“Which is why we have to make sure there is no next time,” Lawrence Robertson said with slow clarity.
As shocking as Susan’s own revelations had seemed, the words spoken to her now flabbergasted her, mostly because they came from the lips of people she had always considered good and decent, upright and moral human beings. Her mouth and tongue felt numb, paralyzed.
John Calvin motioned for Lawrence to stand back, and he did so wordlessly. Susan’s father looked down into her face. “I know what you’re thinking, kitten. And, as smart as you are, you’re wrong.”
Susan’s pale eyes flicked directly on his. They looked so like her own, the ones she saw in the mirror every day, and the sincerity deep within them seemed to penetrate her psyche. She did not know what she was thinking, so she found herself eager for her father’s theory.
“U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men isn’t some greedy monster of a corporation panicking over its profits. We’re small, as you know, smaller than we ever should be. We deal with priceless concepts, with products that cost millions to build, yet ‘making money,’ at least in a significant sense, is a notion that hasn’t reached us and may not for another century.”
Susan could scarcely call her father rich. They had both borrowed heavily to send her through college. The state covered medical school for all physicians. Had she had to make her own way, as in Bainbridge’s day, she would have drowned in her own debt. Most of the men currently involved in the company’s projects would never see the riches their hard work might eventually reap. They did it from a firm belief that, once accepted, robotics would make humans happier, healthier, and better.
John seemed to be trying to read his daughter’s mind as he spoke, his scrutiny intense, his tone almost pleading. “People have imagined robots improving our lives since long before any of our births. The water clock was invented in 200 BC, for God’s sake; and Leonardo da Vinci made a moving armored robot in 1495. Animatronics are commonplace at theme parks and as children’s toys, and NASA has used robotic exploration and analysis units since at least the 1990s. General Motors had a functioning robotic arm on its assembly line in the 1960s. And that’s all assuming you don’t include computers in the robotics category. Yet, when it comes to an actual humanoid robot, one that can actually think and talk, one that has skin, muscles, and a functional skeleton, one that can actually pass for human, people panic.” The disgust in his voice became palpable. “The Frankenstein Complex.”
Susan had never heard her father denigrate anyone. He treated everyone kindly and had something nice to say about even the ones Susan would not miss if they fell off the earth. Although they argued about some things, she could never fault his knowledge or logic. He could make her see the other side of issues that did not seem to have one, and his love for humanity was unimpeachable. About this issue, he clearly felt passionate.
John cleared his throat. “Susan, the positronic brain will change the course of history. It’s the greatest invention since” — he paused to consider — “the greatest invention ever, in my opinion.”
Behind him, Susan could see Lawrence Robertson and Alfred Lanning exchanging glances, their cheeks flushed by the enormity of John Calvin’s compliment.
“It will change the world as nothing else has since the Internet or the cellular phone. Society will improve a millionfold. Our lives will become easier, better in every way. Medicine will take a grand leap into the future. The possibilities are mind-boggling: prosthetics, transplants, fixing neural pathways, the intricacies of perfect surgery, even psychiatry itself, once we explore the relationship between human neural pathways and the positronic brain. Thousands of lives saved, millions in time.” John Calvin’s eyes held a gleam Susan had never seen before. It combined raw excitement with hope and joy and honest, innocent wonder.
Susan took a slow, deep breath. Her father had never steered her wrong. He had an uncanny memory, a keen mind, a gift for finding the best in everyone and everything. She understood the grandeur in his speech; yet she also saw why it might incite fear in some. What about the surgeons replaced by those robots who could perform those perfect surgeries? What about the mental status of those people fitted with wondrous, robotic prosthetics? Would a caste system develop: full humans versus cyborgs versus robots? Could fully sentient robots contemplate their superiority, their immortality, their precision, and program themselves to overcome the Three Laws of Robotics? She released the breath in a long sigh.
“Believe me, Susan.” John Calvin had not finished. “I taught you to look at both sides of every issue, and I know you’re doing that now, doing it with great intelligence and fervor.” His gaze remained fully locked on her own. “Know this: I believe zealously in the Three Laws and in the process that governs their existence in each and every positronic brain. They cannot be removed or tampered with; the simple act of trying would utterly destroy the brain itself.”
A shiver traversed Susan. She hated when people seemed to read her thoughts, even the father who knew her better than anyone else. “I think,” she finally managed to say, “the world would be a far, far better place if all of us had to adhere to the Three Laws of Robotics.” She knew they needed a definitive answer. “All right. No police.” It amazed Susan how, this day, the men of USR seemed to do everything concurrently. Once again, to a man, the entire room appeared relieved by her promise.
Chapter 22
Susan could not scrub an image of “Princess” Valerie Aldrich from her mind. Seated beside Remington on the crosstown bus, Susan found her mind’s eye filled with images of the elderly woman in the purple silk pants and cape, the tawdry tiara perched on perfectly coiffed white hair. Susan could still picture the put-upon husband, remembered only as a butler in the mind of his beloved after fifty-four blissful years of marriage. He had come to them with great desperation and hope that the nanorobots might rescue her from the fixed delusion spoiling their well-deserved happily-ever-after. If the nanorobots did their job, and Susan believed they would have, they could have salvaged the kind of rare and perfect love rarely seen anymore. Susan knew few enough marriages that had weathered two decades, let alone longer than half a century.
“Damn it!” Sorrow and impotent rage seized her. “Damn it, damn it, damn it.”
Remington put his arm around her, drawing her closer.
“She deserved better, Remy. They both deserved better.”
Remington’s emerald eyes held Susan’s gamely. “Which ‘she’ do you mean, Susan?”
“Valerie Aldrich and her husband,” Susan said, then realized how ridiculous she sounded. “Well, I guess they all did. The victims of the explosion, and Payton Flowers, too. Not many people deserve to die.” Susan huffed out a breath. “But she shouldn’t have to leave this world as That Looney in the Princess Costume Who Blew up a Government Office.”
“No,” Remington admitted. He flipped his portable radiation detector over and over in his hands.
“They were married fifty-four years. Fifty-four years.”
“Yes,” Remington said unhelpfully, still playing with the object in his lap.
The true lunatics, Susan realized, were the ones who had reprogrammed the nanorobots, the ones willing to murder and defame. For what? She remembered Nate’s definition of the Society for Humanity, verbatim to her surprise: “a bipartisan political action group dedicated to ‘rescuing’ mankind from advanced intelligence, particularly the artificial type, and raising ethical challenges to several forms of robotic and medical technology.” Can anyone who claims to “rescue mankind,” can any group that calls itself the Society for Humanity, really be responsible for so much death and destruction? Susan realized that without the Three Laws of Robotics, the devastation would have been a lot worse. She patted her pocket to assure herself she had not lost her own portable radiation detector.