Powell said, "Here's where you come in, Mike. You're the body specialist, and I want you to check me. I've been trying to cut out all circuits not involved in the personal initiative hookup. Right here, for instance, is the trunk artery involving mechanical operations. I cut out all routine side routes as emergency divisions-" He looked up, "What do you think?"
Donovan had a very bad taste in his mouth, "The job's not that simple, Greg. Personal initiative isn't an electric circuit you can separate from the rest and study. When a robot is on his own, the intensity of the body activity increases immediately on almost all fronts. There isn't a circuit entirely unaffected. What must be done is to locate the particular condition - a very specific condition - that throws him off, and then start eliminating circuits."
Powell got up and dusted himself, "Hmph. All right. Take away the blueprints and burn them."
Donovan said, "You see when activity intensifies, anything can happen, given one single faulty part. Insulation breaks down, a condenser spills over, a connection sparks, a coil overheats. And if you work blind, with the whole robot to choose from, you'll never find the bad spot. If you take Dave apart and test every point of his body mechanism one by one, putting him together each time, and trying him out"
"All right. All right. I can see through a porthole, too."
They faced each other hopelessly, and then Powell said cautiously, "Suppose we interview one of the subsidiaries."
Neither Powell nor Donovan had ever had previous occasion to talk to a "finger." It could talk; it wasn't quite the perfect analogy to a human finger. In fact, it had a fairly developed brain, but that brain was tuned primarily to the reception of orders via positronic field, and its reaction to independent stimuli was rather fumbling.
Nor was Powell certain as to its name. Its serial number was DV-5-2, but that was not very useful.
He compromised. "Look, pal," he said, "I'm going to ask you to do some hard thinking and then you can go back to your boss."
The "finger" nodded its head stiffly, but did not exert its limited brainpower on speech.
"Now on four occasions recently," Powell said, "your boss deviated from brain-scheme. Do you remember those occasions?"
"Yes, sir."
Donovan growled angrily, "He remembers. I tell you there is something very sinister-"
"Oh, go bash your skull. Of course, the 'finger' remembers. There is nothing wrong with him." Powell turned back to the robot, "What were you doing each time... I mean the whole group"
The "finger" had a curious air of reciting by rote, as if he answered questions by the mechanical pressure of his brainpan, but without any enthusiasm whatever.
He said, "The first time we were at work on a difficult outcropping in Tunnel 17, Level B. The second time we were buttressing the roof against a possible cave-in. The third time we were preparing accurate blasts in order to tunnel farther without breaking into a subterranean fissure. The fourth time was just after a minor cave-in"
"What happened at these times?"
"It is difficult to describe. An order would be issued, but before we could receive and interpret it, a new order came to march in queer formation."
Powell snapped out, "Why?"
"I don't know."
Donovan broke in tensely, "What was the first order... the one that was superseded by the marching directions?"
"I don't know. I sensed that an order was sent, but there was never time to receive it."
"Could you tell us anything about it? Was it the same order each time?"
The "finger" shook his head unhappily, "I don't know."
Powell leaned back, "All right, get back to your boss."
The "finger" left, with visible relief.
Donovan said, "Well, we accomplished a lot that time. That was real sharp dialogue all the way through. Listen, Dave and that imbecile 'finger' are both holding out on us. There is too much they don't know and don't remember. We've got to stop trusting them, Greg."
Powell brushed his mustache the wrong way, "So help me, Mike, another fool remark out of you, and I'll take away your rattle and teething ring."
"All right. You're the genius of the team. I'm just a poor sucker. Where do we stand?"
"Right behind the eight ball. I tried to work it backward through the 'finger,' and couldn't. So we've got to work it forward."
"A great man," marveled Donovan. "How simple that makes it. Now translate that into English, Master."
"Translating it into baby talk would suit you better. I mean that we've got to find out what order it is that Dave gives just before everything goes black. It would be the key to the business."
"And how do you expect to do that? We can't get close to him because nothing will go wrong as long as we are there. We can't catch the orders by radio because they are transmitted via this positronic field. That eliminates the close-range and the long-range method, leaving us a neat, cozy zero."
"By direct observation, yes. There's still deduction."
"Huh?"
"We're going on shifts, Mike." Powell smiled grimly. "And we are not taking our eyes off the visiplate. We're going to watch every action of those steel headaches. When they go off into their act, we're going to see what happened immediately before and we're going to deduce the order."
Donovan opened his mouth and left it that way for a full minute. Then he said in strangled tones, "I resign. I quit."
"You have ten days to think up something better," said Powell wearily.