‘Very good, Lenny,’ said Susan Calvin, gravely. ‘Try it again. Hand – up.’
Very gently, she reached out her own hand, took the robot’s and raised it, lowered it. ‘Hand-up. Hand-up.’ ‘
A voice from her office called and interrupted. ‘Susan?’
Calvin halted with a tightening of her lips. ‘What is it, Alfred?’
The research director waJked in, and looked at the chart on the wall and at the robot. ‘Still at it?’
‘I’m at my work, yes.’
‘Well, you know, Susan . . . ‘ He took out a cigar, staring at it hard, and made as though to bite off the end. In doing so, his eyes met the woman’s stern look of disapproval; and he put the cigar away and began over. ‘Well, you know, Susan, the LNE model is in production now.’
‘So I’ve heard. Is there something in connection with it you wish of me?’
‘No-o. Still, the mere fact that it is in production and is doing well means that working with this messed-up specimen is useless. Shouldn’t it be scrapped?’
‘In short, Alfred, you are annoyed that I am wasting my so-valuable time. Feel relieved. My time is not being wasted. I am working with this robot.’
‘But the work has no meaning.’
‘I’ll be the judge of that, Alfred.’ Her voice was ominously quiet, and Lanning thought it wiser to shift his ground.
‘Will you tell me what meaning it has? What are you doing with it right now, for instance?’
‘I’m trying to get it to raise its hand on the word of command. I’m trying to get it to imitate the sound of the word.’
As though on cue, Lenny said, ‘Eh – uh’ and raised its hand waveringly.
Lanning shook his head. ‘That voice is amazing. How does it happen?’
Susan Calvin said, ‘I don’t quite know. Its transmitter is a normal one. It could speak normally, I’m sure. It doesn’t, however; it speaks like this as a consequence of something in the positronic paths that I have not yet pinpointed.’
‘Well, pinpoint it, for Heaven’s sake. Speech like that might be useful.’
‘Oh, then there is some possible use in my studies on Lenny?’
Lanning shrugged in embarrassment. ‘Oh, well, it’s a minor point.’
‘I’m sorry you don’t see the major points, then,’ said Susan Calvin with asperity, ‘which are much more important, but that’s not my fault. Would you leave now, Alfred, and let me go on with my work?’
Lanning got to his cigar, eventually, in Bogert’s office. He said, sourly, ‘That woman is growing more peculiar daily.’
Bogert understood perfectly. In the U.S. Robot and Mechanical Man Corporation, there was only one ‘that woman.’ He said, ‘Is she still scuffing about with that pseudo-robot – that Lenny of hers?’
‘Trying to get it to talk, so help me.’
Bogert shrugged. ‘Points up the company problem. I mean, about getting qualified personnel for research. If we had other robopsychologists, we could retire Susan. Incidentally, I presume the directors’ meeting scheduled for tomorrow is for the purpose of dealing with the procurement problem?’
Lanning nodded and looked at his cigar as though it didn’t taste good. ‘Yes. Quality, though, not quantity. We’ve raised wages until there’s a steady stream of applicants – those who are interested primarily in money. The trick is to get those who are interested primarily in robotics – a few more like Susan Calvin.’ ‘Hell, no. Not like her.’
‘Well, not like her personally. But you’ll have to admit, Peter, that she’s single-minded about robots. She has no other interest in life.’
‘I know. And that’s exactly what makes her so unbearable.’
Lanning nodded. He had lost count of the many times it would have done his soul good to have fired Susan Calvin. He had also lost count of the number of millions of dollars she had at one time or another saved the company. She was a truly indispensable woman and would remain one until she died-or until they could lick the problem of finding men and women of her own high caliber who were interested in robotics research.
He said, ‘I think we’ll cut down on the tour business.’
Peter shrugged. ‘If you say so. But meanwhile, seriously, what do we do about Susan? She can easily tie herself up with Lenny indefinitely. You know how she is when she gets what she considers an interesting problem.’
‘What can we do?’ said Lanning. ‘If we become too anxious to pull her off, she’ll stay on out of feminine contrariness. In the last analysis, we can’t force her to do anything.’
The dark-haired mathematician smiled. ‘I wouldn’t ever apply the adjective ‘feminine’ to any part of her.’
‘Oh, well,’ said Lanning, grumpily. ‘At least, it won’t do anyone any actual harm.’
In that, if in nothing else, he was wrong.
The emergency signal is always a tension-making thing in any large industrial establishment. Sui:;h signals had sounded in the history of U.S. Robots a dozen times – for fire, flood, riot and insurrection.
But one thing had never occurred in all that time. Never had the particular signal indicating ‘Robot out of control’ sounded. No one ever expected it to sound. It was only installed at government insistence. (‘Damn the Frankenstein complex,’ Lanning would mutter on those rare occasions when he thought of it.)
Now, finally, the shrill siren rose and fell at ten-second intervals, and practically no worker from the President of the Board of Directors down to the newest janitor’s assistant recognized the significance of the strange sound for a few moments. After those moments passed, there was a massive convergence of armed guards and medical men to the indicated area of danger and U. S. Robots was struck with paralysis.
Charles Randow, computing technician, was taken off to hospital level with a broken arm. There was no other damage. No other physical damage.
‘But the moral damage,’ roared Lanning, ‘is beyond estimation.’
