I, Robot - Isaac Asimov - v 1.1

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I, Robot

Isaac Asimov

TO JOHN W. CAMPBELL, JR, who godfathered THE ROBOTS

The story entitled Robbie was first published as Strange Playfellow in Super Science

The following stories were originally published in Astounding Science Fiction:

Isaac Asimov.

Asimov.

by Isaac Asimov.

CONTENTS

Introduction

Robbie

Runaround

Reason

Catch That Rabbit

Liar!

Little Lost Robot

Escape!

Evidence

The Evitable Conflict

Introduction

I LOOKED AT MY NOTES AND I DIDN’T LIKE THEM. I’d spent three days at U. S. Robots and

might as well have spent them at home with the Encyclopedia Tellurica.

Susan Calvin had been born in the year 1982, they said, which made her seventy-

five now. Everyone knew that. Appropriately enough, U. S. Robot and Mechanical Men,

Inc. was seventy-five also, since it had been in the year of Dr. Calvin’s birth that

Lawrence Robertson had first taken out incorporation papers for what eventually became

the strangest industrial giant in man’s history. Well, everyone knew that, too.

At the age of twenty, Susan Calvin had been part of the particular Psycho-Math

seminar at which Dr. Alfred Lanning of U. S. Robots had demonstrated the first mobile

robot to be equipped with a voice. It was a large, clumsy unbeautiful robot, smelling of

machine-oil and destined for the projected mines on Mercury. But it could speak and

make sense.

Susan said nothing at that seminar; took no part in the hectic discussion period

that followed. She was a frosty girl, plain and colorless, who protected herself against a

world she disliked by a mask-like expression and a hypertrophy of intellect. But as she

watched and listened, she felt the stirrings of a cold enthusiasm.

She obtained her bachelor’s degree at Columbia in 2003 and began graduate work

in cybernetics.

All that had been done in the mid-twentieth century on “calculating machines”

had been upset by Robertson and his positronic brain-paths. The miles of relays and

photocells had given way to the spongy globe of plantinumiridium about the size of a

human brain.

She learned to calculate the parameters necessary to fix the possible variables

within the “positronic brain”; to construct “brains” on paper such that the responses to

given stimuli could be accurately predicted.

In 2008, she obtained her Ph.D. and joined United States Robots as a

“Robopsychologist,” becoming the first great practitioner of a new science. Lawrence

Robertson was still president of the corporation; Alfred Lanning had become director of

research.

For fifty years, she watched the direction of human progress change and leap

ahead.

Now she was retiring -- as much as she ever could. At least, she was allowing

someone else’s name to be inset upon the door of her office.

That, essentially, was what I had. I had a long list of her published papers, of the

patents in her name; I had the chronological details of her promotions. In short I had her

professional “vita” in full detail.

But that wasn’t what I wanted.

I needed more than that for my feature articles for Interplanetary Press. Much

more.

I told her so.

“Dr. Calvin,” I said, as lushly as possible, “in the mind of the public you and U. S.

Robots are identical. Your retirement will end an era and--”

“You want the human-interest angle?” She didn’t smile at me. I don’t think she

ever smiles. But her eyes were sharp, though not angry. I felt her glance slide through me

and out my occiput and knew that I was uncommonly transparent to her; that everybody

was.

But I said, “That’s right.”

“Human interest out of robots? A contradiction.”

“No, doctor. Out of you.”

“Well, I’ve been called a robot myself. Surely, they’ve told you I’m not human.”

They had, but there was no point in saying so.

She got up from her chair. She wasn’t tall and she looked frail. I followed her to

the window and we looked out.

The offices and factories of U. S. Robots were a small city; spaced and planned. It

was flattened out like an aerial photograph.

“When I first came here,” she said, “I had a little room in a building right about

there where the fire-house is now.” She pointed. “It was torn down before you were born.

I shared the room with three others. I had half a desk. We built our robots all in one

building. Output -- three a week. Now look at us.”

“Fifty Years,” I hackneyed, “is a long time.”

“Not when you’re looking back at them,” she said. “You wonder how they

vanished so quickly.”

She went back to her desk and sat down. She didn’t need expression on her face

to look sad, somehow.

“How old are you?” she wanted to know.

“Thirty-two,” I said.

“Then you don’t remember a world without robots. There was a time when

humanity faced the universe alone and without a friend. Now he has creatures to help

him; stronger creatures than himself, more faithful, more useful, and absolutely devoted

to him. Mankind is no longer alone. Have you ever thought of it that way?”

“I’m afraid I haven’t. May I quote you?”

“You may. To you, a robot is a robot. Gears and metal; electricity and positrons.

Mind and iron! Human-made! If necessary, human-destroyed! But you haven’t worked

with them, so you don’t know them. They’re a cleaner, better breed than we are.”

I tried to nudge her gently with words, “We’d like to hear some of the things you

could tell us; get your views on robots. The Interplanetary Press reaches the entire Solar

System. Potential audience is three billion, Dr. Calvin. They ought to know what you

could tell them on robots.”

It wasn’t necessary to nudge. She didn’t hear me, but she was moving in the right

direction.

“They might have known that from the start. We sold robots for Earth-use then --

before my time it was, even. Of course, that was when robots could not talk. Afterward,

they became more human and opposition began. The labor unions, of course, naturally

opposed robot competition for human jobs, and various segments of religious opinion had

their superstitious objections. It was all quite ridiculous and quite useless. And yet there it

was.”

I was taking it down verbatim on my pocket-recorder, trying not to show the

knuckle-motions of my hand. If you practice a bit, you can get to the point where you can

record accurately without taking the little gadget out of your pocket.

“Take the case of Robbie,” she said. “I never knew him. He was dismantled the

year before I joined the company -- hopelessly out-of-date. But I saw the little girl in the

museum--”

She stopped, but I didn’t say anything. I let her eyes mist up and her mind travel

back. She had lots of time to cover.

“I heard about it later, and when they called us blasphemers and demon-creators, I

always thought of him. Robbie was a non-vocal robot. He couldn’t speak. He was made

and sold in 1996. Those were the days before extreme specialization, so he was sold as a

nursemaid.”

“As a what?”

“As a nursemaid.”

Robbie

“NINETY-EIGHT -- NINETY-NINE -- ONE HUNDRED.” Gloria withdrew her chubby

little forearm from before her eyes and stood for a moment, wrinkling her nose and

blinking in the sunlight. Then, trying to watch in all directions at once, she withdrew a

few cautious steps from the tree against which she had been leaning.

She craned her neck to investigate the possibilities of a clump of bushes to the

right and then withdrew farther to obtain a better angle for viewing its dark recesses. The

quiet was profound except for the incessant buzzing of insects and the occasional chirrup

of some hardy bird, braving the midday sun.

Gloria pouted, “I bet he went inside the house, and I’ve told him a million times

that that’s not fair.”

With tiny lips pressed together tightly and a severe frown crinkling her forehead,

she moved determinedly toward the two-story building up past the driveway.

Too late she heard the rustling sound behind her, followed by the distinctive and

rhythmic clump-clump of Robbie’s metal feet. She whirled about to see her triumphing

companion emerge from hiding and make for the home-tree at full speed.

Gloria shrieked in dismay. “Wait, Robbie! That wasn’t fair, Robbie! You

promised you wouldn’t run until I found you.” Her little feet could make no headway at

all against Robbie’s giant strides. Then, within ten feet of the goal, Robbie’s pace slowed

suddenly to the merest of crawls, and Gloria, with one final burst of wild speed, dashed

pantingly past him to touch the welcome bark of home-tree first.

Gleefully, she turned on the faithful Robbie, and with the basest of ingratitude,

rewarded him for his sacrifice by taunting him cruelly for a lack of running ability.

“Robbie can’t run,” she shouted at the top of her eight-year-old voice. “I can beat

him any day. I can beat him any day.” She chanted the words in a shrill rhythm.

Robbie didn’t answer, of course -- not in words. He pantomimed running instead,

inching away until Gloria found herself running after him as he dodged her narrowly,

forcing her to veer in helpless circles, little arms outstretched and fanning at the air.

“Robbie,” she squealed, “stand still!” -- And the laughter was forced out of her in

breathless jerks.

Until he turned suddenly and caught her up, whirling her round, so that for her the

world fell away for a moment with a blue emptiness beneath, and green trees stretching

hungrily downward toward the void. Then she was down in the grass again, leaning

against Robbie’s leg and still holding a hard, metal finger.

After a while, her breath returned. She pushed uselessly at her disheveled hair in

vague imitation of one of her mother’s gestures and twisted to see if her dress were torn.

She slapped her hand against Robbie’s torso, “Bad boy! I’ll spank you!”

And Robbie cowered, holding his hands over his face so that she had to add, “No,

I won’t, Robbie. I won’t spank you. But anyway, it’s my turn to hide now because you’ve

got longer legs and you promised not to run till I found you.”

Robbie nodded his head -- a small parallelepiped with rounded edges and corners

attached to a similar but much larger parallelepiped that served as torso by means of a

short, flexible stalk -- and obediently faced the tree. A thin, metal film descended over his

glowing eyes and from within his body came a steady, resonant ticking.

“Don’t peek now -- and don’t skip any numbers,” warned Gloria, and scurried for

cover.

With unvarying regularity, seconds were ticked off, and at the hundredth, up went

the eyelids, and the glowing red of Robbie’s eyes swept the prospect. They rested for a

moment on a bit of colorful gingham that protruded from behind a boulder. He advanced

a few steps and convinced himself that it was Gloria who squatted behind it.

Slowly, remaining always between Gloria and home-tree, he advanced on the

hiding place, and when Gloria was plainly in sight and could no longer even theorize to

herself that she was not seen, he extended one arm toward her, slapping the other against

his leg so that it rang again. Gloria emerged sulkily.

“You peeked!” she exclaimed, with gross unfairness. “Besides I’m tired of

playing hide-and-seek. I want a ride.”

But Robbie was hurt at the unjust accusation, so he seated himself carefully and

shook his head ponderously from side to side.

Gloria changed her tone to one of gentle coaxing immediately, “Come on,

Robbie. I didn’t mean it about the peeking. Give me a ride.”

Robbie was not to be won over so easily, though. He gazed stubbornly at the sky,

and shook his head even more emphatically.

“Please, Robbie, please give me a ride.” She encircled his neck with rosy arms

and hugged tightly. Then, changing moods in a moment, she moved away. “If you don’t,

I’m going to cry,” and her face twisted appallingly in preparation.

Hard-hearted Robbie paid scant attention to this dreadful possibility, and shook

his head a third time. Gloria found it necessary to play her trump card.

“If you don’t,” she exclaimed warmly, “I won’t tell you any more stories, that’s

all. Not one--”

Robbie gave in immediately and unconditionally before this ultimatum, nodding

his head vigorously until the metal of his neck hummed. Carefully, he raised the little girl

and placed her on his broad, flat shoulders.

Gloria’s threatened tears vanished immediately and she crowed with delight.

Robbie’s metal skin, kept at a constant temperature of seventy by the high resistance coils

within, felt nice and comfortable, while the beautifully loud sound her heels made as they

bumped rhythmically against his chest was enchanting.

“You’re an air-coaster, Robbie, you’re a big, silver aircoaster. Hold out your arms

straight. -- You got to, Robbie, if you’re going to be an aircoaster.”

The logic was irrefutable. Robbie’s arms were wings catching the air currents and

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摘要：

I,RobotIsaacAsimovTOJOHNW.CAMPBELL,JR,whogodfatheredTHEROBOTSThestoryentitledRobbiewasfirstpublishedasStrangePlayfellowinSuperScienceStories.Copyright©1940byFictioneers,Inc.;copyright©1968byIsaacAsimov.ThefollowingstorieswereoriginallypublishedinAstoundingScienceFiction:Reason,copyright©1941byStreet...

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