The Positronic Man

He took his nearly finished manuscript to Paul Charney. Paul read it at once and offered not only praise but, as George had indicated, valuable suggestions for revision. There were places where Andrew's inability to comprehend the abrupt, non-linear jumps of reasoning of which the human mind is capable had led him into certain oversimplifications and unwarranted conclusions. If anything, Paul thought the book was too sympathetic to the human point of view. A little more criticism of the irrational human attitude toward robotics, and toward science in general, might not have been out of place.

Andrew had not expected that.

He said, "But I would not want to offend anyone, Paul."

"No book worth reading has ever been written that didn't manage to offend someone," Paul replied. "Write what you believe to be the truth, Andrew. It would be amazing if everybody in the world agreed with you. But your viewpoint is unique. You have something real and valuable to give the world here. It won't be worth a thing, though, if you suppress what you feel and write only what you think others want to hear."

"But the First Law-"

"Damn the First Law, Andrew! The First Law isn't everything! How can you harm someone with a book? Well, by hitting him over the head with it, I suppose. But not otherwise. Ideas can't do harm-even wrong ideas, even foolish and vicious ideas. People do the harm. They seize hold of certain ideas, sometimes, and use them as the justification for doing unconscionable, outrageous things. Human history is full of examples of that. But the ideas themselves are just ideas. They must never be throttled. They need to be brought forth, inspected, tested, if necessary rejected, right out in the open. -Anyway, the First Law doesn't say anything about robots writing books. Sticks and stones, Andrew-they can do harm. But words-"

"As you yourself have just remarked, Paul, human history is full of harmful events that began simply with words. If those words had never been uttered, the harmful events would not have taken place."

"You don't understand what I'm saying, do you? Or do you? I think you do. You know what power ideas have, and you don't have a lot of faith in the ability of humans to tell a good idea from a bad one. Well, neither do I, sometimes. But in the long run the bad idea will perish. That's been the story of human civilization for thousands of years. The good does prevail, sooner or later, no matter what horrors have happened along the way. And so it's wrong to suppress an idea that may have value to the world. -Look, Andrew: you're probably the closest thing to a human being that has ever come out of the factories of U. S. Robots and Mechanical Men. You're uniquely equipped to tell the world what it needs to know about the human-robot relationship, because in some ways you partake of the nature of each. And so you may help to heal that relationship, which even at this late date is still a very troubled one. Write your book. Write it honestly."

"Yes. I will, Paul."

"Do you have a publisher in mind for it, by the way?"

"A publisher? Why, no. I haven't yet given any thought to-"

"Well, you should. Or let me do it for you. I have a friend in the book business-a client, really-do you mind if I say a word or two to him?"

"That would be quite kind of you," Andrew said.

"Not at all. I want to see this book out there where it can be read by everybody, just as you do."

And indeed within a few weeks Paul had secured a publishing contract for Andrew's book. He assured Andrew that the terms were extremely generous, extremely fair. That was good enough for Andrew. He signed the contract without hesitation.

Over the next year, while he worked on the closing sections of his manuscript, Andrew often thought of the things Paul had said to him that day-about the importance of stating his beliefs honestly, the value that his book could have if he did. And also about his own uniqueness. There was one statement of Paul's that Andrew could not get out of his mind.

Look, Andrew: you're probably the closest thing to a human being that has ever come out of the factories of u. s. Robots and Mechanical Men. You're uniquely equipped to tea the world what it needs to know about the human-robot relationship, because in some ways you partake of the nature of each.

Was it so? Is that what Paul really thought, Andrew wondered, or had it just been the heat of the moment that had led him to say those things?

Andrew asked himself that over and over again, and gradually he began to form an answer.

And then he decided that the time had come to pay another visit to the offices of Feingold and Charney and have another talk with Paul.

He arrived una

He waited patiently while the receptionist disappeared into the i

Eventually the receptionist returned. "Mr. Charney will be with you soon," the receptionist a

Andrew passed the time revolving in his mind the matter of his word choice of a few minutes before. Could "unroboted" be used as an analog of "unma

Many similar semantic problems had cropped up frequently while Andrew was working on his book. Human language, having been invented by humans for the use of humans, was full of little tricky complexities of that sort. The effort that was required in order to cope with them had undoubtedly increased Andrew's own working vocabulary-and, he suspected, the adaptability of his positronic pathways as well.

Occasionally as Andrew sat in the waiting room someone would enter the room and stare at him. He was the free robot, after all-still the only one. The clothes-wearing robot. An anomaly; a freak. But Andrew never tried to avoid the glances of these curiosity-seekers. He met each one calmly, and each in turn looked quickly away.

Paul Charney finally came out. He and Andrew had not seen each other since the winter, at the funeral of Paul's father George, who had died peacefully at the family home and now lay buried on a hillside over the Pacific. Paul looked surprised to see Andrew now, or so Andrew thought-though Andrew still had no real faith in his ability to interpret human facial expressions accurately.

"Well, Andrew. So good to see you again. I'm sorry I made you wait, but there was something I had to finish."

"Quite all right. I am never in a hurry, Paul."

Paul had taken lately to wearing the heavy makeup that fashion was currently dictating for both sexes, and though it made the somewhat bland lines of his face sharper and firmer, Andrew disapproved. He felt that Paul's strong, incisive personality needed no such cosmetic enhancement. It would have been perfectly all right for Paul to allow himself to look bland; there was nothing bland about the man himself, and no need for all this paint and powder.

Andrew kept his disapproval to himself, of course. But the fact that he disapproved of Paul's appearance at all was something of a novelty for him. He had only just begun to have such thoughts. Since finishing the first draft of his book, Andrew had discovered that disapproving of the things human beings did, as long as he avoided expressing such opinions openly, did not make him as uneasy as he might have anticipated. He could think disapproving thoughts without difficulty and he was even able to put his disapproval in writing. He was certain that it had not always been like that for him.

Paul said, "Come inside, Andrew. I heard that you wanted to talk to me, but I wasn't really expecting that you'd come all the way down here to do it."

"If you are too busy to see me just now, Paul, I am prepared to continue to wait."

Paul glanced at the interplay of shifting shadows on the dial on the wall that served as the reception-office's timepiece and said, "I can make some time. Did you come alone?"

"I hired an automatobile."

"Any trouble doing that?" Paul asked, with more than a trace of anxiety in his tone.

"I wasn't expecting any. My rights are protected."

Paul looked all the more anxious for that. "Andrew, I've explained to you half a dozen times that that law is essentially unenforceable, at least in most circumstances. -and if you insist on wearing clothes, you're bound to run into trouble eventually, you know. Just as you did that first time when my father had to rescue you."

"It was the only such time, Paul. But I'm sorry that you're displeased."

"Well, look at it this way: you're virtually a living legend, do you realize that? People sometimes like to win a little ugly fame for themselves by making trouble for celebrities, and a celebrity is certainly what you are. Besides, as I've already told you, you're too valuable in too many ways for you to have any right to take chances with yourself. -How's the book coming along, by the way?"

"I've finished a complete draft. Now I'm doing the final editing and polishing. At least, I hope it will be the final editing and polishing. The publisher is quite pleased with what he's seen so far."

"Good!"

"I don't know that he's necessarily pleased with the book as a book. There are parts of it that make him uncomfortable, I think. But it's my guess that he expects to sell a great many copies simply because it's the first book written by a robot, and it's that aspect that pleases him."

"It's only human, I'm afraid, to be interested in making money, Andrew."

"I would not be displeased by it either. Let the book sell, for whatever reason it does. I can find good uses for whatever money it brings in."

"But I thought you were well off, Andrew! You've always had your own income-and there was the quite considerable amount of money my grandmother left you-"

"Little Miss was extremely generous. And I'm sure I can count on the family to help me out further, if a time comes when my expenses begin to exceed my income. Still, I would rather be able to earn my own way at all times. I would not want to draw on your resources except as a last resort."