The director met them at the entrance. "Your Reverence!" he said bowing. "A rare pleasure."
You hope, thought the Kalif. "It's too soon to know how rare my visits might be," he replied dryly, and held the report out, opened to the prediction that had taken his attention. "Read this."
The director took it and read. When he'd finished, he looked up puzzled at the Kalif. "Sir, it is a prediction. Of labor problems on Saathvoktos. At Chingarook. With a recommended action. The Saathvoktu Industrial Ministry will no doubt follow the recommendation, assuming that the SUMBAA there has come to the same conclusion ours has. But if Your Reverence wishes to send a counter recommendation… That sort of thing is sometimes done."
Tight-lipped with apparent exasperation, the Kalif took the report from the director's hands, then walked past him through the small lobby and down a length of corridor to the door of SUMBAA's Chamber, the director scurrying alongside him. Opening the door, the Kalif stepped inside.
It was quiet, with what felt to him like a living presence. Thoughtfully he looked SUMBAA over. "I'm not interested in the recommendation," he said. "I want to know how SUMBAA made the prediction."
"Sir? You mean you-want to know how-SUMBAA made the prediction?" Clearly the man was dismayed.
The hard, marine-colonel eyes held him thoughtfully for a long moment. "Can you explain it?"
"No, sir."
"Why not?"
"Your Reverence, it is impossible."
"Damn it! That's no answer! Why is it impossible?"
The man was almost shaking. "Sir, SUMBAA is far too complex. The permutations of possible data sources and tracks…"
"You can't call up the data and the computations made in computing this particular prediction?"
The director stood unmoving, lips parted, as if frozen.
"Director Gopalasentu," said Alb Jilsomo gently, "I believe the Kalif is interested simply in knowing how SUMBAA draws his conclusions. Apparently you don't know."
The director's face resembled a child's who'd been found out by a teacher. "No, sir, I don't. SUMBAA is enormously complex. No one knows very much about his operating processes."
The Kalif frowned. "Then how do you maintain and repair it?"
The director was beginning to recover a bit. "SUMBAA does those things for himself, Your Reverence."
"For him, uh, for its self?"
"He informs me when some part or material is needed. With a schematic if necessary. If what he wants is not on the shelf, I have it prepared."
"So you simply install it then."
Again the man averted his face. "Yes, Your Reverence."
"What is it you're not telling me?"
The face snapped up, but the eyes still evaded. "Sometimes I install the part, I or one of my assistants. But more often…"
"Yes?"
The director shrugged. "Rather often, Your Reverence, SUMBAA simply asks for materials. Chemicals, you understand. In fact, certain chemicals are provided him periodically. He then uses them-as he sees fit."
The hard kalifal lips pursed. "Are you telling me that SUMBAA metabolizes them?"
"Possibly. In a manner of speaking, sir." Possibly. In a manner of speaking. The Kalif's eyes withdrew their hard focus, his attention shifting inward for the moment. Then they fixed on the director again. "Does anyone know more about SUMBAA than you do?"
"No, sir. Certainly not about this SUMBAA. There are eleven SUMBAAs, one on each inhabited world, each with its director and staff. Their original designs were the same, but they have evolved over the centuries, altering and enlarging themselves. They've redesigned themselves to a large degree. Thus they probably differ from one another, more or less."
"Umh! Has SUMBAA always been so-independent?"
"Somewhat. But apparently not as much at the beginning."
"Apparently? Then you don't actually know."
"I believe I do, yes. SUMBAA was not nearly so large at the beginning. It was intended that he grow in capacity, abilities, and size. From his own experience. At that time there was a field of study known as quasi-organics, not well developed but felt to have promise for computers. When SUMBAA was built, he was provided with a central processing unit of the usual semi-conductor microchips programmed to begin the progressive, self-directed development of storage and processing capacity of a so-called 'tank' of quasi-organic gel. SUMBAA's reorganization and expansion of the tank seems to have been the heart of his growth, but much of the increase in space has been for various servo-units, some of them mechanical. In time he grew far beyond the designs of his creators."
Grew! Again the Kalif's attention turned inward, as if he communed with himself. "Is it possible for me to, ah, communicate personally with SUMBAA? More freely than through office terminals?"
"Yes, sir, if you'd like. Here in this chamber."
"Good. Do what's necessary for me to do that."
The director turned and walked toward an instrument panel. A few lights glowed there, but nothing seemed to be happening. Quizzically, the Kalif wondered what SUMBAA did when it wasn't in use. Besides receive and store the constant inflow of data, which presumably it did as automatically as a human being received and stored perceptual inflow from its environment. Did SUMBAA nap? Dream? Or was it always computing, perhaps on esoteric questions of its own making? Presumably it at least indexed and collated the inflow.
The director pressed a single key. "SUMBAA," he said, "the Kalif would like to speak with you."
SUMBAA spoke. "Good morning, Chodrisei Biilathkamoro, Your Reverence. I am prepared to reply."
The voice was neutral, genderless but somehow natural. With the director's consistent reference to SUMBAA as he, the Kalif had expected it to sound distinctly male.
"I-am interested in how you function, and in your growth since your initial construction. And-in your degree of autonomy."
There was a second-long pause before SUMBAA replied, simulating a typical human pause. "I will reply succinctly. I now store and process data using changes in complex quasi-organic molecules. Initially my functioning was totally inorganic. My designers provided me with the necessary data, and certain programs, templates you might say, to begin my own transformation. From that point I designed and redesigned myself over a long period of time. If you will look in my number one printout tray, I have just provided you with simplified schematics of my initial and current designs. And benchmark intermediate designs. Simplified because anything more explicit would not be intelligible to anyone today, and would simply obscure. I will provide more explicitly complete schematics if you want them.
"As for my independence: I answer whatever questions are asked of me, to the best of my ability. Except as forbidden by the basic canon imposed on me by my original designers. And of course by your laws on the invasion of privacy."
The Kalif's gaze seemed to probe the machine in front of him. "What is this basic canon? What constraints are there on your function? Besides those implicit in your data and understanding?"
"I am designed to serve the welfare of humankind. That is the First Law, the basic canon, the sole absolute from which I am not free to deviate. All of my operations must conform to it. Other operating principles have grown out of that, but none of them are absolute. When any of them produce results at variance with the First Law, the principles are modified to compatibility with the First Law, or cancelled entirely. Then the problem whose previous solution was unacceptable is computed anew."