Asimov, Isaac - Foundation Series 10 Isaac Asimovs Caliban by Asimov Isaac

Author:Asimov, Isaac
Language: eng
Format: epub

Page 87

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"Are you all right? What the hell happened to you?"

"I believe that I am fine, sir, though it might be prudent if I underwent a diagnostic later." He paused for a moment. "As to what happened, it was a severe cognitive loop-back sequence. I understand that humans are capable of holding two completely contrary viewpoints at once without any great strain.

It is not so for robots. I was forced to simulate a lack of constraints on my behavior, although the Three Laws of course control my actions. It was most disconcerting."

Donald hesitated for a moment and looked at Alvar, his head cocked to one side. "It has never occurred to me just how strange and uncertain, how unguided a thing it must be to be a human being. We robots know our duty, our purpose, our place, our limits. You humans know none of that. How strange to live a life where all things are permitted, whether or not they are possible.

If I may be so bold as to ask, sir-how is it humans can cope? What is it they do with all the freedom we robots provide?"

Alvar found himself sorely confused and surprised by the question. Still thrown off guard by Donald's experiment, he answered with more honesty than he would have permitted in a considered answer. "They waste it," he said. "They do nothing with their lives, determined to make each day like the last." He thought of the complaints on his desk, civilians whining that the police had disrupted their lives this morning by trying to capture Caliban, quite unconcerned that the disruption had been in the interests of protecting their lives. "They are sure change can only be for the worse. They battle against change-and so ensure there is no change for the better."

But then Alvar stopped and turned away from Donald. "Damn it, that's not fair.

Not all of it, anyway. But I spent the morning learning how we've doomed ourselves with indolence and denial."

"My apologies, sir. I did not intend to move the discussion into such irrelevant areas."

"Irrelevant?" Alvar went back to his desk chair and sat back in it with a sigh. "I think perhaps the questions of change and freedom are very close to the issues in this case. We have looked hard, seeking to find how Fredda Leving was attacked, and who did it. But we have scarcely even stopped to ask ourselves why the blow was struck. I'll tell you the reason we are bound to find, Donald." Suddenly his voice was eager, excited. "The reason-the motive-is going to be change, and the fear of it. It's got to be something mired down in the politics of all this. There is some big change coming, and someone either wants to protect that change-or stop it. That's what we're going to find out. But damn it, we have wandered."

But Alvar had wandered deliberately. He wanted to give Donald a moment to settle down, a chance for his positronic brain to be focused on less frightening, unsettling thoughts for a moment.

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