I, Robot: Catch That Rabbit & Liar

The vacation was longer than two weeks. That, Mike Donovan had to admit. It had been six months, with pay. He admitted that, too. But that, as he explained furiously, was fortuitous.

Powell groaned heavily behind a noticeably insincere smile.

Aloud he said, “You’re as lucid as Euclid with everything except the facts. You’ve watched that robot group for three shifts, you redhead, and they did their work perfectly. You said so yourself. What else can we do?”

“Not a thing. Not a thing. Everything was perfect. Smooth and perfect as the luminiferous ether. Only one little insignificant detail disturbed me—there was no ore.”

Those six subsidiaries are part of DV-5 like your fingers are part of you and it gives them their orders neither by voice nor radio, but directly through positronic fields. Now—there isn’t a roboticist back at United States Robots that knows what a positronic field is or how it works. And neither do I. Neither do you.”

Powell said somberly, “Hi, Dave. How do you feel?”

“Dave,” he said, “you’re a good fellow. There’s nothing flighty or prima donnaish about you. You’re a stable, rock-bottom mining robot, except that you’re equipped to handle six subsidiaries in direct coordination. As far as I know, that has not introduced any unstable paths in your brain-path map.”

Powell had the queasy feeling that if the robot’s face were capable of expression, it would be one of pain and mortification.

At the end of two hours, Powell was copiously besweated.

Powell said, “I’ve got to think it over, Dave. Snap judgments won’t help much. Suppose you go back to the C-shift. Take it easy. Don’t press too hard for quota just for a while—and we’ll fix things up.”

Because you and I have been so injudicious as to display proficiency at the task, we’ve been rewarded with the dirtiest jobs.

They wheeled and turned in macabre simultaneity; and melted through changes of formation with the weird ease of chorus dancers in Lunar Bowl.

Donovan scowled and slipped a detonator into the empty side holster with an ostentatious shove.

You’re postulating a major aberration of the positronic brain.

The “finger” had a curious air of reciting by rote, as if he answered questions by the mechanical pressure of his brain pan, but without any enthusiasm whatever.

He said, “The first time we were at work on a difficult outcropping in Tunnel 17, Level B. The second time we were buttressing the roof against a possible cave-in. The third time we were preparing accurate blasts in order to tunnel farther without breaking into a subterranean fissure. The fourth time was just after a minor cave-in.”

Donovan broke in tensely, “What was the first order...the one that was superseded by the marching directions?”

For eight days, on alternate four-hour shifts, he watched with aching and bleary eyes those glinty metallic forms move against the vague background.

“We could flood the mines, if this weren’t an airless asteroid.”
“A witticism, no doubt,” said Powell. “Really, Mike, you’ll incapacitate me with laughter. What about a mild cave-in?”

“We could flood the mines, if this weren’t an airless asteroid.”
“A witticism, no doubt,” said Powell. “Really, Mike, you’ll incapacitate me with laughter. What about a mild cave-in?”

His detonator was lifted and remained poised while Donovan watched and cursed and blinked the sweat out of his eye.

But in an emergency, all six subsidiaries must be mobilized immediately and simultaneously.

Bogert flattened his black hair down with both hands, “That was the thirty-fourth RB model we’ve turned out, Lanning. All the others were strictly orthodox.”

Bogert’s thick lips spread in a patronizing smile, “Do you? If you can answer for the entire assembly line, I recommend your promotion..."

“Hm-m-m, yes!” The young technician grinned wryly. “It’s still a lulu of a job.”

“Yes, but I’m afraid that after going through some of the harrowing emotional experiences of our present-day sentimental novel”—there was a tinge of bitterness in her voice—“you find real minds like ours dull and colorless.”

The wistfulness in her voice drowned out everything else.

Herbie’s steel fist struck the plastic-topped table with a strident clang.

Susan Calvin rose to her feet with a vivacity almost girlish.

There was a shade of complacency in Bogert’s smile, “I rather thought that would be the case. It is deep. We’ll forget it.”

“Well, now,” Bogert’s voice became ingratiating, “you would know whether...whether he’s thinking of resigning. Health, perhaps, or some other—”

He turned at the sound of the opening door and nodded at Lanning, who entered, cracking the knuckles of one gnarled hand with the other.

Lanning did not trouble to answer, nor to do more than bestow a single cursory glance at the top sheet upon Bogert’s desk.

“Oh, I’d just as soon, I’m just busting to tell someone—and you’re just about the best—er—confidante I could find here.”

She found herself leaning breathlessly against the door jamb, staring into Herbie’s metal face.

They approached Herbie simultaneously; Lanning angry and impatient, Bogert, coolly sardonic.

The two men looked at each other and the hostility in their eyes was all but tangible.

Lanning laughed, not very loudly and the psychologist smiled caustically.

“You know, I suppose,” she continued, “just exactly at what point in the assembly an extraneous factor was introduced or an essential one left out.”

Don’t you suppose that I can see past the superficial skin of your mind?