“If we could look into our own minds,” said Rorden, “they would mean as little to us. The robots seem motionless because we cannot see their thoughts.”
For the first time Alvin looked at the long avenue of titans with some trace of understanding. All his life he had accepted without question the miracle of the synthesizers, the machines which age after age produced in an unending stream all that the city needed. Thousands of times he had watched that act of creation, never thinking that somewhere must exist the prototype of that which he had seen come into the world.
As a human mind may dwell for a little while upon a single thought, so these greater brains could grasp and hold forever the most intricate ideas. The patterns of all created things were frozen in these eternal minds, needing only the touch of a human will to make them reality.
The world had gone very far since, hour upon hour, the first cavemen had patiently chipped their arrowheads and knives from the stubborn stone.
“Our problem now,” said Rorden, “is to get into touch with the creature. It can never have any direct knowledge of Man, for there’s no way in which we can affect its consciousness. If my information’s correct, there must be an interpreting machine somewhere. That was a type of robot that could convert human instructions into commands that the Master Robots could understand. They were pure intelligence with little memory-just as this is a tremendous memory with relatively little intelligence.”
Alvin considered for a moment. Then he pointed to his own robot.
“Why not use it?” he suggested. “Robots have very literal minds. It won’t refuse to pass on our instructions, for I doubt if the Master ever thought of this situation.”
Rorden laughed.
“I don’t suppose he did, but since there’s a machine specially built for the job I think it would be best to use it.”
The Interpreter was a very small affair, a horseshoe-shaped construction built round a vision screen which lit up as they approached. Of all the machines in this great cavern, it was the only one which had shown any cognizance of Man, and its greeting seemed a little contemptuous. For on the screen appeared the words: