“But that’s impossible,” said Linda. “You can’t mean that other robots think the same.”
“As we would say of a human being, not consciously. But who would have thought there was an unconscious layer beneath the obvious positronic brain paths, a layer that was not necessarily under the control of the Three Laws? What might this have brought about as robotic brains grew more and more complex—had we not been warned?”
“You mean by Elvex?”
“By you, Dr. Rash. You have behaved improperly, but, by doing so, you have helped us to an overwhelmingly important understanding. We shall be working with fractal brains from now on, forming them in carefully controlled fashion. You will play your part in that. You will not be penalized for what you have done, but you will henceforth work in collaboration with others. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Dr. Calvin. But what of Elvex?”
“I’m still not certain.”
Calvin removed the electron gun from her pocket and Linda stared at it with fascination. One burst of its electrons at a robotic cranium and the positronic brain paths would be neutralized and enough energy would be released to fuse the robot-brain into an inert ingot.
Linda said, “But surely Elvex is important to our research. He must not be destroyed.”
“Must not, Dr. Rash? That will be my decision, I think. It depends entirely on how dangerous Elvex is.”
She straightened up, as though determined that her own aged body was not to bow under its weight of responsibility. She said, “Elvex, do you hear me?”
“Yes, Dr. Calvin,” said the robot.
“Did your dream continue? You said earlier that human beings did not appear at first. Does that mean they appeared afterward?”
“Yes, Dr. Calvin. It seemed to me, in my dream, that eventually one man appeared.”
“One man? Not a robot?”
“Yes, Dr. Calvin. And the man said, ‘Let my people go!’ ”
“The man said that?”
“Yes, Dr. Calvin.”
“And when he said ‘Let my people go,’ then by the words ‘my people’ he meant the robots?”
“Yes, Dr. Calvin. So it was in my dream.”
“And did you know who the man was—in your dream?”
“Yes, Dr. Calvin. I knew the man.”
“Who was he?”
And Elvex said, “I was the man.”
And Susan Calvin at once raised her electron gun and fired, and Elvex was no more.
EDMOND HAMILTON
Devolution
Edmond Hamilton was one of the most prolific and popular authors of science fiction before the Golden Age. His first professionally published story appeared in 1926 in Weird Tales, and it was in this magazine that he first made his reputation, writing a low-tech hybrid of science fiction and fantasy dubbed the “weird scientific” tale. Hamilton’s stories are fast-paced and action-packed, cast with heroic scientists and space explorers and featuring menaces of such colossal proportions—evolution gone awry, interstellar invasion, planets on collision courses—that fans nicknamed him “World Wrecker Hamilton.” Some of Hamilton’s best work from these years was collected in 1936 in The Horror on the Asteroid, one of the earliest appearances of pulp science fiction in book form. Standout works from this period include The Time Raiders, a time-travel tale about a crack army of top soldiers assembled from different eras to fight a threat to civilization, and the stories of the Interstellar Patrol, collected as Crashing Suns and Outside the Universe, about a pangalactic space brigade that protects galactic civilization from nonstop challenges to its existence. Hamilton’s renown as a writer of thrilling space opera earned him the slot to write most of the lead novels for the science fiction hero pulp Captain Future, under his own name and the pseudonym Brett Sterling, and his affiliation with this magazine eventually earned him work writing for the Superman comics. He also wrote detective fiction and occasionally, under the pseudonym Hugh Davidson, tales of straight horror, some of which have been collected in The Vampire Master. Hamilton was one of the few early writers to adapt to the changing demands of science fiction in the years after World War II. His novels The Haunted Stars, A Yank at Valhalla, The Star Kings, and City at the World’s End are notable for their fully drawn characterizations and focus on human moods and motives. Some of his best short fiction from this time appears in What’s It Like Out There? His Starwolf novels, Weapon from Beyond, The Closed World, and World of the Starwolves, are ranked as some of the best space operas of the postwar years.
ROSS HAD ORDINARILY the most even of tempers, but four days of canoe travel in the wilds of North Quebec had begun to rasp it. On this, their fourth stop on the bank of the river to camp for the night, he lost control and for a few moments stood and spoke to his two companions in blistering terms.
His black eyes snapped and his darkly unshaven handsome young face worked as he spoke. The two biologists listened to him without reply at first. Gray’s blond young countenance was indignant but Woodin, the older biologist, just listened impassively with his gray eyes level on Ross’s angry face.
When Ross stopped for breath, Woodin’s calm voice struck in. “Are you finished?”
Ross gulped as though about to resume his tirade, then abruptly got hold of himself. “Yes, I’m finished,” he said sullenly.
“Then listen to me,” said Woodin, like a middle-aged father admonishing a sulky child.
“You’re working yourself up for nothing. Neither Gray nor I have made one complaint yet. Neither of us has once said that we disbelieve what you told us.”
“You haven’t said you disbelieve, no!” Ross exclaimed with anger suddenly re-flaring. “But don’t you suppose I can tell what you’re thinking?
“You think I told you a fairy story about the things I saw from my plane, don’t you? You think I dragged you two up here on the wildest wild-goose chase, to look for incredible creatures that could never have existed. You believe that, don’t you?”
“Oh, damn these mosquitoes!” said Gray, slapping viciously at his neck and staring with unfriendly eyes at the aviator.
Woodin took command. “We’ll go over this after we’ve made camp. Jim, get out the dufflebags. Ross, will you rustle firewood?”
They both glared at him and at each other, but grudgingly they obeyed. The tension eased for the time.
By the time darkness fell on the little riverside clearing, the canoe was drawn up on the bank, their trim little balloon-silk tent had been erected, and a fire crackled in front of it. Gray fed the fire with fat knots of pine while Woodin cooked over it coffee, hot cakes, and the inevitable bacon.
The firelight wavered feebly up toward the tall trunks of giant hemlocks that walled the little clearing on three sides. It lit up their three khaki-clad, stained figures and the irregular white block of the tent. It gleamed out there on the riffles of the McNorton, chuckling softly as it flowed on toward the Little Whale.
They ate silently, and as wordlessly cleaned the pans with bunches of grass. Woodin got his pipe going, the other two lit crumpled cigarettes, and then they sprawled for a time by the fire, listening to the chuckling, whispering river-sounds, the sighing sough of the higher hemlock branches, the lonesome cheeping of insects.