The Positronic Man (11 page)

"Of course, Sir."

Andrew took Sir's cool, pale, shriveled hand into his own: gnarled ancient flesh against smooth ageless plastic that was without flaw.

Sir said, "You're a splendid robot, do you know that, Andrew? Truly splendid. The finest robot that was ever made."

"Thank you, Sir."

"I wanted to tell you that. And one other thing. I'm glad you're free. That's all. It's important to me that I had a chance to tell you that. All right, Andrew."

It was an unmistakable dismissal. Andrew no longer had Sir's attention. He released Sir's trembling hand and stepped back from the bed, taking up a position alongside George and Little Miss. Little Miss reached forward and touched Andrew's arm just above the elbow, lightly, affectionately. But she said nothing. Nor did George.

The old man seemed to have withdrawn into some private realm, far away. The only sound in the room now was Sir's increasingly rough breathing, becoming ever more harsh, ever less regular. Sir lay motionless, staring upward at nothing at all. His face was as expressionless as any robot's.

Andrew was utterly at a loss. He could only remain standing, absolutely silent, absolutely motionless, watching what he knew must be Sir's final moments.

The old man's breathing grew rougher yet. He made an odd gargling sound, deep in his throat, that was like no sound Andrew had ever heard in his entire existence.

Then all was still. Other than the cessation of Sir's breathing, Andrew was unable to detect any change in him. He had been virtually motionless a moment ago and he was motionless now. He had stared blindly upward before and he was staring upward now. Andrew realized, though, that something profound had just happened, something that was wholly beyond his comprehension. Sir had passed across that mysterious threshold that separated death from life. There was no more Sir. Sir was gone. Only this empty husk remained.

Little Miss broke the endless silence at last with a soft cough. There were no tears in her eyes, but Andrew could see that she was deeply moved.

She said, "I'm glad you got here before he went, Andrew. You belonged here. You were one of us."

Once more Andrew did not know what to reply.

Little Miss said, " And it was wonderful to hear him say what he did to you. He may not have seemed friendly to you toward the end, Andrew, but he was old, you know. And it hurt him that you should have wanted to be free. But he forgave you for that right at the last, didn't he, Andrew?"

And then Andrew found the words to say. He said, "I never would have been free without him, Little Miss."

IT WAS ONLY AFTER Sir's death that Andrew started to wear clothes. He began with an old pair of trousers at first, a pair that he had obtained from George Charney.

It was a daring experiment, and he knew it. Robots, being metallic in exterior cladding and sexless in design-despite the "he" or "she" designations that their owners tended to hang on them-had no need for clothing, neither as protection against the elements nor as any sort of shield for modesty. And no robot, so far as Andrew knew, had ever worn any.

But some curious longing within Andrew seemed to have arisen lately that led him to want to cover his body in the way humans did, and-without pausing to examine the motivation that was leading him toward it-he set out to do so.

The day Andrew acquired the trousers, George had been with him in his workshop, helping him stain some porch furniture for his own house. Not that Andrew needed the help-indeed, it would have been very much simpler all around if George had let him do it by himself-but George had insisted on participating in the job. It was furniture for his own porch, after all. He was the man of the house-George was married now, and a lawyer with the old Feingold firm, which for the past few months had been caned Feingold and Charney, with Stanley Feingold as the senior partner-and he took his adult responsibilities very, very seriously.

At the end of the day the furniture was stained and so, quite thoroughly, was George. He had splotches of stain on his hands, on his ears, on the tip of his nose. His russet mustache and ever more flamboyant side-whiskers were stained too. And, of course, there was stain allover his clothing. But at least George had come prepared for that, bringing an expendable shirt to work in and a disreputable-looking pair of trousers that he must have had since his high school days.

As he was changing back into his regular clothes when the job was done, George crumpled up the old shirt and trousers and said, as he tossed them aside, "You might as well just throw these things in the trash, Andrew. They're of no use to me any more."

George was right about the shirt. Not only was it badly stained, but it had split right down the seam from the arm to the shirt-tail when George reached out too far too quickly while trying to turn a porch table on its side. But the trousers, frayed and worn as they were, seemed salvageable to Andrew.

He held them up with their legs dangling. "If you don't mind," he said, "I'd like to keep these for myself."

George grinned. "To use as rags, you mean?"

Andrew paused just a moment before replying.

"To wear," he said.

Now it was George's turn to pause. Andrew could see the surprise on his face, and then the amusement. George was trying hard not to smile, and he was more or less succeeding at it, but the effort was all too obvious to Andrew's eyes.

"To-wear," George said slowly. "You want to wear my old pants. Is that what you just said, Andrew?"

"It is. I would very much like to wear them, if that is all right with you."

"Is something going wrong with your homeostatic system, Andrew?"

"Not at all. Why do you ask?"

"Only that I was wondering if you were feeling chilly these days. Why else would you want to wear those pants?"

"To find out what it is like."

"Ah," George said. And then after a bit he said, again, " Ah. I see. You want to find out what it's like. All right, I can tell you, Andrew. What it will feel like is like having a dirty old piece of rough unpleasant cloth wrapped around your fine smooth metal skin."

"Are you saying that you don't want me to put the trousers on?" Andrew asked.

"I didn't say that."

"But you think it's a peculiar idea."

"Well-"

"You do."

"Yes. As a matter of fact, I do. Very damned peculiar indeed, Andrew."

"And therefore you refuse to give me the trousers except for the purpose of destroying them?"

"No," George said. There was a note of exasperation in his voice. "Do whatever you want with them, Andrew. Try them on, if you like. Why should I have any objections? You're a free robot. You can put on a pair of pants if that's what you feel like doing. I don't see any reason at all why I should stand in your way. -Go on, Andrew. Put them on."

"Yes," said Andrew. "Yes, I will."

"It's a moment for the history books. The first time a robot has put on clothes. I ought to get my camera, Andrew."

Andrew brought the trousers close to his waist. But then he hesitated.

"Well?" George asked.

"Will you show me how to do it?" Andrew said.

Grinning broadly now, George showed Andrew how to manipulate the static charge so as to allow the trousers to open, wrap about his lower body, and move shut. George demonstrated the technique a couple of times with his own trousers, but Andrew was quite aware that it was going to take him a while to duplicate that one flowing motion, which George, after all, had been performing since he was a child.

"It is the twist of the wrist when you bring the hand upward that puzzles me," Andrew said.

"Like this," said George, and did it yet again.

"Like that?"

"More like this."

"Like this, yes." Andrew touched the little stud once again and the trousers opened, fell, rose, and closed themselves about his legs. "Right?"

"Much better," said George.

"A little practice and it will seem natural to me, I think," Andrew said.

George gave him an odd look. "No, Andrew. It's never going to seem natural to you. Because it isn't natural. -Why on Earth do you want to wear trousers, Andrew?"

"As I said before, George. Out of curiosity about what it is like to be clothed."

"But you weren't naked before you put them on. You were simply-yourself."

"Yes, I suppose I was," Andrew said noncommittally.

"I'm trying to be sympathetic. But for the life of me I still can't understand what you're up to, Andrew. Your body is so beautifully functional that it's a downright shame to cover it-especially when you don't need to worry about either temperature control or modesty. And the fabric doesn't really cling properly, not on metal."

Andrew said, "Are not human bodies beautifully functional, George? Yet you all cover yourselves."

"For warmth, for cleanliness, for protection, for decorativeness. And as a concession to social custom. None of that applies to you."

Andrew said, "I feel bare without clothes."

"You do? You've never said a word about that before today, so far as I know. Is this something new?"

"Reasonably new."

"A week? A month? A year? -What's going on, Andrew?"

"It is hard for me to explain. I have begun to feel-different. "

"Different! Different from whom? It isn't as though a robot is any novelty any more. Andrew, there are millions of robots on Earth now. In this Region, according to the last census, there are almost as many robots as there are humans."

"I know that, George. There are robots doing every conceivable kind of work."

"And not a single one of them wears clothes."

"But none of them is free, George."

"So that's it! You feel different because you are different!"

"Exactly."

"But to wear clothes-"

"Indulge me, George. I want to do this."

George let out his breath in a long, slow exhalation.

"Whatever you say. You're a free robot, Andrew."

"Yes. I am."

After his initial skepticism George seemed to find Andrew's venture into wearing clothes curious and amusing. He cooperated by bringing him, little by little, new additions to his wardrobe. Andrew could hardly go into town to purchase clothing himself, and he felt ill at ease even about ordering it from the computer catalogs, because he knew that his name was widely known in many places ever since the court decision, and he didn't want some shipping clerk in a storeroom far away to recognize it on an order form and begin spreading the word that the free robot was now going in for wearing clothing.

So George would supply him with the articles he requested: a shirt first, then shoes, a fine pair of gloves, a set of decorative epaulets.

"What about underwear?" George asked. "Should I get you some of that too?" But Andrew had no idea of the existence or purpose of underwear, and George had to explain it to him. Andrew decided that he had no need of it.

He tended to wear his new clothes only when he was alone at home. He was hardly ready to go outdoors in them; and even in his own cabin he stopped wearing them in the presence of others after a few preliminary experiments. He was inhibited by George's patronizing smile, which with the best will in the world George continued to be unable to conceal, and by the bewildered stares of the first few customers who saw him dressed when they came to him to commission work.

Andrew might be free, but there was built into him a carefully detailed program concerning his behavior toward human beings: a neural channel that was not as powerful in its effect as the Three Laws, but nevertheless was there to discourage him from giving any sort of offense. It was only by the tiniest steps that he dared advance. Open disapproval would set him back months. It was an enormous leap for him when he finally allowed himself to leave his house with clothing on.

No one he encountered that day showed any sign of surprise. But perhaps they were too astounded even to react. And indeed even Andrew himself still felt strange about his experiment with clothing.

He had a mirror, now, and he would study himself for long periods of time, turning from side to side, looking at himself from all angles. And sometimes he found himself reacting with disfavor to his own appearance. His metal face, with its glowing photoelectric eyes and its rigidly carved robotic features, sometimes struck Andrew himself as strikingly incongruous now that it rose up out of the soft, brightly colored fabrics of clothing meant for a human body.

But at other times it seemed to him perfectly appropriate for him to be wearing clothing. Like virtually all robots, he had been designed, after all, to be fundamentally humanoid in shape: two arms, two legs, an oval head set upon a narrow neck. The U. S. Robots designers had not needed to give him that form. They could have made him look any way they deemed efficient-with rotors instead of legs, with six arms instead of two, with a swiveling sensor-dome atop his trunk instead of a head with two eyes. But no: they had patterned him after themselves. The decision had been made, very early in the history of robotics, that the best way to overcome mankind's deep-seated fear of intelligent machines was to make them as familiar in form as possible.

In that case, why should he not wear clothing also? That would make him look even more human, wouldn't it?

And in any event Andrew wanted to wear clothing now. It seemed symbolic to him of his new status as a legally free robot.

Of course, not everyone accepted Andrew as free, regardless of what the legal finding had been. The term "free robot" had no meaning to many people: it was like saying "dry water" or "bright darkness." Andrew was inherently incapable of resenting that, and yet he felt a difficulty in his thinking process-a slowing, an inner resistance-whenever he was faced with someone's refusal to allow him the status he had won in court.

When he wore clothing in public, he knew, he risked antagonizing such people. Andrew tried to be cautious about that, therefore.

Nor was it only potentially hostile strangers who had difficulty with the idea of his wearing clothing. Even the person who most loved him in all the world-Little Miss-was startled and, Andrew suspected, more than a little troubled by it. Andrew saw that from the very first time. Like her son George, Little Miss had tried to conceal her feelings of surprise and dismay at the sight of Andrew in clothing. And, like George, she had failed.

Well, Little Miss was old now and, like many old people, she had grown set in her ways. Maybe she simply preferred him to look the way he had looked when she was a girl. Or, perhaps, she might believe on some deep level that robots-all robots, even Andrew-should look like the machines that they were, and therefore should not dress like people.

Andrew suspected that if he ever should question Little Miss on that point she would deny it, probably quite indignantly. But he had no intention of doing that. He simply tended to avoid putting on clothes-or too many of them-whenever Little Miss came to visit him.

Which was none too often, these days, for Little Miss was past seventy now-well past seventy-and had grown very thin and sensitive to cold, and even the mild climate of Northern California was too cool for her most of the year. Her husband had died several years before, and since then Little Miss had begun spending much of her time traveling in the tropical parts of the world-Hawaii, Australia, Egypt, the warmer zones of South America, places like that. She would return to California only occasionally, perhaps once or twice a year, to see George and his family -and, of course, Andrew.

After one of her visits George came down to the cabin to speak with Andrew and said ruefully, "Well, she's finally got me, Andrew. I'm going to be running for the Legislature next year. She won't give me any peace unless I do. And I'm sure you know that the First Law of our family, and the Second Law and the Third Law as well, is that nobody says 'no' to Amanda Charney. So there I am: a candidate. It's my genetic destiny, according to her. Like grandfather, like grandson, is what she says."

"Like grandfather-"

Andrew stopped, uncertain.

"What is it, Andrew?"

"Something about the phrase. The idiom. My grammatical circuit-" He shook his head. "Like grandfather, like grandson. There's no verb in the statement, but I know how to adjust for that. Still-"

George began to laugh. "What a literal-minded hunk of tin you can be sometimes, Andrew"'

"Tin?"

"Never mind about that. What the other expression meant was simply that I, George, the grandson, am expected to do what Sir, the grandfather, did-that is to say, to run for the Regional Legislature and have a long and distinguished career. The usual expression is, 'Like father, like son,' but in this case my father didn't care to go into politics, and so my mother has changed the old clichй so that it says-Are you following all this, Andrew, or am I just wasting my breath?"