, and they’ll boot me out quickly. To keep yourself busy, why don’t you brush up on your neurology and psychiatry?”

  When he kissed her, her lips tasted of salt. His last look at her was from fifteen hundred feet. She was a forlorn figure, standing out on the patio, waving listlessly.

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  He was a pale man, almost luminous in his pallor, and he announced himself as Roger Wald, Kayden’s Executive Assistant. Wald flapped his pale hands and Kayden thought that he looked as though his face was of moonstone dust, held together with luminous putty.

  “How long have you been on the job here, Wald?”

  “Oh, over two years. I’ve been the assistant to some very great men and-”

  Kayden grinned. “Yeah. And now you’re the assistant to a guy with grease under his fingernails. Buck up, Roger. I brush my teeth and everything.”

  Wald flapped his gray hands some more. “Oh, I didn’t mean to imply that-”

  “Skip it, Roger. You just keep telling me the score and we’ll get along fine. Is this my room?” Wald had led him into a small plaster cubicle containing one single bed, a chair, a bureau and a glass ash tray.

  “Yes, it is. I admit it’s a bit bleak, Mr. Kayden-”

  “Call me Joe, please.”

  “Yes sir. The room is bleak. They all are. Dr. Mundreath who was in charge three years ago felt that there should be no distractions, you know.”

  “No, I don’t know. Let me check this. I’m in charge?”

  “Oh, yes sir.”

  “Then your first job, Roger, is to get me a suite of rooms. I want luxury on a Sybarite scale. I want rooms with music, tele sets, wine lists and everything but beautiful hostesses. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now show me the production setup, the labs and all.”

  The Project was housed in a series of long, one-story buildings surrounded by a high electrified wall. Interception rocket stations were set up in profusion in the surrounding countryside, the scanners revolving perpetually.

  One building housed the best approach to a Thinking Machine that had been devised. The guard let them through the door and Kayden stopped dead. The main room was five hundred feet long and about eighty feet wide. All along the walls stood independent units of the machine. Each unit was plastered with switchboard panels, plug sockets and lamp indicators. Between the interstices of the panels showed an array of electronic tubes, circuit elements, relays.

  Kayden looked at a small vehicle rolling smoothly across the floor. A uniformed girl sat in it and guided it. He recognized it as a massive variation of a master programming unit. The girl wheeled it up to one of the independent units against the wall, consulted a chart and plugged in the programming unit. The indicator lamps glowed and the girl took the tape that was ejected from the wall unit. She glanced at it, unplugged and wheeled away toward a far part of the room. He could see at least a dozen other master programming units.

  “What are they after?” he asked Wald.

  “Test problem. With each improvement in the basic equipment, we run the same test problems through.”

  “What’s the problem they’re working on now?”

  Roger Wald beckoned to one of the girls on the vehicles. She stopped beside them, smiled prettily.

  “Mr. Kayden, Miss Finch. Miss Finch, what is the test problem?”

  “Chemical exchange separation method, Mr. Wald.”

  The girl drove away on the silent wheels. Wald said: “We just feed the machine all the factors of a problem—i.e., to devise a simple way of preparing carbon-13 compounds. We know the answer, of course. Other test questions concern other fields—rules of harmonics, heat radiation and so forth.”

  They walked into the room and, as Kayden looked more closely at the independent units, he began to see the point of approach to the problem. He said, “Give me a short statement of the reasons for failure.”

  Roger Wald bit his lip. “My training ... I’d better get Dr. Zander for you. He’s in charge of testing and analysis of results. We’ll go to his office.”

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  Zander was a man constructed of overlapping pink spheres. His face was covered with a constant dew of perspiration. He had the build, the complexion and the blue eyes to go with what should have been an amiable disposition. But his small mouth was an upside down U of sourness, his eyes were smothered bits of blue glass and his voice was a nasal whine. He looked at Kayden with what could have been contempt. Kayden sat and Wald stood on the opposite side of Zander’s paper-littered desk.

  “So! You’re the new director,” Zander said.

  “Right. Glad to know
you, Dr. Zander. I’ve heard about you. Suppose you give me a brief on the present difficulties.”

  “You want it in layman’s language?”

  Kayden smiled with his lips alone. “I think I can struggle through the big words with you, Doc.”

  Zander frowned and put his fat fingertips together, stared at Kayden through the puffy arch. “History first. By 1953 the Electronic Mechanical and Numerical Integrator and Calculator was carried to a point of development where it could solve any problem given to it in the mathematical field, provided the automatic sequencing was fed to it on a paper tape or punch cards. Iconoscopes were set up to act as accumulators to expand the memory factor, and calculations were put on the binary obviating the use of digits two through nine.