"Sure. So can all the new calculators. Do you think they'll team up with
the watchbirds?"

* * * * *

Gelsen felt annoyed at Macintyre, and even more annoyed at himself for
being ridiculous. "It's a fact that the watchbirds can put their
learning into action. No one is monitoring them."

"So that's the trouble," Macintyre said.

"I've been thinking of getting out of watchbird." Gelsen hadn't realized
it until that moment.

"Look, Chief," Macintyre said. "Will you take an engineer's word on
this?"

"Let's hear it."

"The watchbirds are no more dangerous than an automobile, an IBM
calculator or a thermometer. They have no more consciousness or volition
than those things. The watchbirds are built to respond to certain
stimuli, and to carry out certain operations when they receive that
stimuli."

"And the learning circuits?"

"You have to have those," Macintyre said patiently, as though
explaining the whole thing to a ten-year-old. "The purpose of the
watchbird is to frustrate all murder-attempts, right? Well, only certain
murderers give out these stimuli. In order to stop all of them, the
watchbird has to search out new definitions of murder and correlate them
with what it already knows."

"I think it's inhuman," Gelsen said.

"That's the best thing about it. The watchbirds are unemotional. Their
reasoning is non-anthropomorphic. You can't bribe them or drug them. You
shouldn't fear them, either."

The intercom on Gelsen's desk buzzed. He ignored it.

"I know all this," Gelsen said. "But, still, sometimes I feel like the
man who invented dynamite. He thought it would only be used for blowing
up tree stumps."

"_You_ didn't invent watchbird."

"I still feel morally responsible because I manufacture them."

The intercom buzzed again, and Gelsen irritably punched a button.

"The reports are in on the first week of watchbird operation," his
secretary told him.

"How do they look?"

"Wonderful, sir."

"Send them in in fifteen minutes." Gelsen switched the intercom off and
turned back to Macintyre, who was cleaning his fingernails with a wooden
match. "Don't you think that this represents a trend in human thinking?
The mechanical god? The electronic father?"

"Chief," Macintyre said, "I think you should study watchbird more
closely. Do you know what's built into the circuits?"

"Only generally."

"First, there is a purpose. Which is to stop living organisms from
c