Unwise Child Part 34

She glanced at her gla.s.s, nodded, and drained it. Mike had extracted a promise from her that she would drink one drink before she talked. He could see that she was a trifle tense, and he thought the liquor would relax her somewhat. Now he was ready to listen.

She handed him her empty, and while he refilled it, she said: "It's about Snook.u.ms again."

Mike gave her her gla.s.s, grabbed the nearby chair, turned it around, sat down, and regarded her over its back.

"I've lived with him so long," she said after a minute. "So long. It almost seems as though I've grown up with him. Eight years. I've been a mother to him, and a big sister at the same time--and maybe a maiden aunt. He's been a career and a family all rolled in together." She still watched her writhing hands, not raising her eyes to Mike's.

"And--and, I suppose, a husband, too," she continued. "That is, he's sort of the stand-in for a--well, a somebody to teach--to correct--to reform. I guess every woman wants to--to _remake_ the man she meets--the man she wants."

And then her eyes were suddenly on his. "But I don't. Not any more. I've had enough of it." Then she looked back down at her hands.

Mike the Angel neither accepted nor rejected the statement. He merely waited.

"He was mine," she said after a little while. "He was mine to mold, to teach, to form. The others--the roboticists, the neucleonicists, the sub-electronicists, all of them--were his instructors. All they did was give him facts. It was I who gave him a personality.

"I made him. Not his body, not his brain, but his mind.

"I made him.

"I knew him.

"And I--I--"

Still staring at her hands, she clasped them together suddenly and squeezed.

"And I loved him," she finished.

She looked up at Mike then. "Can you see that?" she asked tensely. "Can you understand?"

"Yes," said Mike the Angel quietly. "Yes, I can understand that. Under the same circ.u.mstances, I might have done the same thing." He paused.

"And now?"

She lowered her head again and began ma.s.saging her forehead with the finger tips of both hands, concealing her face with her palms.

"And now," she said dully, "I know he's a machine. Snook.u.ms isn't a _he_ any more--he's an _it_. He has no personality of his own, he only has what I fed into him. Even his voice is mine. He's not even a psychic mirror, because he doesn't reflect _my_ personality, but a puppet imitation of it, distorted and warped by the thousands upon thousands of cold facts and mathematical relations.h.i.+ps and logical postulates. And none of these _added_ anything to him, as a personality. How could they?

He never had a _person_ality--only a set of behavior patterns that I drilled into him over a period of eight years."

She dropped her hands into her lap and tilted her head back, looking at the blank white s.h.i.+mmer of the glow plates.

"And now, suddenly, I see him for what he is--for what _it_ is. A machine.

"It was never anything _but_ a machine. It is still a machine. It will never be anything else.

"Personality is something that no machine can ever have. Idiosyncrasies, yes. No two machines are identical. But any personality that an individual sees in a machine has been projected there by the individual himself; it exists only in the human mind.

"A machine can only do what it is built to do, and teaching a robot is only a building process." She gave a short, hard laugh. "I couldn't even build a monster, like Dr. Frankenstein did, unless I purposely built it to turn on me. And in that case I would have done nothing more than the suicide who turns a gun on himself."

Her head tilted forward again, and her eyes sought those of Mike the Angel. A rather lopsided grin came over her face.

"I guess I'm disenchanted, huh, Mike?" she asked.

Mike grinned back, but his lips were firm. "I think so, yes. And I think you're glad of it." His grin changed to a smile.

"Remember," he asked, "the story of the Sleeping Beauty? Did you want to stay asleep all your life?"

"G.o.d forbid and thank you for the compliment, sir," she said, managing a smile of her own. "And are you the Prince Charming who woke me up?"

"Prince Charming, I may be," said Mike the Angel carefully, "but I'm not the one who woke you up. You did that yourself."

Her smile became more natural. "Thanks, Mike. I really think I might have seen it, sooner or later. But, without you, I doubt...." She hesitated. "I doubt that I'd want to wake up."

"You said you were scared," Mike said. "What are you scared of?"

"I'm scared to death of that d.a.m.ned machine."

_Great love, chameleon-like, hath turned to fear, And on the heels of fear there follows hate._

Mike quoted to himself--he didn't say it aloud.

"The only reason anyone would have to fear Snook.u.ms," he said, "would be that he was uncontrollable. Is he?"

"Not yet. Not completely. But I'm afraid that knowing that he's been filled with Catholic theology isn't going to help us much."

"Why not?"

"Because he has it so inextricably bound up with the Three Laws of Robotics that we can't nullify one without nullifying the other. He's convinced that the laws were promulgated by G.o.d Himself."

"Holy St. Isaac," Mike said softly. "I'm surprised he hasn't carried it to its logical conclusion and asked for baptism."

She smiled and shook her head. "I'm afraid your logic isn't as rigorous as Snook.u.ms' logic. Only angels and human beings have free will; Snook.u.ms is neither, therefore he does not have free will. Whatever he does, therefore, must be according to the will of G.o.d. Therefore Snook.u.ms cannot sin. Therefore, for him, baptism is both unnecessary and undesirable."

"Why 'undesirable'?" Mike asked.

"Since he is free from sin--either original or actual--he is therefore filled with the plenitude of G.o.d's grace. The purpose of a sacrament is to give grace to the recipient; it follows that it would be useless to give the Sacrament to Snook.u.ms. To perform a sacrament or to receive it when one knows that it will be useless is sacrilege. And sacrilege is undesirable."

"Brother! But I still don't see how that makes him dangerous."

"The operation of the First Law," Leda said. "For a man to sin involves endangering his immortal soul. Snook.u.ms, therefore, must prevent men from sinning. But sin includes thought--intention. Snook.u.ms is trying to figure that one out now; if he ever does, he's going to be a thought policeman, and a strict one."

"You mean he's working on _telepathy_?"

She laughed humorlessly. "No. But he's trying to dope out a system whereby he can tell what a man is going to do a few seconds before he does it--muscular and nervous preparation, that sort of thing. He hasn't enough data yet, but he will have it soon enough.

"There's another thing: Snook.u.ms is fouling up the Second Law's operation. He won't take orders that interfere in any way with his religious beliefs--since that automatically conflicts with the First Law. He, himself, cannot sin. But neither can he do anything which would make him the tool of an intent to sin. He refuses to do anything at all on Sunday, for instance, and he won't let either Fitz or I do anything that even vaguely resembles menial labor. Slowly, he's coming to the notion that human beings aren't human--that only G.o.d is human, in relation to the First and Second Laws. There's nothing we can do with him."

"What will you do if he becomes completely uncontrollable?"

She sighed. "We'll have to shut him off, drain his memory banks, and start all over again."