Positronic Man, The - Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg

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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 swim in it, and yet he
was still close enough to shore to be able to get back to land in a moment if need be. He doubted that need
would be. The girls stood side by side on the beach, watching him in fascination.
Andrew had never gone swimming before. There had never been the slightest reason for him to do
so. But he had been programmed for grace and coordination under all circumstances, and it took him no
more than a microsecond to calculate the nature of the motions necessary to propel him through the water
just below the surface--the rhythmic kicking of the legs, the lifting of the arms, the cupping of the hands.
Deftly he glided along parallel to the shore for perhaps a dozen meters, swimming smoothly, efficiently,
powerfully. Then he turned and returned to his starting point. The whole excursion had taken just a few
摘要：

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

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