The Positronic Man

Five

MISS HAD BEGUN to cross the threshold that truly separates girlhood from womanhood, now. She was enjoying an active social life and going off with her new friends-not all of them girls-on excursions to the mountains, to the deserts of the south, to the wilderness to the north. Her presence in the Martin house was becoming an increasingly rare event.

So it was Little Miss-not as little as before-who filled Andrew's horizon now. She was turning into a coltish, tireless girl who loved to run great distances along the beach, with Andrew effortlessly keeping pace beside her. She went rambling in the forested areas adjacent to the house, and relied on Andrew to help her down when she had scrambled a little too far up some tree to peer into a bird's nest, or when she had trapped herself on some precarious rocky ledge that she had climbed for the sake of getting a better view of the sea.

As ever, Andrew was vigilant and endlessly protective as Little Miss romped about. He would let her take her little tomboyish risks, yes, because they seemed to make her happy, but not without his calculating the real risk of anything serious happening to her, and he was always poised and ready to intervene swiftly on her behalf if that should be necessary.

The First Law, of course, compelled Andrew to exert constant diligence to protect Little Miss from harm. But, as he sometimes told himself, he would willingly and gladly defend her against peril of any sort even if the First Law did not exist.

That was an odd thought: that there might be no First Law. Andrew could barely conceive of that The First Law (and the Second, and the Third) were such fundamental aspects of his neural pathways that it made him dizzy to imagine himself without them. And yet he had imagined it. Andrew was puzzled by that: how strange, having a capacity to imagine the unimaginable! It made him feel almost human, when paradoxical concepts like that went through his mind.

But what did almost human mean? That was another paradox, and an even more dizzying one. Either you were human or you were not How could there be any sort of intermediate state?

You are a robot, Andrew reminded himself sternly.

You are a product of the United States Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation.

And then Andrew would look at Little Miss and a sensation of great joy and warmth would spread through his positronic brain-a sensation that he had come to identify as "love"-and he would have to remind himself, allover again, that he was nothing more than a cleverly designed structure of metal and plastic with an artificial platinum-iridium brain inside his chrome-steel skull, and he had no right to feel emotions, or to think paradoxical thoughts, or to do any other such complex and mysterious human thing. Even his woodworking art-and he did allow himself to think of it as "art"-was simply a function of the skills with which he had been programmed by his designers.

Little Miss never allowed herself to forget that the very first piece of woodcarving Andrew had done had been for her. She was rarely without the little pendant that he had made for her out of that piece of driftwood, wearing it on a silver chain about her neck and reaching up to finger it fondly again and again.

It was she who first objected to Sir's casual habit of giving away Andrew's productions to anyone who visited the house. He would proudly show his guests Andrew's latest work, and then, when the predictable expressions of admiration and even envy were uttered, would grandly exclaim, "Do you really like it that much? Then take it with you! By all means, take it! My pleasure! There are plenty more where that one came from!"

One day Sir bestowed a particularly intricate abstract carving-a shining spheroid made of slender interwoven strips of redwood with inlays of manzanita and madrone wood-on the Speaker of the Legislature. The Speaker was a loud-voiced red-faced man who had always seemed particularly dull-witted and vulgar to Little Miss, and she very much doubted that he had any ability to see the beauty in Andrew's work. No doubt he was simply being diplomatic when he had praised the carving, and he would simply toss it thoughtlessly into some closet when he got it home.

Little Miss said, after the Speaker had left, "Come on, Dad. You shouldn't have given that to him and you know it!"

"But he liked it, Mandy. He said he thought it was extremely beautiful."

"It is extremely beautiful. So is the beach in front of our house. If he said the beach was extremely beautiful, would you have deeded it over to him?"

"Mandy, Mandy-"

"Well? Would you?"

"It's a false parallel," Sir said. "Obviously you don't go handing away chunks of your real estate to people on a whim. But a small carving-given as a modest expression of affection to a friend of many years' standing who also happens to be a highly influential political leader-"

"Are you saying it was a bribe?"

For an instant real anger flashed in Sir's eyes. But it died away almost as fast as it had come and the usual twinkle with which he regarded his youngest daughter returned.

"You don't really mean that, do you, Mandy? You understand that my gift to the Speaker was merely an act of hospitality, right?"

"Well-yes. Yes. I'm sorry, Dad. What I said was uncalled-for and mean."

Sir smiled. "It was, yes. -Is it that you wanted that carving for yourself? Your room is already filled with things that Andrew has made, you know. The whole house is. We can't give them away as fast as he makes them."

"That's the whole point I was trying to make. That you give them away."

Sir's smile grew broader. "Well, what would you prefer that I do? Sell them to people?"

"As a matter of fact, yes. That's exactly what I would prefer."

Sir said, looking astonished, "It isn't like you to be greedy, Mandy."

"What does greed have to do with this?"

"Surely you must understand that we already have more than enough money. Quite apart from the complete impropriety of my putting a price tag on some object that a guest in my house might happen to admire, it would be absurd for me to go in for trivial profiteering of any such kind."

"I'm not saying that we should try to make money on the things Andrew carves. But what about Andrew?"

"What about him?"

"He does the work. He should have the money."

Sir blinked. "Andrew's a robot, Mandy."

"Yes, I know that, Dad"

"Robots aren't people, sweet. They're machines, remember? Like telephones, like computers. What imaginable use would a machine have for money? Robots don't go shopping. Robots don't take holidays in Hawaii. Robots don't-"

"I'm serious, Dad. This is an important issue. Andrew spent hours making that."

"So?"

"Robot or not, he's got the right to benefit from the results of his labor. When you coolly hand out the things he makes as gifts to your friends or political associates, the way you do, you're exploiting him, did you ever stop to think of that, Dad? He may be a machine but he's not a slave. And also he's an artist. He's entitled to be compensated for making those things. Maybe not when he makes them for us, but when you give them away like that to other people-" Little Miss paused. "Do you remember the French Revolution, Dad? -No, I don't mean do you remember it literally. But its basic issue was the exploiting of the working classes by the aristocracy. Robots are our new working classes. And if we go on treating our robots the way the dukes and duchesses treated their peasants-"

Sir smiled gently.

"The last thing we need to worry about, Mandy, is an uprising by our robots. The Three Laws"

"The Three Laws, the Three Laws, the Three Laws! I hate the Three Laws! You can't deprive Andrew of the benefit of the work he does. You can't! It isn't fait; Dad!"

The fury in Little Miss's voice cut off the rest of Sir's disquisition on the Laws of Robotics before he had barely managed to frame his words.

He said instead, after a moment, "You really feel strongly about this, don't you, Mandy?"

"Yes. Yes, I do."

"All right. Let me think about it. And perhaps we can actually work something out for Andrew along the lines that you're suggesting."

"You promise?"

"I promise," said Sir, and Little Miss knew that everything was going to be all right, for her father's promises to her were inviolable contracts -always had been, always would be.

Some time went by, and other visitors came to the house, and everyone who saw Andrew's work responded with the usual praise. But Little Miss, who was watching closely, observed with pleasure that her father had stopped giving Andrew's things away, no matter how effusive the praise might be.

On the other hand, it happened on several occasions that some guest would say, "You don't think I could buy that from you, do you, Gerald?" And Sir, looking uncomfortable, would simply shrug and reply that he wasn't quite sure whether he wanted to get into the business of selling such things.

Little Miss wondered why her father was sidestepping the issue like that. Sidestepping things wasn't normally part of his nature. And it wasn't as though anyone was likely to accuse him of deliberately setting out to earn money by peddling Andrew's work to his house guests. Obviously Gerald Martin was in no need of picking up a bit of extra money on the side that way. But if the offers were made in good faith, though, why not accept them?

She let the issue rest, nevertheless. She knew her father well enough to understand that the matter was still open, and would be attended to in due course.

Then another visitor came: John Feingold, Sir's lawyer. The offices of Feingold's law firm were in the San Francisco area, where despite the general decentralization of city life that had been going on all during the current century a good many people still preferred to live. But though San Francisco was only a short journey south of the wild strip of coast where the Martins lived, a visit from John Feingold to the Martin house was a relatively unusual thing. Usually Sir went down to San Francisco whenever he had business to discuss with Feingold. So Little Miss knew that something special must be up.

Feingold was an easy-going white-haired man with florid pink skin, a pudgy belly, and a warm, amiable smile. He preferred to dress in older styles of clothing and the rims of his contact lenses were tinted a bright green, a fashion so rare nowadays that it was all that Little Miss could do to keep from giggling whenever she saw the lawyer. Sir had to shoot her a stern glance now and then when he detected a fit of laughter coming over her in Feingold's presence.