"Asimov, Isaac - Robot City - Robots and Aliens 03 - Intruder - Robert Thurston" - читать интересную книгу автора (Asimov Isaac)

After all, the First Law says,..A robot may not harm a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.? That, however, begs the question, for it assumes that a robot knows what a human being is in the first place.
Suppose a robot is manufactured to be no better than a human being. Human beings often suppose other people are inferior, and not fully human, if they simply don?t speak your language, or speak it with an odd accent. (That?s the whole point of George Bernard Shaw?s Pygmalion.) In that case, it should be simple to build a robot within whom the definition of a human being includes the speaking of a specific language with a specific accent. Any failure in that respect makes a person the robot must deal with not a human being and the robot can harm or even kill him without breaking the First Law.
In fact, I have a robot in my book Robots and Empire for which a human being is defined as speaking with a Solarian accent, and my hero is in danger of death for that very reason.
So you see it is not easy to differentiate between a robot and a human being.
We can make the matter even more difficult, if we suppose a world of robots that have never seen human beings. (This would be like our early unsophisticated human beings who have never met anyone outside their own tribe.) They might still have the First Law and might still know that they must not harm a human being?but what is this human being they must not harm?
They might well think that a human being is superior to a robot in some ways, since that would be one reason why he must not be harmed. You ought not to offer violence to someone worthier than yourself.
On the other hand, if someone were superior to you, wouldn?t it be sensible to suppose that you couldn?t harm him? If you could, wouldn?t that make him inferior to you? The fallacy there ought to be obvious. A robot is certainly superior to an unthinking rock, yet a falling rock might easily harm or even destroy a robot. Therefore the inferior can harm the superior, but in a well-run Universe it should not do so.
In that case, a robot beginning only with the Laws of Robotics might well conclude that human beings were superior to robots.
But then, suppose that in this world of robots, one robot is superior to all the rest. Is it possible, in that case, that this superior robot, who has never seen a human being, might conclude that he himself is a human being?
If he can persuade the other robots that this is so then the Laws of Robotics will govern their behavior toward him and he may well establish a despotism over them. But will it differ from a human despotism in any way? Will this robot-human still be governed and limited by the Three Laws in certain respects, or will it be totally free of them?
In that case, if it has the appearance and mentality and behavior of a human being, and if it lacks the Three Laws, in what way is it not a human being? Has it not become a human being in actuality?
And what happens if, then, real human beings appear on the scene? Do the Three Laws suddenly begin to function again in the robot-human, or does he persist in considering himself human? In my very first published robot story, ?Reason,? come to think of it, I described a robot that considered himself to be superior to human beings and could not be argued out of it.
So what with one thing or another, the problem of defining a human being is enormously complex, and while in my various stories I?ve dealt with different aspects of it, I am glad to leave the further consideration of that problem to Robert Thurston in this third book of the Robots and Aliens series.


CHAPTER 1
ROBOT CITY DREAMS

Derec knew he was dreaming. The street he now ambled down wasn?t real. There had never been a street anywhere in Robot City like this distorted thoroughfare. Still, too much was familiar about it, and that really scared him.
The Compass Tower, now too far in the distance, had changed, too. There seemed to be lumps allover its surfaces, but that was impossible. In a city where buildings could appear and disappear overnight, the Compass Tower was the only permanent, unchangeable structure.
It was possible this strange street was newly created, but he doubted that. It was a dream-street, plain and simple, and this had to be a dream. Anyway, where were the robots? Nobody could travel this far along a Robot City street without encountering at least a utility robot scurrying along, on its way to some regular task; or a courier robot, its claws clutching tools; or a witness robot, checking the movements of the humans. During a stroll like this, Derec should have encountered a robot every few steps.
No, it was absolutely certain this was a dream. What he was doing was sleeping in his ship somewhere in space between the blackbody planet and Robot City. He had just come off duty after dealing with the Silversides for hours, a task that would tire a saint.
At one time, just after his father had injected chemfets into his bloodstream, he had regularly dreamed of Robot City, but it turned out that his harrowing nightmares had all been induced by a monitor that his father had implanted in his brain. The monitor had been trying to establish contact so he could be aware of the nature of the chemfets, which were tiny circuit boards that grew in much the same manner as the city itself had. Replicating in his bloodstream and programmed by his father, they were a tiny robot city in his body, one that gave him psycho-electronic control over the city?s core computer and therefore all its robots. After he had known this and the chemfets? replication process had stabilized, he had had no more nightmares of a distorted Robot City.
Until now.
Since he was so aware he was dreaming, perhaps this was what Ariel had explained to him as a ?lucid dream.? In the lucid dream state, she said, the dreamer could control the events of the dream. He wanted to control this dream, but at the moment he couldn?t think of anything particular to do.
He looked around him. The immediate streetscape seemed composed of bits and pieces from several stages of the city?s development, a weird composite of what Derec had observed during his several stays there.
But where were the robots?
If this was a lucid dream, maybe the reason he hadn?t seen any yet was that he hadn?t guided any into the scene. Maybe they were waiting inside the buildings to be summoned. Maybe he should do so, before he panicked. But which one could he bring onstage? How about Lucius, the robot who had created the city?s one authentic artistic masterpiece, the breathtaking tetragonal, pyramidal building-sculpture entitled ?Circuit Breaker?? He?d be a good choice since, as the victim of a bizarre roboticide, he no longer existed. It certainly would be pleasant to see old Lucius again, his body so unrobotically stooped, if only to chat with him about art. There hadn?t been much art in his life lately, especially if you didn?t count the rather breathtaking spectacle of a thousand blackbodies spread across the sky. That was pretty, but it wasn?t art.
He wondered why his thoughts were rambling so. Had the Silversides disturbed his mind?s equilibrium that much? Forget them. Forget them now. Get a normal robot into the dream. One of the most unforgettable robots he had known. Avernus, say. Let?s see his stern visage again, his jet-black metallic skin, his interchangeable hands. He concentrated on Avernus, but the robot didn?t appear. How about Euler and his glowing photocell eyes? Nope, no deal. Let?s try for Wohler, then, before he went nonfunctional trying to save Ariel on the outer wall of the Compass Tower. Golden and impressive, Wohler would be a wonderful choice. But no Wohler responded to his summons. He would have to talk to Ariel about this. As a lucid dream, it was shaping up as one hell of a failure.

Ariel, in her compartment aboard the ship, was also dreaming. Hers was not, however, a lucid dream. Deeper than that, it was a clearcut nightmare.
Jacob Winterson, the humaniform robot who had been her servant, existed again. Jacob had been destroyed by Neuronius, one of the flying aliens called blackbodies. He had blown up and mangled most of Jacob (and himself in the bargain). The few charred pieces that remained were now buried in some unmarked area of the agricultural community she had initiated as a political compromise with the blackbodies. The compromise had worked. They had been about to destroy their planet?s new robot city entirely because it was a threat to their weather systems; however, an agricultural community was acceptable to all sides.
She missed Jacob. Very much. In that comfortable, detached way a human could love a robot, she had loved him. Not that it could ever have been real love. She was too much in love with Derec to be unfaithful to him except in dreams. On the other hand, she could not deny that she had not sometimes been romantically attracted toward the handsome and imperturbable humaniform robot.
In the dream, Jacob sat in front of a computer terminal, his humanlike fingers flying over the keyboard, pressing keys as if he wanted to push them all the way through, making the screen shake with the ferocity of his entries.
She asked him what he was doing. He said he was searching for the formula that would transform a humaniform robot into a human being. There was no such formula, she told him. When he turned toward her, his eyes seemed filled with a frightening human anger. He protested that there were at least a hundred Earth and Spacer legends in which creatures changed into human beings. Statues, puppets, fish, trees, all became human in such myths. He was certain, he said with an un-Jacobian shrillness, that there had to be a formula by which he, too, could be transmogrified.

Why did the Compass Tower look so diseased? Derec asked himself. Was it possible for him, as a lucid dreamer, to change that? He concentrated on the building?s shape, trying to restore it to its architecturally magnificent pyramidal form. But nothing happened. If anything, the tower became uglier, and he had to look away from it.
In the distance something came toward him, traveling down the street at a high speed. As it passed by buildings, the buildings changed. When it neared, he saw it was a vehicle, but one quite unlike any Robot City mode of transportation. It ran on three thick wheels, making it vaguely resemble a jitney, the smaller, lighter utility type of vehicle used for taxiing around the city. The vehicle?s body was misshapen, as if a lot of ungeometric chunks had been welded together on a long central stem. It was colored black and gray in an illogical and splotchy fashion.
Still certain he was in the midst of a lucid dream, Derec stood defiantly in the center of the roadway ?daring the vehicle to come to a screeching stop at his feet. Which it did. Good, he thought, I?m in control of the dream at last. Just watch me now.
A large hatch at the top of the vehicle sprang open with an explosive sound, and Dr. Avery, his father, pulled himself through the opening. What kind of a lucid dream was this? The last person he wanted to see was his megalomaniacal father, interfering in a dream in just the way he?d interfered with Derec?s life, injecting him with chemfets and transforming him into a walking computer. Half-computer, anyway.
Avery was looking more demented than usual. His eyes, usually intense, now glowed with an overdramatic madness. In fact, Avery looked so exaggerated that Derec felt he could relax. No reason to be afraid, after all, just a dream. A dream he would seize control of at any moment.

Ariel placed her hand upon Jacob?s. His hand, she noted, felt soft, more like human than humaniform. She told him to stop. There was no need for him to become human. Even if he found a formula, it would be foolish to use it. As a humaniform robot, Jacob had all the virtues of human existence without all the miseries, without human physical and emotional pains.
Jacob turned away from the computer and looked at Ariel, for a moment a humanlike sadness in his eyes.
?Don?t you see?? he said, ?I want the misery. I want to feel what a human feels. Pain, happiness, love. I want to love you, Mistress Ariel.?
She put a finger on his lips. In contrast to his hand, they felt robotic, hard metal lips that could, if she pressed hard enough, make her fingertip bleed. She almost wanted to test that out. If she tried to cut her hand, would Jacob be able to invoke the First Law of Robotics?the part stating that a robot could not allow a human to come to harm?fast enough to prevent her from succeeding?
?You can?t love me, Jacob,? she said tenderly. ?I love Derec, so there?s no point in your loving me. It would be?what do they call it in romances?unrequited.?
?That wouldn?t matter. I would be happy with that, too. I could respond to it, as in your great literary works. I could, like one of your legendary lovers, die falling off a bridge or swimming a river or with a vial of poison and a great dagger plunging in??
?Hush, Jacob. Please stop. I wouldn?t want you to die for me.?
?I am already dead.?