Unwise Child Read online

  17

  Leda Crannon was standing outside the cubicle that had been built forSnookums. Her back and the palms of her hands were pressed against thedoor. Her head was bowed, and her red hair, shining like a hellish flamein the light of the glow panels, fell around her shoulders and cheeks,almost covering her face.

  "Leda," said Mike the Angel gently.

  She looked up. There were tears in her blue eyes.

  "Mike! Oh, Mike!" She ran toward him, put her arms around him, and triedto bury her face in Mike's chest.

  "What's the matter, honey? What's happened?" He was certain she couldn'thave heard about Mellon's death yet. He held her in his arms, carefully,tenderly, not passionately.

  "He's crazy, Mike. He's completely crazy." Her voice had suddenly losteverything that gave it color. It was only dead and choked.

  Mike the Angel knew it was an emotional reaction. As a psychologist, shewould never have used the word "crazy." But as a woman ... as a humanbeing....

  "Fitz is still in there talking to him, but he's--he's--" Her voicechoked off again into sobs.

  Mike waited patiently, holding her, caressing her hair.

  "Eight years," she said after a minute or so. "Eight years I spent. Andnow he's gone. He's broken."

  "How do you know?" Mike asked.

  She lifted her head and looked at him. "Mike--did he really hit you? Didhe refuse to stop when you ordered him to? What _really_ happened?"

  Mike told her what had happened in the darkened companionway justoutside his room.

  When he finished, she began sobbing again. "He's lying, Mike," she said."_Lying!_"

  Mike nodded silently and slowly. Leda Crannon had spent all of her adultlife tending the hurts and bruises and aches of Snookums the Child. Shehad educated him, cared for him, taken pleasure in his triumphs, worriedabout his health, and watched him grow mentally.

  And now he was sick, broken, ruined. And, like all parents, she wasasking herself: "What did I do wrong?"

  Mike the Angel didn't give her an answer to that unspoken question, buthe knew what the answer was in so many cases:

  The grieving parent has not necessarily done anything wrong. It maysimply be that there was insufficient or poor-quality material to workwith.

  With a human child, it is even more humiliating for a parent to admitthat he or she has contributed inferior genetic material to a child thanit is to admit a failure in upbringing. Leda's case was different.

  Leda had lost her child, but Mike hesitated to point out that it wasn'ther fault in the first place because the material wasn't up to the taskshe had given it, and in the second place because she hadn't reallylost anything. She was still playing with dolls, not human beings.

  "Hell!" said Mike under his breath, not realizing that he waspractically whispering in her ear.

  "Isn't it?" she said. "Isn't it Hell? I spent eight years trying to makethat little mind of his tick properly. I wanted to know what was theright, proper, and logical way to bring up children. I had a theory, andI wanted to test it. And now I'll never know."

  "What sort of theory?" Mike asked.

  She sniffled, took a handkerchief from her pocket, and began wiping ather tears. Mike took the handkerchief away from her and did the wipingjob himself. "What's this theory?" he said.

  "Oh, it isn't important now. But I felt--I still feel--that everybody isborn with a sort of Three Laws of Robotics in him. You know what Imean--that a person wouldn't kill or harm anyone, or refuse to do whatwas right, in addition to trying to preserve his own life. I thinkbabies are born that way. But I think that the information they're givenwhen they're growing up can warp them. They still think they're obeyingthe laws, but they're obeying them wrongly, if you see what I mean."

  Mike nodded without saying anything. This was no time to interrupt her.

  "For instance," she went on, "if my theory's right, then a child wouldnever disobey his father--unless he was convinced that the man was notreally his father, you see. For instance, if he learned, very early,that his father never spanks him, that becomes one of the identifyingmarks of 'father.' Fine. But the first time his father _does_ spank him,doubt enters. If that sort of thing goes on, he becomes disobedientbecause he doesn't believe that the man is his father.

  "I'm afraid I'm putting it a little crudely, but you get the idea."

  "Yeah," said Mike. For all he knew, there might be some merit in thegirl's idea; he knew that philosophers had talked of the "basic goodnessof mankind" for centuries. But he had a hunch that Leda was going aboutit wrong. Still, this was no time to argue with her. She seemed calmernow, and he didn't want to upset her any more than he had to.

  "That's what you've been working on with Snookums?" he asked.

  "That's it."

  "For eight years?"

  "For eight years."

  "Is that the information, the data, that makes Snookums so priceless,aside from his nucleonics work?"

  She smiled a little then. "Oh no. Of course not, silly. He's been feddata on everything--physics, subphysics, chemistry, mathematics--allkinds of things. Most of the major research laboratories on Earth haveproblems of one kind or another that Snookums has been working on. Hehasn't been given the problem _I_ was working on at all; it would biashim." Then the tears came back. "And now it doesn't matter. He's insane.He's lying."

  "What's he saying?"

  "He insists that he's never broken the First Law, that he has never hurta human being. And he insists that he has followed the orders of humanbeings, according to the Second Law."

  "May I talk to him?" Mike asked.

  She shook her head. "Fitz is running him through an analysis. He evenmade me leave." Then she looked at his face more closely. "You don'tjust want to confront him and call him a liar, do you? No--that's notlike you. You know he's just a machine--better than I do, I guess....What is it, Mike?"

  _No_, he thought, looking at her, _she still thinks he's human.Otherwise, she'd know that a computer can't lie--not in the human senseof the word._

  _Most people, if told that a man had said one thing, and that a computerhad given a different answer, would rely on the computer._

  "What is it, Mike?" she repeated.

  "Lew Mellon," he said very quietly, "is dead."

  The blood drained from her face, leaving her skin stark against thebright red of her hair. For a moment he thought she was going to faint.Then a little of the color came back.

  "Snookums." Her voice was whispery.

  He shook his head. "No. Apparently he tried to jump Vaneski and got hitwith a stun beam. It shouldn't have killed him--but apparently it did."

  "God, God, God," she said softly. "Here I've been crying about a damnedmachine, and poor Lew has been lying up there dead." She buried her facein her hands, and her voice was muffled when she spoke again. "And I'mall cried out, Mike. I can't cry any more."

  Before Mike could make up his mind whether to say anything or not, thedoor of Snookums' room opened and Dr. Fitzhugh came out, closing thedoor behind him. There was an odd, stricken look on his face. He lookedat Leda and then at Mike, but the expression on his face showed that hereally hadn't seen them clearly.

  "Did you ever wonder if a robot had a soul, Mike?" he asked in awondering tone.

  "No," Mike admitted.

  Leda took her hands from her face and looked at him. Her expression wasa bright blank stare.

  "He won't answer my questions," Fitzhugh said in a hushed tone. "I can'tcomplete the analysis."

  "What's that got to do with his soul?" Mike asked.

  "He won't answer my questions," Fitzhugh repeated, looking earnestly atMike. "He says God won't allow him to."