“What do you mean?” Ursula turned to face him.
“I mean you organic humans faced a choice, a hundred years ago, when you saw that ‘artificial’ intelligence was going to take off and someday leave the biological kind behind.
“You could have wrecked the machines, but that would have halted progress.
“You could have deep-programmed us with ‘Fundamental Laws of Robotics’,” Gavin sniffed. “And had slaves far smarter than their masters.
“But what was it you organics finally did decide to do?”
Ursula knew it was no use answering, not when Gavin was in one of his moods. She concentrated on piloting Hairy Thunderer closer to the asteroid.
“What was your solution to the problem of smart machines?” Gavin persisted. “You chose to raise us as your children, that’s what you did. You taught us to be just like you, and even gave most of us humaniform bodies!”
Ursula’s last partner—a nice old ’bot and good chess player—had warned, her when he retired, not to hire an adolescent Class-AAA android fresh out of college. They could be as difficult as any human teenager, he cautioned.
The worst part of it was that Gavin was right once again.
Despite genetic and cyborg improvements to the human animal, machines still seemed fated to surpass biological men. For better or worse the decision had been made to raise Class-AAA androids as human children, with all the same awkward irritations that implied.
Gavin shook his head in dramatic, superior sadness, exactly like a too-smart adolescent who properly deserved to be strangled.
“Can you really object when I, a man-built, manlike android, anthropomorphize? We only do as we’ve been taught, mistress.”
His bow was eloquently sarcastic.
Ursula said nothing. It was hard, at times, to be entirely sure humanity had made the right decision after all.
Below, across the face of the ravaged asteroid, stretched acres of great-strutted scaffolding—twisted and curled in ruin. Within the toppled derricks lay silent ranks of shattered, unfinished starships, wrecked perhaps a hundred million years ago.
Ursula felt sure that theirs were the first eyes to look on this scene since some awful force had wrought this havoc.
The ancient destroyers had to be long gone. Nobody had yet found a star machine even close to active. Still, she took no chances, making certain the weapons console was vigilant.
The sophisticated, semi-sentient unit searched, but found no energy sources, no movement among the ruined, unfinished star probes below. Instruments showed nothing but cold rock and metal, long dead.
Ursula shook her head. She did not like such metaphors. Gavin’s talk of “murdered babies” didn’t help one look at the ruins below as potentially profitable salvage.
It would not help her other vocation, either… the paper she had been working on for months now… her carefully crafted theory about what had happened out here, so long ago.
“We have work to do,” she told her partner. “Let’s get on with it.”
Gavin pressed two translucent hands together prayerfully. “Yes, Mommy. Your wish is my program.” He sauntered away to his own console and began deploying their remote exploration drones.
Ursula concentrated on directing the lesser minds within Thunderer’s control board—those smaller semisentient minds dedicated to rockets and radar and raw numbers—who still spoke and acted coolly and dispassionately… as machines ought to do.
3
Greeter is right. One of the little humans does seem to be on the track of something. We crippled survivors all listen in as Greeter arranges to tap the tiny Earthship’s crude computers, where its Captain stores her speculations.
Her thoughts are crisp indeed, for a biological creature.
Still, she is missing many, many pieces to the puzzle.
4
After centuries of wondering, mankind has at last realized an ancient dream. We have discovered proof of civilizations other than our own.
In the decade we have been exploring the Outer Belt in earnest, humanity has uncovered artifacts from more than forty different cultures… all represented by robot starships… all apparently long dead.
What happened here?
And why were all those long-ago visitors robots?
Back in the late twentieth century, some scholars had begun to doubt that biological beings could ever adapt well enough to space travel to colonize more than a little corner of the Milky Way. But even if that were so, it would not prevent exploration of the galaxy. Advanced intelligences could send out mechanical representatives, robots better suited to the tedium and dangers of interstellar spaceflight than living beings.
After all, a mature, long-lived culture could afford to wait thousands of years for data to return from distant star systems.
Even so, the galaxy is a big place. To send a probe to every site of interest could impoverish a civilization.
The most efficient way would be to dispatch only a few deluxe robot ships, instead of a giant fleet of cheaper models. Those first probes would investigate nearby stars and planets. Then, after their explorations were done, they would use local resources to make copies of themselves.
The legendary John Von Neumann first described the concept. Sophisticated machines, programmed to replicate themselves from raw materials, could launch their “daughters” toward still further stellar systems. There, each probe would make still more duplicates, and so on.
Exploration could proceed far faster than if carried out by living beings. And after the first wave there would be no further cost to the home system. From then on information would pour back, year after year, century after century.
It sounded so logical. Those twentieth century scholars calculated that the technique could deliver an exploration probe to every star in our galaxy a mere three million years after the first was launched—an eyeblink compared to the age of the galaxy.
But there was a rub! When we humans discovered radio and then spaceflight, no extra-solar probes announced themselves to say hello. There were no messages welcoming us into the civilized sky.
At first those twentieth century philosophers thought there could be only one explanation…
Ursula frowned at the words on the screen. No, it wouldn’t be fair to judge too harshly those thinkers of a century ago. After all, who could have expected the Universe to turn out to be so bizarre?
She glanced up from the text-screen to see how Gavin was doing with his gang of salvage drones. Her partner’s tethered form could be seen drifting between the ship and the ruined yards. He looked very human, motioning with his arms and directing the less sophisticated, non-citizen machines at their tasks.
Apparently he had things well in hand. Her own shift wasn’t due for an hour, yet. Ursula returned to the latest draft of the article she hoped to submit to The Universe… if she could ever find the right way to finish it.
In correction mode, she backspaced and altered the last two paragraphs, then went on.
Let us re-create the logic of those philosophers of the last century, in an imagined conversation.
“We will certainly build robot scouts someday. Colonization aside, any truly curious race could hardly resist the temptation to send out mechanical emissaries, to say ‘hello’ to strangers out there and report back what they find. The first crude probes to leave our solar system—the Voyagers and Pioneers—demonstrated this basic desire. They carried simple messages meant to be deciphered by other beings long after the authors were dust.