RC2 - Suspicion, Isaac Asimov's Robot City Book 2 - Mike McQuay

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Isaac Asimov's ROBOT CITY - Book Two: Suspicion

ISAAC ASIMOV’S

ROBOT CITY

Books in the Isaac Asimov’s Robot CityTM series from Ace

BOOK 1: ODYSSEY by Michael P. Kube-McDowell

BOOK 2: SUSPICION by Mike McQuay

BOOK 3: CYBORG by William F. Wu

BOOK 4: PRODIGY by Arthur Byron Cover

BOOK 5: REFUGE by Rob Chilson

BOOK 6: PERIHELION by William F. Wu

ISAAC ASIMOV’S

ROBOT

CITY

BOOK 2: SUSPICION

MIKE MCQUAY

A Byron Preiss Visual Publications, Inc. Book

ACE BOOKS, NEW YORK

This book is an Ace original edition, and has never been previously published.

ISAAC ASIMOV’S ROBOT CITY

BOOK 2: SUSPICION

An Ace Book/published by arrangement with Byron Preiss Visual Publications, Inc.

PRINTING HISTORY

Ace Edition/September 1987

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Isaac Asimov's ROBOT CITY - Book Two: Suspicion

Cover art and illustrations by Paul Rivoche.

Edited by David M. Harris.

Book design by Alex Jay/Studio J.

This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission.

ROBOT CITY is a trademark of Byron Preiss Visual Publications, Inc.

For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group, 200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.

ISBN: 0-441-73126-0

Ace books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, 200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.

The name “Ace” and the “A” logo are trademarks belonging to Charter Communications, Inc.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3

For Brian Shelton And the “bruised banana”

THE LAWS OF HUMANICS

ISAAC ASIMOV

I am pleased by the way in which the Robot City books pick up the various themes and references

in my robot stories and carry on with them.

For instance, my first three robot novels were, essentially, murder mysteries, with Elijah Baley as

the detective. Of these first three, the second novel, The Naked Sun, was a locked-room mystery,

in the sense that the murdered person was found with no weapon on the site and yet no weapon

could have been removed either.

I managed to produce a satisfactory solution but I did not do that sort of thing again, and I am

delighted that Mike McQuay has tried his hand at it here.

The fourth robot novel, Robots and Empire, was not primarily a murder mystery. Elijah Baley

had died a natural death at a good, old age, the book veered toward the Foundation universe so

that it was clear that both my notable series, the Robot series and the Foundation series, were

going to be fused into a broader whole. (No, I didn’t do this for some arbitrary reason. The

necessities arising out of writing sequels in the 1980s to tales originally written in the 1940s and

1950s forced my hand.)

In Robots and Empire, my robot character, Giskard, of whom I was very fond, began to concern

himself with “the Laws of Humanics,” which, I indicated, might eventually serve as the basis for

the science of psychohistory, which plays such a large role in the Foundation series.

Strictly speaking, the Laws of Humanics should be a description, in concise form, of how human

beings actually behave. No such description exists, of course. Even psychologists, who study the

matter scientifically (at least, I hope they do) cannot present any “laws” but can only make

lengthy and diffuse descriptions of what people seem to do. And none of them are prescriptive.

When a psychologist says that people respond in this way to a stimulus of that sort, he merely

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Isaac Asimov's ROBOT CITY - Book Two: Suspicion

means that some do at some times. Others may do it at other times, or may not do it at all.

If we have to wait for actual laws prescribing human behavior in order to establish psychohistory

(and surely we must) then I suppose we will have to wait a long time.

Well, then, what are we going to do about the Laws of Humanics? I suppose what we can do is to

start in a very small way, and then later slowly build it up, if we can.

Thus, in Robots and Empire, it is a robot, Giskard, who raises the question of the Laws of

Humanics. Being a robot, he must view everything from the standpoint of the Three Laws of

Robotics — these robotic laws being truly prescriptive, since robots are forced to obey them and

cannot disobey them.

The Three Laws of Robotics are:

1 — A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to

harm.

2 — A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would

conflict with the First Law.

3 — A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the

First or Second Law.

Well, then, it seems to me that a robot could not help but think that human beings ought to

behave in such a way as to make it easier for robots to obey those laws.

In fact, it seems to me that ethical human beings should be as anxious to make life easier for

robots as the robots themselves would. I took up this matter in my story “The Bicentennial Man,”

which was published in 1976. In it, I had a human character say in part:

“If a man has the right to give a robot any order that does not involve harm to a human being, he

should have the decency never to give a robot any order that involves harm to a robot, unless

human safety absolutely requires it. With great power goes great responsibility, and if the robots

have Three Laws to protect men, is it too much to ask that men have a law or two to protect

robots?”

For instance, the First Law is in two parts. The first part, “A robot may not injure a human

being,” is absolute and nothing need be done about that. The second part, “or, through inaction,

allow a human being to come to harm,” leaves things open a bit. A human being might be about

to come to harm because of some event involving an inanimate object. A heavy weight might be

likely to fall upon him, or he may slip and be about to fall into a lake, or any one of uncountable

other misadventures of the sort may be involved. Here the robot simply must try to rescue the

human being; pull him from under, steady him on his feet and so on. Or a human being might be

threatened by some form of life other than human — a lion, for instance — and the robot must

come to his defense.

But what if harm to a human being is threatened by the action of another human being? There a

robot must decide what to do. Can he save one human being without harming the other? Or if

there must be harm, what course of action must he pursue to make it minimal?

It would be a lot easier for the robot, if human beings were as concerned about the welfare of

human beings, as robots are expected to be. And, indeed, any reasonable human code of ethics

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Isaac Asimov's ROBOT CITY - Book Two: Suspicion

would instruct human beings to care for each other and to do no harm to each other. Which is,

after all, the mandate that humans gave robots. Therefore the First Law of Humanics from the

robots’ standpoint is:

1 — A human being may not injure another human being, or, through inaction, allow a human

being to come to harm.

If this law is carried through, the robot will be left guarding the human being from misadventures

with inanimate objects and with non-human life, something which poses no ethical dilemmas for

it. Of course, the robot must still guard against harm done a human being unwittingly by another

human being. It must also stand ready to come to the aid of a threatened human being, if another

human being on the scene simply cannot get to the scene of action quickly enough. But then,

even a robot may unwittingly harm a human being, and even a robot may not be fast enough to

get to the scene of action in time or skilled enough to take the necessary action. Nothing is perfect.

That brings us to the Second Law of Robotics, which compels a robot to obey all orders given it

by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. This means that

human beings can give robots any order without limitation as long as it does not involve harm to

a human being.

But then a human being might order a robot to do something impossible, or give it an order that

might involve a robot in a dilemma that would do damage to its brain. Thus, in my short story

“Liar!,” published in 1940, I had a human being deliberately put a robot into a dilemma where its

brain burnt out and ceased to function.

We might even imagine that as a robot becomes more intelligent and self-aware, its brain might

become sensitive enough to undergo harm if it were forced to do something needlessly

embarrassing or undignified. Consequently, the Second Law of Humanics would be:

2 — A human being must give orders to a robot that preserve robotic existence, unless such

orders cause harm or discomfort to human beings.

The Third Law of Robotics is designed to protect the robot, but from the robotic view it can be

seen that it does not go far enough. The robot must sacrifice its existence if the First or Second

Law makes that necessary. Where the First Law is concerned, there can be no argument. A robot

must give up its existence if that is the only way it can avoid doing harm to a human being or can

prevent harm from coming to a human being. If we admit the innate superiority of any human

being to any robot (which is something I am a little reluctant to admit, actually), then this is

inevitable.

On the other hand, must a robot give up its existence merely in obedience to an order that might

be trivial, or even malicious? In “The Bicentennial Man,” I have some hoodlums deliberately

order a robot to take itself apart for the fun of watching that happen. The Third Law of Humanics

must therefore be:

3 — A human being must not harm a robot, or, through inaction, allow a robot to come to harm,

unless such harm is needed to keep a human being from harm or to allow a vital order to be

carried out.

Of course, we cannot enforce these laws as we can the Robotic Laws. We cannot design human

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Isaac Asimov's ROBOT CITY - Book Two: Suspicion

brains as we design robot brains. It is, however, a beginning, and I honestly think that if we are to

have power over intelligent robots, we must feel a corresponding responsibility for them, as the

human character in my story “The Bicentennial Man” said.

Certainly in Robot City, these are the sorts of rules that robots might suggest for the only human

beings on the planet, as you may soon learn.

CHAPTER 1

PARADES

It was sunset in the city of robots, and it was snowing paper.

The sun was a yellow one and the atmosphere, mostly nitrogen/oxygen blue, was flush with the

veins of iron oxides that traced through it, making the whole twilight sky glow bright orange like

a forest fire.

The one who called himself Derec marveled at the sunset from the back of the huge earthmover

as it slowly made its way through the city streets, crowds of robots lining the avenue to watch

him and his companions make this tour of the city. The tiny shards of paper floated down from

the upper stories of the crystal-like buildings, thrown (for reasons that escaped Derec) by the

robots that crowded the windows to watch him.

Derec took it all in, sure that it must have significance or the robots wouldn’t do it. And that was

the only thing he was sure of—for Derec was a person without memory, without notion of who

he was. Worse still, he had come to this impossible world, unpopulated by humans, by means that

still astounded him; and he had no idea, no idea, of where in the universe he was.

He was young, the cape of manhood still new on his shoulders, and he only knew that by

observing himself in a mirror. Even his name—Derec—wasn’t really his. It was a borrowed

name, a convenient thing to call himself because not having a name was like not existing. And he

desperately wanted to exist, to know who, to know what he was.

And why.

Beside him sat a young woman called Katherine Burgess, who had said she’d known him,

briefly, when he’d had a name. But he wasn’t sure of her, of her truth or her motivations. She had

told him his real name was David and that he’d crewed on a Settler ship, but neither the name nor

the classification seemed to fit as well as the identity he’d already been building for himself; so

he continued to call himself by his chosen name, Derec, until he had solid proof of his other

existence.

Flanking the humans on either side were two robots of advanced sophistication (Derec knew that,

but didn’t know how he knew it). One was named Euler, the other Rydberg, and they couldn’t, or

wouldn’t, tell him any more than he already knew—nothing. The robots wanted information from

him, however. They wanted to know why he was a murderer.

The First Law of Robotics made it impossible for robots to harm human beings, so when the only

other human inhabitant of Robot City turned up dead, Derec and Katherine were the only

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IsaacAsimov'sROBOTCITY-BookTwo:SuspicionISAACASIMOV’SROBOTCITYBooksintheIsaacAsimov’sRobotCityTMseriesfromAceBOOK1:ODYSSEYbyMichaelP.Kube-McDowellBOOK2:SUSPICIONbyMikeMcQuayBOOK3:CYBORGbyWilliamF.WuBOOK4:PRODIGYbyArthurByronCoverBOOK5:REFUGEbyRobChilsonBOOK6:PERIHELIONbyWilliamF.WuISAACASIMOV’SROBOT...

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