Memoirs of a Space Traveler

“How could I? His intelligence, for all I know, was on the level of a lizard’s — at least initially. How far he advanced I can’t tell you, because I was more interested then in how to destroy him than in asking him questions.”

“What did you do?”

“It was at night. I awoke with the impression that the whole house was starting to collapse. He had cut through the armor plate instantly, but the concrete required work. By the time I had run here, he was already halfway in the hole. In half an hour at the most, he would reach the ground under the foundation and pass through it like butter. I had to act fast.”

“You turned off the electricity?”

“Immediately. But without result.”

“Impossible!”

“Yet true. I wasn’t careful enough. I knew where the power line supplying the house was, but it hadn’t occurred to me that there might be a deeper line. There was, and he reached it and became independent of my circuit breakers.”

“But that presupposes intelligent behavior!”

“Nothing of the kind; it’s an ordinary tropism. A plant grows toward the light, an infusorian moves toward a concentration of hydrogen ions; he looked for electricity. The power I had supplied him with wasn’t enough, so he sought another source.”

“And what did you do?”

“At first I was going to call the power station, or at least the substation, but that would have revealed my projects and perhaps made it difficult to continue them. I used liquid oxygen; luckily I had some. My whole supply went in there.”

“He was paralyzed by the low temperature?”

“It did not so much paralyze him as destroy his coordination. He thrashed about… I tell you, that was a sight! I had to hurry — I didn’t know whether he would adapt to the bath, too — so I didn’t waste time pouring out the oxygen, but threw it in together with the Dewar vessels.”

“Vacuum bottles?”

“Yes, they’re like large vacuum bottles.”

“Ah, that’s why there’s so much glass.”

“Exactly. He smashed everything within reach. An epileptic fit… It’s hard to believe — the house is old and has two stories, but it shook. I felt the floor tremble.”

“What happened next?”

“I had to render him harmless before the temperature rose. I couldn’t go down myself — I would have frozen instantly. Nor could I use explosives; I didn’t want to blow up my home, after all. When he had stopped rampaging and was only quivering, I opened the hatch and let down a small robot with a carborundum circular saw.”

“Didn’t the robot freeze?”

“About eight times. I would pull it out — it was tied to a rope. But each time it cut deeper. Finally it destroyed him.”

“Gruesome,” I muttered.

“No, cybernetic evolution. But perhaps I go in for theatrical effects, and that’s why I showed you this. Let’s go back.”

With these words Diagoras lowered the armored hatch.

“There’s one thing I don’t understand,” I said. “Why do you expose yourself to such dangers? You must enjoy them; otherwise…”

“Et tu, Brute?” he replied, pausing on the first step. “What else could I have done, in your opinion?”

“You could have constructed electronic brains only, without limbs, armor, or effectors. They would be incapable of anything except mental activity.”

“That was my very goal, though I was unable to realize it. Chains of proteins can combine on their own, but not transistors or cathode tubes. I had to provide ‘limbs.’ A poor solution, because — only because — it was a primitive one. There are other forms of danger, you see.”

He turned and went upstairs. We found ourselves on the first floor, but this time Diagoras headed in the opposite direction. He stopped in front of a copper-plated door.

“When I spoke of Corcoran, you no doubt thought that I envy him. I don’t. Corcoran wasn’t seeking knowledge; he merely wanted to create what he had planned, and since he made only what he wanted, what he could comprehend, he learned nothing and proved nothing except that he is a skillful technician. I am much less confident than Corcoran. I say: I don’t know, but I want to know. Building a manlike machine, a grotesque rival for the good things of this world, would be ordinary imitation.”

“But every construction must be what you create it to be,” I protested. “You may not know its future activity exactly, but you must have an initial plan.”

“Not at all. I told you about the first, spontaneous reaction of my kybernoids — the attacking of obstacles and limitations. Don’t think that I or anyone else will ever know where this comes from, why this is so.”

“Ignoramus et ignorabimus…?”