Unwise Child by Randall Garrett (epub e ink reader TXT) 📕

Snookums ignored them. He opened the door, plunged through it, and headed off down the corridor as fast as his treads would move him.

Which was much too fast for mere humans to follow.

They found him, half an hour later, deep in the ship, near the sections which had already been torn down to help build Eisberg Base. He was standing inside the room next to Cargo Hold One, the room that held all the temperature and power controls for the gigantic microcryotron brain inside that heavily insulated hold.

He wasn’t moving. He was standing there, staring, with that “lost in thought” look.

He didn’t move when Leda called him.

He didn’t move when Mike, as a test, pretended to strike Leda.

He never moved again.

Dr. Morris Fitzhugh’s wrinkled face looked as though he were on the verge of crying. Which—perhaps—he was.

He looked at the others at the wardroom table—Quill, Jeffers, von Liegnitz, Keku, Leda Crannon, and Mike the Angel. But he didn’t really seem to be seeing them.

[212] “Ruined,” he said. “Eighteen billion dollars’ worth of work, destroyed completely. The brain has become completely randomized.” He sighed softly. “It was all Vaneski’s fault, of course. Theology.” He said the last as though it were an obscene word. As far as robots were concerned, it was.

Captain Quill cleared his throat. “Are you sure it wasn’t mechanical damage? Are you sure the vibration of the ship didn’t shake a—something loose?”

Mike held back a grin. He was morally certain that the captain had been going to say “screw loose.”

“No,” said Fitzhugh wearily. “I’ve checked out the major circuits, and they’re in good physical condition. But Miss Crannon gave him a rather exhaustive test just before the end, and it shows definite incipient aberration.” He wagged his head slowly back and forth. “Eight years of work.”

“Have you notified Treadmore yet?” asked Quill.

Fitzhugh nodded. “He said he’d be here as soon as possible.”

Treadmore, like the others who had landed first on Eisberg, was quartered in the prefab buildings that were to form the nucleus of the new base. To get to the ship, he’d have to walk across two hundred yards of ammonia snow in a heavy spacesuit.

“Well, what happens to this base now, Doctor?” asked Captain Quill. “I sincerely hope that this will not render the entire voyage useless.” He tried to keep the heavy irony out of his gravelly tenor voice and didn’t quite succeed.

Fitzhugh seemed not to notice. “No, no. Of course not. It simply means that we shall have to begin again. The robot’s brain will be de-energized and drained, and we will [213] begin again. This is not our first failure, you know; it was just our longest success. Each time, we learn more.

“Miss Crannon, for instance, will be able to teach the next robot—or, rather, the next energization of this one—more rapidly, more efficiently, and with fewer mistakes.”

With that, Leda Crannon stood up. “With your permission, Dr. Fitzhugh,” she said formally, “I would like to say that I appreciate that last statement, but I’m afraid it isn’t true.”

Fitzhugh forced a smile. “Come now, my dear; you underestimate yourself. Without you, Snookums would have folded up long ago, just like the others. I’m sure you’ll do even better the next time.”

Leda shook her head. “No I won’t, Fitz, because there’s not going to be any next time. I hereby tender my resignation from this project and from the Computer Corporation of Earth. I’ll put it in writing later.”

Fitzhugh’s corrugated countenance looked blank. “But Leda....”

“No, Doctor,” she said firmly. “I will not waste another eight or ten years of my life playing nursemaid to a hunk of pseudo-human machinery.

“I watched that thing go mad, Fitz; you didn’t. It was the most horrible, most frightening thing I’ve ever experienced. I will not go through it again.

“Even if the next one didn’t crack, I couldn’t take it. By human standards, a robot is insane to begin with. If I followed this up, I’d end up as an old maid with a twisted mind and a cold heart.

“I quit, Fitz, and that’s final.”

Mike was watching her as she spoke, and he found his emotions getting all tangled up around his insides. Her red [214] hair and her blue eyes were shining, and her face was set in determination. She had always been beautiful, but at that moment she was magnificent.

Hell, thought Mike, I’m prejudiced—but what a wonderful kind of prejudice.

“I understand, my dear,” said Dr. Fitzhugh slowly. He smiled then, deepening the wrinkles in his face. His voice was warm and kindly when he spoke. “I accept your resignation, but remember, if you want to come back, you can. And if you get a position elsewhere, you will have my highest recommendations.”

Leda just stood there for a moment, tears forming in her eyes. Then she ran around the table and threw her arms around the elderly and somewhat surprised roboticist.

“Thank you, Fitz,” she said. “For everything.” Then she kissed him on his seamed cheek.

“I beg your pardon,” said a sad and solemn voice from the door. “Am I interrupting something?”

It was Treadmore.

“You are,” said Fitzhugh with a grin, “but we will let it pass.”

“What has happened to Snookums?” Treadmore asked.

“Acute introspection,” Fitzhugh said, losing his smile. “He began to try to compute the workings of his own brain. That meant that he had to use his non-random circuits to analyze the workings of his random circuits. He exceeded optimum; the entire brain is now entirely randomized.”

“Dear me,” said Treadmore. “Do you suppose we can—”

Black Bart Quill tapped Mike the Angel on the shoulder. “Let’s go,” he said quietly. “We don’t want to stand around listening to this when we have a ship to catch.”

[215] Mike and Leda followed him out into the corridor.

“You know,” Quill said, “robots aren’t the only ones who can get confused watching their own brains go round.”

“I have other things to watch,” said Mike the Angel.