asimov, isaac - the bicentennial man (v1.0) Read online

  "Well. "

  "I see that you are going to accede," said Paul. "You may hesitate but you will come to it in the end. Let me assure you, then, of one further point: If, in the process of transferring my client's positronic brain from his present body to an organic one, there is any damage, however slight, then I will never rest until I've nailed the corporation to the ground. I will, if necessary, take every possible step to mobilize public opinion against the corporation if one brain path of my client's platinum-iridium essence is scrambled." He turned to Andrew and asked, "Do you agree to all this, Andrew?"

  Andrew hesitated a full minute. It amounted to the approval of lying, of blackmail, of the badgering and humiliation of a human being. But not physical harm, he told himself, not physical harm.

  He managed at last to come out with a rather faint "Yes."

  14

  He felt as though he were being constructed again. For days, then for weeks, finally for months, Andrew

  found himself not himself somehow, and the simplest actions kept giving rise to hesitation.

  Paul was frantic. "They've damaged you, Andrew. We'll have to institute suit!"

  Andrew spoke very slowly. "You . . . mustn't. You'll never be able to prove . . . something . . . like m-m-m-m='

  "Malice?"

  "Malice. Besides, I grow . . . stronger, better. It's the tr-tr-tr-"

  "Tremble?"

  "Trauma. After all, there's never been such an opop-op- . . . before."

  Andrew could feel his brain from the inside. No one else could. He knew he was well, and during the months that it took him to learn full coordination and full positronic interplay he spent hours before the mirror.

  Not quite human! The face was stiff-too stiff and the motions were too deliberate. They lacked the careless, free flow of the human being, but perhaps that might come with time. At least now he could wear clothes without the ridiculous anomaly of a metal face going along with it.

  Eventually, he said, "I will be going back to work."

  Paul laughed. "That means you are well. What will you be doing? Another book?"

  "No," said Andrew, seriously. "I live too long for any one. career to seize me by the throat and never let me go. There was a time when I was primarily an artist, and I can still turn to that. And there was a time when I was a historian, and I can still turn to that. But now I wish to be a robobiologist "

  "A robopsycholagist, you mean."

  "No. That would imply the study of positronic brains, and at the moment I lack the desire to do that. A robobiologist, it seems to me, would be concerned with the working of the body attached to that brain."

  "Wouldn't that be a roboticist?"

  "A roboticist works with a metal body. I would be

  studying an organic humanoid body, of which I have the only one, as far as I know."

  "You narrow your field," said Paul, thoughtfully. "As an artist, all conception is yours; as a historian you deal chiefly with robots; as a robobiologist, you will deal with yourself."

  Andrew nodded. "It would seem so:"

  Andrew had to start from the very beginning, for he knew nothing of ordinary biology and almost nothing of science. He became a familiar sight in the libraries, where he sat at the electronic indices for hours at a time, looking perfectly normal in clothes. Those few who knew he was a robot in no way interfered with him.

  He built a laboratory in a room which he added to his house; and his library grew, too.

  Years passed, and Paul came to him one day and said, "It's a pity you're no longer working on the history of robots. I understand U.S. Robots is adopting a radically new policy."

  Paul had aged, and his deteriorating eyes had been replaced with photoptic cells. In that respect, he had drawn closer to Andrew.

  "What have they done?" Andrew asked.

  "They are manufacturing central computers, gigantic positronic brains, really, which communicate with anywhere from a dozen to a thousand robots by microwave. The robots themselves have no brains at all. They are the limbs of the gigantic brain, and the two are physically separate."

  "Is that more efficient?"

  "U.S. Robots claims it is. Smythe-Robertson established the new direction before he died, however, and it's my notion that it's a backlash at you. U.S. Robots is determined that they will make no robots that will give them the type of trouble you have, and for that reason they separate brain and body. The brain will have no body to wish changed; the body will have no brain to wish anything.

  "It's amazing, Andrew," Paul went on, "the influence you have had on the history of. robots. It was your artistry that encouraged U.S. Robots to make robots more precise and specialized; it was your freedom that resulted in the establishment of the principle of robotic rights; it was your insistence on an android body that made U.S. Robots switch to brain-body separation"

  Andrew grew thoughtful. "I suppose in the end the corporation will produce one vast brain controlling several billion robotic bodies. All the eggs will be in one basket. Dangerous. Not proper at all."

  "I think you're right," said Paul, "but I don't suspect it will come to pass for a century at least and I won't live to see it. In fact, I may not live to see next year."

  "Paul!" cried Andrew, in concern.

  Paul shrugged. "Men are mortal, Andrew. We're not like you. It doesn't matter too much, but it does make it important to assure you on one point. I'm the last of the human Martins. The money I control personally will be left to the trust in your name, and as far as anyone can foresee the future, you will be economically secure."

  "Unnecessary," Andrew said, with difficulty. In all this time, he could not get used to the deaths of the Martins.

  "Let's not argue. That's the way it's going to be. Now, what are you working on?"

  "I am designing a system for allowing androids myself-to gain energy from the combustion of hydrocarbons, rather than from atomic cells."

  Paul raised his eyebrows. "So that they will breathe and eat?"

  "Yes."

  "How long have you been pushing in that direction?"

  "For a long time now, but I think I have finally designed an adequate combustion chamber for catalyzed controlled breakdown."

  "Hut why, Andrew? The atomic cell is surely in finitely better."

  "In some ways, perhaps. But the atomic cell is

  15

  It took time, but Andrew had time. In the first place, he did not wish to do anything till Paul-had died in peace. With the death of the great-grandson of Sir, Andrew felt more nearly exposed to a hostile world and for that reason was all the more determined along the path he had chosen.

  Yet he was not really alone. If a man had died, the firm of Feingold and Martin lived, for a corporation does not die any more than a robot does.

  The firm had its directions and it followed them soullessly. By way of the trust and through the law firm, Andrew continued to be wealthy. In return for their own large annual retainer, Feingold and Martin involved themselves in the legal aspects of the new combustion chamber. But when the time came for Andrew to visit U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation, he did it alone. Once he had gone with Sir and once with Paul. This time, the third time, he was alone and manlike.

  U.S. Robots had changed. The actual production plant had been shifted to a large space station, as had grown to be the case with more and more industries. With them had gone many robots. The Earth itself was becoming park like, with its one-billion-person population stabilized and perhaps not more than thirty percent of its at-least-equally-large robot population independently brained.

  The Director of Research was Alvin Magdescu, dark of complexion and hair, with a little pointed beard and wearing nothing above the waist but the breast band that fashion dictated. Andrew himself was well covered in the older fashion of several decades back.

  Magdescu offered his hand to his visitor. "I know you, of course, and I'm rather pleased to see you.

  You're our most notorious product and it'
s a pity old Smyth Robertson was so set against you. We could have done a great deal with you."

  "You still can," said Andrew.

  "No, I don't think so. We're past the time. We've had robots on Earth for over a century, but that's changing. It will be back to space with them, and those that stay here won't be brained."

  "But there remains myself, and I stay on Earth."

  "True, but there doesn't seem to be much of the robot about you. What new request have you?"

  "To be still less a robot. Since I am so far organic, I wish an organic source of energy. I have here the plans . . : '

  Magdescu did not hasten through them. He might have intended to at first, but he stiffened and grew intent. At one point, he said, "This is remarkably ingenious. Who thought of all this?"

  "I did," Andrew replied.

  Magdescu looked up at him sharply, then said, "It would amount to a major overhaul of your body, and an experimental one, since such a thing has never been attempted before. I advise against it. Remain as you are."

  Andrew's face had limited means of expression, but impatience showed plainly in his voice. "Dr. Magdescu, you miss the entire point: You have no choice but to accede to my request. If such devices can be built into my body, they can be built into human bodies as well. The tendency to lengthen human life by prosthetic devices has already been remarked on. There are no devices better than the ones I have designed or am de

  signing. t happens, I control the patents by way of the firm of Feingold and Martin. We are quite capable of going into business for ourselves and of developing the kind of prosthetic devices that may end by producing human beings with many of the properties of robots. Your own business will then suffer.

  "If, however, you operate on me now and agree to do so under similar circumstances in the future, you will receive permission to make use of the patents and control the technology of both robots and of the prosthetization of human beings. The initial leasing will not be granted, of course, until after the first operation is completed successfully, and after enough time has passed to demonstrate that it is indeed successful."

  Andrew felt scarcely any First Law inhibition to the stern conditions he was setting a human being. He was learning to reason that what seemed like cruelty might, in the long run, be kindness.

  Magdescu was stunned. "I'm not the one to decide something like this. That's a corporate decision that would take time."

  "I can wait a reasonable time," said Andrew, "but only a reasonable time." And he thought with satisfaction that Paul himself could not have done it better.

  16

  It took only a reasonable time, and the operation was a success.

  "I was very much against the operation, Andrew," Magdescu said, "but not for the reasons you might think. I was not in the least against the experiment, if it had been on someone else. I hated risking your positronic brain. Now that you have the positronic pathways interacting with simulated nerve pathways, it might have been difficult to rescue the brain intact if the body had gone bad"

  "I had every faith in the skill of the staff at U.S. Robots," said Andrew. "And I can eat now."

  "Well, you can sip olive oil. It will mean occasional cleanings of the combustion chamber, as we have explained to you. Rather an uncomfortable touch, I should think."

  "Perhaps, if I did not expect to go further. Self cleaning is not impossible. In fact, I am working on a

  device that will deal with solid food that may be expected to contain incombustible fractions-indigestible matter, so to speak, that will have to be discarded."

  "You would then have to develop an anus."

  "Or the equivalent."

  "What else, Andrew. . . ?"

  "Everything else."

  "Genitalia, too?"

  "Insofar as they will fit my plans. My body is a canvas on which I intend to draw . . ."

  Magdescu waited for the sentence to he completed, and when it seemed that it would not be, he completed it himself. "A man?"

  "We shall see," Andrew said.

  "That's a puny ambition, Andrew. You're better than a man. You've gone downhill from the moment, you opted to become organic."

  "My brain has not suffered."

  "No, it hasn't. I'll grant you that. But, Andrew, the whole new breakthrough in prosthetic devices made possible by your patents is being marketed under your name. You're recognized as the inventor and you're being honored for it-as you should be. Why play further games with your body?"

  Andrew did not answer.

  The honors came. He accepted membership in several learned societies, including one that was devoted to the new science he had established-the one he had called robobiology but which had come to be termed prosthetology. On the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of his construction, a testimonial dinner was given in his honor at U.S. Robots. If Andrew saw an irony in this, he kept it to himself.

  Alvin Magdescu came out of retirement to chair the dinner. He was himself ninety-four years old and was alive because he, too, had prosthetized devices that, among other things, fulfilled the function of liver and, kidneys. The dinner reached its climax when Magdescu, after a short and emotional talk, raised his glass to . toast The Sesquicentennial Robot.

  Andrew had had the sinews of his face redesigned

  to the point where he could show a human range of emotions, but he sat through all the ceremonies solemnly passive. He did not like to be a Sesquicentennial Robot.

  17

  It was prosthetology that finally took Andrew off the Earth.

  In the decades that followed the celebration of his sesquicentennial, the Moon had come to be a world more Earthlike than Earth in every respect but its gravitational pull; and in its underground cities there was a fairly dense population. Prosthetized devices there had to take the lesser gravity into account. Andrew spent five years on the Moon working with local prosthetologists to make the necessary adaptations. When not at his work, he wandered among the robot population, every one of which treated him with the robotic obsequiousness due a man.

  He came back to an Earth that was humdrum and quiet in comparison, and visited the offices of Feingold and Martin to announce his return.

  The current head of the firm, Simon DeLong, was surprised. "We had been told you were returning, Andrew"-he had almost said Mr. Martin-"but we were not expecting you till next week."

  "I grew impatient," said Andrew briskly. He was anxious to get to the point. "On the Moon, Simon, I was in charge of a research team of twenty human scientists. I gave orders that no one questioned. The Lunar robots deferred to me as they would to a human being. Why, then, am I not a human being?"

  A wary look entered DeLong's eyes. "My dear Andrew, as you have just explained, you are treated as a human being by both robots and human beings. You are, therefore, a human being de facto."

  "To be a human being de facto is not enough. I want not only to be treated as one, but to be legally identified as one. I want to be a human being de jure."

  "Now, that is another matter," DeLong said. "There

  we would run into human prejudice and into the undoubted fact that, however much you may be like a human being, you are not a human being."

  "In what way not?" Andrew asked. "I have the shape of a human being and organs equivalent to those of a human being. My organs, in fact, are identical to some of those in a prosthetized human being. I have contributed artistically, literally, and scientifically to human culture as much as any human being now alive. What more can one ask?"

  "I myself would ask nothing more. The trouble is that it would take an act of the World Legislature to define you as a human being. Frankly, I wouldn't expect that to happen."

  "To whom on the Legislature could I speak?"

  "To the Chairman of the Science and Technology Committee, perhaps."

  "Can you arrange a meeting?"

  "But you scarcely need an intermediary. In your position, you can-"

  "No. You arrange it." It didn't eve
n occur to Andrew that he was giving a fiat order to a human being. He had grown so accustomed to that on the Moon. "I want him to know that the firm of Feingold and Martin is backing me in this to the hilt."

  "Well, now-"

  "To the hilt, Simon. In one hundred and seventy-three years I have in one fashion or another contributed greatly to this firm. I have been under obligation to individual members of the firm in times past. I am not, now. It is rather the other way around now and I am calling in my debts."

  "I will-do what I can," DeLong said.

  18

  The Chairman of the Science and Technology Committee was from the East Asian region and was a woman. Her name was Chee Li-hsing and her transparent garments-obscuring what she wanted obscured only by their dazzle-made her look plastic-wrapped.