“I was astonished just how incompetent I was,” Fredda Leving’s voice said. “I was amazed how many little tasks I could not perform. I cannot begin to describe the humiliation I felt when I realized that I could not find my way around my own city by myself. I needed a robot to guide me, or I would get hopelessly lost.”
There was a nervous titter or two in the audience, and Fredda nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, it is funny. But it is also very sad. Let me ask you out there who think I am being absurd—suppose all the robots simply stopped right now. Let us ignore the obvious fact that our entire civilization would collapse, because the robots are the ones who run it. Let’s keep it tight, and personal. Think what would happen to you if your robots shut down. What if your driver ceased to function, your personal attendant ground to a halt, your cook mindlocked and could not prepare meals, your valet lost power right now?
“How many of you could find your way home? Very few of you can fly your own cars, I know that—but could you even walk home? Which way is home from here? And if and when you got home, would you remember how to use the manual controls to open the door? How many of you even know your own address?”
Again, silence, at least at first. But then there was a shout from the audience. The camera cut away to show a man standing in front of his seat, a man dressed in one of the more comic-opera variants of the Ironhead uniform. “So what?” he yelled. “I don’t know my address. Big deal! All I need to know is, I’m the human being! I’m the one on top! I got a good life thanks to robots. I don’t want it messed up!”
There was a ragged flurry of cheers and applause, mostly from the back of the house. The view cut back to Fredda as she stepped out from behind her lectern and joined in the applause herself, clapping slowly, loudly, ironically, still going long after everyone else had quit. “Congratulations,” she said. “You are the human being. I am sure you are proud of that, and you should be. But if Simcor Beddle sent you here to disrupt my speech, you go back and tell the leader of the Ironheads that you helped me make my point. What troubles me is that it almost sounds as if you are proud of your ignorance. That strikes me as terribly dangerous, and terribly sad.
“So tell me this. You don’t know where you live. You don’t do much of anything. You don’t know how to do anything. So: What in the Nine Circles of Hell are you good for?” She looked up from the man to the entire audience. “What are we good for? What do we do? What are humans for?
“Look around you. Consider your society. Look at the place of humans in it. We are drones, little else. There is scarcely an aspect of our lives that has not been entrusted to the care of the robots. In entrusting our tasks to them, we surrender our fate to them.
“So what are humans for? That is the question, the real question it all comes down to in the end. And I would submit that our current use of robots has given us a terrifying answer, one that will doom us if we do not act.
“Because right here, right now, we must face the truth, my friends. And the true answer to that question is: not much.”
Fredda took a deep breath, collected her notes, and stepped back from the podium. “Forgive me if I end this lecture on that grim note, but I think it is something we all need to face. In this lecture I have stated the problem I wished to address. In my next lecture, I will offer up my thoughts on the Three Laws of Robotics, and on a solution to the problems we face. I believe I am safe in saying it should be of interest to you all.”
And with that, the recording faded away, and Alvar Kresh was left alone with his own thoughts. She couldn’t be right. She couldn’t.
All right, then. Assume she was wrong. Then what were humans good for?
“Well, Donald, what did you think?” Alvar asked.
“I must confess I found it to be a most disturbing presentation.”
“How so?”
“Well, sir, it makes the clear implication that robots are bad for humans.”
Kresh snorted derisively. “Old, old arguments, all of them. There isn’t a one that I haven’t heard before. She makes it sound like the entire population of Hades, of all Inferno, is made up of indolent incompetents. Well, I for one still know how to find my own way home.”
“That is so, sir, but I fear that you might be in a minority.”
“What? Oh, come on. She made it sound as if everyone were utterly incompetent. I don’t know anyone that helpless.”
“Sir, if I may observe, most of your acquaintances are fellow law enforcement officers, or workers in fields that you as Sheriff often come into contact with.”
“What’s your point?”
“Police work is one of the very few fields of endeavor in which robots can be of only marginal help. A good police officer must be capable of independent thought and action, be willing to cooperate in a group, be ready to deal with all kinds of people, and be capable of working without robots. Your deputies must be rather determined, self-confident individuals, willing to endure a certain amount of physical danger—perhaps even relishing the stimulus of danger. I would suggest that police officers would make for a rather skewed sample of the population. Think for a moment, not of your officers, but of the people they encounter. The people that end up as victims in the police reports. I know that you do not hold those people in the highest regard. How competent and capable are they? How dependent on their robots are they?”
Alvar Kresh opened his mouth as if to protest, but then stopped, frowned, and thought. “I see your point. Now you’ve disturbed me, Donald.”
“My apologies, sir. I meant no—”
“Relax, Donald. You’re sophisticated enough to know you’ve done no harm. You got me to thinking, that’s all.” He nodded at the televisor. “As if she hadn’t done that already.”
“Yes, sir, quite so. But I would suggest, sir, that it is time for bed. “
“It certainly is. Can’t be tired for the Governor, can I?” Alvar stood and yawned. “And what the hell could he want that can’t wait until later in the day?”
Alvar Kresh walked wearily back to his bedroom, very much dreading the morning. Whatever the Governor wanted, it was unlikely to be good news.
10
SIMCOR Beddle was up betimes, thoughtfully reviewing the results of the Ironhead action against Settlertown. The results were not good. Sheriff Kresh’s deputies were simply getting too good at their jobs. Too many arrests, too little damage, and worst of all, the publicity was bad. It made the Ironheads look inept at best.
All right, then, it was time to come up with another tactic. Some way to tangle with the damned Settlers where Kresh’s people could not interfere so much.
Wait a moment. He had the very thing. Leving’s next lecture. If his information was even remotely reliable, the place would be crawling with Settlers. Yes, yes. An altercation there would do nicely.
But what about publicity? Not much point in staging a riot if no one saw it. Beddle leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. Her first lecture had not drawn much of a crowd, though it should have, given the seditious material she had presented. Maybe that was the key. Plant a few belated reports here and there, accurate and otherwise, about what she had said then. Perhaps he could arrange for a few tame sources to drop a few inflammatory and extremely misleading speculations as to what the devil she was doing in the hospital.
Yes, yes. That was it. Properly brought along, reports on that first lecture should get the hall filled for the second, and live televisor coverage to boot. Disrupt those goings-on and no one could help but pay attention.