The Robots of Dawn (Robot #3)

by Isaac Asimov

Robot-block was what the general population called it or, more frequently, roblock for short.

There was no reason for this not to be. Any official might be a woman. The Secretary-General might be a woman. There were women on the police force, even a woman with the rank of captain. It was just that, without warning, one didn’t expect it in any given case. There were times in history when women entered administrative posts in considerable numbers. Baley knew that; he knew history well. But this wasn’t one of those times.

“Connotations and associations; the subtle effect, not of dictionary meaning, but of years of usage; the nature of the sentences and conditions and events in which one has experienced the use of one word as compared with that of the other.”

“The punishment of a murderer is psychic-probing, Partner Elijah, followed by the construction of a new personality. It is the personal structure of the mind that has committed the crime, not the life of the body.”

Baley, it seemed not that the Aurorans were growing more humane in their attitude out of a liking for the humane, but that they were denying the robotic nature of the objects in order to remove the discomfort of having to recognize the fact that the human beings were dependent upon objects of artificial intelligence.

History was interesting to the extent that it was catastrophic and, while that might make absorbing viewing, it made horrible living. Undoubtedly, personal lives continued to be interesting for the vast majority of Aurorans and, if the collective interaction of lives grew quiet, who would mind?

“It might. And if such an encounter is imminent, all the more reason why we should not be passively waiting. For we are growing passive, Mr. Baley. No new Spacer world has been settled in two and a half centuries. Our worlds are so tame, so delightful, we do not wish to leave them. This world was originally settled, you see, because Earth had grown so unpleasant that the risks and dangers of new and empty worlds seemed preferable by comparison. By the time our fifty Spacer worlds were developed—Solaria last of all—there was no longer any push, any need to move out elsewhere. And Earth itself had retreated to its underground caves of steel. The End. Finis.” “You don’t really mean that.” “If we stay as we are? If we remain placid and comfortable and unmoving? Yes, I do mean that. Humanity must expand its range somehow if it is to continue to flourish. One method of expansion is through space, through a constant pioneering reach toward other worlds. If we fail in this, some other civilization that is undergoing such expansion will reach us and we will not be able to stand against its dynamism.”

Are there Laws of Humanics as there are Laws of Robotics? How many Laws of Humanics might there be and how can they be expressed mathematically? I don’t know. “Perhaps, though, there may come a day when someone will work out the Laws of Humanics and then be able to predict the broad strokes of the future, and know what might be in store for humanity, instead of merely guessing as I do, and know what to do to make things better, instead of merely speculating. I dream sometimes of founding a mathematical science which I think of as ‘psychohistory,’ but I know I can’t and I fear no one ever will.”

“Well, think. The task is to design a robotic brain as close to the human as possible and that would require, it would seem, a certain reach into the poetic—” He paused and his small smile became an outright grin. “You know it always bothers some of my colleagues when I tell them that, if a conclusion is not poetically balanced, it cannot be scientifically true. They tell me they don’t know what that means.”

“Sex—permitted and free as water—has nothing to do with love on Aurora, just as sex—forbidden and a thing of shame—has nothing to do with love on Solaria. In either case, children are few and must come about only after formal application. —And then, if permission is granted, there must be an interlude of sex designed for childbearing only, dull and brackish. If, after a reasonable time, impregnation doesn’t follow, the spirit rebels and artificial insemination is resorted to.

Nothing was lacking and those portions which might be expected to be erectile were, indeed, erectile. Indeed, they were under what, in a human, would be called conscious control. Jander could tumesce and detumesce on order. He told me so when I asked him if his penis was functional in that respect. I was curious and he demonstrated.

Not for a moment, even today, would he stop to question whether such a revelation might not embarrass me. —Yes, I offered myself to him and why not? He was the only human being I really knew. He was superficially gentle to me and I didn’t understand his true purposes. He was a natural target for me. Then, too, he saw to it that I was introduced to sexual stimulation under controlled conditions—the controls he set up. It was inevitable that eventually I would turn to him. I had to, for there was no one else—and he refused.”

Even though my sexual development was stunted and distorted, with effects I feel to this day, I did not blame him. I did not know enough. I found excuses for him. He was busy. He had others. He needed older women. You would be astonished at the ingenuity with which I uncovered reasons for his refusal. It was only years later that I became aware that something was wrong and I managed to bring it out openly, face-to-face. ‘Why did you refuse me?’ I asked. ‘Obliging me might have put me on the right track, solved everything.’ ”

He was willing to see me distorted for life, rather than risk his objectivity. His observations meant more to him than my normality. From that time on, I knew what I was and what he was—and I left him.” The silence hung heavy in the air.

“Earthpeople have long lived on an increasingly crowded planet and have drawn together into still more crowded cities that finally became the beehives and anthills you call Cities with a capital ‘C.’ What kind of Earthpeople, then, would leave Earth and go to other worlds that are empty and hostile so that they might build new societies from nothing, societies that they could not enjoy in completed form in their own lifetime—trees that would still be saplings when they died, so to speak.” “Rather unusual people, I suppose.” “Quite unusual. Specifically, people who are not so dependent on crowds of their fellows as to lack the ability to face emptiness. People who even prefer emptiness, who would like to work on their own and face problems by themselves, rather than hide in the herd and share the burden so that their own load is virtually nothing. Individualists, Mr. Baley. Individualists!” “I see that.”

“And if these robots form a society so human that they cannot be differentiated from human, then, when true human beings arrive, might it not be that the robots would resent the immigrants and try to keep them off? Might the robots not react to Aurorans as you react to Earthpeople?”

“Yes, Dr. Amadiro. It may be precisely because I’m a stranger that I can see clearly. I am not blinded by custom and ideals. Robots are not permitted to enter Personals and that’s one distinction that is clearly made. It permits human beings to find one place where they can be alone. You and I sit at our ease, while robots remain standing in their niches, as you see”—Baley waved his arm toward Daneel—“which is another distinction. I think that human beings—even Aurorans—will always be eager to make distinctions and to preserve their own humanity.” “Astonishing, Mr. Baley.” “Not astonishing at all, Dr. Amadiro. You have lost. Even if you manage to foist your belief that Dr. Fastolfe destroyed Jander upon Aurorans generally, even if you reduce Dr. Fastolfe to political impotence, even if you get the Legislature and the Auroran people to approve your plan of robot settlement, you will only have gained time. As soon as the Aurorans see the implications of your plan, they will turn against you. It might be better, then, if you put an end to your campaign against Dr. Fastolfe and meet with him to work out some compromise whereby the settlement of new worlds by Earthmen can be so arranged as to represent no threat to Aurora or to the Spacer worlds in general.”

“What case can you judge from, then? You are only guessing. To me, it seems obvious that, if a robot is human enough, he would be accepted as human. Do you demand proof that I am not a robot? The fact that I seem human is enough. In the end, we will not worry whether a new world is settled by Aurorans who are human in fact or in appearance, if no one can tell the difference. But—human or robot—the settlers will be Aurorans either way, not Earthpeople.”

For the first time in his life, Baley found himself envying a robot. Imagine being able to walk through that; to be indifferent to water, to sight, to sound; to be able to ignore surroundings and to have a pseudo-life that was absolutely courageous; to know no fear of pain or of death, because there was no pain or death. And yet to be incapable of originality of thought, to be incapable of unpredictable leaps of intuition— Were such gifts worth what humanity paid for them?

“I will never see you again, Gladia, but I will never forget you, either. I will die in a few decades and when I do you will be as young as you are now, so we would have to say good-bye soon whatever we would imagine as happening.”

Giskard said, “Good-bye, friend Elijah, and remember that, although people apply the phrase to Aurora, it is, from this point on, Earth itself that is the true World of the Dawn.”