"Only those who show some sign of making trouble, young d'Armand—which means only half of the brightest."
"And the other half?"
"They work their way into government, join the LORDS party, and start the long, savage climb," Bolwheel assured him.
Dar frowned. "So they can't design a decent robot?"
"Decent, yes. But if it's more than 'decent,' they are marked as dangerous; they might take their bosses' jobs. No, a smart young man on Terra will be sure to hide his mind."
Dar shuddered. "No wonder they come to Maxima! Who would want to work in that kind of environment?"
"Not me," Kimish assured him, "so I made just enough trouble to be deported, but not enough for them to care where." He leaned back with a sigh. "Can you know how intoxicating the spirit of freedom is, here? Where your neighbors challenge you to dream up some idea nobody ever thought of before? Where they make you feel ashamed, if you don't come up with anything new?"
"Yes." Dar had a few memories of PEST's Terra, himself. "It makes all the toil and loneliness worthwhile."
He caught looks of sympathy, quickly veiled; their wives stayed home to keep them company.
Quick change of topic needed, and Bolwheel supplied it. "I think perhaps that is why PEST leaves us alone, and does not seek to impose its rules here."
Kimish frowned. "I was wondering about that. One squadron of destroyers, and we'd be slaves."
"But they need us, they need us," Msimangu assured him. "They need someone, away from Terra, to invent better computers for them, for they must have machines to do the work, if they are to give the people the leisure they have promised. And they dare not have such innovation being developed on any of their planets—it could set people to thinking, and questioning their orders."
A rumbling chorus of agreement went around the table, men nodding their heads in concurrence, and Dar nodded along with the rest of them, even though, privately, he thought it might also have something to do with PEST thinking Maxima was too small to be worth swatting. Realistically, he knew that the asteroid would die if its customers stopped buying, which meant the Terran government could destroy them any time it wanted to. And if PEST's bureaucrats could destroy the Maximans, surely they could also control them, easily and totally, as much as they wished—or so they thought, so they reasoned.
They were wrong, of course. They could kill Maxima, they could conquer it—but if they didn't conquer, they couldn't control. As long as they left the asteroid free, Maximans could do whatever they wished.
But Maxima wasn't about to let PEST know that. Sure, it might be fun to send the Terran bureaucrats a list of all the things Maximans did, that were forbidden on Terra—but it would also be very foolish. A bureaucrat defines himself by the amount of power he has; PEST's logical response would be conquest.
Which in itself was pretty silly, when all they would have to do would be to send back a list of all the things Terrans could do, that Maximans couldn't—mostly hedonistic pastimes. The younger Maximans would start eating their hearts out.
Or maybe not. Dar's neighbors were a pretty unworldly bunch, if you excluded making money and building grandiose houses.
Houses they were definitely big on, though. "I passed your estate on the way in, young d'Armand," Msimangu was saying, "I saw your home. I confess I thought it the height of ugliness last year, but now I begin to see its form emerge. It will be beautiful, when it is done."
"Why, thank you," Dar said, frankly floored by the compliment. In fact, he was so pleased that he forgot to mention who had designed it.
The factory was running just fine. Dar wandered up one aisle and down the other, feeling increasingly useless as he went along. He couldn't even dump the waste bins any more—since Lona had started leaving Fess home, Dar had assigned him that little chore. After all, he couldn't have the poor robot sitting around with nothing to do.
It was hard to believe these machines were of the same genus as Fess. Technically, they were robots, though with nowhere near the capacity of a general purpose model such as Fess. They were operated by much smaller computers, specialized for a very limited number of tasks. Dar hesitated to call them "robots" at all—they were really just automated machine tools. Robots were originally supposed to be artificial people, but these machines couldn't mimic human thought patterns in the slightest way.
And they certainly didn't look human. The first was only a set of rollers that rotated a synthetic crystal a millimeter at a time, then lowered onto it a hemispherical cover that was filled with golden contacts. The central computer tested each circuit within the crystal through those contacts, checking continuity, resistance, power input versus output, and a host of other electronic characteristics. After fifteen minutes, the rollers tilted the crystal out onto the padded belt that carried it to the next robot—or into the garbage can, if it had failed any of its tests.
The next robot was very similar, except that it connected microscopic filaments to each contact point.
Then came a robot that looked like an octopus, with fifteen arms sprouting from a central globe that held its computer. Its job was assembling fifteen crystals into one globular cluster joined by filaments, then immersing it in a chemical bath. After two hours, enough silicon had adhered to the filaments so that the robot could withdraw its arms and start assembling another cluster, while the first rested in its bath for a week, slowly growing together into a single giant crystal.
Meanwhile, another robot—a single bench that grabbed, folded, and held metal and plastic while a steel arm welded joints—was casting and assembling the housings for the completed machines. Then came the assembly line—a final robot which took the finished giant crystals out of their baths and fastened them inside the housings, then connected the contacts to the terminals for the mechanical attachments that actually did the work.
All of it faster than he could do. All of it better than he could do. And most of it much, much smaller than he could see.
Dar surveyed the area, feeling totally useless.
"You really should take a finished robot out for testing, Dar."
"Yeah, I know—but I've done two already today, and there's plenty of time to check the other three."
"Still, it must be done, or you will have a dozen untested robots at week's end."
"I know, I know—but there doesn't seem to be much point to it. You know they'll work perfectly."
"I do not, Dar. True, if the individual crystal circuits are sound, the finished computer will be fine…"
"Of course, because the central computer tests each stage of the work as it's being done." There were contacts embedded in the "holder" on each bench, and in each arm, allowing testing while production was in process.
"But you may find a mechanical flaw, Dar."
"Yeah, sure. Last week I found a pinhole in a suction funnel, and the week before that, there was a hum in a lifting fan. Never in the computers, of course."
He watched the process, shaking his head with dissatisfaction.
"What displeases you, Dar?"
"Huh? Oh. I keep forgetting you're programmed for gestures, too. Nothing, Fess—or nothing that should, anyway. We make dam good household robots—but blast it, all we make is household robots!"
"True, Dar, but, as you say, you make them very well—and you always manage to offer an automaton that will do more than your competition's product."
"Well, that's true. We started out with a little canister that could dust, and speak a few simple responses such as 'Yes, ma'am,' 'No, sir,' 'Good morning,' and 'Please move…' "
"Which every other company's could also do, of course."
"Yeah, but we figured out a way for ours to scrub floors and polish furniture, too."
"Then you added the abilities to pick up, clear a table, load a dishwasher, one by one—and always a year or two before the other companies."