THE BICENTENNIAL MAN Read online

  “Good God!”

  “The trouble with you, Peter, is that when you think of a witness to a planetological statement, you think of planetologists. You divide up human beings into categories, and despise and dismiss most. A robot cannot do that. The First Law says, ‘A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.’ Any human being. That is the essence of the robotic view of life. A robot makes no distinction. To a robot, all men are truly equal, and to a robopsychologist who must perforce deal with men at the robotic level, all men are truly equal, too.

  “It would not occur to Madarian to say a truck driver had heard the statement. To you a truck driver is not a scientist but is a mere animate adjunct of a truck, but to Madarian he was a man and a witness. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

  Bogert shook his head in disbelief. “But you are sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure. How else can you explain the other point; Madarian’s remark about the startling of the witness? Jane was crated, wasn’t she? But she was not deactivated. According to the records, Madarian was always adamant against ever deactivating an intuitive robot. Moreover, Jane-5, like any of the Janes, was extremely non-talkative. Probably it never occurred to Madarian to order her to remain quiet within the crate; and it was within the crate that the pattern finally fell into place. Naturally she began to talk. A beautiful contralto voice suddenly sounded from inside the crate. If you were the truck driver, what would you do at that point? Surely you’d be startled. It’s a wonder he didn’t crash.”

  “But if the truck driver was the witness, why didn’t he come forward--”

  “Why? Can he possibly know that anything crucial had happened, that what he heard was important? Besides, don’t you suppose Madarian tipped him well and asked him not to say anything? Would you want the news to spread that an activated robot was being transported illegally over the Earth’s surface.”

  “Well, will he remember what was said?”

  “Why not? It might seem to you, Peter, that a truck driver, one step above an ape in your view, can’t remember. But truck drivers can have brains, too. The statements were most remarkable and the driver may well have remembered some. Even if he gets some of the letters and numbers wrong, we’re dealing with a finite set, you know, the fifty-five hundred stars or star systems within eighty light-years or so--I haven’t looked up the exact number. You can make the correct choices. And if needed, you will have every excuse to use the Psycho-probe--”

  The two men stared at her. Finally Bogert, afraid to believe, whispered, “But how can you be sure?”

  For a moment, Susan was on the point of saying: Because I’ve called Flagstaff, you fool, and because I spoke to the truck driver, and because he told me what he had heard, and because I’ve checked with the computer at Flagstaff and got the only three stars that fit the information, and because I have those names in my pocket.

  But she didn’t. Let him go through it all himself. Carefully, she rose to her feet, and said sardonically, “How can I be sure?...Call it feminine intuition.”

  Do not fear, Gentle Readers, that my misunderstanding of Judy-Lynn’s intentions destroyed a friendship. The Asimovs and the del Reys live less than a mile apart, and frequent each other often. Although Judy-Lynn never hesitates to bounce me off the nearest wall, we all are, have been, and will remain, the very best of friends.

  Sometime in mid-1969, Doubleday called me up to ask if I would write a science fiction story that could serve as the basis of a movie. I didn’t want to, because I don’t like to get tangled up with the visual media directly. They’ve got money, but that’s all they’ve got. But Doubleday pressed me and I don’t like to refuse Doubleday. I agreed.

  Then eventually I had dinner with a very pleasant gentleman who was involved with the motion picture company and who wanted to discuss the story with me.

  He told me he wanted an undersea setting and that suited me. He then went on to describe with considerable enthusiasm the nature of the characters he wanted in the story, and the events he thought would be necessary. As he spoke, my spirits sank. The fact was that I didn’t want the hero he described; I didn’t want, with even greater intensity, the heroine he described; and most of all, I didn’t want the events he described.

  I have always found myself unable, however, to express a negative reaction to people, especially face to face. I did my best to smile and act interested.

  The next day I called up Doubleday. It might not be too late. I asked if the contract had been signed. Yes, indeed, it had, and a large advance had been paid over, of which most was to be turned over to me.

  I didn’t think there was room for my spirits to sink lower, but they did. I had to write the story.

  “Well, then,” I said, “if what I write is not acceptable, would you return the advance?”

  “We don’t have to,” I was told. “The advance is unconditional. If they don’t like your story, we still keep the advance.”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t want it that way. If what I do is unacceptable, I want the entire advance returned. Take your share of it out of my royalties.”

  Doubleday doesn’t like to refuse me anything either, so they agreed, although they made it plain they would return their share and not take anything out of my royalties.

  That meant I was under no obligation to do anything but my best, as I conceived that best to be. On September 1, 1969, I began to write WATERCLAP and I did it my way. I knew exactly what the movie people wanted and I didn’t give it to them. Naturally, they rejected it when it was done and every cent they had advanced was returned to them.

  This was a huge relief to me, you can well imagine.

  And there is a world outside Hollywood, too. Ejler Jakobsson of Galaxy liked the story as I had written it, so it appeared in the May 1970 issue of that magazine. He paid me far less than the movie people would have, but then, all he bought was the story.

  Waterclap

  Stephen Demerest looked at the textured sky. He kept looking at it and found the blue opaque and revolting.

  Unwarily, he had looked at the Sun, for there was nothing to blank it out automatically, and then he had snatched his eyes away in panic. He wasn’t blinded; just a few afterimages. Even the Sun was washed out.

  Involuntarily, he thought of Ajax’s prayer in Homer’s Iliad. They were fighting over the body of Patroclus in the mist and Ajax said, “O Father Zeus, save the Achaeans out of this mist! Make the sky clean, grant us to see with our eyes! Kill us in the light, since it is thy pleasure to kill us!”

  Demerest thought: Kill us in the light--

  Kill us in the clear light on the Moon, where the sky is black and soft, where the stars shine brightly, where the cleanliness and purity of vacuum make all things sharp.

  --Not in this low-clinging, fuzzy blue.

  He shuddered. It was an actual physical shudder that shook his lanky body, and he was annoyed. He was going to die. He was sure of it. And it wouldn’t be under the blue, either, come to think of it, but under the black--but a different black.

  It was as though in answer to that thought that the ferry pilot, short, swarthy, crisp-haired, came up .to him and said, “Ready for the black, Mr. Demerest?”

  Demerest nodded. He towered over the other as he did over most of the men of Earth. They were thick, all of them, and took their short, low steps with ease. He himself had to feel his footsteps, guide them through the air; even the impalpable bond that held him to the ground was textured.

  “I’m ready,” he said. He took a deep breath and deliberately repeated his earlier glance at the Sun. It was low in the morning sky, washed out by dusty air, and he knew it wouldn’t blind him. He didn’t think he would ever see it again.

  He had never seen a bathyscaphe before. Despite everything, he tended to think of it in terms of prototypes, an oblong balloon with a spherical gondola beneath. It was as though he persisted in thinking of space flight in terms of tons of fuel spewed backward i
n fire, and an irregular module feeling its way, spiderlike, toward the Lunar surface.

  The bathyscaphe was not like the image in his thoughts at all. Under its skin, it might still be buoyant bag and gondola, but it was all engineered sleekness now.

  “My name is Javan,” said the ferry pilot. “Omar Javan.”

  “Javan?”

  “Queer name to you? I’m Iranian by descent; Earthman by persuasion. Once you get down there, there are no nationalities.” He grinned and his complexion grew darker against the even whiteness of his teeth. “If you don’t mind, we’ll be starting in a minute. You’ll be my only passenger, so I guess you carry weight.”

  “Yes,” said Demerest dryly. “At least a hundred pounds more than I’m used to.”

  “You’re from the Moon? I thought you had a queer walk on you. I hope it’s not uncomfortable.”

  “It’s not exactly comfortable, ,but I manage. We exercise for this.”

  “Well, come on board.” He stood aside and let Demerest walk down the gangplank. “I wouldn’t go to the Moon myself.”

  “You go to Ocean-Deep.”

  “About fifty times so far. That’s different.”

  Demerest got on board. It was cramped, but he didn’t mind that. It might be a space module except that it was more--well, textured. There was that word again. There was the clear feeling everywhere that mass didn’t matter. Mass was held up; it didn’t have to be hurled up.

  They were still on the surface. The blue sky could be seen greenishly through the clear thick glass. Javan said, “You don’t have to be strapped in. There’s no acceleration. Smooth as oil, the whole thing. It won’t take long; just about an hour. You can’t smoke.”

  “I don’t smoke,” said Demerest.

  “I hope you don’t have claustrophobia.”

  “Moon-men don’t have claustrophobia.”

  “All that open--”

  “Not in our cavern. We live in a”--he groped for the phrase --”a Lunar-Deep, a hundred feet deep.”

  “A hundred feet!” The pilot seemed amused, but he didn’t smile. “We’re slipping down now.”

  The interior of the gondola was fitted into angles but here and there a section of wall beyond the instruments showed its basic sphericity. To Javan, the instruments seemed to be an extension of his arms; his eyes and hands moved over them lightly, almost lovingly.

  “We’re all checked out,” he said, “but I like a last-minute look-over; we’ll be facing a thousand atmospheres down there.” His finger touched a contact, and the round door closed massively inward and pressed against the beveled rim it met.

  “The higher the pressure, the tighter that will hold,” said Javan. “Take your last look at sunlight, Mr. Demerest.”

  The light still shone through the thick glass of the window. It was wavering now; there was water between the Sun and them now.

  “The last look?” said Demerest.

  Javan snickered. “Not the last look. I mean for the trip. ...I suppose you’ve never been, on a bathyscaphe before.”

  “No, I haven’t. Have many?”

  “Very few,” admitted Javan. “But don’t worry. It’s just an underwater balloon. We’ve introduced a million improvements since the first bathyscaphe. It’s nuclear-powered now and we can move freely by water jet up to certain limits, but cut it down to basics and it’s still a spherical gondola under buoyancy tanks. And it’s still towed out to sea by a mother ship because it needs what power it carries too badly to waste it on surface travel. Ready?”

  “Ready.”

  The supporting cable of the mother ship flicked away and the bathyscaphe settled lower; then lower still, as sea water fed into the buoyancy tanks. For a few moments, caught in surface currents, it swayed, and then there was nothing. The bathyscaphe sank slowly through a deepening green.

  Javan relaxed. He said, “John Bergen is head of Ocean-Deep. You’re going to see him?”

  “That’s right.”

  “He’s a nice guy. His wife’s with him.”

  “She is?”

  “Oh, sure. They have women down there. There’s a bunch down there, fifty people. “Some stay for months.”

  Demerest put his finger on the narrow, nearly invisible seam where door met wall. He took it away and looked at it. He said, “It’s oily.”

  “Silicone, really. The pressure squeezes some out. It’s supposed to. ...Don’t worry. Everything’s automatic. Everything’s fail-safe. The first sign of malfunction, any malfunction at all, our ballast is released and up we go.”

  “You mean nothing’s ever happened to these bathyscaphes?”

  “What can happen?” The pilot looked sideways at his passenger. “Once you get too deep for sperm whales, nothing can go wrong.”

  “Sperm whales?” Demerest’s thin face creased in a frown.

  “Sure, they dive as deep as half a mile. If they hit a bathyscaphe--well, the walls of the buoyancy chambers aren’t particularly strong. They don’t have to be, you know. They’re open to the sea and when the gasoline, which supplies the buoyancy, compresses, sea water enters.”

  It was dark now. Demerest found his gaze fastened to the viewport. It was light inside the gondola, but it was dark in that window. And it was not the darkness of space; it was a thick darkness.

  Demerest said sharply, “Let’s get this straight, Mr. Javan. You are not equipped to withstand the attack of a sperm whale. Presumably you are not equipped to withstand the attack of a giant squid. Have there been any actual incidents of that sort?”

  “Well, it’s like this--”

  “No games, please, and don’t try ragging the greenhorn. I am asking out of professional curiosity. I am head safety engineer at Luna City and I am asking what precautions this bathyscaphe can take against possible collision with large creatures.”

  Javan looked embarrassed. He muttered, “Actually, there have been no incidents.”

  “Are any expected? Even as a remote possibility?”

  “Anything is remotely possible. But actually sperm whales are too intelligent to monkey with us and giant squid are too shy.”

  “Can they see us?”

  “Yes, of course. We’re lit up.”

  “Do you have floodlights?”

  “We’re already past the large-animal range, but we have them, and I’ll turn them on for you.”

  Through the black of the window there suddenly appeared a snow-storm, an inverted upward-falling snowstorm. The blackness had come alive with stars in three-dimensional array and all moving upward.

  Demerest said, “What’s that?”

  “Just crud. Organic matter. Small creatures. They float, don’t move much, and they catch the light. We’re going down past them. They seem to be going up in consequence.”

  Demerest’s sense of perspective adjusted itself and he said, “Aren’t we dropping too quickly?”

  “No, we’re not. If we were, I could use the nuclear engines, if I wanted to waste power; or I could drop some ballast. I’ll be doing that later, but for now everything is fine. Relax, Mr. Demerest. The snow thins as we dive and we’re not likely to see much in the way of spectacular life forms. There are small angler fish and such but they avoid us.”

  Demerest said, “How many do you take down at a time?”

  “I’ve had as many as four passengers in this gondola, but that’s crowded. We can put two bathyscaphes in tandem and carry ten, but that’s clumsy. What we really need are trains of gondolas, heavier on the nukes-the nuclear engines-and lighter on the buoyancy. Stuff like that is on the drawing board, they tell me. Of course, they’ve been telling me that for years.”

  “There are plans for large-scale expansion of Ocean-Deep, then?”

  “Sure, why not? We’ve got cities on the continental shelves, why not on the deep-sea bottom? The way I look at it, Mr. Demerest, where man can go, he will go and he should go. The Earth is ours to populate and we will populate it. All we need to make the deep sea habitable are completely maneuv
erable ‘scaphes. The buoyancy chambers slow us, weaken us, and complicate the engineering.”

  “But they also save you, don’t they? If everything goes wrong at once, the gasoline you carry will still float you to the surface-. What would do that for you if your nuclear engines go wrong and you had no buoyancy?”

  “If it comes to that, you can’t expect to eliminate the chances of accident altogether, not even fatal ones.”

  “I know that very well,” said Demerest feelingly.

  Javan stiffened. The tone of his voice changed. “Sorry. Didn’t mean anything by that. Tough about that accident.”

  “Yes,” said Demerest. Fifteen men and five women had died. One of the individuals listed among the “men “ had been fourteen years old. It had been pinned down to human failure. What could a head safety engineer say after that?

  “Yes,” he said.

  A pall dropped between the two men, a pall as thick and as turgid as the pressurized sea water outside. How could one allow for panic and for distraction and for depression all at once? There were the Moon-Blues--stupid name--but they struck men at inconvenient times. It wasn’t always noticeable when the Moon-Blues came but it made men torpid and slow to react.

  How many times had a meteorite come along and been averted or smothered or successfully absorbed? How many times had a Moonquake done damage and been held in check? How many times had human failure been backed up and compensated for? How many times had accidents not happened?

  But you don’t payoff on accidents not happening. There were twenty dead--

  Javan said (how many long minutes later?), “There are the lights of Ocean-Deep!”

  Demerest could not make them out at first. He didn’t know where to look. Twice before, luminescent creatures had flicked past the windows at a distance and with the floodlights off again, Demerest had thought them the first sign of Ocean-Deep. Now he saw nothing.