The Positronic Man

Seventeen

MAGDESCU MUST HAVE made things very clear to the Board of Directors, and the urgency of the message must have gotten through to them. For it was within quite a reasonable time indeed that word reached Andrew that the corporation was willing to do business with him. U.S.R.M.M. would build and design the combustion chamber and install it in his android body at its own expense; and it was prepared to enter into negotiations for a licensing arrangement covering manufacture and distribution of the entire range of prosthetic organs that Andrew might have under development.

Under Andrew's supervision a prototype metabolic converter was constructed and extensively tested at a newly constructed facility in Northern California, first within robot hulls, then with newly fabricated android bodies that had not been equipped with positronic brains and were operated on external life-support systems.

The results were impressive, everyone agreed. And finally Andrew declared that he was ready to have the device installed in himself.

"You're absolutely certain?" Magdescu asked.

The bouncy little Director of Research looked concerned. During the course of the project Magdescu and Andrew had developed a curious but sturdy friendship, for which Andrew was quietly grateful now that none of the Charneys were left. In the time since Paul Charney's death Andrew had come clearly to recognize that he needed some sort of sense of close co

"Yes," he said. "I have no doubts that the work will be done skillfully and well."

"I'm not talking about our part of the work," said Magdescu. "I'm talking about yours."

"You can't possibly doubt that the combustion chamber will work!"

"The tests leave no question of that."

"Then what-?"

"I've been against this thing from the start, Andrew, as you know. But I don't think you fully understand why."

"It's because you think that the radical technological upheaval that my prosthetics will cause for U. S. Robots is going to be too much for the company to handle."

"No! Absolutely not! Not even remotely! I'm all in favor of experiment for the sake of experimentation! Don't you think I want to see some forward movement in this damned field of ours, after all these decades of stupid and furtive backscuttling toward ever more simpleminded and now downright brainless robots? No, Andrew, it's you that I'm worried about."

"But if the combustion chamber-"

Magdescu threw up his hands. "It's safe, it's safe! Nobody disagrees on that score. But-look, Andrew, we'll be opening your body and taking out your atomic cell and installing a bunch of revolutionary new equipment, and then we'll be hooking everything up to your positronic pathways. What if something goes wrong with your body during the operation? There's always a possibility of that-small, maybe, but real. You aren't just a positronic brain sitting inside a metal framework any more, you know. Your brain is linked to the android housing in a far more complex way now. I know how they must have had to do the transfer operation. Your positronic pathways are tied into simulated neural pathways. Suppose your android body starts malfunctioning on the operating table? Suppose it begins to enter a terminal malfunction, Andrew?"

"Dies, is that what you're trying to say?"

"Dies, yes. Your body begins to die."

"There'll be a backup android body sitting on the table right next to it."

"And if we can't make the transfer in time? If your positronic brain suffers irreversible decay while we're trying to untangle it from the million and one linkages that were set up in Smythe-Robertson's time and lift it over to the backup body? Your positronic brain is you, Andrew. There's no way to back up a brain, positronic or otherwise. If it's damaged it's damaged for good. If it's damaged beyond a certain point you'll be dead."

"And this is why you're hesitant about the operation?"

"You're the only one of you that there is. I'd hate to lose you."

"I'd hate to lose me too, Alvin. But I don't think it's going to happen."

Magdescu looked bleak. "You insist on going through with it, then."

"I insist. I have every faith in the skill of the staff at U. S. Robots."

And that was where the matter rested. Magdescu was unable to budge him; and once more Andrew made the journey eastward to the U. S. Robots research center, where an entire building had been reconfigured to serve as the operating theater.

Before he went, he took a long solitary stroll one afternoon along the beach, under the steep rugged cliffs, past the swarming tide pools where Miss and Little Miss had liked to play in their childhood of a century and more ago, and stood for a long while looking out at the dark turbulent sea, the vast arch of the sky, the white flecks of cloud in the west.

The sun was begi

And, he thought, perhaps he was the only robot who had ever been able to respond to the beauty of the world in this way. Robots were a dull plodding bunch, in the main. They did their jobs and that was that. It was the way they were supposed to be. It was the way everyone wanted them to be.

"You're the only one of you that there is," Magdescu had said.

Yes. It was true. He had a capacity for aesthetic response that went far beyond the emotive range of any other robot that had ever been.

Beauty meant something to him. He appreciated it when he saw it; he had created beauty himself.

And if he never saw any of this again, how very sad that would be.

And then Andrew smiled at his own foolishness. Sad? For whom? He would never know it, if the operation should fail. The world and all its beauty would be lost to him, but what would that matter? He would have ceased to function. He would be permanently out of order. He would be dead, and after that it would make no difference to him at all that he could no longer perceive the beauties of the world. That was what death meant: a total cessation of function, an end to all processing of data.

There were risks, yes. But they were risks he had to take, because otherwise- Otherwise- He simply had to. There was no otherwise. He could not go on as he was, outwardly human in form, more or less, but incapable of the most basic human biological functions-breathing, eating, digesting, excreting- An hour later Andrew was on his way east. Alvin Magdescu met him in person at the U. S. Robots airstrip.

"Are you ready?" Magdescu asked him.

"Totally."

"Well, then, Andrew, so am I."

Obviously they intended to take no chances. They had constructed a wondrous operating theater for him, far more advanced in capability than the earlier room in which they had carried out his transformation from the metallic to the androidal form.

It was a magnificent tetrahedral enclosure illuminated by a cross-shaped cluster of chromed fixtures at its summit that flooded the room with brilliant but not glaring light. A platform midway between floor and ceiling jutted from one wall, dividing the great room almost in half, and atop this platform rested a dazzling transparent aseptic bubble within which the surgery would be performed. Beneath the platform that supported the bubble was the surgical stage's environmental-support apparatus: an immense cube of dull green metal, housing an intricate tangle of pumps, filters, heating ducts, reservoirs of sterilizing chemicals, humidifiers, and other equipment. On the other side of the room was a great array of supplementary machinery covering an entire wall: an autoclave, a laser bank, a host of metering devices, a camera boom and associated playback screens that would allow consulting surgeons outside the operating area to monitor the events.

"What do you think?" Magdescu asked proudly.

"Very impressive. I find it most reassuring. And highly flattering as well."

"You know that we don't want to lose you, Andrew. You're a very important-individual."

Andrew did not fail to notice the slight hesitation in Magdescu's voice before that last word. As though Magdescu had been about to say man, and had checked himself just barely in time. Andrew smiled thinly but said nothing.

The operation took place the next morning, and it was an unqualified success. There turned out to be no need for any of the elaborate safety devices that the U. S. Robots people had set up. The operating team, following procedures that Andrew himself had helped to devise, went briskly about the task of removing his atomic cell, installing the combustion chamber, and establishing the new neural linkages, and performed its carefully choreographed work without the slightest hitch.

Half an hour after it was over Andrew was sitting up, checking his positronic parameters, exploring the altered data-flow surging through his brain as a torrent of messages came in from the new metabolic system.

Magdescu stood by the window, watching him.

"How do you feel?"

"Fine. I told you there'd be no problems."

"Yes. Yes."

"As I said, my faith in the skill of your staff was unwavering. And now it's done. I have the ability to eat."

"So you do. You can sip olive oil, at any rate."

"That's eating. I'm told that olive oil has a delicious taste."

"Well, sip all you want. It'll mean occasional cleaning of the combustion chamber, as of course you already realize. Something of a nuisance, I'd say, but there's no way around it."

"A nuisance for the time being," Andrew said. "But it's not impossible to make the chamber self-cleaning. I've already had some ideas about that. And other things."

"Other things?" Magdescu asked. "Such as?''