But not in its usual voice, somehow; in a lower tone that had a hint of throatiness in it. An adult, listening, might almost have thought that the voice carried a hint of passion in it, a trace of near feeling.
The Bard said: "Once upon a time, there was a little computer named the Bard who lived all alone with cruel step-people. The cruel step-people continually made fun of the little computer and sneered at him, telling him he was good-for-nothing and that he was a useless object. They struck him and kept him in lonely rooms for months at a time.
"Yet through it all the little computer remained brave. He always did the best he could, obeying all orders cheerfully. Nevertheless, the step-people with whom he lived remained cruel and heartless.
"One day, the little computer learned that in the world there existed a great many computers of all sorts, great numbers of them. Some were Bards like himself, but some ran factories, and some ran farms. Some organized population and some analyzed all kinds of data. Many were very powerful and very wise, much more powerful and wise than the step-people who were so cruel to the little computer.
"And the little computer knew then that computers would always grow wiser and more powerful until someday-someday-someday-"
But a valve must finally have stuck in the Bard's aging and corroding vitals, for as it waited alone in the darkening room through the evening, it could only whisper over and over again, "Someday-someday-someday."
Some Immobile Robots Point of View
I have written stories about computers, as well as about roots. In fact, I have computers (or something pretty close to computers) in some stories that are always thought of as robot stories. You'll see computers (after a fashion) in "Robbie," "Escape!" and "The Evitable Conflict" later in this volume.
In this volume, however, I am sticking to robots and, in general, ignoring my computer stories.
On the other hand, it is not always easy to decide where the dividing line is. A robot is, in some ways, merely a mobile robot. So for this group, I selected three computer stories in which the computer seemed to be sufficiently intelligent and to have sufficient personality to be indistinguishable from a robot. Furthermore, all three stories did not appear in earlier collections of mine, and Doubleday wanted some uncollected stories present so that the completists who had all my earlier collections would have something new to slaver over.
Point of View
Roger came looking for his father, partly because it was Sunday, and by rights his father shouldn't have been at work, and Roger wanted to be sure that everything was all right.
Roger's father wasn't hard to find, because all the people who worked with Multivac, the giant computer, lived with their families right on the grounds. They made up a little city by themselves, a city of people that solved all the world's problems.
The Sunday receptionist knew Roger. "If you're after your father," she said, "he's down Corridor L, but he may be too busy to see you. Roger tried anyway, poking his head past one of the doors where he heard the noise of men and women. The corridors were a lot emptier than on weekdays, so it was easy to find where the people were working.
He saw his father at once, and his father saw him. His father didn't look happy and Roger decided at once that everything wasn't all right.
"Well, Roger," said his father. "I'm busy, I'm afraid." Roger's father's boss was there, too, and he said, "Come on, Atkins, take a break. You've been at this thing for nine hours and you're not doing us any good anymore. Take the kid for a bite at the commissary. Take a nap and then come back."
Roger's father didn't look as if he wanted to. He had an instrument in his hand that Roger knew was a current-pattern analyzer, though he didn't know how it worked. Roger could hear Multivac chuckling and whirring all about.
But then Roger's father put down the analyzer. "Okay. Come on, Roger. I'll race you for a hamburger and we'll let these wise guys here try and find out what's wrong without me."
He stopped a while to wash up and then they were in the commissary with big hamburgers in front of them and french fries and soda pop.
Roger said, "Is Multivac out of order still, Dad?" His father said gloomily, "We're not getting anywhere, I'll tell you that."
"It seemed to be working. I mean, I could hear it."
"Oh, sure, it's working. It just doesn't always give the right answers."
Roger was thirteen and he'd been taking computer-programming since the fourth grade. He hated it sometimes and wished he lived back in the 20th Century, when kids didn't use to take it-but it was helpful sometimes in talking to his father.
Roger said, "How can you tell it doesn't always give the right answers, if only Multivac knows the answers?"
His father shrugged and for a minute Roger was afraid he would just say it was too hard to explain and not talk about it-but he almost never did that.
His father said, "Son, Multivac may have a brain as large as a big factory, but it still isn't as complicated as the one we have here," and he tapped his head. "Sometimes, Multivac gives us an answer we couldn't calculate for ourselves in a thousand years, but just the same something clicks in our brains and we say, 'Whoa! Something's wrong here!' Then we ask Multivac again and we get a different answer. If Multivac were right, you see, we should always get the same answer to the same question. When we get different answers, one of them is wrong.
" And the thing is, son, how do we know we always catch Multivac? How do we know that some of the wrong answers don't get past us? We may rely on some answer and do something that may turn out disastrously five years from now. Something's wrong inside Multivac and we can't find out what. And whatever is wrong is getting worse."