I, Robot. Айзек Азимов

talkative. The combination, therefore, resulted in a tour that was fully explained, perhaps even over-abundantly explained, at every step. However, Mrs Weston was not bored. Indeed, she stopped him several times and begged him to repeat his statements in simpler language so that Gloria might understand. Under the influence of this appreciation of his narrative powers, Mr Struthers expanded genially and became ever more communicative, if possible.

      George Weston, himself, showed a gathering impatience.

      ‘Pardon me, Struthers,’ he said, breaking into the middle of a lecture on the photo-electric cell, ‘haven’t you a section of the factory where only robot labor is employed?’

      ‘Eh? Oh, yes! Yes, indeed!’ He smiled at Mrs Weston. ‘A vicious circle in a way, robots creating more robots. Of course, we are not making a general practice out of it. For one thing, the unions would never let us. But we can turn out a very few robots using robot labor exclusively, merely as a sort of scientific experiment. You see,’ he tapped his pince-nez into one palm argumentatively, ‘what the labor unions don’t realize – and I say this as a man who has always been very sympathetic with the labor movement in general – is that the advent of the robot, while involving some dislocation to begin with, will, inevitably—’

      ‘Yes, Struthers,’ said Weston, ‘but about that section of the factory you speak of – may we see it? It would be very interesting, I’m sure.’

      ‘Yes! Yes, of course!’ Mr Struthers replaced his pince-nez in one conclusive movement and gave vent to a soft cough of discomfiture. ‘Follow me, please.’

      He was comparatively quiet while leading the three through a long corridor and down a flight of stairs. Then, when they had entered a large well-lit room that buzzed with metallic activity, the sluices opened and the flood of explanation poured forth again.

      ‘There you are!’ he said with pride in his voice. ‘Robots only! Five men act as overseers and they don’t even stay in this room. In five years, that is, since we began this project, not a single accident has occurred. Of course, the robots here assembled are comparatively simple, but …’

      The General Manager’s voice had long died to a rather soothing murmur in Gloria’s ears. The whole trip seemed rather dull and pointless to her, though there were many robots in sight. None were even remotely like Robbie, though, and she surveyed them with open contempt.

      In this room, there weren’t any people at all, she noticed. Then her eyes fell upon six or seven robots busily engaged at a round table half-way across the room. They widened in incredulous surprise. It was a big room. She couldn’t see for sure, but one of the robots looked like – looked like – it was!

      ‘Robbie!’ Her shriek pierced the air, and one of the robots about the table faltered and dropped the tool he was holding. Gloria went almost mad with joy. Squeezing through the railing before either parent could stop her, she dropped lightly to the floor a few feet below, and ran toward her Robbie, arms waving and hair flying.

      And the three horrified adults, as they stood frozen in their tracks, saw what the excited little girl did not see, – a huge, lumbering tractor bearing blindly down upon its appointed track.

      It took split-seconds for Weston to come to his senses, and those split-seconds meant everything, for Gloria could not be overtaken. Although Weston vaulted the railing in a wild attempt, it was obviously hopeless. Mr Struthers signaled wildly to the overseers to stop the tractor, but the overseers were only human and it took time to act.

      It was only Robbie that acted immediately and with precision.

      With metal legs eating up the space between himself and his little mistress he charged down from the opposite direction. Everything then happened at once. With one sweep of an arm, Robbie snatched up Gloria, slackening his speed not one iota, and, consequently, knocking every breath of air out of her. Weston, not quite comprehending all that was happening, felt, rather than saw, Robbie brush past him, and came to a sudden bewildered halt. The tractor intersected Gloria’s path half a second after Robbie had, rolled on ten feet further and came to a grinding, long-drawn-out stop.

      Gloria regained her breath, submitted to a series of passionate hugs on the part of both her parents and turned eagerly toward Robbie. As far as she was concerned, nothing had happened except that she had found her friend.

      But Mrs Weston’s expression had changed from one of relief to one of dark suspicion. She turned to her husband, and, despite her disheveled and undignified appearance, managed to look quite formidable, ‘You engineered this, didn’t you?’

      George Weston swabbed at a hot forehead with his handkerchief. His hand was unsteady, and his lips could curve only into a tremulous and exceedingly weak smile.

      Mrs Weston pursued the thought, ‘Robbie wasn’t designed for engineering or construction work. He couldn’t be of any use to them. You had him placed there deliberately so that Gloria would find him. You know you did.’

      ‘Well, I did,’ said Weston. ‘But, Grace, how was I to know the reunion would be so violent? And Robbie has saved her life; you’ll have to admit that. You can’t send him away again.’

      Grace Weston considered. She turned toward Gloria and Robbie and watched them abstractedly for a moment. Gloria had a grip about the robot’s neck and would have asphyxiated any creature but one of metal, and was prattling nonsense in half-hysterical frenzy. Robbie’s chrome-steel arms (capable of bending a bar of steel two inches in diameter into a pretzel) wound about the little girl gently and lovingly, and his eyes glowed a deep, deep red.

      ‘Well,’ said Mrs Weston, at last, ‘I guess he can stay with us until he rusts.’

       Susan Calvin shrugged her shoulders, ‘Of course, he didn’t. That was 1998. By 2002, we had invented the mobile speaking robot which, of course, made all the non-speaking models out of date, and which seemed to be the final straw as far as the non-robot elements were concerned. Most of the world governments banned robot use on Earth for any purpose other than scientific research between 2003 and 2007.’

       ‘So that Gloria had to give up Robbie eventually?’

       ‘I’m afraid so. I imagine, however, that it was easier for her at the age of fifteen than at eight. Still, it was a stupid and unnecessary attitude on the part of humanity. US Robots hit its low point, financially, just about the time I joined them in 2007. At first, I thought my job might come to a sudden end in a matter of months, but then we simply developed the extra-Terrestrial market.’

       ‘And then you were set, of course.’

       ‘Not quite. We began by trying to adapt the models we had on hand. Those first speaking models, for instance. They were about twelve feet high, very clumsy and not much good. We sent them out to Mercury to help build the mining station there, but that failed.’

       I looked up in surprise, ‘It did? Why, Mercury Mines is a multi-billion-dollar concern.’

       ‘It is now, but it was a second attempt that succeeded. If you want to know about that, young man, I’d advise you to look up Gregory Powell. He and Michael Donovan handled our most difficult cases in the teens and twenties. I haven’t heard from Donovan in years, but Powell is living right here in New York. He’s a grandfather now, which is a thought difficult to get used to. I can only think of him as a rather young man. Of course, I was younger, too.’

       I tried to keep her talking, ‘If you would give me the bare bones, Dr Calvin, I can have Mr Powell fill it in afterward.’ (And this was exactly what I later did.)

       She spread her thin hands out upon the desk and looked at them. ‘There are two or three,’ she said, ‘that I know a little about.’

       ‘Start with Mercury,’ I suggested.

       ‘Well, I think it was in 2015 that the Second Mercury Expedition was sent out. It was exploratory