Evidence

   “But that wasn’t it, either,” said Dr. Calvin thoughtfully, “Oh, eventually, the ship and others like it became government property; the Jump through hyperspace was perfected, and now we actually have human colonies on the planets of some of the nearer stars, but that wasn’t it.”
   I had finished eating and watched her through the smoke of my cigarette.
   “It’s what has happened to the people here on Earth in the last fifty years that really counts. When I was born, young man, we had just gone through the last World War. It was a low point in history—but it was the end of nationalism. Earth was too small for nations and they began grouping themselves into Regions. It took quite a while. When I was born the United States of America was still a nation and not merely a part of the Northern Region. In fact, the name of the corporation is still ‘United States Robots-.’ And the change from nations to Regions, which has stabilized our economy and brought about what amounts to a Golden Age, when this century is compared with the last, was also brought about by our robots.”
   “You mean the Machines,” I said. “The Brain you talked about was the first of the Machines, wasn’t it?”
   “Yes, it was, but it’s not the Machines I was thinking of. Rather of a man. He died last year.” Her voice was suddenly deeply sorrowful. “Or at least he arranged to die, because he knew we needed him no longer. Stephen Byerley.”
   “Yes, I guessed that was who you meant.”
   “He first entered public office in 2032. You were only a boy then, so you wouldn’t remember the strangeness of it. His campaign for the Mayoralty was certainly the queerest in history-!”
   Francis Quinn was a politician of the new school. That, of course, is a meaningless expression, as are all expressions of the sort. Most of the “new schools” we have were duplicated in the social life of ancient Greece, and perhaps, if we knew more about it, in the social life of ancient Sumeria and in the lake dwellings of prehistoric Switzerland as well.
   But, to get out from under what promises to be a dull and complicated beginning, it might be best to state hastily that Quinn neither ran for office nor canvassed for votes, made no speeches and stuffed no ballot boxes. Any more than Napoleon pulled a trigger at Austerlitz.
   And since politics makes strange bedfellows, Alfred Lanning sat at the other side of the desk with his ferocious white eyebrows bent far forward over eyes in which chronic impatience had sharpened to acuity. He was not pleased.
   The fact, if known to Quinn, would have annoyed him not the least. His voice was friendly, perhaps professionally so.
   “I assume you know Stephen Byerley, Dr. Lanning.”
   “I have heard of him. So have many people.”
   “Yes, so have I. Perhaps you intend voting for him at the next election.”
   “I couldn’t say.” There was an unmistakable trace of acidity here. “I have not followed the political currents, so I’m not aware that he is running for office.”
   “He may be our next mayor. Of course, he is only a lawyer now, but great oaks—”
   “Yes,” interrupted Lanning, “I have heard the phrase before. But I wonder if we can get to the business at hand.”
   “We are at the business at hand, Dr. Lanning.” Quinn’s tone was very gentle, “It is to my interest to keep Mr. Byerley a district attorney at the very most, and it is to your interest to help me do so.”
   “To my interest? Come!” Lanning’s eyebrows hunched low.
   “Well, say then to the interest of the U. S. Robot & Mechanical Men Corporation. I come to you as Director Emeritus of Research, because I know that your connection to them is that of, shall we say, ‘elder statesman.’ You are listened to with respect and yet your connection with them is no longer so tight but that you cannot possess considerable freedom of action; even if the action is somewhat unorthodox.”
   Dr. Lanning was silent a moment, chewing the cud of his thoughts. He said more softly, “I don’t follow you at all, Mr. Quinn.”
   “I am not surprised, Dr. Lanning. But it’s all rather simple. Do you mind?” Quinn lit a slender cigarette with a lighter of tasteful simplicity and his big-boned face settled into an expression of quiet amusement. “We have spoken of Mr. Byerley—a strange and colorful character. He was unknown three years ago. He is very well known now. He is a man of force and ability, and certainly the most capable and intelligent prosecutor I have ever known. Unfortunately he is not a friend of mine”
   “I understand,” said Lanning, mechanically. He stared at his fingernails.
   “I have had occasion,” continued Quinn, evenly, “in the past year to investigate Mr. Byerley—quite exhaustively. It is always useful, you see, to subject the past life of reform politicians to rather inquisitive research. If you knew how often it helped—” He paused to smile humorlessly at the glowing tip of his cigarette. “But Mr. Byerley’s past is unremarkable. A quiet life in a small town, a college education, a wife who died young, an auto accident with a slow recovery, law school, coming to the metropolis, an attorney.”
   Francis Quinn shook his head slowly, then added, “But his present life. Ah, that is remarkable. Our district attorney never eats!”
   Lanning’s head snapped up, old eyes surprisingly sharp, “Pardon me?”
   “Our district attorney never eats.” The repetition thumped by syllables. “I’ll modify that slightly. He has never been seen to eat or drink. Never! Do you understand the significance of the word? Not rarely, but never!”
   “I find that quite incredible. Can you trust your investigators?”
   “I can trust my investigators, and I don’t find it incredible at all. Further, our district attorney has never been seen to drink—in the aqueous sense as well as the alcoholic—nor to sleep. There are other factors, but I should think I have made my point.”
   Lanning leaned back in his seat, and there was the rapt silence of challenge and response between them, and then the old roboticist shook his head. “No. There is only one thing you can be trying to imply, if I couple your statements with the fact that you present them to me, and that is impossible.”
   “But the man is quite inhuman, Dr. Lanning.”
   “If you told me he were Satan in masquerade, there would be a faint chance that I might believe you.”
   “I tell you he is a robot, Dr. Lanning.”
   “I tell you it is as impossible a conception as I have ever heard, Mr. Quinn.”
   Again the combative silence.
   “Nevertheless,” and Quinn stubbed out his cigarette with elaborate care, “you will have to investigate this impossibility with all the resources of the Corporation.”
   “I’m sure that I could undertake no such thing, Mr. Quinn. You don’t seriously suggest that the Corporation take part in local politics.”
   “You have no choice. Supposing I were to make my facts public without proof. The evidence is circumstantial enough.”
   “Suit yourself in that respect.”
   “But it would not suit me. Proof would be much preferable. And it would not suit you, for the publicity would be very damaging to your company. You are perfectly well acquainted, I suppose, with the strict rules against the use of robots on inhabited worlds.”
   “Certainly!”—brusquely.
   “You know that the U. S. Robot & Mechanical Men Corporation is the only manufacturer of positronic robots in the Solar System, and if Byerley is a robot, he is a positronic robot. You are also aware that all positronic robots are leased, and not sold; that the Corporation remains the owner and manager of each robot, and is therefore responsible for the actions of all.”
   “It is an easy matter, Mr. Quinn, to prove the Corporation has never manufactured a robot of a humanoid character.”
   “It can be done? To discuss merely possibilities.”
   “Yes. It can be done.”
   “Secretly, I imagine, as well. Without entering it in your books.”
   “Not the positronic brain, sir. Too many factors are involved in that, and there is the tightest possible government supervision.”
   “Yes, but robots are worn out, break down, go out of order—and are dismantled.”
   “And the positronic brains re-used or destroyed.”
   “Really?” Francis Quinn allowed himself a trace of sarcasm. “And if one were, accidentally, of course, not destroyed—and there happened to be a humanoid structure waiting for a brain.”
   “Impossible!”
   “You would have to prove that to the government and the public, so why not prove it to me now.”
   “But what could our purpose be?” demanded Lanning in exasperation. “Where is our motivation? Credit us with a minimum of sense.”
   “My dear sir, please. The Corporation would be only too glad to have the various Regions permit the use of humanoid positronic robots on inhabited worlds. The profits would be enormous. But the prejudice of the public against such a practice is too great. Suppose you get them used to such robots first—see, we have a skillful lawyer, a good mayor, and he is a robot. Won’t you buy our robot butlers?”
   “Thoroughly fantastic. An almost humorous descent to the ridiculous.”
   “I imagine so. Why not prove it? Or would you still rather try to prove it to the public?”
   The light in the office was dimming, but it was not yet too dim to obscure the flush of frustration on Alfred Lanning’s face. Slowly, the roboticist’s finger touched a knob and the wall illuminators glowed to gentle life.

   “Well, then,” he growled, “let us see.”
   The face of Stephen Byerley is not an easy one to describe. He was forty by birth certificate and forty by appearance—but it was a healthy, well-nourished good-natured appearance of forty; one that automatically drew the teeth of the bromide about “looking one’s age.”
   This was particularly true when he laughed, and he was laughing now. It came loudly and continuously, died away for a bit, then began again-
   And Alfred Lanning’s face contracted into a rigidly bitter monument of disapproval. He made a half gesture to the woman who sat beside him, but her thin, bloodless lips merely pursed themselves a trifle.
   Byerley gasped himself a stage nearer normality.
   “Really, Dr. Lanning … really—I … I … a robot?”
   Lanning bit his words off with a snap, “It is no statement of mine, sir. I would be quite satisfied to have you a member of humanity. Since our corporation never manufactured you, I am quite certain that you are—in a legalistic sense, at any rate. But since the contention that you are a robot has been advanced to us seriously by a man of certain standing—”
   “Don’t mention his name, if it would knock a chip off your granite block of ethics, but let’s pretend it was Frank Quinn, for the sake of argument, and continue.”
   Lanning drew in a sharp, cutting snort at the interruption, and paused ferociously before continuing with added frigidity, “-by a man of certain standing, with whose identity I am not interested in playing guessing games, I am bound to ask your cooperation in disproving it. The mere fact that such a contention could be advanced and publicized by the means at this man’s disposal would be a bad blow to the company I represent—even if the charge were never proven. You understand me?”
   “Oh, yes, your position is clear to me. The charge itself is ridiculous. The spot you find yourself in is not. I beg your pardon, if my laughter offended you. It was the first I laughed at, not the second. How can I help you?”
   “It could be very simple. You have only to sit down to a meal at a restaurant in the presence of witnesses, have your picture taken, and eat.” Lanning sat back in his chair, the worst of the interview over. The woman beside him watched Byerley with an apparently absorbed expression but contributed nothing of her own.
   Stephen Byerley met her eyes for an instant, was caught by them, then turned back to the roboticist. For a while his fingers were thoughtful over the bronze paperweight that was the only ornament on his desk.
   He said quietly, “I don’t think I can oblige you.”
   He raised his hand, “Now wait, Dr. Lanning. I appreciate the fact that this whole matter is distasteful to you, that you have been forced into it against your will, that you feel you are playing an undignified and even ridiculous part. Still, the matter is even more intimately concerned with myself, so be tolerant.
   “First, what makes you think that Quinn—this man of certain standing, you know—wasn’t hoodwinking you, in order to get you to do exactly what you are doing?”
   “Why it seems scarcely likely that a reputable person would endanger himself in so ridiculous a fashion, if he weren’t convinced he were on safe ground.”
   There was little humor in Byerley’s eyes, “You don’t know Quinn. He could manage to make safe ground out of a ledge a mountain sheep could not handle. I suppose he showed the particulars of the investigation he claims to have made of me?”
   “Enough to convince me that it would be too troublesome to have our corporation attempt to disprove them when you could do so more easily.”
   “Then you believe him when he says I never eat. You are a scientist, Dr. Lanning. Think of the logic required. I have not been observed to eat, therefore, I never eat Q.E.D. After all!”
   “You are using prosecution tactics to confuse what is really a very simple situation.”
   “On the contrary, I am trying to clarify what you and Quinn between you are making a very complicated one. You see, I don’t sleep much, that’s true, and I certainly don’t sleep in public. I have never cared to eat with others—an idiosyncrasy which is unusual and probably neurotic in character, but which harms no one. Look, Dr. Lanning, let me present you with a suppositious case. Supposing we had a politician who was interested in defeating a reform candidate at any cost and while investigating his private life came across oddities such as I have just mentioned.
   “Suppose further that in order to smear the candidate effectively, he comes to your company as the ideal agent. Do you expect him to say to you, ‘So-and-so is a robot because he hardly ever eats with people, and I have never seen him fall asleep in the middle of a case; and once when I peeped into his window in the middle of the night, there he was, sitting up with a book; and I looked in his frigidaire and there was no food in it.’
   “If he told you that, you would send for a straitjacket. But if he tells you, ‘He never sleeps; he never eats,’ then the shock of the statement blinds you to the fact that such statements are impossible to prove. You play into his hands by contributing to the to-do.”
   “Regardless, sir,” began Lanning, with a threatening obstinacy, “of whether you consider this matter serious or not, it will require only the meal I mentioned to end it.”
   Again Byerley turned to the woman, who still regarded him expressionlessly. “Pardon me. I’ve caught your name correctly, haven’t I? Dr. Susan Calvin?”
   “Yes, Mr. Byerley.”
   “You’re the U. S. Robot’s psychologist, aren’t you?”
   “Robopsychologist, please.”
   “Oh, are robots so different from men, mentally?”
   “Worlds different.” She allowed herself a frosty smile, “Robots are essentially decent.”
   Humor tugged at the corners of the lawyer’s mouth, “Well, that’s a hard blow. But what I wanted to say was this. Since you’re a psycho—a robopsychologist, and a woman, I’ll bet that you’ve done something that Dr. Lanning hasn’t thought of.”
   “And what is that?”
   “You’ve got something to eat in your purse.”
   Something caught in the schooled indifference of Susan Calvin’s eyes. She said, “You surprise me, Mr. Byerley.”
   And opening her purse, she produced an apple. Quietly, she handed it to him. Dr. Lanning, after an initial start, followed the slow movement from one hand to the other with sharply alert eyes.
   Calmly, Stephen Byerley bit into it, and calmly he swallowed it
   “You see, Dr. Lanning?”
   Dr. Lanning smiled in a relief tangible enough to make even his eyebrows appear benevolent A relief that survived for one fragile second.
   Susan Calvin said, “I was curious to see if you would eat it, but, of course, in the present case, it proves nothing.”
   Byerley grinned, “It doesn’t?”

   “Of course not. It is obvious, Dr. Lanning, that if this man were a humanoid robot, he would be a perfect imitation. He is almost too human to be credible. After all, we have been seeing and observing human beings all our lives; it would be impossible to palm something merely nearly right off on us. It would have to be all right. Observe the texture of the skin, the quality of the irises, the bone formation of the hand. If he’s a robot, I wish U. S. Robots had made him, because he’s a good job. Do you suppose then, that anyone capable of paying attention to such niceties would neglect a few gadgets to take care of such things as eating, sleeping, elimination? For emergency use only, perhaps; as, for instance, to prevent such situations as are arising here. So a meal won’t really prove anything.”
   “Now wait,” snarled Lanning, “I am—not quite the fool both of you make me out to be. I am not interested in the problem of Mr. Byerley’s humanity or nonhumanity. I am interest in getting the corporation out of a hole. A public meal will end the matter and keep it ended no matter what Quinn does. We can leave the finer details to lawyers and robopsychologists.”
   “But, Dr. Lanning,” said Byerley, “you forget the politics of the situation. I am as anxious to be elected, as Quinn is to stop me. By the way, did you notice that you used his name? It’s a cheap shyster trick of mine; I knew you would, before you were through.”
   Lanning flushed, “What has the election to do with it?”
   “Publicity works both ways, sir. If Quinn wants to call me a robot, and has the nerve to do so, I have the nerve to play the game his way.”
   “You mean you—” Lanning was quite frankly appalled.
   “Exactly. I mean that I’m going to let him go ahead, choose his rope, test its strength, cut off the right length, tie the noose, insert his head and grin. I can do what little else is required.”
   “You are mighty confident.”
   Susan Calvin rose to her feet, “Come, Alfred, we won’t change his mind for him.”
   “You see.” Byerley smiled gently. “You’re a human psychologist, too.”
   But perhaps not all the confidence that Dr. Lanning had remarked upon was present that evening when Byerley’s car parked on the automatic treads leading to the sunken garage, and Byerley himself crossed the path to the front door of his house.
   The figure in the wheel chair looked up as he entered and smiled. Byerley’s face lit with affection. He crossed over to it.
   The cripple’s voice was a hoarse, grating whisper that came out of a mouth forever twisted to one side, leering out of a face that was half scar tissue, “You’re late, Steve.”
   “I know, John, I know. But I’ve been up against a peculiar and interesting trouble today.”
   “So?” Neither the torn face nor the destroyed voice could carry expression but there was anxiety in the clear eyes. “Nothing you can’t handle?”
   “I’m not exactly certain. I may need your help. You’re the brilliant one in the family. Do you want me to take you out into the garden? It’s a beautiful evening.”
   Two strong arms lifted John from the wheel chair. Gently, almost caressingly, Byerley’s arms went around the shoulders and under the swathed legs of the cripple. Carefully, and slowly, he walked through the rooms, down the gentle ramp that had been built with a wheel chair in mind, and out the back door into the walled and wired garden behind the house.
   “Why don’t you let me use the wheel chair, Steve? This is Silly.”
   “Because I’d rather carry you. Do you object? You know that you’re as glad to get out of that motorized buggy for a while, as I am to see you out. How do you feel today?” He deposited John with infinite care upon the cool grass.
   “How should I feel? But tell me about your troubles.”
   “Quinn’s campaign will be based on the fact that he claims I’m a robot.”
   John’s eyes opened wide, “How do you know? It’s impossible. I won’t believe it.”
   “Oh, come, I tell you it’s so. He had one of the big-shot scientists of U. S. Robot & Mechanical Men Corporation over at the office to argue with me.”
   Slowly John’s hands tore at the grass, “I see. I see.”
   Byerley said, “But we can let him choose his ground. I have an idea. Listen to me and tell me if we can do it “
   The scene as it appeared in Alfred Lanning’s office that night was a tableau of stares. Francis Quinn stared meditatively at Alfred Lanning. Lanning’s stare was savagely set upon Susan Calvin, who stared impassively in her turn at Quinn.
   Francis Quinn broke it with a heavy attempt at lightness, “Bluff. He’s making it up as he goes along.”
   “Are you going to gamble on that, Mr. Quinn?” asked Dr. Calvin, indifferently.
   “Well, it’s your gamble, really.”
   “Look here,” Lanning covered definite pessimism with bluster, “we’ve done what you asked. We witnessed the man eat. It’s ridiculous to presume him a robot.”
   “Do you think so?” Quinn shot toward Calvin. “Lanning said you were the expert.”
   Lanning was almost threatening, “Now, Susan—”
   Quinn interrupted smoothly, “Why not let her talk, man? She’s been sitting there imitating a gatepost for half an hour.”
   Lanning felt definitely harassed. From what he experienced then to incipient paranoia was but a step. He said, “Very well. Have your say, Susan. We won’t interrupt you.”
   Susan Calvin glanced at him humorlessly, then fixed cold eyes on Mr. Quinn. “There are only two ways of definitely proving Byerley to be a robot, sir. So far you are presenting circumstantial evidence, with which you can accuse, but not prove—and I think Mr. Byerley is sufficiently clever to counter that sort of material. You probably think so yourself, or you wouldn’t have come here.
   “The two methods of proof are the physical and the psychological. Physically, you can dissect him or use an X-ray. How to do that would be your problem. Psychologically, his behavior can be studied, for if he is a positronic robot, he must conform to the three Rules of Robotics. A positronic brain cannot be constructed without them. You know the Rules, Mr. Quinn?”
   She spoke them carefully, clearly, quoting word for word the famous bold print on page one of the “Handbook of Robotics.”
   “I’ve heard of them,” said Quinn, carelessly.
   “Then the matter is easy to follow,” responded the psychologist, dryly. “If Mr. Byerley breaks any of those three rules, he is not a robot. Unfortunately, this procedure works in only one direction. If he lives up to the rules, it proves nothing one way or the other.”
   Quinn raised polite eyebrows, “Why not, doctor?”
   “Because, if you stop to think of it, the three Rules of Robotics are the essential guiding principles of a good many of the world’s ethical systems. Of course, every human being is supposed to have the instinct of self-preservation. That’s Rule Three to a robot. Also every ‘good’ human being, with a social conscience and a sense of responsibility, is supposed to defer to proper authority; to listen to his doctor, his boss, his government, his psychiatrist, his fellow man; to obey laws, to follow rules, to conform to custom—even when they interfere with his comfort or his safety. That’s Rule Two to a robot. Also, every ‘good’ human being is supposed to love others as himself, protect his fellow man, risk his life to save another. That’s Rule One to a robot. To put it simply—if Byerley follows all the Rules of Robotics, he may be a robot, and may simply be a very good man.”
   “But,” said Quinn, “you’re telling me that you can never prove him a robot.”
   “I may be able to prove him not a robot”
   “That’s not the proof I want.”
   “You’ll have such proof as exists. You are the only one responsible for your own wants.”

  Here Lanning’s mind leaped suddenly to the sting of an idea, “Has it occurred to anyone,” he ground out, “that district attorney is a rather strange occupation for a robot? The prosecution of human beings—sentencing them to death—bringing about their infinite harm—”
   Quinn grew suddenly keen, “No, you can’t get out of it that way. Being district attorney doesn’t make him human. Don’t you know his record? Don’t you know that he boasts that he has never prosecuted an innocent man; that there are scores of people left untried because the evidence against them didn’t satisfy him, even though he could probably have argued a jury into atomizing them? That happens to be so.”
   Lanning’s thin cheeks quivered, “No, Quinn, no. There is nothing in the Rules of Robotics that makes any allowance for human guilt. A robot may not judge whether a human being deserves death. It is not for him to decide. He may not harm a human-variety skunk, or variety angel.”
   Susan Calvin sounded tired. “Alfred,” she said, “don’t talk foolishly. What if a robot came upon a madman about to set fire to a house with people in it? He would stop the madman, wouldn’t he?”
   “Of course.”
   “And if the only way he could stop him was to kill him—”
   There was a faint sound in Lanning’s throat. Nothing more.
   “The answer to that, Alfred, is that he would do his best not to kill him. If the madman died, the robot would require psychotherapy because he might easily go mad at the conflict presented him—of having broken Rule One to adhere to Rule One in a higher sense. But a man would be dead and a robot would have killed him.”
   “Well, is Byerley mad?” demanded Lanning; with all the sarcasm he could muster.
   “No, but he has killed no man himself. He has exposed facts which might represent a particular human being to be dangerous to the large mass of other human beings we call society. He protects the greater number and thus adheres to Rule One at maximum potential. That is as far as he goes. It is the judge who then condemns the criminal to death or imprisonment, after the jury decides on his guilt or innocence. It is the jailer who imprisons him, the executioner who kills him. And Mr. Byerley has done nothing but determine truth and aid society.
   “As a matter of fact, Mr. Quinn, I have looked into Mr. Byerley’s career since you first brought this matter to our attention. I find that he has never demanded the death sentence in his closing speeches to the jury. I also find that he has spoken on behalf of the abolition of capital punishment and contributed generously to research institutions engaged in criminal neurophysiology. He apparently believes in the cure, rather than the punishment of crime. I find that significant.”
   “You do?” Quinn smiled. “Significant of a certain odor of roboticity, perhaps?”
   “Perhaps. Why deny it? Actions such as his could come only from a robot, or from a very honorable and decent human being. But you see, you just can’t differentiate between a robot and the very best of humans.”
   Quinn sat back in his chair. His voice quivered with impatience. “Dr. Lanning, it’s perfectly possible to create a humanoid robot that would perfectly duplicate a human in appearance, isn’t it?”
   Lanning harrumphed and considered, “It’s been done experimentally by U. S. Robots,” he said reluctantly, “without the addition of a positronic brain, of course. By using human ova and hormone control, one can grow human flesh and skin over a skeleton of porous silicone plastics that would defy external examination. The eyes, the hair, the skin would be really human, not humanoid. And if you put a positronic brain, and such other gadgets as you might desire inside, you have a humanoid robot.”
   Quinn said shortly, “How long would it take to make one?”
   Lanning considered, “If you had all your equipment—the brain, the skeleton, the ovum, the proper hormones and radiations—say, two months.”
   The politician straightened out of his chair. “Then we shall see what the insides of Mr. Byerley look like. It will mean publicity for U. S. Robots—but I gave you your chance.”
   Lanning turned impatiently to Susan Calvin, when they were alone. “Why do you insist—”?
   And with real feeling, she responded sharply and instantly, “Which do you want—the truth or my resignation? I won’t lie for you. U. S. Robots can take care of itself. Don’t turn coward.”
   “What,” said Lanning, “if he opens up Byerley, and wheels and gears fall out what then?”
   “He won’t open Byerley,” said Calvin, disdainfully. “Byerley is as clever as Quinn, at the very least”
   The news broke upon the city a week before Byerley was to have been nominated. But “broke” is the wrong word. It staggered upon the city, shambled, crawled. Laughter began, and wit was free. And as the far off hand of Quinn tightened its pressure in easy stages, the laughter grew forced, an element of hollow uncertainty entered, and people broke off to wonder.
   The convention itself had the sir of a restive stallion. There had been no contest planned. Only Byerley could possibly have been nominated a week earlier. There was no substitute even now. They had to nominate him, but there was complete confusion about it.
   It would not have been so bad if the average individual were not torn between the enormity of the charge, if true, and its sensational folly, if false.
   The day after Byerley was nominated perfunctorily, hollowly—a newspaper finally published the gist of a long interview with Dr. Susan Calvin, “world famous expert on robopsychology and positronics.”
   What broke loose is popularly and succinctly described as hell.
   It was what the Fundamentalists were waiting for. They were not a political party; they made pretense to no formal religion. Essentially they were those who had not adapted themselves to what had once been called the Atomic Age, in the days when atoms were a novelty. Actually, they were the Simple-Lifers, hungering after a life, which to those who lived it had probably appeared not so Simple, and who had been, therefore, Simple-Lifers themselves.
   The Fundamentalists required no new reason to detest robots and robot manufacturers; but a new reason such as the Quinn accusation and the Calvin analysis was sufficient to make such detestation audible.
   The huge plants of the U. S. Robot & Mechanical Men Corporation was a hive that spawned armed guards. It prepared for war.
   Within the city the house of Stephen Byerley bristled with police.
   The political campaign, of course, lost all other issues, and resembled a campaign only in that it was something filling the hiatus between nomination and election.
   Stephen Byerley did not allow the fussy little man to distract him. He remained comfortably unperturbed by the uniforms in the background. Outside the house, past the line of grim guards, reporters and photographers waited according to the tradition of the caste. One enterprising ‘visor station even had a scanner focused on the blank entrance to the prosecutor’s unpretentious home, while a synthetically excited announcer filled in with inflated commentary.
   The fussy little man advanced. He held forward a rich, complicated sheet. “This, Mr. Byerley, is a court order authorizing me to search these premises for the presence of illegal … uh … mechanical men or robots of any description.”
   Byerley half rose, and took the paper. He glanced at it indifferently, and smiled as he handed it back. “All in order. Go ahead. Do your job. Mrs. Hoppen”—to his housekeeper, who appeared reluctantly from the next room—” please go with them, and help out if you can.”
   The little man, whose name was Harroway, hesitated, produced an unmistakable blush, failed completely to catch Byerley’s eyes, and muttered, “Come on,” to the two policemen.
   He was back in ten minutes.
   “Through?” questioned Byerley, in just the tone of a person who is not particularly interested in the question, or its answer.
   Harroway cleared his throat, made a bad start in falsetto, and began again, angrily, “Look here, Mr. Byerley, our special instructions were to search the house very thoroughly.”
   “And haven’t you?”
   “We were told exactly what to look for.”
   “Yes?”
   “In short, Mr. Byerley, and not to put too fine a point on it, we were told to search you.”
   “Me?” said the prosecutor with a broadening smile. “And how do you intend to do that?”
   “We have a Penet-radiation unit—”
   “Then I’m to have my X-ray photograph taken, hey? You have the authority?”
   “You saw my warrant.”
   “May I see it again?”

   Harroway, his forehead shining with considerably more than mere enthusiasm, passed it over a second time.
   Byerley said evenly, “I read here as the description of what you are to search; I quote: ‘the dwelling place belonging to Stephen Allen Byerley, located at 355 Willow Grove, Evanstron, together, with any garage, storehouse or other structures or buildings thereto appertaining, together with all grounds thereto appertaining’ … um … and so on. Quite in order. But, my good man, it doesn’t say anything about searching my interior. I am not part of the premises. You may search my clothes if you think I’ve got a robot hidden in my pocket.”
   Harroway had no doubt on the point of to whom he owed his job. He did not propose to be backward, given a chance to earn a much better—i.e., more highly paid—job.
   He said, in a faint echo of bluster, “Look here. I’m allowed to search the furniture in your house, and anything else I find in it. You are in it, aren’t you?”
   “A remarkable observation. I am in it. But I’m not a piece of furniture. As a citizen of adult responsibility—I have the psychiatric certificate proving that—I have certain rights under the Regional Articles. Searching me would come under the heading of violating my Right of Privacy. That paper isn’t sufficient.”
   “Sure, but if you’re a robot, you don’t have Right of Privacy.”
   “True enough but that paper still isn’t sufficient. It recognizes me implicitly as a human being.”
   “Where?” Harroway snatched at it.
   “Where it says ‘the dwelling place belonging to’ and so on. A robot cannot own property. And you may tell your employer, Mr. Harroway, that if he tries to issue a similar paper which does not implicitly recognize me as a human being, he will be immediately faced with a restraining injunction and a civil suit which will make it necessary for him to prove me a robot by means of information now in his possession, or else to pay a whopping penalty for an attempt to deprive me unduly of my Rights under the Regional Articles. You’ll tell him that, won’t you?”
   Harroway marched to the door. He turned.. “You’re a slick lawyer—” His hand was in his pocket. For a short moment, he stood there. Then he left, smiled in the direction of the ‘visor scanner, still playing away—waved to the reporters, and shouted, “We’ll have something for you tomorrow, boys. No kidding.”
   In his ground car, he settled back, removed the tiny mechanism from his pocket and carefully inspected it. It was the first time he had ever taken a photograph by X-ray reflection. He hoped he had done it correctly.
   Quinn and Byerley had never met face-to-face alone. But visorphone was pretty close to it. In fact, accepted literally, perhaps the phrase was accurate, even if to each, the other were merely the light and dark pattern of a bank of photocells.
   It was Quinn who had initiated the call. It was Quinn, who spoke first, and without particular ceremony, “Thought you would like to know, Byerley, that I intend to make public the fact that you’re wearing a protective shield against Penet-radiation.”
   “That so? In that case, you’ve probably already made it public. I have a notion our enterprising press representatives have been tapping my various communication lines for quite a while. I know they have my office lines full of holes; which is why I’ve dug in at my home these last weeks.” Byerley was friendly, almost chatty.
   Quinn’s lips tightened slightly, “This call is shielded—thoroughly. I’m making it at a certain personal risk.”
   “So I should imagine. Nobody knows you’re behind this campaign. At least, nobody knows it officially. Nobody doesn’t know it unofficially. I wouldn’t worry. So I wear a protective shield? I suppose you found that out when your puppy dog’s Penet-radiation photograph, the other day, turned out to be overexposed.”
   “You realize, Byerley, that it would be pretty obvious to everyone that you don’t dare face X-ray analysis.”
   “Also that you, or your men, attempted illegal invasion of my Rights of Privacy.”
   “The devil they’ll care for that.”
   “They might. It’s rather symbolic of our two campaigns isn’t it? You have little concern with the rights of the individual citizen. I have great concern. I will not submit to X-ray analysis, because I wish to maintain my Rights on principle. Just as I’ll maintain the rights of others when elected.”
   “That will, no doubt make a very interesting speech, but no one will believe you. A little too high-sounding to be true. Another thing,” a sudden, crisp change, “the personnel in your home was not complete the other night.”
   “In what way?”
   “According to the report,” he shuffled papers before him that were just within the range of vision of the visiplate, “there was one person missing—a cripple.”
   “As you say,” said Byerley, tonelessly, “a cripple. My old teacher, who lives with me and who is now in the country—and has been for two months. A ‘much-needed rest’ is the usual expression applied in the case. He has your permission?”
   “Your teacher? A scientist of sorts?”
   “A lawyer once—before he was a cripple. He has a government license as a research biophysicist, with a laboratory of his own, and a complete description of the work he’s doing filed with the proper authorities, to whom I can refer you. The work is minor, but is a harmless and engaging hobby for a—poor cripple. I am being as helpful as I can, you see.”
   “I see. And what does this … teacher … know about robot manufacture?”
   “I couldn’t judge the extent of his knowledge in a field with which I am unacquainted.”
   “He wouldn’t have access to positronic brains?”
   “Ask your friends at U. S. Robots. They’d be the ones to know.”
   “I’ll put it shortly, Byerley. Your crippled teacher is the real Stephen Byerley. You are his robot creation. We can prove it. It was he who was in the automobile accident, not you. There will be ways of checking the records.”
   “Really? Do so, then. My best wishes.”
   “And we can search your so-called teacher’s ‘country place,’ and see what we can find there.”
   “Well, not quite, Quinn.” Byerley smiled broadly. “Unfortunately for you, my so-called teacher is a sick man. His country place is his place of rest. His Right of Privacy as a citizen of adult responsibility is naturally even stronger, under the circumstances. You won’t be able to obtain a warrant to enter his grounds without showing just cause. However, I’d be the last to prevent you from trying.”
   There was a pause of moderate length, and then Quinn leaned forward, so that his imaged-face expanded and the fine lines on his forehead were visible, “Byerley, why do you carry on? You can’t be elected.”
   “Can’t I?”
   “Do you think you can? Do you suppose that your failure to make any attempt to disprove the robot charge—when you could easily, by breaking one of the Three Laws—does anything but convince the people that you are a robot?”
   “All I see so far is that from being a rather vaguely known, but still largely obscure metropolitan lawyer, I have now become a world figure. You’re a good publicist.”
   “But you are a robot.”
   “So it’s been said, but not proven.”
   “It’s been proven sufficiently for the electorate.”
   “Then relax you’ve won.”

   “Good-by,” said Quinn, with his first touch of viciousness, and the visorphone slammed off.
   “Good-by,” said Byerley imperturbably, to the blank plate.
   Byerley brought his “teacher” back the week before election. The air car dropped quickly in an obscure part of the city.
   “You’ll stay here till after election,” Byerley told him. “It would be better to have you out of the way if things take a bad turn.”
   The hoarse voice that twisted painfully out of John’s crooked mouth might have had accents of concern in it. “There’s danger of violence?”
   “The Fundamentalists threaten it, so I suppose there is, in a theoretical sense. But I really don’t expect it. The Fundies have no real power. They’re just the continuous irritant factor that might stir up a riot after a while. You don’t mind staying here? Please, I won’t be myself if I have to worry about you.”
   “Oh, I’ll stay. You still think it will go well?”
   “I’m sure of it. No one bothered you at the place?”
   “No one. I’m certain.”
   “And your part went well?”
   “Well enough. There’ll be no trouble there.”
   “Then take care of yourself, and watch the televisor tomorrow, John.” Byerley pressed the gnarled hand that rested on his.
   Lenton’s forehead was a furrowed study in suspense. He had the completely unenviable job of being Byerley’s campaign manager in a campaign that wasn’t a campaign, for a person that refused to reveal his strategy, and refused to accept his manager’s.
   “You can’t!” It was his favorite phrase. It had become his only phrase. “I tell you, Steve, you can’t!”
   He threw himself in front of the prosecutor, who was spending his time leafing through the typed pages of his speech.
   “Put that down, Steve. Look, that mob has been organized by the Fundies. You won’t get a hearing. You’ll be stoned more likely. Why do you have to make a speech before an audience? What’s wrong with a recording, a visual recording?”
   “You want me to win the election, don’t you?” asked Byerley, mildly.
   “Win the election! You’re not going to win, Steve. I’m trying to save your life.”
   “Oh, I’m not in danger.”
   “He’s not in danger. He’s not in danger.” Lenton made a queer, rasping sound in his throat. “You mean you’re getting out on that balcony in front of fifty thousand crazy crackpots and try to talk sense to them—on a balcony like a medieval dictator?”
   Byerley consulted his watch. “In about five minutes—as soon as the televisor lines are free.”
   Lenton’s answering remark was not quite transliterable.
   The crowd filled a roped off area of the city. Trees and houses seemed to grow out of a mass-human foundation. And by ultra-wave, the rest of the world watched. It was a purely local election, but it had a world audience just the same. Byerley thought of that and smiled.
   But there was nothing to smile at in the crowd itself. There were banners and streamers, ringing every possible change on his supposed roboticity. The hostile attitude rose thickly and tangibly into the atmosphere.
   From the start the speech was not successful. It competed against the inchoate mob howl and the rhythmic cries of the Fundie claques that formed mob-islands within the mob. Byerley spoke on, slowly, unemotionally-
   Inside, Lenton clutched his hair and groaned—and waited for the blood.
   There was a writhing in the front ranks. An angular citizen with popping eyes, and clothes too short for the lank length of his limbs, was pulling to the fore. A policeman dived after him, making slow, struggling passage. Byerley waved the latter off, angrily.
   The thin man was directly under the balcony. His words tore unheard against the roar.
   Byerley leaned forward. “What do you say? If you have a legitimate question, I’ll answer it.” He turned to a flanking guard. “Bring that man up here.”
   There was a tensing in the crowd. Cries of “Quiet” started in various parts of the mob, and rose to a bedlam, then toned down raggedly. The thin man, red-faced and panting, faced Byerley.
   Byerley said, “Have you a question?”
   The thin man stared, and said in a cracked voice, “Hit me!”
   With sudden energy, he thrust out his chin at an angle. “Hit me! You say you’re not a robot. Prove it. You can’t hit a human, you monster.”
   There was a queer, flat, dead silence. Byerley’s voice punctured it. “I have no reason to hit you.”
   The thin man was laughing wildly. “You can’t hit me. You won’t hit me. You’re not a human. You’re a monster, a make-believe man.”
   And Stephen Byerley, tight-lipped, in the face of thousands who watched in person and the millions, who watched by screen, drew back his fist and caught the man crackingly upon the chin. The challenger went over backwards in sudden collapse, with nothing on his face but blank, blank surprise.
   Byerley said, “I’m sorry. Take him in and see that he’s comfortable. I want to speak to him when I’m through.”
   And when Dr. Calvin, from her reserved space, turned her automobile and drove off, only one reporter had recovered sufficiently from the shock to race after her, and shout an unheard question.
   Susan Calvin called over her shoulder, “He’s human.”
   That was enough. The reporter raced away in his own direction.
   The rest of the speech might be described as “Spoken but not heard.”
   Dr. Calvin and Stephen Byerley met once again—a week before he took the oath of office as mayor. It was late—past midnight.
   Dr. Calvin said, “You don’t look tired.”
   The mayor-elect smiled. “I may stay up for a while. Don’t tell Quinn.”
   “I shan’t. But that was an interesting story of Quinn’s, since you mention him. It’s a shame to have spoiled it. I suppose you knew his theory?”
   “Parts of it.”
   “It was highly dramatic. Stephen Byerley was a young lawyer, a powerful speaker, a great idealist—and with a certain flare for biophysics. Are you interested in robotics, Mr. Byerley?”
   “Only in the legal aspects.”
   “This Stephen Byerley was. But there was an accident. Byerley’s wife died, he himself, worse. His legs were gone; his face was gone; his voice was gone. Part of his mind was bent. He would not submit to plastic surgery. He retired from the world, legal career gone—only his intelligence, and his hands left. Somehow he could obtain positronic brains, even a complex one, one which had the greatest capacity of forming judgments in ethical problems—which is the highest robotic function so far developed.
   “He grew a body about it. Trained it to be everything he would have been and was no longer. He sent it out into the world as Stephen Byerley, remaining behind himself as the old, crippled teacher that no one ever saw—”
   “Unfortunately,” said the mayor-elect, “I ruined all that by hitting a man. The papers say it was your official verdict on the occasion that I was human.”
   “How did that happen? Do you mind telling me? It couldn’t have been accidental.”
   “It wasn’t entirely. Quinn did most of the work. My men started quietly spreading the fact that I had never hit a man; that I was unable to hit a man; that to fail to do so under provocation would be sure proof that I was a robot. So I arranged for a silly speech in public, with all sorts of publicity overtones, and almost inevitably, some fool fell for it. In its essence, it was what I call a shyster trick. One in which the artificial atmosphere which has been created does all the work. Of course, the emotional effects made my election certain, as intended.”
   The robopsychologist nodded. “I see you intrude on my field—as every politician must, I suppose. But I’m very sorry it turned out this way. I like robots. I like them considerably better than I do human beings. If a robot can be created capable of being a civil executive, I think he’d make the best one possible. By the Laws of Robotics, he’d be incapable of harming humans, incapable of tyranny, of corruption, of stupidity, of prejudice. And after he had served a decent term, he would leave, even though he were immortal, because it would be impossible for him to hurt humans by letting them know that a robot had ruled them. It would be most ideal.”
   “Except that a robot might fail due to the inherent inadequacies of his brain. The positronic brain has never equaled the complexities of the human brain.”
   “He would have advisers. Not even a human brain is capable of governing without assistance.”
   Byerley considered Susan Calvin with grave interest. “Why do you smile, Dr. Calvin?”
   “I smile because Mr. Quinn didn’t think of everything.”
   “You mean there could be more to that story of his.”
   “Only a little. For the three months before election, this Stephen Byerley that Mr. Quinn spoke about, this broken man, was in the country for some mysterious reason. He returned in time for that famous speech of yours. And after all, what the old cripple did once, he could do a second time, particularly where the second job is very simple in comparison to the first.”
   “I don’t quite understand.”
   Dr. Calvin rose and smoothed her dress. She was obviously ready to leave. “I mean there is one time when a robot may strike a human being without breaking the First Law. Just one time.”
   “And when is that?”
   Dr. Calvin was at the door. She said quietly, “When the human to be struck is merely another robot.”
   She smiled broadly, her thin face glowing. “Good-by Mr. Byerley. I hope to vote for you five years from now—for Co-ordinator.”
   Stephen Byerley chuckled. “I must reply that that is a somewhat farfetched idea.”
   The door closed behind her.

   I stared at her with a sort of horror, “Is that true?”
   “All of it,” she said.
   “And the great Byerley was simply a robot.”
   “Oh, there’s no way of ever finding out. I think he was. But when he decided to die, he had himself atomized, so that there will never be any legal proof. Besides, what difference would it make?”
   “Well—”
   “You share a prejudice against robots which is quite unreasoning. He was a very good Mayor; five years later he did become Regional Co-ordinator. And when the Regions of Earth formed their Federation in 2044, he became the first World Co-ordinator. By that time it was the Machines that were running the world anyway.”
   “Yes, but—”
   “No buts! The Machines are robots, and they are running the world. It was five years ago that I found out all the truth. It was 2052; Byerley was completing his second term as World Co-ordinator—”

The Evitable Conflict

   The Co-ordinator, in his private study, had that medieval curiosity, a fireplace. To be sure, the medieval man might not have recognized it as such, since it had no functional significance. The quiet, licking flame lay in an insulated recess behind clear quartz.
   The logs were ignited at long distance through a trifling diversion of the energy beam that fed the public buildings of the city. The same button that controlled the ignition first dumped the ashes of the previous fire, and allowed for the entrance of fresh wood.—It was a thoroughly domesticated fireplace, you see.
   But the fire itself was real. It was wired for sound, so that you could hear the crackle and, of course, you could watch it leap in the air stream that fed it.
   The Co-ordinator’s ruddy glass reflected, in miniature, the discreet gamboling of the flame, and, in even further miniature, it was reflected in each of his brooding pupils.
   And in the frosty pupils of his guest, Dr. Susan Calvin of U. S. Robots & Mechanical Men Corporation.
   The Co-ordinator said, “I did not ask you here entirely for social purposes, Susan.”
   “I did not think you did, Stephen,” she replied.
   “—And yet I don’t quite know how to phrase my problem. On the one hand, it can be nothing at all. On the other, it can mean the end of humanity.”
   “I have come across so many problems, Stephen, that presented the same alternative. I think all problems do.”
   “Really? Then judge this—World Steel reports an overproduction of twenty thousand long tons. The Mexican Canal is two months behind schedule. The mercury mines at Almaden have experienced a production deficiency since last spring, while the Hydroponics plant at Tientsin has been laying men off. These items happen to come to mind at the moment. There is more of the same sort.”
   “Are these things serious? I’m not economist enough to trace the fearful consequences of such things.”
   “In themselves, they are not serious. Mining experts can be sent to Almaden, if the situation were to get worse. Hydroponics engineers can be used in Java or in Ceylon, if there are too many at Tientsin. Twenty thousand long tons of steel won’t fill more than a few days of world demand, and the opening of the Mexican Canal two months later than the planned date is of little moment. It’s the Machines that worry me; I’ve spoken to your Director of Research about them already.”
   “To Vincent Silver?—He hasn’t mentioned anything about it to me.”
   “I asked him to speak to no one. Apparently, he hasn’t.”
   “And what did he tell you?”
   “Let me put that item in its proper place. I want to talk about the Machines first. And I want to talk about them to you, because you’re the only one in the world who understands robots well enough to help me now.—May I grow philosophical?”
   “For this evening, Stephen, you may talk how you please and of what you please, provided you tell me first what you intend to prove.”
   “That such small unbalances in the perfection of our system of supply and demand, as I have mentioned, may be the first step towards the final war.”
   “Hmp. Proceed.”
   Susan Calvin did not allow herself to relax, despite the designed comfort of the chair she sat in. Her cold, thin-lipped face and her flat, even voice were becoming accentuated with the years. And although Stephen Byerley was one man she could like and trust, she was almost seventy and the cultivated habits of a lifetime are not easily broken.
   “Every period of human development, Susan,” said the Co-ordinator, “has had its own particular type of human conflict—its own variety of problem that, apparently, could be settled only by force. And each time, frustratingly enough, force never really settled the problem. Instead, it persisted through a series of conflicts, then vanished of itself,—what’s the expression,—ah, yes ‘not with a bang, but a whimper,’ as the economic and social environment changed. And then, new problems, and a new series of wars,—apparently endlessly cyclic.
   “Consider relatively modern times. There were the series of dynastic wars in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, when the most important question in Europe was whether the houses of Hapsburg or Valois-Bourbon were to rule the continent. It was one of those ‘inevitable conflicts,’ since Europe could obviously not exist half one and half the other.
   “Except that it did, and no war ever wiped out the one and established the other, until the rise of a new social atmosphere in France in 1789 tumbled first the Bourbons and, eventually, the Hapsburgs down the dusty chute to history’s incinerator.
   “And in those same centuries there were the more barbarous religious wars, which revolved about the important question of whether Europe was to be Catholic or Protestant. Half and half she could not be. It was ‘inevitable’ that the sword decide.—Except that it didn’t. In England, a new industrialism was growing, and on the continent, a new nationalism. Half and half Europe remains to this day and no one cares much.
   “In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there was a cycle of nationalist-imperialist wars, when the most important question in the world was which portions of Europe would control the economic resources and consuming capacity of which portions of non-Europe. All non-Europe obviously could not exist part English and part French and part German and so on.—Until the forces of nationalism spread sufficiently, so that non-Europe ended what all the wars could not, and decided it could exist quite comfortably all non-European.
   “And so we have a pattern—”
   “Yes. Stephen, you make it plain,” said Susan Calvin. “These are not very profound observations.”
   “No.—But then, it is the obvious which is so difficult to see most of the time. People say ‘It’s as plain as the nose on your face.’ But how much of the nose on your face can you see, unless someone holds a mirror up to you? In the twentieth century, Susan, we started a new cycle of wars—what shall I call them? Ideological wars? The emotions of religion applied to economic systems, rather than to extra-natural ones? Again the wars were ‘inevitable’ and this time there were atomic weapons, so that mankind could no longer live through its torment to the inevitable wasting away of inevitability.—And positronic robots came.
   “They came in time, and, with it and alongside it, interplanetary travel.—So that it no longer seemed so important whether the world was Adam Smith or Karl Marx. Neither made very much sense under the new circumstances. Both had to adapt and they ended in almost the same place.”
   “A deus ex machina, then, in a double sense,” said Dr. Calvin, dryly.
   The Co-ordinator smiled gently, “I have never heard you pun before, Susan, but you are correct. And yet there was another danger. The ending of every other problem had merely given birth to another. Our new worldwide robot economy may develop its own problems, and for that reason we have the Machines. The Earth’s economy is stable, and will remain stable, because it is based upon the decisions of calculating machines that have the good of humanity at heart through the overwhelming force of the First Law of Robotics.”
   Stephen Byerley continued, “And although the Machines are nothing but the vastest conglomeration of calculating circuits ever invented, they are still robots within the meaning of the First Law, and so our Earth-wide economy is in accord with the best interests of Man. The population of Earth knows that there will be no unemployment, no over-production or shortages. Waste and famine are words in history books. And so the question of ownership of the means of production becomes obsolescent. Whoever owned them (if such a phrase has meaning), a man, a group, a nation, or all mankind, they could be utilized only as the Machines directed.—Not because men were forced to but because it was the wisest course and men knew it.
   “It puts an end to war—not only to the last cycle of wars, but to the next and to all of them. Unless—”
   A long pause, and Dr. Calvin encouraged him by repetition. “Unless—”
   The fire crouched and skittered along a log, then popped up.
   “Unless,” said the Co-ordinator, “the Machines don’t fulfill their function.”
   “I see. And that is where those trifling maladjustments come in which you mentioned awhile ago—steel, hydroponics and so on.”
   “Exactly. Those errors should not be. Dr. Silver tells me they cannot be.”
   “Does he deny the facts? How unusual!”
   “No, he admits the facts, of course. I do him an injustice. What he denies is that any error in the machine is responsible for the so-called (his phrase) errors in the answers. He claims that the Machines are self-correcting and that it would violate the fundamental laws of nature for an error to exist in the circuits of relays. And so I said—”
   “And you said, ‘Have your boys check them and make sure, anyway.’“
   “Susan, you read my mind. It was what I said, and he said he couldn’t.”
   “Too busy?”

   “No, he said that no human could. He was frank about it. He told me, and I hope I understand him properly, that the Machines are a gigantic extrapolation. Thus, a team of mathematicians work several years calculating a positronic brain equipped to do certain similar acts of calculation. Using this brain they make further calculations to create a still more complicated brain, which they use again to make one still more complicated and so on. According to Silver, what we call the Machines are the result of ten such steps.”
   “Ye-es, that sounds familiar. Fortunately, I’m not a mathematician. Poor Vincent. He is a young man. The Directors before him, Alfred Lanning and Peter Bogert, are dead, and they had no such problems. Nor had I. Perhaps roboticists as a whole should now die, since we can no longer understand our own creations.”
   “Apparently not. The Machines are not super-brains in Sunday supplement sense,—although they are so pictured in the Sunday supplements. It is merely that in their own particular province of collecting and analyzing a nearly infinite number of data and relationships thereof, in nearly infinitesimal time, they have progressed beyond the possibility of detailed human control.
   “And then I tried something else. I actually asked the Machine. In the strictest secrecy, we fed it the original data involved in the steel decision, its own answer, and the actual developments since,—the overproduction, that is,—and asked for an explanation of the discrepancy.”
   “Good, and what was its answer?”
   “I can quote you that word for word: ‘The matter admits of no explanation.’ “
   “And how did Vincent interpret that?”
   “In two ways. Either we had not given the Machine enough data to allow a definite answer, which was unlikely. Dr. Silver admitted that.—Or else, it was impossible for the Machine to admit that it could give any answer to data which implied that it could harm a human being. This, naturally, is implied by the First Law. And then Dr. Silver recommended that I see you.”
   Susan Calvin looked very tired, “I’m old, Stephen. When Peter Bogert died, they wanted to make me Director of Research and I refused. I wasn’t young then, either, and I did not wish the responsibility. They let young Silver have it and that satisfied me; but what good is it, if I am dragged into such messes.
   “Stephen, let me state my position. My researches do indeed involve the interpretation of robot behavior in the light of the Three Laws of Robotics. Here, now, we have these incredible calculating machines. They are positronic robots and therefore obey the Laws of Robotics. But they lack personality; that is, their functions are extremely limited. Must be, since they are so specialized. Therefore, there is very little room for the interplay of the Laws, and my one method of attack is virtually useless. In short, I don’t know that I can help you, Stephen.”
   The Co-ordinator laughed shortly, “Nevertheless, let me tell you the rest. Let me give you my theories, and perhaps you will then be able to tell me whether they are possible in the light of robopsychology.”
   “By all means. Go ahead.”
   “Well, since the Machines are giving the wrong answers, then, assuming that they cannot be in error, there is only one possibility. They are being given the wrong data! In other words, the trouble is human, and not robotic. So I took my recent planetary inspection tour—”
   “From which you have just returned to New York.”
   “Yes. It was necessary, you see, since there are four Machines, one handling each of the Planetary Regions. And all four are yielding imperfect results.”
   “Oh, but that follows, Stephen. If any one of the Machines is imperfect, that will automatically reflect in the result of the other three, since each of the others will assume as part of the data on which they base their own decisions, the perfection of the imperfect fourth. With a false assumption, they will yield false answers.”
   “Uh-huh. So it seemed to me. Now, I have here the records of my interviews with each of the Regional Vice-Coordinators. Would you look through them with me?—Oh, and first, have you heard of the ‘Society for Humanity’?”
   “Umm, yes. They are an outgrowth of the Fundamentalists who have kept U. S. Robots from ever employing positronic robots on the grounds of unfair labor competition and so on. The ‘Society for Humanity’ itself is anti-Machine, is it not?”
   “Yes, yes, but—Well, you will see. Shall we begin? We’ll start with the Eastern Region.”
   “As you say—”

   The Eastern Region
   Area: 7,500,000 square miles
   Population: 1,700,000,000
   Capital: Shanghai

   Ching Hso-lin’s great-grandfather had been killed in the Japanese invasion of the old Chinese Republic, and there had been no one beside his dutiful children to mourn his loss or even to know he was lost. Ching Hso-lin’s grandfather had survived the civil war of the late forties, but there had been no one beside his dutiful children to know or care of that.
   And yet Ching Hso-lin was a Regional Vice-Co-ordinator, with the economic welfare of half the people of Earth in his care.
   Perhaps it was with the thought of all that in mind, that Ching had two maps as the only ornaments on the wall of his office. One was an old hand-drawn affair tracing out an acre or two of land, and marked with the now outmoded pictographs of old China. A little creek trickled aslant the faded markings and there were the delicate pictorial indications of lowly huts, in one of which Ching’s grandfather had been born.
   The other map was a huge one, sharply delineated, with all markings in neat Cyrillic characters. The red boundary that marked the Eastern Region swept within its grand confines all that had once been China, India, Burma, Indo-China, and Indonesia. On it, within the old province of Szechuan, so light and gentle that none could see it, was the little mark placed there by Ching which indicated the location of his ancestral farm.
   Ching stood before these maps as he spoke to Stephen Byerley in precise English, “No one knows better than you, Mr. Co-ordinator, that my job, to a large extent, is a sinecure. It carries with it a certain social standing, and I represent a convenient focal point for administration, but otherwise it is the Machine!—The Machine does all the work. What did you think, for instance, of the Tientsin Hydroponics works?”
   “Tremendous!” said Byerley.
   “It is but one of dozens, and not the largest. Shanghai, Calcutta, Batavia, Bangkok—They are widely spread and they are the answer to feeding the billion and three quarters of the East.”
   “And yet,” said Byerley, “you have an unemployment problem there at Tientsin. Can you be over-producing? It is incongruous to think of Asia as suffering from too much food.”
   Ching’s dark eyes crinkled at the edges. “No. It has not come to that yet. It is true that over the last few months, several vats at Tientsin have been shut down, but it is nothing serious. The men have been released only temporarily and those who do not care to work in other fields have been shipped to Colombo in Ceylon, where a new plant is being put into operation.”
   “But why should the vats be closed down?”
   Ching smiled gently, “You do not know much of hydroponics, I see. Well, that is not surprising. You are a Northerner, and there soil farming is still profitable. It is fashionable in the North to think of hydroponics, when it is thought of at all, as a device of growing turnips in a chemical solution, and so it is—in an infinitely complicated way

  “In the first place, by far the largest crop we deal with (and the percentage is growing) is yeast. We have upward of two thousand strains of yeast in production and new strains are added monthly. The basic food-chemicals of the various yeasts are nitrates and phosphates among the inorganics together with proper amounts of the trace metals needed, down to the fractional parts per million of boron and molybdenum which are required. The organic matter is mostly sugar mixtures derived from the hydrolysis of cellulose, but, in addition, there are various food factors which must be added.
   “For a successful hydroponics industry—one which can feed seventeen hundred million people—we must engage in an immense reforestation program throughout the East; we must have huge wood-conversion plants to deal with our southern jungles; we must have power, and steel, and chemical synthetics above all.”
   “Why the last, sir?”
   “Because, Mr. Byerley, these strains of yeast have each their peculiar properties. We have developed, as I said, two thousand strains. The beefsteak you thought you ate today was yeast. The frozen fruit confection you had for dessert was iced yeast. We have filtered yeast juice with the taste, appearance, and all the food value of milk.
   “It is flavor, more than anything else, you see, that makes yeast feeding popular and for the sake of flavor we have developed artificial, domesticated strains that can no longer support themselves on a basic diet of salts and sugar. One needs biotin; another needs pteroylglutamic acid; still others need seventeen different amino acids supplied them as well as all the Vitamins B, but one (and yet it is popular and we cannot, with economic sense, abandon it)—“
   Byerley stirred in his seat, “To what purpose do you tell me all this?”
   “You asked me, sir, why men are out of work in Tientsin. I have a little more to explain. It is not only that we must have these various and varying foods for our yeast; but there remains the complicating factor of popular fads with passing time; and of the possibility of the development of new strains with the new requirements and new popularity. All this must be foreseen, and the Machine does the job—”
   “But not perfectly.”
   “Not very imperfectly, in view of the complications I have mentioned. Well, then, a few thousand workers in Tientsin are temporarily out of a job. But, consider this, the amount of waste in this past year (waste that is, in terms of either defective supply or defective demand) amounts to not one-tenth of one percent of our total productive turnover. I consider that—”
   “Yet in the first years of the Machine, the figure was nearer one-thousandth of one percent.”
   “Ah, but in the decade since the Machine began its operations in real earnest, we have made use of it to increase our old pre-Machine yeast industry twenty-fold. You expect imperfections to increase with complications, though—”
   “Though?”
   “There was the curious instance of Rama Vrasayana.”
   “What happened to him?”
   “Vrasayana was in charge of a brine-evaporation plant for the production of iodine, with which yeast can do without, but human beings not. His plant was forced into receivership.”
   “Really? And through what agency?”
   “Competition, believe it or not. In general, one of the chiefest functions of the Machine’s analyses is to indicate the most efficient distribution of our producing units. It is obviously faulty to have areas insufficiently serviced, so that the transportation costs account for too great a percentage of the overhead. Similarly, it is faulty to have an area too well serviced, so that factories must be run at lowered capacities, or else compete harmfully with one another. In the case of Vrasayana, another plant was established in the same city, and with a more efficient extracting system.”
   “The Machine permitted it?”
   “Oh, certainly. That is not surprising. The new system is becoming widespread. The surprise is that the Machine failed to warn Vrasayana to renovate or combine.—Still, no matter. Vrasayana accepted a job as engineer in the new plant, and if his responsibility and pay are now less, he is not actually suffering. The workers found employment easily; the old plant has been converted to—something or other. Something useful. We left it all to the Machine.”
   “And otherwise you have no complaints.”
   “None!”

   The Tropic Region:
   Area: 22,000,000 square miles
   Population: 500,000,000
   Capital: Capital City

   The map in Lincoln Ngoma’s office was far from the model of neat precision of the one in Ching’s Shanghai dominion. The boundaries of Ngoma’s Tropic Region were stenciled in dark, wide brown and swept about a gorgeous interior labeled “jungle” and “desert” and “here be Elephants and all Manner of Strange Beasts.”
   It had much to sweep, for in land area the Tropic Region enclosed most of two continents: all of South America north of Argentina and all of Africa south of the Atlas. It included North America south of the Rio Grande as well, and even Arabia and Iran in Asia. It was the reverse of the Eastern Region. Where the ant hives of the Orient crowded half of humanity into 15 percent of the land mass, the Tropics stretched its 15 per cent of Humanity over nearly half of all the land in the world.
   But it was growing. It was the one Region whose population increase through immigration exceeded that through births.—And for all who came it had use.
   To Ngoma, Stephen Byerley seemed like one of these immigrants, a pale searcher for the creative work of carving a harsh environment into the softness necessary for man, and he felt some of that automatic contempt of the strong man born to the strong Tropics for the unfortunate pallards of the colder suns.
   The Tropics had the newest capital city on Earth, and it was called simply that: “Capital City,” in the sublime confidence of youth. It spread brightly over the fertile uplands of Nigeria and outside Ngoma’s windows, far below, was life and color; the bright, bright sun and the quick, drenching showers. Even the squawking of the rainbowed birds was brisk and the stars were hard pinpoints in the sharp night.
   Ngoma laughed. He was a big, dark man, strong faced and handsome.
   “Sure,” he said, and his English was colloquial and mouth-filling, “the Mexican Canal is overdue. What the hell? It will get finished just the same, old boy.”
   “It was doing well up to the last half year.”
   Ngoma looked at Byerley and slowly crunched his teeth over the end of a big cigar, spitting out one end and lighting the other, “Is this an official investigation, Byerley? What’s going on?”
   “Nothing. Nothing at all. It’s just my function as Coordinator to be curious.”
   “Well, if it’s just that you are filling in a dull moment, the truth is that we’re always short on labor. There’s lots going on in the Tropics. The Canal is only one of them—”
   “But doesn’t your Machine predict the amount of labor available for the Canal,—allowing for all the competing projects?”
   Ngoma placed one hand behind his neck and blew smoke rings at the ceiling, “It was a little off.”
   “Is it often a little off?”
   “Not oftener than you would expect.—We don’t expect too much of it, Byerley. We feed it data. We take its results. We do what it says.—But it’s just a convenience, just a laborsaving device. We could do without it, if we had to. Maybe not as well, maybe not as quickly, but we’d get there.
   “We’ve got confidence out here, Byerley, and that’s the secret. Confidence! We’ve got new land that’s been waiting for us for thousands of years, while the rest of the world was being ripped apart in the lousy fumblings of pre-atomic time. We don’t have to eat yeast like the Eastern boys, and we don’t have to worry about the stale dregs of the last century like you Northerners.
   “We’ve wiped out the tsetse fly and the Anopheles mosquito, and people find they can live in the sun and like it, now. We’ve thinned down the jungles and found soil; we’ve watered the deserts and found gardens. We’ve got coal and oil in untouched fields, and minerals out of count.
   “Just step back. That’s all we ask the rest of the world to do.—Step back, and let us work.”
   Byerley said, prosaically, “But the Canal,—it was on schedule six months ago. What happened?”
   Ngoma spread his hands, “Labor troubles.” He felt through a pile of papers skeltered about his desk and gave it up.
   “Had something on the matter here,” he muttered, “but never mind. There was a work shortage somewhere in Mexico once on the question of women. There weren’t enough women in the neighborhood. It seemed no one had thought of feeding sexual data to the Machine.”
   He stopped to laugh, delightedly, then sobered, “Wait a while. I think I’ve got it.—Villafranca!”
   “Villafranca?”
   “Francisco Villafranca.—He was the engineer in charge. Now let me straighten it out. Something happened and there was a cave-in. Right. Right. That was it. Nobody died, as I remember, but it made a hell of a mess.—Quite a scandal.”
   “Oh?”
   “There was some mistake in his calculations.—Or at least, the Machine said so. They fed through Villafranca’s data, assumptions, and so on. The stuff he had started with. The answers came out differently. It seems the answers Villafranca had used didn’t take account of the effect of a heavy rainfall on the contours of the cut.—Or something like that. I’m not an engineer, you understand.
   “Anyway, Villafranca put up a devil of a squawk. He claimed the Machine’s answer had been different the first time. That he had followed the Machine faithfully. Then he quit! We offered to hold him on—reasonable doubt, previous work satisfactory, and all that—in a subordinate position, of course—had to do that much—mistakes can’t go unnoticed—bad for discipline—Where was I?”
   “You offered to hold him on.”
   “Oh yes. He refused.—Well, take all in all, we’re two months behind. Hell, that’s nothing.”
   Byerley stretched out his hand and let the fingers tap lightly on the desk, “Villafranca blamed the Machine, did he?”
   “Well, he wasn’t going to blame himself, was he? Let’s face it; human nature is an old friend of ours. Besides, I remember something else now—Why the hell can’t I find documents when I want them? My filing system isn’t worth a damn—This Villafranca was a member of one of your Northern organizations. Mexico is too close to the North! that’s part of the trouble.”

   “Which organization are you speaking of?’
   “The Society of Humanity, they call it. He used to attend the annual conference in New York, Villafranca did. Bunch of crackpots, but harmless.—They don’t like the Machines; claim they’re destroying human initiative. So naturally Villafranca would blame the Machine.—Don’t understand that group myself. Does Capital City look as if the human race were running out of initiative?”
   And Capital City stretched out in golden glory under a golden sun,—the newest and youngest creation of Homo metropolis.

   The European Region
   Area: 4,000,000 square miles
   Population: 300,000,000
   Capital: Geneva

   The European Region was an anomaly in several ways. In area, it was far the smallest, not one-fifth the size of the Tropic Region in area, and not one-fifth the size of the Eastern Region in population. Geographically, it was only somewhat similar to pre-Atomic Europe, since it excluded what had once been European Russia and what had once been the British Isles, while it included the Mediterranean coasts of Africa and Asia, and, in a queer jump across the Atlantic, Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay as well.
   Nor was it likely to improve its relative status vis-à-vis the other regions of Earth, except for what vigor the South American provinces lent it. Of all the Regions, it alone showed a positive population decline over the past half century. It alone had not seriously expanded its productive facilities, or offered anything radically new to human culture.
   “Europe,” said Madame Szegeczowska, in her soft French, “is essentially an economic appendage of the Northern Region. We know it, and it doesn’t matter.”
   And as though in resigned acceptance of a lack of individuality, there was no map of Europe on the wall of the Madame Co-ordinator’s office.
   “And yet,” pointed out Byerley, “you have a Machine of your own, and you are certainly under no economic pressure from across the ocean.”
   “A Machine! Bah!” She shrugged her delicate shoulders, and allowed a thin smile to cross her little face as she tamped out a cigarette with long fingers. “Europe is a sleepy place. And such of our men as do not manage to immigrate to the Tropics are tired and sleepy along with it. You see for yourself that it is myself, a poor woman, to whom falls the task of being Vice-Co-ordinator. Well, fortunately, it is not a difficult job, and not much is expected of me.
   “As for the Machine—What can it say but ‘Do this and it will be best for you.’ But what is best for us? Why, to be an economic appendage of the Northern Region.
   “And is it so terrible? No wars! We live in peace—and it is pleasant after seven thousand years of war. We are old, monsieur. In our borders, we have the regions where Occidental civilization was cradled. We have Egypt and Mesopotamia; Crete and Syria; Asia Minor and Greece.—But old age is not necessarily an unhappy time. It can be a fruition—”
   “Perhaps you are right,” said Byerley, affably. “At least the tempo of life is not as intense as in the other Regions. It is a pleasant atmosphere.”
   “Is it not?—Tea is being brought, monsieur. If you will indicate your cream and sugar preference, please. Thank you.
   She sipped gently, then continued, “It is pleasant. The rest of Earth is welcome to the continuing struggle. I find a parallel here, a very interesting one. There was a time when Rome was master of the world. It had adopted the culture and civilization of Greece, a Greece which had never been united, which had ruined itself with war, and which was ending in a state of decadent squalor. Rome united it, brought it peace and let it live a life of secure non-glory. It occupied itself with its philosophies and its art, far from the clash of growth and war. It was a sort of death, but it was restful, and it lasted with minor breaks for some four hundred years.”
   “And yet,” said Byerley, “Rome fell eventually, and the opium dream was over.”
   “There are no longer barbarians to overthrow civilization.”
   “We can be our own barbarians. Madame Szegeczowska.—Oh, I meant to ask you. The Almaden mercury mines have fallen off quite badly in production. Surely the ores are not declining more rapidly than anticipated?”
   The little woman’s gray eyes fastened shrewdly on Byerley, “Barbarians—the fall of civilization—possible failure of the Machine. Your thought processes are very transparent, monsieur.”
   “Are they?” Byerley smiled. “I see that I should have had men to deal with as hitherto.—You consider the Almaden affair to be the fault of the Machine?”
   “Not at all, but I think you do. You, yourself, are a native of the Northern Region. The Central Co-ordination Office is at New York.—And I have noticed for quite a while that you Northerners lack somewhat of faith in the Machine.”
   “We do?”
   “There is your ‘Society for Humanity’ which is strong in the North, but naturally fails to find many recruits in tired, old Europe, which is quite willing to let feeble Humanity alone for a while. Surely, you are one of the confident North and not one of the cynical old continent.”
   “This has a connection with Almaden?”
   “Oh, yes, I think so. The mines are in the control of Consolidated Cinnabar, which is certainly a Northern company, with headquarters at Nikolaev. Personally, I wonder if the Board of Directors have been consulting the Machine at all. They said they had in our conference last month, and, of course, we have no evidence that they did not, but I wouldn’t take the word of a Northerner in this matter—no offense intended—under any circumstances.—Nevertheless, I think it will have a fortunate ending.”
   “In what way, my dear madam?”
   “You must understand that the economic irregularities of the last few months, which, although small as compared with the great storms of the past, are quite disturbing to our peace-drenched spirits, have caused considerable restiveness in the Spanish province. I understand that Consolidated Cinnabar is selling out to a group of native Spaniards. It is consoling. If we are economic vassals of the North, it is humiliating to have the fact advertised too blatantly.—And our people can be better trusted to follow the Machine.”
   “Then you think there will be no more trouble?”
   “I am sure there will not be—In Almaden, at least.”

   The Northern Region
   Area: 18,000,000 square miles
   Population: 800,000,000
   Capital: Ottawa

   The Northern Region, in more ways than one, was at the top. This was exemplified quite well by the map in the Ottawa office of Vice-Co-ordinator Hiram Mackenzie, in which the North Pole was centered. Except for the enclave of Europe with its Scandinavian and Icelandic regions, all the Arctic area was within the Northern Region.
   Roughly, it could be divided into two major areas. To the left on the map was all of North America above the Rio Grande. To the right was included all of what had once been the Soviet Union. Together these areas represented the centered power of the planet in the first years of the Atomic Age. Between the two was Great Britain, a tongue of the Region licking at Europe. Up at the top of the map, distorted into odd, huge shapes, were Australia and New Zealand, also member provinces of the Region.
   Not all the changes of the past decades had yet altered the fact that the North was the economic ruler of the planet.
   There was almost an ostentatious symbolism thereof in the fact that of the official Regional maps Byerley had seen, Mackenzie’s alone showed all the Earth, as though the North feared no competition and needed no favoritism to point up its pre-eminence.
   “Impossible,” said Mackenzie, dourly, over the whiskey. “Mr. Byerley, you have had no training as a robot technician, I believe.”
   “No, I have not.”
   “Hmp. Well, it is, in my opinion, a sad thing that Ching, Ngoma and Szegeczowska haven’t either. There is too prevalent an opinion among the peoples of Earth that a Co-ordinator need only be a capable organizer, a broad generalizer, and an amiable person. These days he should know his robotics as well, no offense intended.”
   “None taken. I agree with you.”
   “I take it, for instance, from what you have said already, that you worry about the recent trifling dislocation in world economy. I don’t know what you suspect, but it has happened in the past that people—who should have known better—wondered what would happen if false data were fed into the Machine.”
   “And what would happen, Mr. Mackenzie?”