Isaac Asimov & Robert Silverberg - The Positronic Man

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THE POSITRONIC MAN

Isaac Asimov

And

Robert Silverberg

For Janet and Karen

--with much love

THE THREE LAWS OF ROBOTICS

1. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a

human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where

such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection

does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

ONE

"IF YOU'LL TAKE A SEAT, sir," the surgeon said, gesturing toward the chair in

front of his desk. "Please."

"Thank you," said Andrew Martin.

He seated himself calmly. He did everything calmly. That was his nature;

it was one part of him that would never change. Looking at him now, one could

have no way of knowing that Andrew Martin had been driven to the last resort.

But he had been. He had come halfway across the continent for this interview.

It represented his only remaining hope of achieving his life's main goal--

everything had come down to that. Everything.

There was a smooth blankness to Andrew's face--though a keen observer

might well have imagined a hint of melancholy in his eyes. His hair was

smooth, light brown, rather fine, and he looked freshly and cleanly shaven: no

beard, no mustache, no facial affectations of any sort. His clothes were well

made and neat, predominantly a velvety red-purple in color; but they were of a

distinctly old-fashioned cut, in the loose, flowing style called "drapery"

that had been popular several generations back and was rarely seen these days.

The surgeon's face had a certain blankness about it also: hardly a

surprising thing, for the surgeon's face, like all the rest of him, was

fashioned of lightly bronzed stainless steel. He sat squarely upright at his

imposing desk in the windowless room high over Lake Michigan, looking outward

at Andrew Martin with the utmost serenity and poise evident in his glowing

eyes. In front of him on the desk was a gleaming brass nameplate that

announced his serial number, the usual factory-assigned assortment of letters

and numbers.

Andrew Martin paid no attention to that soulless string of characters

and digits. Such dreary, mechanistic identity-designations were nothing of any

moment to him--not now, not any more, not for a very long time. Andrew felt no

need to call the robot surgeon anything but "Doctor."

The surgeon said, "This is all very irregular, you know, sir. Very

irregular."

"Yes. I know that," Andrew Martin said.

"I've thought about very little else since this request first came to my

attention."

"I sincerely regret any discomfort that it may have caused you."

"Thank you. I am grateful for your concern."

All very formal, very courteous, very useless. They were simply fencing

with each other, neither one willing to get down to essentials. And now the

surgeon fell silent. Andrew waited for him to proceed. The silence went on and

on.

This is getting us nowhere, Andrew told himself.

To the surgeon he said, "The thing that I need to know, Doctor, is how

soon the operation can be carried out."

The surgeon hesitated a perceptible moment. Then he said softly, with

that certain inalienable note of respect that a robot always used when

speaking to a human being, "I am not convinced, sir, that I fully understand

how such an operation could be performed, let alone why it should be

considered desirable. And of course I still don't know who the subject of the

proposed operation is going to be."

There might have been a look of respectful intransigence on the

surgeon's face, if the elegantly contoured stainless steel of the surgeon's

face had been in any way capable of displaying such an expression--or any

expression at all.

It was the turn of Andrew Martin to be silent for a moment, now.

He studied the robot surgeon's right hand--his cutting hand--as it

rested on the desk in utter tranquility. It was splendidly designed. The

fingers were long and tapering, and they were shaped into metallic looping

curves of great artistic beauty, curves so graceful and appropriate to their

function that one could easily imagine a scalpel being fitted into them and

instantly becoming, at the moment they went into action, united in perfect

harmony with the fingers that wielded it: surgeon and scalpel fusing into a

single marvelously capable tool.

That was very reassuring, Andrew thought. There would be no hesitation

in the surgeon's work, no stumbling, no quivering, no mistakes or even the

possibility of a mistake.

Such skill came with specialization, of course--a specialization so

fiercely desired by humanity that few robots of the modern era were

independently brained any more. The great majority of them nowadays were mere

adjuncts of enormously powerful central processing units that had computing

capacities far beyond the space limitations of a single robot frame.

A surgeon, too, really needed to be nothing more than a set of sensors

and monitors and an array of tool-manipulating devices--except that people

still preferred the illusion, if nothing more than that, that they were being

operated on by an individual entity, not by a limb of some remote machine. So

surgeons--the ones in private practice, anyway--were still independently

brained. But this one, brained or not, was so limited in his capacity that he

didn't recognize Andrew Martin--had probably never heard of Andrew Martin at

all, in fact.

That was something of a novelty for Andrew. He was more than a little

famous. He had never asked for his fame, of course--that was not his style--

but fame, or at any rate notoriety, had come to him all the same. Because of

what he had achieved: because of what he was. Not who, but what.

Instead of replying to what the surgeon had asked him Andrew said, with

sudden striking irrelevance, "Tell me something, Doctor. Have you ever thought

you would like to be a man?"

The question, startling and strange, obviously took the surgeon aback.

He hesitated a moment as though the concept of being a man was so alien to him

that it would fit nowhere in his allotted positronic pathways.

Then he recovered his aplomb and replied serenely, "But I am a robot,

sir."

"Wouldn't it be better to be a man, don't you think?"

"If I were allowed the privilege of improving myself, sir, I would

choose to be a better surgeon. The practice of my craft is the prime purpose

of my existence. There is no way I could be a better surgeon if I were a man,

but only if I were a more advanced robot. It would please me very much indeed

to be a more advanced robot."

"But you would still be a robot, even so."

"Yes. Of course. To be a robot is quite acceptable to me. As I have just

explained, sir, in order for one to excel at the extremely difficult and

demanding practice of modern-day surgery it is necessary that one be--"

"A robot, yes," said Andrew, with just a note of exasperation creeping

into his tone. "But think of the subservience involved, Doctor! Consider:

you're a highly skilled surgeon. You deal in the most delicate matters of life

and death--you operate on some of the most important individuals in the world,

and for all I know you have patients come to you from other worlds as well.

And yet--and yet--a robot? You're content with that? For all your skill, you

must take orders from anyone, any human at all: a child, a fool, a boor, a

rogue. The Second Law commands it. It leaves you no choice. Right this minute

I could say, 'Stand up, Doctor,' and you'd have to stand up. 'Put your fingers

over your face and wiggle them,' and you'd wiggle. Stand on one leg, sit down

on the floor, move right or left, anything I wanted to tell you, and you'd

obey. I could order you to disassemble yourself limb by limb, and you would.

You, a great surgeon! No choice at all. A human whistles and you hop to his

tune. Doesn't it offend you that I have the power to make you do whatever

damned thing I please, no matter how idiotic, how trivial, how degrading?"

The surgeon was unfazed.

"It would be my pleasure to please you, sir. With certain obvious

exceptions. If your orders should happen to involve my doing any harm to you

or any other human being, I would have to take the primary laws of my nature

into consideration before obeying you, and in all likelihood I would not obey

you. Naturally the First Law, which concerns my duty to human safety, would

take precedence over the Second Law relating to obedience. Otherwise,

obedience is my pleasure. If it would give you pleasure to require me to do

certain acts that you regard as idiotic or trivial or degrading, I would

perform those acts. But they would not seem idiotic or trivial or degrading to

me."

There was nothing even remotely surprising to Andrew Martin in the

things the robot surgeon had said. He would have found it astonishing, even

revolutionary, if the robot had taken any other position.

But even so--even so--

The surgeon said, with not the slightest trace of impatience in his

smooth bland voice, "Now, if we may return to the subject of this

extraordinary operation that you have come here to discuss, sir. I can barely

comprehend the nature of what you want done. It is hard for me to visualize a

situation that would require such a thing. But what I need to know, first of

all, is the name of the person upon whom I am asked to perform this

operation."

"The name is Andrew Martin," Andrew said. "The operation is to be

performed on me."

"But that would be impossible, sir!"

"Surely you'd be capable of it."

"Capable in a technical sense, yes. I have no serious doubt on that

score, regardless of what may be asked of me, although in this case there are

certain procedural issues that I would have to consider very carefully. But

that is beside the point. I ask you please to bear in mind, sir, that the

fundamental effect of the operation would be harmful to you."

"That does not matter at all," said Andrew calmly.

"It does to me."

"Is this the robot version of the Hippocratic Oath?"

"Something far more stringent than that," the surgeon said. "The

Hippocratic Oath is, of course, a voluntary pledge. But there is, as plainly

you must be aware, something innate in my circuitry itself that controls my

professional decisions. Above and beyond everything else, I must not inflict

damage. I may not inflict damage."

"On human beings, yes."

"Indeed. The First Law says--"

"Don't recite the First Law, Doctor. I know it at least as well as you.

But the First Law simply governs the actions of robots toward human beings.

I'm not human, Doctor."

The surgeon reacted with a visible twitch of his shoulders and a

blinking of his photoelectric eyes. It was as if what Andrew had just said had

no meaning for him whatever.

"Yes," said Andrew, "I know that I seem to be quite human, and that what

you're experiencing now is the robot equivalent of surprise. Nevertheless I'm

telling you the absolute truth. However human I may appear to you, I am simply

a robot. A robot, Doctor. A robot is what I am, and nothing more than that.

Believe me. And therefore you are free to operate on me. There is nothing in

the First Law which prohibits a robot from performing actions on another

robot. Even if the action that is performed should cause harm to that robot,

Doctor."

TWO

IN THE BEGINNING, of course--and the beginning for him was nearly two

centuries before his visit to the surgeon's office--no one could have mistaken

Andrew Martin for anything but the robot he was.

In that long-ago era when he had first come from the assembly line of

United States Robots and Mechanical Men he was as much a robot in appearance

as any that had ever existed, smoothly designed and magnificently functional:

a sleek mechanical object, a positronic brain encased in a more-or-less

humanoid-looking housing made from metal and plastic.

His long slim limbs then were finely articulated mechanisms fashioned

from titanium alloys overlaid by steel and equipped with silicone bushings at

the joints to prevent metal-to-metal contact. His limb sockets were of the

finest flexible polyethylene. His eyes were photoelectric cells that gleamed

with a deep red glow. His face--and to call it that was charitable; it was the

merest perfunctory sketch of a face--was altogether incapable of expression.

His bare, sexless body was unambiguously a manufactured device. All it took

was a single glance to see that he was a machine, no more animate, no more

human, no more alive, than a telephone or a pocket calculator or an

automobile.

But that was in another era, long, long ago.

It was an era when robots were still uncommon sights on Earth--almost

the very dawn of the age of robotics, not much more than a generation after

the days when the great early roboticists like Alfred Lanning and Peter Bogert

and the legendary robopsychologist Susan Calvin had done their historic work,

developing and perfecting the principles by which the first positronic robots

had come into being.

The aim of those pioneers had been to create robots capable of taking up

many of the dreary burdens that human beings had for so long been compelled to

bear. And that was part of the problem that the roboticists faced, in those

dawning days of the science of artificial life late in the Twentieth Century

and early in the Twenty-First: the unwillingness of a great many human beings

to surrender those burdens to mechanical substitutes. Because of that

unwillingness, strict laws had been passed in virtually every country--the

world was still broken up into a multitude of nations, then--against the use

of robot labor on Earth.

By the year 2007 they had been banned entirely everywhere on the planet,

except for scientific research under carefully controlled conditions. Robots

could be sent into space, yes, to the ever-multiplying industrial factories

and exploratory stations off Earth: let them cope with the miseries of frigid

Ganymede and torrid Mercury, let them put up with the inconveniences of

scrabbling around on the surface of Luna, let them run the bewildering risks

of the early Jump experiments that would eventually give mankind the

hyperspace road to the stars.

But robots in free and general use on Earth--occupying precious slots in

the labor force that would otherwise be available for actual naturally-born

flesh-and-blood human beings--no! No! No robots wanted around here!

Well, that had eventually begun to change, of course. And the most

dramatic changes had begun to set in around the time that Robot NDR-113, who

would someday be known as Andrew Martin, had been undergoing assembly at the

main Northern Region factory of United States Robots and Mechanical Men.

One of the factors bringing about the gradual breakdown of the antirobot

prejudices on Earth at that time was simple public relations. United States

Robots and Mechanical Men was not only a scientifically adept organization, it

knew a thing or two about the importance of maintaining its profitability,

too. So it had found ways, quiet and subtle and effective, of chipping away at

the Frankenstein myth of the robot, the concept of the mechanical man as the

dreaded shambling Golem.

Robots are here for our convenience, the U.S.R.M.M. public relations

people said. Robots are here to help us. Robots are not our enemies. Robots

are perfectly safe, safe beyond any possibility of doubt.

And--because in fact all those things were actually true--people began

to accept the presence of robots among them. They did so grudgingly, in the

main. Many people--most, perhaps--were still uncomfortable with the whole idea

of robots; but they recognized the need for them and they could at least

tolerate having them around, so long as tight restrictions on their use

continued to be applied.

There was need for robots, like it or not, because the population of

Earth had started to dwindle about that time. After the long anguish that was

the Twentieth Century, a time of relative tranquility and harmony and even

rationality--a certain degree of that, anyway--had begun to settle over the

world. It became a quieter, calmer, happier place. There were fewer people by

far, not because there had been terrible wars and plagues, but because

families now tended to be smaller, giving preference to quality over quantity.

Migration to the newly settled worlds of space was draining off some of

Earth's population also--migration to the extensive network of underground

settlements on the Moon, to the colonies in the asteroid belt and on the moons

of Jupiter and Saturn, and to the artificial worlds in orbit around Earth and

Mars.

So there was no longer so much excitement over the possibility of losing

one's job to a robot. The fear of job shortages on Earth had given way to the

problem of labor shortages. Suddenly the robots that once had been looked upon

with such uneasiness, fear, and even hatred became necessary to maintain the

welfare of a world that had every material advantage but didn't have enough of

a population left to sweep the streets, drive the taxis, cook the meals, stoke

the furnaces.

It was in this new era of diminishing population and increasing

prosperity that NDR-113--the future Andrew Martin--was manufactured. No longer

was the use of robots illegal on Earth; but strict regulations still applied,

and they were still far from everyday sights. Especially robots who were

programmed for ordinary household duties, which was the primary use that

Gerald Martin had in mind for NDR--113.

Hardly anyone in those days had a robot servant around the house. It was

too frightening an idea for most people--and too expensive, besides.

But Gerald Martin was hardly just anyone. He was a member of the

Regional Legislature, a powerful member at that, Chairman of the Science and

Technology Committee: a man of great presence and authority, of tremendous

force of mind and character. What Gerald Martin set out to achieve, Gerald

Martin inevitably succeeded in achieving. And what Gerald Martin chose to

possess, Gerald Martin would invariably come to possess. He believed in

robots: he knew that they were an inevitable development, that they would

ultimately become inextricably enmeshed in human society at every level.

And so--utilizing his position on the Science and Technology Committee

to the fullest--he had been able to arrange for robots to become a part of his

private life, and that of his family. For the sake of gaining a deeper

understanding of the robot phenomenon, he had explained. For the sake of

helping his fellow members of the Regional Legislature to discover how they

might best grapple with the problems that the coming era of robotic ubiquity

would bring. Bravely, magnanimously, Gerald Martin had offered himself as an

experimental subject and had volunteered to take a small group of domestic

robots into his own home.

The first robots that arrived were simple specialized ones dedicated to

specific routine tasks. They were approximately human in form but they had

little if anything to say and went about their business in the quiet,

efficient manner of the machines that they all too plainly were. At first the

Martins found it strange to have them around, but very quickly they faded into

the background of the family's existence, arousing no more interest than

toasters or vacuum cleaners would.

But then--

"This is NDR-l 13," Gerald Martin announced one cool, windy afternoon in

June, when the delivery truck had rolled up the long driveway that led to the

imposing clifftop estate of the Gerald Martin family and the sleek, shining

mechanical man had been released from his crate. "Our personal household

robot. Our own private family retainer."

"What did you call him?" Amanda asked. Amanda was the younger of the two

Martin daughters, a small golden-haired child with penetrating blue eyes. She

was just beginning to learn to read and write, then.

"NDR-113."

"Is that his name?"

"His serial number, actually."

Amanda frowned. "En-dee-arr. Endeearr 113. That's a peculiar name."

"Serial number," Gerald Martin said again.

But Amanda wanted no part of that. "Endeearr. We can't call him

something like that. It doesn't sound like any kind of name anything ought to

have."

"Listen to her," Melissa Martin said. Melissa was the older Martin girl:

five years older than Amanda, dark-haired, dark-eyed. Melissa was practically

a woman, so far as Melissa was concerned. Amanda was merely a child, and

therefore Melissa regarded her as foolish by definition. "She doesn't like the

robot's serial number."

"En-dee-arr," Amanda said again, elaborately paying no attention to

Melissa. "That isn't any good. It really isn't. What about calling him

Andrew?"

"Andrew?" Gerald Martin said. "It's got an n in it, doesn't it? And a

d?" For a moment Amanda looked a little doubtful. "Sure it does. And an r,

that much I'm certain of. N-D-R. Andrew."

"Just listen to her," Melissa said scornfully. But Gerald Martin was

smiling. He knew that it wasn't at all unusual to adapt a robot's serial

letters into a name. Robots of the JN series tended to become Johns or Janes.

RG robots became Archies. QT robots were called Cuties. Well, here was an NDR-

series robot, and Amanda wanted to call him Andrew. Fine. Fine. Gerald Martin

had a way of letting Amanda do what Amanda thought was best for Amanda. Within

limits, of course.

"Very well," he said. " Andrew it is."

And Andrew it was. So much so that, as the years went along, no one in

the Martin family ever called him NDR--113 again. In time his serial number

was forgotten altogether, and it had to be looked up whenever he needed to be

taken in for maintenance. Andrew himself claimed to have forgotten his own

number. Of course, that wasn't strictly true. No matter how much time might go

by, he could never forget anything, not if he wanted to remember it.

But as time went on, and things began to change for Andrew, he had less

and less desire to remember the number. He left it safely hidden away in the

oblivion of his memory banks and never thought of going searching for it. He

was Andrew now--Andrew Martin--the Andrew of the Martin family

Andrew was tall and slender and graceful, because that was how NDR

robots were designed to look. He moved quietly and unobtrusively around the

splendid house that the Martin family occupied overlooking the Pacific,

efficiently doing all that the Martins required him to do.

It was a house out of a vanished age, a grand and majestic mansion that

really required a grand retinue of servants to keep it up; but of course there

were no servants to be had any longer, except for robots, and that had been

causing some problems for the Martins before Gerald Martin offered himself up

for this experiment. Now a pair of robot gardeners tended the glistening green

lawns and pruned the glorious hedges of fiery red azaleas and trimmed away the

dead fronds of the towering palm trees that ran along the ridge behind the

house. A robot housecleaner kept dust and cobwebs at bay. And Andrew the robot

served as valet, butler, lady's maid, and chauffeur for the Martin family. He

prepared meals; he selected and poured the wines of which Gerald Martin was so

fond; he supervised their wardrobes; he arranged and cared for their fine

furniture, their works of art, their myriad distinctive possessions.

Andrew had one other duty, too, which in fact monopolized much of his

time to the detriment of the rest of his formal household routine.

The Martin estate--for that was what it was, nothing less, a great

estate--was an isolated one, alone on its beautiful ridge overlooking the

chilly blue ocean. There was a little town nearby, but it was some distance

away. The nearest city of any size, San Francisco, was far down the coast.

Cities were starting to become obsolete now, anyway, and people preferred to

communicate electronically and keep plenty of distance between one house and

the next. So the Martin girls, in their grand and wonderful isolation, had

very few playmates.

They did, however, have Andrew.

It was Miss who first figured out how that might best be arranged.

("Miss" was what Andrew invariably called Melissa, not because he was

incapable of pronouncing her first name but because it seemed improper to him

to address her in such a familiar way. Amanda was always "Little Miss"--never

anything else. Mrs. Martin--Lucie was her first name--was "Ma'am" to Andrew.

And as for Gerald Martin, he was "Sir." Gerald Martin was the sort of

individual whom many people, not simply robots, felt most comfortable calling

"Sir." The number of people in the world who called him "Gerald" was a very

small number indeed, and it was impossible to suppose him being "Jerry" to

anybody at all.)

Miss quickly came to understand more than a little about how to take

advantage of the presence of a robot in the house. It was a simple matter of

utilizing the Second Law.

"Andrew," she said, "we order you to stop what you're doing and play

with us."

At the moment Andrew was arranging the books in the Martin library,

which had wandered a little out of alphabetical order, as books have a way of

doing.

He paused and looked down from the high mahogany bookcase between the

two great leaded-glass windows at the north end of the room. Mildly he said,

"I'm sorry, Miss. I'm occupied at present by a task requested by your father.

A prior order from Sir must take precedence over this request of yours."

"I heard what Daddy told you," Miss replied. "He said, 'I'd like you to

tidy up those books, Andrew. Get them back into some kind of sensible

arrangement.' Isn't that so?"

"That is exactly what he said, yes, Miss. Those were his very words."

"Well, then, if all he said was that he'd like you to tidy up those

books --and you don't deny that he did--then it wasn't much of an order, was

it? It was more of a preference. A suggestion. A suggestion isn't an order.

Neither is a preference. Andrew, I order you. Leave the books where they are

and come take Amanda and me out for a walk along the beach."

It was a perfect application of the Second Law. Andrew put the books

down immediately and descended from his ladder. Sir was the head of the

household; but he hadn't actually given an order, not in the formal sense of

the concept, and Miss had. She certainly had. And an order from a human member

of this household--any human member of the household--had to take priority

over a mere expression of preference from some other human member of the

household, even if that member happened to be Sir himself.

Not that Andrew had any problem with any of that. He was fond of Miss,

and even more fond of Little Miss. At least, the effect that they had upon his

actions was that which in a human being would have been called the result of

fondness. Andrew thought of it as fondness, for he didn't know any other term

for what he felt toward the two girls. Certainly he felt something. That in

itself was a little odd, but he supposed that a capacity for fondness had been

built into him, the way his various other skills had been. And so if they

wanted him to come out and play with them, he'd do it happily--provided they

made it permissible for him to do it within the context of the Three Laws.

The trail down to the beach was a steep and winding one, strewn with

rocks and gopher-holes and other troublesome obstacles. No one but Miss and

Little Miss used it very often, because the beach itself was nothing more than

a ragged sandy strand covered with driftwood and storm-tossed seaweed, and the

ocean, in this northern part of California, was far too chilly for anyone

without a wetsuit to consider entering. But the girls loved its bleak, moody,

windswept charm.

As they scrambled down the trail Andrew held Miss by the hand and

carried Little Miss in the crook of his arm. Very likely both girls could have

made their way down the path without incident, but Sir had been very strict

about the beach trail. "Make sure they don't run or jump around, Andrew. If

they tripped over something in the wrong place it would be a fifty-foot drop.

I can't stop them from going down there, but I want you to be right beside

them at all times to be certain they don't do anything foolish. That's an

order."

One of these days, Andrew knew, Miss or even Little Miss was going to

countermand that order and tell him to stand aside while they ran giddily down

the hill to the beach. When that happened it would set up a powerful

equipotential of contradiction in his positronic brain and beyond much doubt

he would be hard pressed to deal with it.

Sir's order would ultimately prevail, naturally, since it embodied

elements of the First Law as well as the Second, and anything that involved

First Law prohibitions always took highest priority. Still, Andrew knew that

his circuitry would be stressed more than a little the first time a direct

conflict between Sir's decree and the girls' whims came into play.

For the moment, though, Miss and Little Miss were content to abide by

the rules. Carefully, step by step, he made his way down the face of the cliff

with the girls in tow.

At the bottom Andrew released Miss's hand and set Little Miss down on

the damp sand. Immediately they went streaking off, running gleefully along

the edge of the fierce, snarling sea.

"Seaweed!" Miss cried, grabbing up a thick brown ropy length of kelp

that was longer than she was and swinging it like a whip. "Look at this big

chunk of seaweed, Andrew!"

"And this piece of driftwood," said Little Miss. "Isn't it beautiful,

Melissa?"

"Maybe to you," the older girl said loftily. She took the gnarled and

bent bit of wood from Little Miss, examined it in a perfunctory way, and

tossed it aside with a shudder. "Ugh. It's got things growing on it."

"They're just another kind of seaweed," Little Miss said. "Right,

Andrew?"

She picked up the discarded piece of driftwood and handed it to him for

inspection.

"Algae, yes," he said.

"Algy?"

"Algae. The technical term for seaweed."

"Oh. Algy." Little Miss laughed and put the bit of driftwood down near

the beginning of the trail, so she would remember to take it with her when

they went up to the house again. Then she rampaged off down the beach again,

following her older sister through the foamy fringes of the surf.

Andrew kept pace with them without difficulty. He did not intend to let

them get very far from him at any time.

He had needed no special orders from Sir to protect the girls while they

were actually on the beach: the First Law took care of that. The ocean here

was not only wild-looking but exceedingly dangerous: the currents were strong

and unpredictable, the water was intolerably cold at almost any time of the

year, and the great rocky fangs of a deadly reef rose from the swirling

breakers less than fifty meters offshore. If Miss or Little Miss should make

the slightest move to enter the sea, Andrew would be beside them in an

instant.

But they had more sense than to want to go swimming in this impossible

ocean. The shore along this part of the Pacific coast was a beautiful thing to

behold in its harsh, bleak way, but the sea itself, forever angry and

turbulent, was the enemy of those who were not bred for it, and even a small

child could see that at a glance.

Miss and Little Miss were wading in the tide pools now, peering at the

dark periwinkles and gray-green limpets and pink-and-purple anemones and the

myriad little scuttling hermit crabs, and searching--as they always did,

rarely with much luck--for a starfish. Andrew stood nearby, poised and ready

in the event that a sudden wave should rise without warning nearby and sweep

toward shore. The sea was quiet today, as quiet as that savage body of water

ever got, but perilous waves were apt to come out of nowhere at any time.

Miss said suddenly, "Andrew, do you know how to swim?"

"I could do it if it were necessary, Miss."

"It wouldn't short-circuit your brain, or anything? If water got in, I

mean?"

"I am very well insulated," Andrew told her.

"Good. Swim out to that gray rock and back, then. The ones where the

cormorants are nesting. I want to see how fast you can do it."

"Melissa--" said Little Miss uneasily.

"Shh, Amanda. I want Andrew to go out there. Maybe he can find some

cormorant eggs and bring them back to show us."

"It would not be good to disturb the nest, Miss, " said Andrew gently.

"I said I wanted you to go out there."

"Melissa--" Little Miss said again, more sharply.

But Miss was insistent. It was an order. Andrew felt the preliminary

signs of contradictory potentials building up: a faint trembling in his

fingertips, a barely perceptible sense of vertigo. Orders were to be obeyed:

that was the Second Law. Miss could order him to swim to China this minute,

and Andrew would do it without hesitation if no other considerations were

involved. But he was here to protect the girls. What would happen if something

unexpected befell them while he was out by the cormorant rock? A sudden

menacing wave, a rockslide, even an earthquake--earthquakes weren't everyday

occurrences here, but they certainly could happen at any time

It was a pure First Law issue.

"I am sorry, Miss. With no adults here to guard you, I am unable to

leave you unattended long enough to swim to that rock and back. If Sir or

Ma'am were present, that would be a different matter, but as it is--"

"Don't you recognize an order when you hear one? I want you to swim out

there, Andrew."

"As I have explained, Miss--"

"You don't have to worry about us. It's not as though I'm a child,

Andrew. What do you think, that some sort of terrible ogre is going to come

down the beach and gobble us up while you're in the water? I can look after

myself, thank you, and I'll take care of Amanda too if I have to."

Little Miss said, "You aren't being fair to him, Melissa. He's got his

orders from Daddy."

"And now he has his orders from me." Miss gestured peremptorily. "Swim

out to the cormorant rock, Andrew. Go ahead. Now, Andrew."

Andrew felt himself growing a little warm, and ordered his circuitry to

make the necessary homeostatic correction.

"The First Law--" he began.

"What a bore you are! You and your First Law both!" cried Melissa.

"Can't you forget the First Law once in a while? But no, no, you can't do

that, can you? You've got those silly laws wired into you and there's no

getting around them. You're nothing but a dumb machine."

"Melissa!" Little Miss said indignantly.

"Yes, that is true," said Andrew. "As you correctly state, I am nothing

but a dumb machine. And therefore I have no ability to countermand your

father's order concerning your safety on the beach." He bowed slightly in

Melissa's direction. "I deeply regret this, Miss."

Little Miss said, "If you want to see Andrew swim so much, Melissa, why

don't you just have him wade into the surf and do some swimming right close to

shore? There wouldn't be any harm in that, would there?"

"It wouldn't be the same thing," Miss said, pouting. "Not at all."

But, Andrew reflected, perhaps that would satisfy her. He disliked being

the focus of so much disharmony.

"Let me show you," he said.

He waded in. The heavy foam-flecked surf thundered up violently around

his knees, but Andrew was able easily to adjust his gyroscopic stabilizers as

the force of the breaking waves assailed him. The rough, sharp rocks that were

scattered allover the sea floor meant nothing to his metallic treads. His

sensors told him that the temperature of the water was well below human

comfort tolerance, but that, too, was irrelevant to him.

Four or five meters out, the water was deep enough so that Andrew could

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THEPOSITRONICMANIsaacAsimovAndRobertSilverbergForJanetandKaren--withmuchloveTHETHREELAWSOFROBOTICS1.Arobotmaynotinjureahumanbeing,or,throughinaction,allowahumanbeingtocometoharm.2.ArobotmustobeytheordersgivenitbyhumanbeingsexceptwheresuchorderswouldconflictwiththeFirstLaw.3.Arobotmustprotectitsownex...

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Isaac Asimov & Robert Silverberg - The Positronic Man

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