"Oh, it is, it is--all things considered. It isn't dangerous, if that's
what you're worried about. But it sure as the devil is expensively
wasteful."
She nodded and sipped at her coffee. "I know that. But I don't see any
other way it could have been done."
"Neither do I, right off the bat," Mike admitted. He took a good swallow
of the hot liquid in his cup and said: "I wanted to ask you two
questions. First, what was it that Snookums was doing just before he
came into the Power Section? Black Bart said he'd been galloping all
over the ship, with you at his heels."
Her infectious smile came back. "He was playing seismograph. He was
simply checking the intensity of the vibrations at different points in
the ship. That gave him part of the data he needed to tell you which of
the tubes were acting up."
"I'm beginning to think," said Mike, "that we'll have to start building
a big brain aboard every ship--that is, if we can learn enough about
such monsters from Snookums."
"What was the other question?" Leda asked.
"Oh.... Well, I was wondering just why you are connected with this
project. What does a psychologist have to do with robots? If you'll
pardon my ignorance."
This time she laughed softly, and Mike thought dizzily of the gay
chiming of silver bells. He clamped down firmly on the romantic
wanderings of his mind as she started her explanation.
"I'm a specialist in child psychology, Mike. Actually, I was hired as an
experiment--or, rather, as the result of a wild guess that happened to
work. You see, the first two times Snookums' brain was activated, the
circuits became disoriented."
"You mean," said Mike the Angel, "they went nuts."
She laughed again. "Don't let Fitz hear you say that. He'll tell you
that 'the circuits exceeded their optimum randomity limit.'"
Mike grinned, remembering the time he had driven a robot brain daffy by
bluffing it at poker. "How did that happen?"
"Well, we don't know all the details, but it seems to have something to
do with the slow recovery rate that's necessary for learning. Do you
know anything about Lagerglocke's Principle?"
"Fitzhugh mentioned something about it in the briefing we got before
take-off. Something about a bit of learning being an inelastic rebound."
"That's it. You take a steel ball, for instance, and drop it on a steel
plate from a height of three or four feet. It bounces--almost perfect
elasticity. The next time you drop it, it does the same thing. It hasn't
learned anything.
"But if you drop a lead ball, it doesn't bounce as much, and it will
flatten at the point of contact. _The next time it falls on that flat
side, its behavior will be different._ It has learned something."
Mike rubbed the tip of an index finger over his chin. "These
illustrations are analogues of the human mind?"
"That's right. Some people have minds like steel balls. They can learn,
but you have to hit them pretty hard to make them do it. On the other
hand, some people have minds like glass balls: They can't learn at all.
If you hit them hard enough to make a real impression, they simply
shatter."
"All right. Now what has this got to do with you and Snookums?"
"Patience, boy, patience," Leda said with a grin. "Actually, the
lead-ball analogy is much too simple. An intelligent mind has to have
time to partially recover, you see. Hit it with too many shocks, one
right after another, and it either collapses or refuses to learn or
both.
"The first two times the brain was activated, the roboticists just began
feeding data into the thing as though it were an ordinary computing
machine. They were forcing it to learn too fast; they weren't giving it
time to recover from the shock of learning.
"Just as in the human being, there is a difference between a robot's
brain and a robot's mind. The _brain_ is a physical thing--a bunch of
cryotrons in a helium bath. But the _mind_ is the sum total of all the
data and reaction patterns and so forth that have been built into the
brain or absorbed by it.
"The brain didn't have an opportunity to recover from the learning
shocks when the data was fed in too fast, so the mind cracked. It
couldn't take it. The robot went insane.
"Each time, the roboticists had to deactivate the brain, drain it of all
data, and start over. After the second time, Dr. Fitzhugh decided they
were going about it wrong, so they decided on a different tack."
"I see," said Mike the Angel. "It had to be taught slowly, like a
child."
"Exactly," said Leda. "And who would know more about teaching a child
than a child psychologist?" she added brightly.
Mike looked down at his coffee cup, watching the slight wavering of the
surface as it broke up the reflected light from the glow panels. He had
invited this girl down to his stateroom (he told himself) to get
information about Snookums. But now he realized that information about
the girl herself was far more important.
"How long have you been working with Snookums?" he asked, without
looking up from his coffee.
"Over eight years," she said.
Then Mike looked up. "You know, you hardly look old enough. You don't
look much older than twenty-five."
She smiled--a little shyly, Mike thought. "As Snookums says, 'You're
nice.' I'm twenty-six."
"And you've been working with Snookums since you were eighteen?"
"Uh-huh." She looked, very suddenly, much younger than even the
twenty-five Mike had guessed at. She seemed to be more like a somewhat
bashful teen-ager who had been educated in a convent. "I was what they
call an 'exceptional child.' My mother died when I was seven, and Dad
... well, he just didn't know what to do with a baby girl, I guess. He
was a kind man, and I think he really loved me, but he just didn't know
what to do with me. So when the tests showed that I was ... brighter ...
than the average, he put me in a special school in Italy. Said he didn't
want my mind cramped by being forced to conform to the mental norm.
Maybe he even believed that himself.
"And, too, he didn't approve of public education. He had a lot of odd
ideas.
"Anyway, I saw him during summer vacations and went to school the rest
of the year. He took me all over the world when I was with him, and the
instructors were pretty wonderful people; I'm not sorry that I was
brought up that way. It was a little different from the education that
most children have, but it gave me a chance to use my mind."
"I know the school," said Mike the Angel. "That's the one under the
Cesare Alfieri Institute in Florence?"
"That's it; did you go there?" There was an odd, eager look in her eyes.
Mike shook his head. "Nope. But a friend of mine did. Ever know a guy
named Paulvitch?"
She squealed with delight, as though she'd been playfully pinched. "Sir
Gay? You mean Serge Paulvitch, the Fiend of Florence?" She pronounced
the name properly: "_Sair_-gay," instead of "surge," as too many people
were prone to do.
"Sounds like the same man," Mike admitted, grinning. "As evil-looking as
Satanas himself?"
"That's Sir Gay, all right. Half the girls were scared of him, and I
think _all_ the boys were. He's about three years older than I am, I
guess."
"Why call him Sir Gay?" Mike asked. "Just because of his name?"
"Partly. And partly because he was always such a gentleman. A real
_nice_ guy, if you know what I mean. Do you know him well?"
"_Know_ him? Hell, I couldn't run my business without him."
"Your business?" She blinked. "But he works for--" Then her eyes became
very wide, her mouth opened, and she pointed an index finger at Mike.
"Then you ... you're Mike the Angel! M. R. Gabriel! Sure!" She started
laughing. "I never connected it up! My golly, my golly! I thought you
were just another Space Service commander! Mike the Angel! Well, I'll be
darned!"
She caught her breath. "I'm sorry. I was just so surprised, that's all.
Are you really _the_ M. R. Gabriel, of M. R. Gabriel, Power Design?"
Mike was as close to being nonplused as he cared to be. "Sure," he said.
"You mean you didn't know?"
She shook her head. "No. I thought Mike the Angel was about sixty years
old, a crotchety old genius behind a desk, as eccentric as a comet's
orbit, and wealthier than Croesus. You're just not what I pictured,
that's all."
"Just wait a few more decades," Mike said, laughing. "I'll try to live
up to my reputation."
"So you're Serge's boss. How is he? I haven't seen him since I was
sixteen."
"He's grown a beard," said Mike.
"No!"
"Fact."
"My God, how horrible!" She put her hand over her eyes in mock horror.
"Let's talk about you," said Mike. "You're much prettier than Serge
Paulvitch."
"Well, I should hope so! But really, there's nothing to tell. I went to
school. B.S. at fourteen, M.S. at sixteen, Ph.D. at eighteen. Then I
went to work for C.C. of E., and I've been there ever since. I've never
been engaged, I've never been married, and I'm still a virgin. Anything
else?"
"No runs, no hits, no errors," said Mike the Angel.
She grinned back impishly. "I haven't been up to bat yet, Commander
Gabriel."
"Then I suggest you grab some sort of club to defend yourself, because
I'm going to be in there pitching."
The smile on her face faded, to be replaced by a look that was neither
awe nor surprise, but partook of both.
"You really mean that, don't you?" she asked in a hushed voice.
"I do," said Mike the Angel.
* * * * *
Commander Peter Jeffers was in the Control Bridge when Mike the Angel
stepped in through the door. Jeffers was standing with his back to the
door, facing the bank of instruments that gave him a general picture of
the condition of the whole ship.
Overhead, the great dome of the ship's nose allowed the gleaming points
of light from the star field ahead to shine down on those beneath
through the heavy, transparent shield of the cast transite and the
invisible screen of the external field.
Mike walked over and tapped Pete Jeffers on the shoulder.
"Busy?"
Jeffers turned around slowly and grinned. "Hullo, old soul. Naw, I ain't
busy. Nothin' outside but stars, and we don't figger on gettin' too
close to 'em right off the bat. What's the beef?"
"I have," said Mike the Angel succinctly, "goofed."
Jeffers' keen eyes swept analytically over Mike the Angel's face. "You
want a drink? I snuck a spot o' brandy aboard, and just by purty ole
coincidence, there's a bottle right over there in the speaker housing."
Without waiting for an answer, he turned away from Mike and walked
toward the cabinet that held the intercom speaker. Meantime, he went
right on talking.
"Great stuff, brandy. French call it _eau de vie_, and that, in case you
don't know it, means 'water of life.' You want a little, eh, ol' buddy?
Sure you do." By this time, he'd come back with the bottle and a pair of
glasses and was pouring a good dose into each one. "On the other hand,
the Irish gave us our name for whisky. Comes from _uisge-beatha_, and by
some bloody peculiar coincidence, that also means 'water of life.' So
you just set yourself right down here and get some life into you."
Mike sat down at the computer table, and Jeffers sat down across from
him. "Now you just drink on up, buddy-buddy and then tell your ol' Uncle
Pete what the bloody hell the trouble is."
Mike looked at the brandy for a full half minute. Then, with one quick
flip of his wrist and a sudden spasmodic movement of his gullet, he
downed it.