Herbie turned slowly to his neglected novel, but there was no one to read his thoughts.
Milton Ashe stretched slowly and magnificently, to the tune of cracking joints and a chorus of grunts, and then glared at Peter Bogert, Ph.D.
“Say,” he said, “I’ve been at this for a week now with just about no sleep. How long do I have to keep it up? I thought you said the positronic bombardment in Vac Chamber D was the solution.”
Bogert yawned delicately and regarded his white hands with interest. “It is. I’m on the track.”
“I know what that means when a mathematician says it. How near the end are you?”
“It all depends.”
“On what?” Ashe dropped into a chair and stretched his long legs out before him.
“On Lanning. The old fellow disagrees with me.” He sighed, “A bit behind the times, that’s the trouble with him. He clings to matrix mechanics as the all in all, and this problem calls for more powerful mathematical tools. He’s so stubborn.”
Ashe muttered sleepily, “Why not ask Herbie and settle the whole affair?”
“Ask the robot?” Bogert’s eyebrows climbed.
“Why not? Didn’t the old girl tell you?”
“You mean Calvin?”
“Yeah! Susie herself. That robot’s a mathematical wiz. He knows all about everything plus a bit on the side. He does triple integrals in his head and eats up tensor analysis for dessert.”
The mathematician stared skeptically, “Are you serious?”
“So help me! The catch is that the dope doesn’t like math. He would rather read slushy novels. Honest! You should see the tripe Susie keeps feeding him: ‘Purple Passion’ and ‘Love in Space.’ ”
“Dr. Calvin hasn’t said a word of this to us.”
“Well, she hasn’t finished studying him. You know how she is. She likes to have everything just so before letting out the big secret.”
“She’s told you.”
“We sort of got to talking. I have been seeing a lot of her lately.” He opened his eyes wide and frowned, “Say, Bogie, have you been noticing anything queer about the lady lately?”
Bogert relaxed into an undignified grin, “She’s using lipstick, if that’s what you mean.”
“Hell, I know that. Rouge, powder and eye shadow, too. She’s a sight. But it’s not that. I can’t put my finger on it. It’s the way she talks – as if she were happy about something.” He thought a little, and then shrugged.
The other allowed himself a leer, which, for a scientist past fifty, was not a bad job, “Maybe she’s in love.”
Ashe allowed his eyes to close again, “You’re nuts, Bogie. You go speak to Herbie; I want to stay here and go to sleep.”
“Right! Not that I particularly like having a robot tell me my job, nor that I think he can do it!”
A soft snore was his only answer.
Herbie listened carefully as Peter Bogert, hands in pockets, spoke with elaborate indifference.
“So there you are. I’ve been told you understand these things, and I am asking you more in curiosity than anything else. My line of reasoning, as I have outlined it, involves a few doubtful steps, I admit, which Dr. Lanning refuses to accept, and the picture is still rather incomplete.”
The robot didn’t answer, and Bogert said, “Well?”
“I see no mistake,” Herbie studied the scribbled figures.
“I don’t suppose you can go any further than that?”
“I daren’t try. You are a better mathematician than I, and – well, I’d hate to commit myself.”
There was a shade of complacency in Bogert’s smile, “I rather thought that would be the case. It is deep. We’ll forget it.” He crumpled the sheets, tossed them down the waste shaft, turned to leave, and then thought better of it.
“By the way-”
The robot waited.
Bogert seemed to have difficulty. “There is something – that is, perhaps you can -” He stopped.
Herbie spoke quietly. “Your thoughts are confused, but there is no doubt at all that they concern Dr. Lanning. It is silly to hesitate, for as soon as you compose yourself, I’ll know what it is you want to ask.”
The mathematician’s hand went to his sleek hair in the familiar smoothing gesture. “Lanning is nudging seventy,” he said, as if that explained everything.
“I know that.”
“And he’s been director of the plant for almost thirty years.” Herbie nodded.
“Well, now,” Bogert’s voice became ingratiating, “you would know whether… whether he’s thinking of resigning. Health, perhaps, or some other-”
“Quite,” said Herbie, and that was all.
“Well, do you know?”
“Certainly.”
“Then-uh-could you tell me?”
“Since you ask, yes.” The robot was quite matter-of-fact about it. “He has already resigned!”
“What!” The exclamation was an explosive, almost inarticulate, sound. The scientist’s large head hunched forward, “Say that again!”
“He has already resigned,” came the quiet repetition, “but it has not yet taken effect. He is waiting, you see, to solve the problem of – er – myself. That finished, he is quite ready to turn the office of director over to his successor.”
Bogert expelled his breath sharply, “And this successor? Who is he?” He was quite close to Herbie now, eyes fixed fascinatedly on those unreadable dull-red photoelectric cells that were the robot’s eyes.
Words came slowly, “You are the next director.”
And Bogert relaxed into a tight smile, “This is good to know. I’ve been hoping and waiting for this. Thanks, Herbie.”
Peter Bogert was at his desk until five that morning and he was back at nine. The shelf just over the desk emptied of its row of reference books and tables, as he referred to one after the other. The pages of calculations before him increased microscopically and the crumpled sheets at his feet mounted into a hill of scribbled paper.
At precisely noon, he stared at the final page, rubbed a blood-shot eye, yawned and shrugged. “This is getting worse each minute. Damn!”
He turned at the sound of the opening door and nodded at Lanning, who entered, cracking the knuckles of one gnarled hand with the other.
The director took in the disorder of the room and his eyebrows furrowed together.
“New lead?” he asked.
“No,” came the defiant answer. “What’s wrong with the old one?”
Lanning did not trouble to answer, nor to do more than bestow a single cursory glance at the top sheet upon Bogert’s desk. He spoke through the flare of a match as he lit a cigar.
“Has Calvin told you about the robot? It’s a mathematical genius. Really remarkable.”
The other snorted loudly, “So I’ve heard. But Calvin had better stick to robopsychology. I’ve checked Herbie on math, and he can scarcely struggle through calculus.”
“Calvin didn’t find it so.”
“She’s crazy.”
“And I don’t find it so.” The director’s eyes narrowed dangerously.
“You!” Bogert’s voice hardened. “What are you talking about?”
“I’ve been putting Herbie through his paces all morning, and he can do tricks you never heard of.”
“Is that so?”
“You sound skeptical!” Lanning flipped a sheet of paper out of his vest pocket and unfolded it. “That’s not my handwriting, is it?”
Bogert studied the large angular notation covering the sheet, “Herbie did this?”
“Right! And if you’ll notice, he’s been working on your time integration of Equation 22. It comes” – Lanning tapped a yellow fingernail upon the last step – “to the identical conclusion I did, and in a quarter the time. You had no right to neglect the Linger Effect in positronic bombardment.”
“I didn’t neglect it. For Heaven’s sake, Lanning, get it through your head that it would cancel out-”
“Oh, sure, you explained that. You used the Mitchell Translation Equation, didn’t you? Well – it doesn’t apply.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’ve been using hyper-imaginaries, for one thing.”
“What’s that to do with?”
“Mitchell’s Equation won’t hold when-”
“Are you crazy? If you’ll reread Mitchell’s original paper in the Transactions of the Far-”
“I don’t have to. I told you in the beginning that I didn’t like his reasoning, and Herbie backs me in that.”