Utopia - By Isaac Asimov,Roger E. Allen Page 0,18

point in their well-rehearsed argument when her husband glared at her and suggested that she go the whole distance in making the damned New Laws into angels and rivet wings to their backs, or said something else to the same effect. But not tonight. Fredda realized that Alvar was...different tonight. The New Law robots were on his mind-but usually the subject simply got him angry. This time there was something more thoughtful about him. Almost, impossibly enough, as if he were worried about them. "Do you really want to know?" she asked, her voice uncertain.

"Of course I do," he replied gently. "Why else would I ask? I'm always interested in your work."

"Well," she said, "the short answer is that I don't know. There is no question that they have a-a drive for beauty. I can't think of what else to call it. Though perhaps it might be more accurate to call it an impulse to put things right. Where, exactly, it comes from, I can't say. But it's not all that surprising that it's there. When you construct something as complex as a robotic brain, and introduce novel programming-like the New Laws-there are bound to be unexpected consequences of one sort or another. One reason I'm so interested in Prospero is that the programming of his gravitonic brain was still half-experimental. He's different from the other New Laws in some unexpected ways. He has a much less balanced personality than Caliban, for one thing."

"Leave that to one side for the moment," Alvar said. "What about this urge to create business?"

"There you get into very dangerous waters," Fredda said. "I'd be very reluctant to credit them with true creative impulses. I'm sure Donald would agree with me."

"I certainly would," Donald said, speaking from his wall niche, and startling Fredda just a fraction. The convention was that robots were to speak only when spoken too, especially during meals, but Donald often found ways to make liberal interpretations of that rule. "Robots do not and cannot achieve true creativity," he went on. "We are capable of imitation, of reproducing from an existing model, and even of a certain degree of embellishment. But only humans are capable of true acts of creation."

"All right, Donald. Let' s not get off on that debate," Kresh said. "By creation or repair or imitation, the New Laws have done great things on the Utopia reservation, in ways that don't seem to offer them any sort of benefit. Green plants and fresh water and a balanced local ecology don't do them any good. So why do they do it?"

"Ask them and they'll tell you it's because they want to-and good luck getting a more detailed answer," Fredda said. "I haven't, and I've tried enough times: I don't know if it's their Fourth Law, or the fact that they were designed for terraforming work, or the synergy between the two of those things. Or maybe it's because Gubber Anshaw designed their gravitonic brain with an underlying internal topography that is closer to the human brain's pattern than any other robotic brain has even been."

Alvar smiled. "In other words, you don't know," he said.

Fredda smiled back, and reached across the table to take his hand in hers. "In other words, I don't know," she agreed. It was good to talk with him, on this of all subjects, without anger. She knew he had never really felt completely confident in his decision regarding the New Laws. And, in her own heart of hearts, she had to admit it was at least possible it might have been better all around if she had never created them. "But even if I don't know why they feel the impulse, I do know that they feel it."

"I guess that will have to do," he said. "There are times when I wonder about that. It is something new and different in the universe for robots to work for something without orders, without direction. And Donald's observation to the contrary, I am not absolutely convinced it is impossible for an artificial mind to have creative ability. I don't like the New Law robots. I think they are dangerous, and not to be trusted. But I cannot quite bring myself to believe they, and all their work, should be wiped off the face of the planet."

Fredda pulled her hand back, and looked at her husband in alarm. "Alvar-what are you talking about? You decided years ago that they should be allowed to survive. What you're saying now makes it