"Allen, Roger Macbride - 01 - Isaac Asimov's Caliban" - читать интересную книгу автора (Allen Roger Macbride)

ДTake it easy, Donald,У Kresh said. ДThat doesnТt mean that the Three Laws couldnТt be built into another form of brain. Right, Terach?У
Terach blinked and nodded, still a bit distracted. ДOf course, of course. I really cannot say anything specific about gravitonic brains, but I suppose it canТt do any harm to speak in broad generalities. Gubber Anshaw is really just at the beginning of his research on gravitonics, but in my opinion heТ s already made tremendous breakthroughs. ItТs time someone did.У
ДHow do you mean?У
ДI mean that we have rung out the changes on positronics. Certainly todayТs positronic brain is far superior to the original units. It has been greatly advanced and improved. There have been many refinements in it. But the positronic brainТs basic design hasnТt changed in thousands of years. It would be as. if we were still using chemical rockets for spacecraft, instead of hyperdrive. The positronic brain is an incredibly conservative design that puts tremendous and needless limits on what robots can do. Because the Three Laws are embedded in its design, the positronic brain is seen as the only possible design for use in robots. That is an article of belief, of faith, even among robotics researchers. But gravitonics could change all that.
ДGravitonic brains currently have one or two minor drawbacks, but they are at the beginning of their development. They promise tremendous advantages over positronics, in terms of flexibility and capacity.У
ДWell, you certainly sound like a true believer yourself,У Kresh said dryly. There is none so faithful as the converted, he thought. ДVery well, Terach. I may well wish to talk with you later, but that will do it for now. You may go.У
Jomaine nodded and stood up. He hesitated before heading for the door. Д Ah, one question,У he said. ДWhat is the prognosis for Fredda Leving?У
KreshТs face hardened. ДSheТs still unconscious,У he said, Дbut they expect her to awaken sometime in the next day or so, and go on to a rapid and complete recovery. They are using the most advanced regeneration techniques to stimulate recovery. I understand her head injury should be completely healed within two days.У
Jomaine Terach smiled and nodded. ДThatТs excellent news,У he said. ДThe staff here will be delighted to hear it--ah, that is, if IТm allowed to tell them.У
Kresh waved his hand in negligent dismissal. ДGo right ahead, Terach. ItТs public knowledge--and sheТs under heavy guard.У
Terach pasted on a patently false smile, nodded nervously, and left the room.
Kresh watched him go. ДWhatТs your reading, Donald?У he asked, without looking over at the robot. No one talked about it much, but advanced police robots were specially engineered to detect the bodyТ s involuntary responses to questions. In effect, Donald was a highly sophisticated lie detector.
ДI should remind you that Jomaine Terach quite possibly knows about my capabilities as a truth-sensor. I have never met him before, but a records-check confirms that he was on staff here during my construction. That does add a variable. However, suffice to say that he was highly agitated, sir. Far more so than any of the others, and, in my opinion, more so than would be accounted for solely by surprise and concern over the attack on Lady Leving. Voice stress and other indicators confirm that he was concealing something.У
That didnТt surprise Alvar. All witnesses concealed things. ДWas he lying?У he asked. ДLying directly?У
ДNo, sir. But he was most concerned to learn we knew about the gravitonic brains. I found this confusing, as he went to some length to discuss them. I formed the impression that he was intent on steering the interrogation away from some other point.У
ДYou caught that, too, I see. The damnable thing is that I canТt imagine what point he was trying to lead us away from. My hunch is he thinks we know more than we do.У
ДThat is my opinion as well.У
Alvar Kresh drummed his fingers on the table and stared at the door Jomaine Terach had used to leave the room.
There was more going on here than the attack on Leving. Something else was up. Something that involved the Governor, and Leving, and Welton, and the Settler-Spacer relationship on Inferno,
Indeed, the attack was already beginning to recede in importance in his mind. That was merely the loose thread he was tugging on. He knew that if he left it alone, the rest of it would never be revealed. Pull it too hard, and it would snap, break its connections to the rest of the mystery. But play the investigation of the attack carefully, tug the thread gently, and maybe he could use it to unravel the whole tangled problem.
Alvar Kresh was determined to find out all he could.
Because something big was going on.

JOMAINE Terach left the interview room. His personal robot, Bertran, was waiting outside in the hall and dutifully followed him as Jomaine hurried back to his own laboratory.
Sheriff Kresh had made Bertran wait outside the room during the interrogation. It was just a little harassment, Jomaine told himself, another way for Kresh to get and keep me unnerved. And yes, he admitted to himself, it had worked. Spacers in general, and Infernals particularly, did not like to be without their robots.
Only after he was in his own lab, only after Bertran had followed him in and shut the door safely behind him, did Jomaine allow himself to succumb to the fears he was feeling. He crossed the room hurriedly. He dropped back into his favorite old armchair and breathed a sigh of relief.
ДSir, are you all right?У Bertran asked. ДI fear the bad news about Lady Leving and the police interview have greatly distressed you.У
Jomaine Terach nodded tiredly. ДThat they have, Bertran. That they have. But IТll be fine in just a moment. I just need to think for a bit. Why donТt you bring me some water and then retire to your niche for a while?У
ДVery good, sir.У The robot stepped to the lab sink, filled a glass, and brought it back. Jomaine watched as Bertran went over to his wall niche and dropped back into standby mode.
That was the way it was supposed to be. A robot did what you told it to do and then got out of the way. That was how it had been for thousands of years. Did they really dare try and change that? Did Fredda Leving truly think she could overturn everything that completely?
And did she truly have to make a deal with the devil, with Tonya Welton, in order to make it happen?
Well, at any rate, he had managed to steer things away from any discussion of the Three Laws. If he had been forced to sacrifice a few tidbits about gravitonics in order to accomplish that, so be it. It would all be public in a day or so, anyway.
They were safe for the moment. But still, the project was madness. Caliban was madness. Building him had been a violation of the most basic Spacer law and philosophy, but Fredda Leving had gone ahead, anyway. Typical bullheadedness.
Never mind theory and philosophy, she had said. They were an experimental lab, not a theory shop that never acted on its ideas. It was time to take the next step, she said. It was time to build a gravitonic robot with no limits on its mind whatsoever. A blank slate, thatТs what she had called Caliban. An experimental robot, to be kept inside the lab at all times, never to leave. A robot with no knowledge of other robots, or the Settlers, or anything beyond human behavior and a carefully edited source of knowledge about the outside world. Then let it live at the lab, under controlled conditions, and see what happens. See what rules it developed for its own behavior.
Did she truly have to build Caliban?
No, ask the question directly, he told himself. WeТve all hedged around it long enough. And yes, that was the deadly secret question. No one else knew. With Caliban broken free of the lab, with Fredda unconscious, there was no one else in the wide world who could ask the question.
So Jomaine asked it of himself.
Did she really have to build a robot that did not have the Three Laws?


4

SIMCOR Beddle lifted his left hand, tilted his index finger just so, and Sanlacor 123 pulled back his chair with perfect timing, getting it out from behind him just as Simcor was getting up, so that the chair never came in contact with SimcorТs body as he rose.
There was quite a fashion for using detailed hand signals to command robots, and Simcor was a skilled practitioner of the art.
Simcor turned and walked away from the breakfast table, toward the closed door to the main gallery, Sanlacor hard on his heels. The door swung open just as he arrived at it. The Daabor unit on the other side of the door had no other job in the world but to open it. The machine marked out its existence by standing there, watching for anyone who might approach from its side of the door, and listening for footsteps from inside the room.
But Simcor Beddle, leader of the Ironheads, had no time to think about how menial robots spent their days. He was a busy man.
He had a riot to plan.
Simcor Beddle was a small, rotund man, with a round sallow face and hard, gimlet eyes of indeterminate color. His hair was glossy black, and just barely long enough to lie flat. He was heavy-set, there was no doubt about that. But there was nothing soft about him. He was a hard, determined man, dressed in a rather severe military-style uniform.
Managing his forces, that was the main thing. Keeping them from getting out of control was always a problem. His Ironheads were a highly effective team of rowdies, but they were rowdies all the same--and as such, they easily grew restive and bored. It was necessary to keep them busy, active, if he were to keep them under any sort of control at all.
No one quite knew where the Ironheads had gotten their name, but no one could deny it was appropriate. They were stubborn, pugnacious, bashing whatever was in their way whenever they saw fit. Maybe it was that stubbornness that earned them their name. More likely, though, it was their fanatical defense of the real Ironheads--robots. Well, granted, no one used anything as crude as raw iron to make robot bodies, but robots were as hard, as strong, as powerful, as iron.