"Asimov, Isaac - Robot City - Robots and Aliens 05 - Maverick - Bruce Bethke" - читать интересную книгу автора (Asimov Isaac)

He moved. An arm so gaunt and elongated, with carpal bones so long it gave the appearance of having two elbows, more unfolded than reached out to touch a small stud beneath the image of the starfish.
The grim, lipless mouth opened; the voice was high and reedy. ?Denofah. Praxil mastica. ? The rails flared brightly. An instant later the asteroid was gone, replaced by a swiftly dissipating cloud of incandescent gas.
The mouth twitched slightly at the corners, in an expression that may have been a grim smile. He pressed the stud again. ?Rijat. ? The screen showing the starfish and the weapon went blank.
An indicator light at the far right end of the console began blinking. Swiveling one eye to the screen just above the indicator, he reached across and pressed another stud. The image that appeared was that of a younger member of his own species.
?Forrgive the intrrusion, Masterr,? the young one said in heavily accented Galactic, with a piping trill on the ?r? sounds. ?But your orrders were to reporrt any K-band interferrence instantly. ?
Both eyes locked on the image, and he swiveled his chair around so that he was facing the viewscreen. ?Did it match the patterrn? Were you able to get a dirrectional fix??
?Master Aranimas, it still matches the patterrn. Rrobots using hyperspace keys to teleport; there must be thousands of them. We have both a directional fix and an estimated distance. ?
?Excellent! Give me the coordinates; I?ll relay them to the navigator. ? While the young one was reading off the numbers, Aranimas swiveled his left eye onto another screen and pressed another stud. ?Helm! Prepare for hyperspace jump in five hazodes. ? Another screen, another stud. ?Navigator! Lay in the fastest course possible to take us to these coordinates. ? He repeated the numbers the young one had given him.
When the orders were all given and the screens all blank, he sat back in his chair, entwined his long, bony fingers, and allowed himself a thin smile. ?Wolruf, you traitor, I have you now. And Derec, you meddlesome boy, I?ll have your robots, your teleport keys, and your head in my trophy case. ? He reached forward and thumbed a button, and the starfish reappeared on a screen. ?Deh feh opt spa, nexori. Derec. ?
The starfish seemed quite excited at the prospect.

CHAPTER 1
JANET

Attitude thrusters fired in short, tightly controlled bursts. With a delicate grace that belied its thirty-ton mass, the small, streamlined spacecraft executed a slow pirouette across the starspeckled void, flipping end-for-end and rolling ninety degrees to starboard. When the maneuver was complete, the attitude thrusters fired again, to leave the ship traveling stem-first along its orbital trajectory and upside-down relative to the surface of the small, blue-white planet.
Slowly, ponderously, the main planetary drives built up to full thrust. One minute later they shut down, and the hot white glare of the final deceleration burn faded to the deep bloody red of cooling durylium ion grids.
A final touch on the attitude jets, and the ship slipped quietly into geostationary orbit. Yet so skilled was the robot helmsman, so flawless the gravity compensation fields, that the ship?s sole human occupant had not yet noticed any change in flight status.
The robot named Basalom, however, patched into the ship?s communications system by hyperwave commlink, could not help but receive the news. He turned to the human known as Janet Anastasi, blinked his mylar plastic eyelids nervously, and allocated a hundred nanoseconds to resolving a small dilemma.
Like the really tough ones, the problem involved his conflicting duties under the Laws of Robotics. The Second Law aspect of the situation was clear: A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings. except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. Dr. Anastasi had specifically ordered him to alert her the moment they entered orbit about Tau Puppis IV. He?d already cross-checked the navigator?s star sightings against the reference library in the ship?s computer; the small, Earthlike world currently situated some 35,000 kilometers overhead was definitely Tau Puppis IV. Unmistakably, his Second Law duty was to tell Dr. Anastasi that she had arrived at her destination.
As soon as Basalom started to load that statement into his speech buffer, though, a nagging First Law priority asserted itself. The First Law said: A robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction allow a human being to come to harm. Ever since they?d left the planet of the Ceremyons, any mention of the Learning Machine project seemed to cause Dr. Anastasi tremendous emotional distress. Even an implied reference to her son, her ex-husband, or the way the two of them had thoroughly bollixed the experiment by abducting Learning Machine #2 was enough to send the woman?s blood pressure rocketing and turn her voiceprint into a harsh and jangled mass of severe stress indicators.
Now they?d returned to Tau Puppis IV, the world on which Dr. Anastasi had dropped Learning Machine #1. Basalom integrated that information with the data base he?d built up over two years of working with Dr. Anastasi, and concluded with 95% confidence that breaking the news to her would precipitate a negative emotional reaction. He could not predict exactly what her reaction would be-no robot was that sophisticated?but he could predict beyond a reasonable doubt that the information would cause Dr. Anastasi significant emotional discomfort.
And that was Basalom? s dilemma. How did this emotional pain fit within the First Law definition of harm? His systems programming was not precise on that point. If emotional pain was not harm, there was little point to his being programmed to perceive it. But if evoking strong emotion was harm, then obeying Second Law orders could become a terribly ticklish business. How could he obey an order to tell Dr. Anastasi something that would upset her?

Basalom weighed positronic potentials. The order to provide the information had been emphatic and direct. The harm that would ensue-that might ensue-was only a possibility, and would, Basalom knew from experience, pass fairly quickly. In addition, he recalled from experience that Dr. Anastasi?s reaction to his not providing the information would be just as extreme an emotion as if he did provide it.
The possibility of harming a human balanced; it was the same, no matter whether he acted or refrained from acting. He began downloading the statement to his speech buffer; as soon as he?d slowed his perception levels down to human realtime, he?d tell her.
Of course, if blood spurted out of her ears when he voiced the words, then he?d know that he?d caused some harm.
?Dr. Anastasi?? The slender blond woman looked up from her smartbook and speared Basalom with a glare. ?We have entered geostationary orbit over the fourth planet in the Tau Puppis star system, mistress. ?
?Well, it?s frosted well about time. ? She reacted as if surprised by the tone of her own voice, rubbed the bags under her bloodshot eyes, and smiled apologetically. ?I?m sorry, Basalom. I?ve shot the messenger again, haven?t I??
Basalom blinked nervously and did a quick scan of the room, but found no evidence of an injured messenger or a recently fired weapon. ?Mistress??
She dismissed his question with a wave of her hand. ?An old expression; never mind. Is the scanning team ready??
Through his internal commlink, Basalom consulted the rest of the crew. The reply came back as a dialogue box patched through to the scanning team, and a direct visual feed from a camera on the dorsal fin. From Basalom?s point of view he saw Mistress Janet?s image in the upper right corner and the scanning team?s input/output stream in the upper left corner. Both windows overlaid a view of the ship?s top hull gleaming brightly in the reflected planetlight, and as he watched, a long slit opened down the spine of the ship, and a thin stalk somewhat resembling an enormous dandelion began rising slowly toward the planet. At the tip of the stalk, delicate antennae were unfolding like whisker-thin flower petals and dewsparkled spiderwebs.
?They have opened the pod bay doors,? Basalom said, ?and are erecting the sensor stalk now. ? He shot a commlink query at the scanning crew; in answer, data from the critical path file flashed up in the scanning team?s dialogue box. ?The stalk will be fully deployed in approximately five minutes and twenty-three seconds. ?
Dr. Anastasi made no immediate reply. To kill time while waiting for something further to report, Basalom began allocating every fifth nanosecond to building a simulation of how Dr. Anastasi saw the world. It had often puzzled him, how humans had managed to accomplish so much with only simple binocular vision and an almost complete inability to accept telesensory feeds. How lonely it must feel to be locked into a local point of view! he decided.
At last, Dr. Anastasi spoke. ?Five minutes, huh?? Basalom updated the estimate. ?And fourteen seconds. ?
?Good. ? She leaned back in her chair, closed her eyes, and tried to work a kink out of her neck. ?Boy, will I be glad to get this over with. ?
Basalom felt a tickle in his Second Law sense and formulated a suggestion. ?Mistress? If there is another place you?d rather be, we can leave for it right now. ?
Dr. Anastasi opened her eyes and smiled wistfully at the robot; the expression did interesting things to the topography of her face. Basalom quickly scanned and mapped the wrinkles around her eyes, stored the image for later study, and then backed down to normal magnification.
?No, Basalom,? Janet said, in that curiously slow output-only mode that humans used so often. ?This is where I want to be. It?s just... ? Her voice tapered off into a little sigh.
Mistress Janet?s last sentence didn?t make immediate sense, so Basalom tried to parse it out. It? s just. That broke out to It is just. Substituting for the pronoun, he came up with Being in orbit around Tau Puppis IV is just. Quickly sorting through and discarding all the adverbial meanings of just, he popped up a window full of adjective definitions. Reasonable, proper, righteous, lawful, see Fair
Ah, that seemed to make sense. Being in orbit around Tau

Puppis N is fair. Basalom felt a warm glow of satisfaction in his grammar module. Now if he only understood what Mistress Janet meant.
Janet sighed again and finished the sentence. ?It?s just, I?ve been thinking about old Stoneface again, that?s all. Sometimes I swear that man is the albatross I?ll be wearing around my neck the rest of my life. ?
Basalom started to ask Janet why she wanted to wear a terran avian with a three-meter wingspan around her neck, then thought better of it. ?Stoneface, mistress??
?Wendy. Doctor Wendell Avery. My ex-husband. ? Basalom ran a voiceprint across the bottom of his field of view and watched with familiar alarm as the hostility markers erupted like pimples in Or. Anastasi?s voice. ?Derec?s father. My chief competitor. The little tin god who?s out to infest the galaxy with his little tin anthills. ?
?By which you mean the robot cities, mistress?? Janet put an elbow on the table and rested her chin in the palm of her hand. ?I mean exactly that, Basalom. ? She sighed, frowned, and went silent again.
Basalom stood quiet a moment, then switched to thermographic vision. As he?d expected, Or. Anastasi?s skin temperature was rising, and the major arteries in her neck were dilating. He recognized the pattern; she was building up to another angry outburst.
He was still trying to sort out the First Law implications of defusing her temper when it exploded..
?Oammit, Basalom, he?s an architect, not a roboticist!? Janet slammed a wiry fist down on the table and sent her smartbook flying. ?That?s my nanotechnology he?s using. My cellular robots; my heuristic programming. But do you think he ever once thought of sharing the credit??
She kicked the leg of the table and let out a little sob. ?The Learning Machine experiments were beautiful. Three innocent, unformed minds, experiencing the universe for the first time. Unit Two, especially; growing up with those brilliant, utterly alien Ceremyons. Just think of what we could have learned from it!