‘Yeah but how? How can they program a robot to obey some dumb law he can’t even understand? Like first thing he needs to know who’s a human being and who ain’t. Like I heard this old guy by the post office saying the president was a son of a bitch and somebody ought to shoot him. I’m just saying what he said, Father. But with these dumb laws a robot could hear that and get a gun and go shoot the president because he’s only a dog so it’s okay.’
‘Now you’re just being silly. Everybody knows the president is human.’
‘Yeah, but the Robotic Law don’t say how a robot’s supposed to find out who’s human and who’s robots, like what’s he supposed to do, go see Mr Swann every time he wants to stick a pin in a doll or—’
‘Excuse me for a minute…’ The priest hurried out, lifting his skirts as he thumped down the basement stairs into the dark gallery.
Father O’Bride was a shadowy alien, with a pair of bright orange ear-protectors standing out from the sides of his head like insect eyes. And wasn’t that a picture of the Pope he was shooting at?
‘What? Whatsa matter?’ O’Bride took off the ear-protectors and automatically kissed their strap before putting them down. ‘You still crapping around tryina convert that Wood brat?’
‘He… gets on my nerves sometimes.’
‘Little smart-ass, needs fifty laps, that’s what he needs.’
‘…tried everything, I’ve tried talking to him about Space-ship Earth even, how if he were an alien landing here—’
‘Excuse me while I throw up. I can’t stand all that space crap, can’t stand that kid either. You know what?’
‘—how the alien would wonder Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going?’
‘Yeah but you know what?’
‘But listen, I told him we came from the mind of God, and he — he just said, “Pa thinks we’re all apes who got tired of picking fleas and grunting” not even seven years old and he—’
‘Yeah but you know what I think?’
‘Where are we going, to the destiny God prepared for us, he came right out with how his mother says when people die they turn into ether and rise up through seven astral planes—’
‘You know what I think? I think the kid is a darn robot.’
Bzzt bzz-bzzz bzzzt bzz? said the telephone on the desk. Phones that were still cradled shouldn’t be saying anything. Roderick crept closer and listened.
‘…sure this thing’s on? I can’t hear a fucking…’
‘Look, I know my stuff, not like that hick O’Smith… hire a fucking amateur and then wonder what went wrong, man they never learn…’
‘…ill don’t see why we don’t just trash him now, hot trail gets cold while you wait for them motherfucking tankthinkers to make up their fu… ders is orders I guess… Hey I still can’t…’
‘…some kinda bionic boy or what? Hey Pete? What…?’
‘Bionic my ass, all a cover for something… unny thing you know the first real bionic man wasn’t even scratched in that plane crash, you know? Like he was just… in the hospital… started picking up infections… everything going wrong, one part after another… next thing you know… Hey I can’t hear a damn thing on this…’
‘…short of agents anyway, too much of this crap going on… tired of freezing my ass off in panel trucks… extra help on that whatsit, Kratt… in that thermos?’
Roderick looked out of the window. There was a panel truck parked across the road. The sign said O’Bannion Flowers but there wasn’t any O’Bannion Flowers in town. Okay, so G-men or something watching him, and they wanted to trash him or something, put him in the hospital where he could pick up infections like the six million –
‘…with priests you gotta go careful, see? Priests get headlines… Anyway they want we should surveil to pick up all the contacts… maybe I got the wires crossed or… was that a shot?’
Down the street, the wretched pick-up of Mr Ogilvy back-fired again. As usual, it was wobbling and going too fast, cutting a sine-wave pattern along the route from the public school to Mr O.’s favourite bar. People liked to pretend that it was the old pick-up that knew the way, that Mr O. just put his foot down and went to sleep.
The crash and the flaming explosion weren’t quite as good as on TV. There was hardly any noise at all.
By the time Father Warren came back, the fire trucks and tow trucks were just leaving.
‘I’m sorry I took so long,’ he said. ‘Couldn’t resist trying a couple of shots with Father O’Bride’s handgun. Not much good, I guess, but — now where were we? I was about to say, robots will be programmed to recognize people. After all, people recognize each other, don’t they?’
‘Only you don’t recognize that I’m a robot,’ said Roderick. ‘Sometimes, boy, I don’t even know myself what I am, Mr Swann says it’ll take a lot of money to even find out if I’m a person in law — or just one of these legal statues like you said — or if I’m a dog or a knife or what — but look, even to work these laws you gotta have some way of telling robots from people. You gotta have these other unnatural laws and Mr Swann and Perry Mason to work them out, boy, there goes your logic. I mean if a robot hurts somebody and says I thought he was just a robot, boy, old Perry could really get the District Attorney hung up, holy—’
Father Warren banged a slim fist on the desk. ‘Assume robots can tell people from robots, assume that. Then the Three Laws are perfectly logical, right?’
‘No but I mean that’s just a start, the robot’s gotta figure out what harm and injury mean, more legal stuff see, it’s right back to court again with the Districk—’
‘Assume we’ve got that worked out too. Then do you see how logical—?’
‘Wait, no, soom sure, soom all that stuff for just the first law, just the first part of the first law. I didn’t even mention how’s a robot surgeon gonna operate without cutting into anybody, how’s a robot cop gonna arrest anybody, how’s a robot soldier gonna kill anybody — okay so soom we don’t have robots doing any jobs like that, we still got the second part, he can’t let anybody come to harm by inaction that’s not doing nothing, just like not even existing, only how does that tie in with that clause 3 there I mean the third law?’
‘Afraid I don’t follow you. What — just a minute.’ Father Warren took a handkerchief from his sleeve and blew his nose. Then he went to the window and stared out at the black-and-white garden. ‘Getting dark.’ He went around the room, turning on lights. ‘I think I see what you’re driving at. If the robot doesn’t protect its own existence first and foremost, how can it be around later to prevent some human coming to harm?’
‘Yeah, Father, that’s it. Because there’s no time in these laws, it’s always something right away like somebody tries to shoot a guy and the robot gets in between. But take a robot farmer, he knows somebody might starve if he stopped work so he’s really gotta perteck himself, for ever. But in these other laws it says that if some kid just comes along and tells him to go jump off the highest building in the world he’s gotta go and do it. Is that logical?’
‘Maybe not, Roderick. Maybe not. But—’