Del Rey, Lester – Instinct

Senthree grinned, in spite of himself. “Nobody knows. Men apparently kept a lot of them, but so far as I can see they are completely useless. They’re clever, in a way. But I don’t think they were pets. Just another mystery.”

“Umm. Like men. Maybe you can tell me what good Man will be. I’ve been curious about that since I saw your appropriations. But nobody can answer.”

“It’s in the records,” Senthree told him sharply. Then he modified his voice carefully. “How well do you know your history? I mean about the beginning.”

“Well …”

He probably knew some of it, Senthree thought. They all got part of it as legends. He leaned back in his seat now, though, as the biochemist began the old tale of the beginning as they knew it. They knew that there had been Man a million years before them. And somebody—Asimov or Asenion, the record wasn’t quite clear—had apparently created the first robot. They had improved it up to about the present level. Then there had been some kind of a contest in which violent forces had ruined the factories, most of the robots, and nearly all of the Men. It was believed from the fragmentary records that a biological weapon had killed the rest of man, leaving only the robots.

Those first robots, as they were now known, had had to start on a ruined world from scratch—a world where mines were exhausted, and factories were gone. They’d learned to get metals from the seas, and had spent years and centuries slowly rebuilding the machines to build new robots. There had been only two of them when the task was finished, and they had barely time enough to run one new robot off and educate him sketchily. Then they had discharged finally, and he had taken up rebuilding the race. It was almost like beginning with no history and no science. Twenty millennia had passed before they began to rebuild a civilization of their own.

“But why did Man die?” Senthree asked. “That’s part of the question. And are we going to do the same? We know we are similar to Man. Did he change himself in some way that ruined him? Can we change ourselves safely? You know that there are a thousand ways we could improve ourselves. We could add anti-gravity, and get rid of our cumbersome vehicles. We could add more arms. We could eliminate our useless mouths and talk by radio. We could add new circuits to our brains. But we don’t dare. One school says that nobody can build a better race than itself, so Man must have been better than we are—and if he made us this way, there was a reason. Even if the psychologists can’t understand some of the circuits in our brains, they don’t dare touch them.

“We’re expanding through the universe—but we can’t even change ourselves to fit the new planets. And until we can find the reasons for Man’s disappearance, that makes good sense. We know he was planning to change himself. We have bits of evidence. And he’s dead. To make it worse, we have whole reels of education tape that probably contain all the answers— but information is keyed to Man’s brain, and we can’t respond to it. Give us a viable Man, and he can interpret that. Or we can find out by comparison what we can and cannot do. I maintain we can do a lot.”

Arpeten shook his head doubtfully. “I suppose you think you know why he died!”

“I think so, yes. Instinct! That’s a built-in reaction, an unlearned thought. Man had it. If a man heard a rattlesnake, he left the place in a hurry, even though he’d never heard it before. Response to that sound was built into him. No tape impressed it, and no experience was needed. We know the instincts of some of the animals, too—and one of them is to struggle and kill—like the ants who kill each other off. I think Man did just that. He couldn’t get rid of his instincts when they were no longer needed, and they killed him. He should have changed—and we can change. But I can’t tell that from animals. I need intelligent life, to see whether instinct or intelligence will dominate. And robots don’t have instincts—I’ve looked for even one sign of something not learned individually, and can’t find it. It’s the one basic difference between us. Don’t you see, Man is the whole key to our problem of whether we can change or not without risking extermination?”

“Umm.” The director sounded noncommittal. “Interesting theory. But how are you going to know you have Man?”

Senthree stared at the robot with more respect. He tried to explain, but he had never been as sure of that himself as he might. Theoretically, they had bones and bits of preserved tissue. They had examined the gene pattern of these, having learned that the cells of the individual contain the same pattern as that of the zygote. And they had other guides—man’s achievements, bits of his literature. From these, some working theories could be made. But he couldn’t be quite sure—they’d never really known whether man’s pigment was dark brown, pinkish orange, white, or what; the records they had seemed to disagree on this.

“We’ll know when we get an intelligent animal with instinct,” he said at last. “It won’t matter exactly whether he is completely like Man or not. At least it will give us a check on things we must know. Until then, we’ll have to go on trying. You might as well know that the last experiment failed, though it was closer. But in another hundred years …”

“So.” Arpeten’s face became bland, but he avoided the look of Senthree. “I’m afraid not. At least for a while. That’s what I came about, you know. We’ve just had word of several new planets around Arcturus, and it will take the major allocation of our funds to colonize these. New robots must be built, new ships—oh, you know. And we’re retrenching a bit on other things. Of course, if you’d succeeded … but perhaps it’s better you failed. You know how the sentiment against reviving Man has grown.”

Senthree growled bitterly. He’d seen how it was carefully nurtured—though he had to admit it seemed to be easy to create. Apparently most of the robots were afraid of Man—felt he would again take over, or something. Superstitious fools.

“How much longer?” he asked.

“Oh, we won’t cut back what you have, Dr. Senthree. But I’m afraid we simply can’t allocate more funds. When this is finished, I was hoping to make you biological investigator, incidentally, on one of the planets. There’ll be work enough… . Well, it was a pleasure.” He shook hands again, and walked out, his back a gleaming ramrod of efficiency and effectiveness.

Senthree turned back, his new body no longer moving easily. It could already feel the harsh sands and unknown chemical poisons of investigating a new planet— the futile, empty carding of new life that could have no real purpose to the robots. No more appropriations! And they had barely enough funds to meet the current bills.

Four hundred years—and a ship to Arcturus had ended it in three months. Instinct, he thought again—given life with intelligence and instinct together for one year, and he could settle half the problems of his race, perhaps. But robots could not have instincts. Fifty years of study had proven that.

Beswun threw up a hand in greeting as he returned, and he saw that the dissection was nearly complete, while the antique robot was activated. A hinge on its ludicrous jaw was moving, and rough, grating words were coming out. Senthree turned to the dissecting bench, and then swung back as he heard them.

“Wrong … wrong,” it was muttering. “Can not live. Is not good brain. No pineal. Medulla good, but not good cerebrum. Fissures wrong. Maybe pituitary disfunction? No. How can be?” It probed doubtfully and set the brain aside. “Mutation maybe. Very bad. Need Milliken mike. See nucleus of cells. Maybe just freak, maybe new disease.”

Senthree’s fingers were taut and stiff as he fished into his bag and came out with a set of lenses. Beswun shook his head and made a waiting sign. He went out at a run, to come back shortly with a few bits of metal and the shavings from machining still on his hands. “Won’t fit—but these adapters should do it. There, 324MD2991. Now come over here where you can look at it over this table—that’s where the—uh, rays are.”

He turned back, and Senthree saw that a fine wire ran from one adapter. “He doesn’t speak our bio-terminology, Senthree. We’ll have to see the same things he does. There—we can watch it on the screen. Now, 324MD2991, you tell us what is wrong and point it out. Are your hands steady enough for that?”