COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works, page 211
Jerrold said slowly, "I'm interested, naturally. If you don't think I'm prying into secrets—"
"It's not that sort of secret. They don't care how many people find out, because not many can find out."
"That door wasn't even locked. I walked right in. Betty, do you realize what we're talking about? Are you handing me a line?"
She shook her head, green eyes serious. "No, I'm not, not at all. There's no reason why I shouldn't tell you all about it, if you want to know. They don't care."
"The robots? Why don't they?"
"You won't do anything about it."
"I might tell someone else."
"He wouldn't do anything about it."
"He might tell the chief of police."
"The chief wouldn't do anything about it. It's like a stone thrown into a pond. I've seen it happen before. The ripples go out—and then they stop. The robots have all the power in the world, Mr. Mike Jerrold."
Unthinking impulse made the man look up. "Eh?"
"They run things. They make people do what they want. They've done it to me, too. When I found out first about them, I was scared. They processed me. It's painless—" She smiled a little. "You don't even realize it's happening. You think you've made your own decision. Your relative values simply shift. I was going to quit. I was processed, I realized that it was a good job, paying well, that I wouldn't be harmed, and that nothing I could do would alter things. So here I am."
"What are they?" Jerrold said in a tight voice. "I won't believe you—" He paused. "No. I saw them. They were intelligent, weren't they?"
"Sure. And they've been around for quite a while. History's full of attempts to make robots. The Golem, the homunculi—I had a good liberal education. For ages people have tried to make intelligent robots. Not too long ago someone succeeded. Or a number of technicians succeeded; I'm not sure. But the world never heard about it. Can you guess why?"
-
"Wait a minute." Jerrold rubbed his jaw. "You mean the perfect solvent?"
"Of course. Suppose you make the perfect solvent. What would happen? It would dissolve anything you put it in. You could make it, but you couldn't keep it. Intelligent robots are like that. If they're successful at all, it's because they have the right sort of brain—one that can think. And necessarily it's also unlimited in its scope. It's far more intelligent than we are. Look"—Betty tapped the table—"let's say, Dr. Jones makes a robot. The robot can think faster than light, a lot faster. From its creation it's brainier than its creator. What would it do?"
"It wouldn't remain a laboratory subject."
"Course not. It didn't. It processed the scientist, so Dr. Jones thought he'd failed; it left another, useless robot in its place, and it went out and hid. It didn't like this world. It wanted something different. So it simply set out to change the world, through the tools at hand."
"Tools. People?"
"Uh-huh. I think there've been lots of successful robots made, and I've an idea that they've made others, to help them change the world. The office upstairs isn't the only one, you know. It only handles a section of New York. There are other robot offices, in Washington, Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles, in Europe and Asia, too. And Africa. Wherever there's a natural social control center, the robots have an office."
"That's plain crazy," Jerrold said. "How could a secret like that be kept?"
Betty's eyes were very serious. "Mr. Mike Jerrold, listen to me. The robots don't even try to keep their secret. They don't have to. You're not the first man to walk into the office and see them. There are plenty of people going around today who know there are robots on the fifteenth floor here. The same goes for Washington and Frisco—everywhere."
"That doesn't make sense. Why don't they talk?"
"They've been processed. When the robots get around to it, they do something to the guy's mind. It doesn't hurt. He never knows it's happened. He still realizes that there are intelligent robots, and pretty often he knows what they're doing. But that's locked in his mind. He can never tell anyone, never pass on what he knows."
Jerrold pounced on a flaw. "You're telling me about it."
She gestured wearily. "I tell you, they don't care. They just never bothered in my case. It doesn't matter who I talk to. Eventually that person will come under the robots' observation, and he'll be processed. The same goes for anybody he might talk to—anybody he might convince."
"It's no way to keep a secret. Damn it! It ... it seems as if those devils are so self-confident that they don't even bother to ... to—"
-
Betty finished her drink. "Another, please. Thanks. Why talk about it, Mike? It'll only upset you, until you're processed."
"They won't process me," Jerrold said grimly.
"Hm-m-m." Betty looked unconvinced. "I told you they can control minds at a distance."
"Telepathy? Impossible. Selectivity—"
"It's not telepathy. They use a mechanism. Look, suppose you wanted to check up on a lot of people. What would you do? No detectives."
"Dictaphones—eh?"
"Call it that. And suppose you wanted to give them orders, too. Just vocal orders—limit it to humanity, for the example."
"A two-way radio."
"And suppose you didn't want those people to know what you were doing. You'd hide the radio, wouldn't you?"
"Yeah."
"Where would you hide it?"
Jerrold started to answer, paused, and looked sharply at the girl. She nodded.
"The Purloined Letter. In plain sight, but disguised. And disguised so no one could possibly discover it was a radio."
"What?"
Betty smiled crookedly. "If you were clever enough, you could disguise it as a vacuum tube and put it in a radio. You'd sell it openly—as a vacuum tube. People would buy it for one purpose, but it'd really serve two."
"It's not a radio—"
"No, it's not. But it's something everybody uses, and uses often. Built into it is a device that seems to serve a perfectly natural mechanical purpose. It does serve that purpose. But it also keeps open a connection with the robots. It keeps them in mental touch with anyone who uses that particular device."
"What is it?"
"Telephone," Betty said. "Some time ago a certain improvement was made on phones, and almost all of them have it now. The robots saw to that. Humans make the ... the gadget, of course, and they make it to fulfill one obvious mechanical purpose. They don't know that the structure of the gadget makes it also a tool for the robots. That's right, Mike. All over the world there are control offices, manned by robots. They listen in on telephone conversations—not the oral ones, but the mental. They read thoughts, through that little gadget in the phone, the gadget that really belongs there to make the phone work. They issue orders through it. They process minds. They make people do what they want. They manipulate stocks, swing business deals, start wars and stop them. They run the earth, Mr. Mike Jerrold. You know that now, and they don't care if you know, because you can't stop them."
Jerrold said, "What are they trying to do?"
"I don't know," Betty told him. "I couldn't understand. They don't think the way we do. They want the world different, but I don't know how. But they're getting it the way they want. It may be swell for humans, and then again it may not. It doesn't matter a hell of a lot, does it?"
Jerrold didn't say anything. Something within him rose up in furious revolt against the thought of irrevocable future, the negation of free will. It was like driving beasts into a trap. Some would break for freedom, some would balk, some would fight. But eventually the trappers would get what they wanted. It was the sum total that counted, and Jerrold knew that telepathic control, at the right points and places, would affect the whole of humanity.
He looked at Betty again. Her skin had a pearly pallor in the dimness, and her eyes were shadowy, strange. There was an incongruity about the scene.
Jerrold said, "Excuse me," and got up. He ordered another round of drinks on his way out. In the lobby, he entered an elevator and got off at the fifteenth floor.
-
The receptionist's window was closed now. But the door was still unlocked.
Jerrold went into the adjoining room. The robot was wheeling itself smoothly about the table, its wire-fingered hands manipulating the lights on the relief map of midtown Manhattan. Jerrold's stomach dropped, and a band of coldness circumscribed his middle. He stood there, waiting for the thing to notice him.
It ignored him completely.
It was man-size, but with a horrible functionalism man did not possess. It was alien. It went about its business, with sublime self-confidence, and its intelligence was obvious. The cilia touched the lights; sometimes they lingered, and Jerrold knew why. Processing—He skirted the robot at last and went into the next room. It was identical with the first, though the robot was dissimilar. Its head was a gleaming ball, featureless, and it moved on three jointed legs. It worked on a relief map of the lower tip of Manhattan, from the Battery to Wall Street.
Wall Street—
There were many rooms; there were robots in all of them, each somewhat different, each working on a different sector of the five boroughs. Jerrold had a feeling that they never stopped; that they would stop only when they had achieved their goal. He had a brief, perverse hope that one of them would notice him. It was discomforting to be ignored, like a ... gnat.
He went back to the first office and gingerly touched the map. Nothing happened. He gripped the tower of the Empire State and tried to snap it off; it was impossible. The plastic was unbreakable.
Jerrold, sweat beads on his face, took hold of the robot's arm. He tried to move that, too. He was dragged around in the creature's wake, quite unable to force the arm into the slightest deviation from its course.
They worked; they were invulnerable. That was the sum total of Jerrold's findings. Whether or not they would be invulnerable to a really powerful weapon, or to acid—
Betty was waiting when he got back to the bar. Jerrold sat down, and they drank in silence.
"It doesn't do any good, really," she said at last. "I know you can't help feeling as you do. But after you're processed, you'll be much happier about all this."
"I had to find out," he said. "Convince myself."
"And you're convinced."
"Yeah. Damn those things! They—"
"It was our own mistake, trying to build intelligent robots. Quite as silly as having a contest to see who can stay longest under water without breathing. The one who wins—drowns."
Jerrold held out his hand; it was trembling slightly. He made a grimace of worried uneasiness.
"The bottom's dropped out."
"You thought the ice was solid all the way down. That's why. But it doesn't matter, Mike. It doesn't matter, really."
"Those inhuman devils, forcing humanity into a social pattern to suit their own needs—No!"
Betty moved her shoulders, settling herself like a cat. "We might have followed that pattern anyway, without the robots. You know that, don't you?"
"I've got to think this out." Jerrold tried to focus his mind; it was curiously difficult. As he had said, the bottom had dropped out. He'd discovered that he had an incurable disease, and the psychological result was the same.
In a way it was odd how convinced he was of the robots' invulnerability. Their self-confidence was sublime. They did not try to protect themselves. Protection was automatically a part of their plan to remold the world into—into what?
Jerrold didn't want to find out. He didn't much care. Humanity has developed on a belief in free will. Men know they can make their own ultimate decisions, and they feel that those decisions may be important. For want of a nail—
The part influences the whole. Otherwise, there was futility. It was not pleasant to feel that the part had no slightest influence upon the whole, that, inevitably, the herd would be driven into the predestined trap, that, no matter how the fish might flop and wriggle, the net was unalterably lifting and closing. A man might aim at a star—well and good. If his motives coincided with the aims of the robots, he'd be allowed to fulfill his plan. On the other hand—Jerrold met Betty's quiet gaze.
" 'Nor all your tears wash out a word of it,' " she said. "It's no use, Mr. Mike Jerrold."
"The moving finger's anthropomorphic. We wouldn't object so much to that. Man made God in his own image. It's the reason men are willing to obey kings—they know that kings are flesh and blood like themselves, and want much the same things. There's the same common denominator. There isn't with those damned creatures upstairs."
"They're not made in our own image. If you'd only realize that in a little while you won't care—"
Jerrold set down his glass with a bang. He stood up, face strained, lips tight. "Let's get out of here," he said. "I don't like the feeling of being watched."
-
Betty went out with him, a rather quizzical smile on her lips. They hailed a taxi and found a restaurant. Jerrold didn't eat much. His mind went like a squirrel in a cage.
Afterward, they danced at a roof garden. Beneath them lay New York. Jerrold guided Betty to a terrace, and they stood alone, looking out into the dim city below.
"We're on top," he said at last. "Like humanity. But it's a long way down."
She drew the wrap closer about her shoulders. "We won't know it. It may not even be down."
"Guided. No, not even that. Led. Driven. Without realizing that we're not the masters." He searched for the faint lights of Brooklyn. "All over the world, people making plans, struggling and suffering and being crucified, because they think it's worth while. Fighting for what they think they want. And if they eventually get it, it'll only be because the robots want the same thing. We're blind in darkness. Blinder than the blind. If only—" His gaze went up to the empty sky, seeking an answer where there was none.
"What will happen? Man won't conquer the stars. That's one dream he'll never fulfill. But the robots will. They'll have no trouble in building spaceships. Maybe they can do that now, only they're not ready. And we thought the super-race would be a mutation of man!"
Betty didn't answer. When Jerrold turned to her, she lifted her face as though expecting his mouth to seek hers. There was no passion in the kiss; there was something deeper, a blind, desperate search for reassurance, a hunger that could never be sated. It was a man's hunger for the unattainable. And it was bitter.
He drew back suddenly. Betty's eyes glowed with a faint reflection of the lights beyond them. She was warm, human, attainable—and it did not matter.
"I'm ... awfully credulous," Jerrold said unsteadily.
"You saw them. They make you believe. It's because they're what they are."
"I suppose so. That's why I feel it's hopeless to try to do anything."
"Quite hopeless."
"Just the same—"
There was silence. After a time Jerrold said, "Aren't there places in the world where their power doesn't reach?"
"The unimportant places. The ones that don't matter. They control only the key spots; that's all that's necessary." She moved into his arms, her gaze holding his. "I'm very lonely, Mr. Mike Jerrold. I like you to hold me. Do you know what may happen to us?"
"What?" he asked softly.
"Marriage," she said, shrugging a little. "Or not. It doesn't matter. You'll be processed. That's inevitable. You won't be able to tell anyone about the robots. It would be nice to be with you as long as this lasts. I can afford to tell the truth, because I know there's no time to waste."
"I'm going to fight," Jerrold said. "The robots can't be invulnerable. Somehow, somewhere, there must be a way—"
"There is no way." She shivered. "Take me home, please. I'm not afraid. I can't be afraid; I was processed against it. It's just that—Take me home."
-
Jerrold did, and her face stayed with him during the long ride back to Manhattan. She had become a symbol, perhaps a symbol of humanity, resigned, going down to an unknown but predestined doom. In the background the inhuman silhouettes of the robots loomed. They were alien. There was not even a standard matrix for them. Their shape did not matter, as long as they were functionally designed to fulfill their tasks.
Jerrold did not sleep that night. It rained, the hot, sticky rain of the New York summer, and he walked the streets, his steps inevitably returning to the building where Betty worked. On the fifteenth floor, without lights—they needed none—the robots worked untiringly, directing the destinies of mankind. Through—something—in all the telephones of the five boroughs they listened to thoughts and molded those thoughts. And men believed that their decisions were their own!
