Andrew hesitated a full minute. It amounted to the approval of lying, of blackmail, of the badgering and humiliation of a human being. But not physical harm, he told himself, not physical harm.
He managed at last to come out with a rather faint “Yes.”
He felt as though he were being constructed again. For days, then for weeks, finally for months, Andrew found himself not himself somehow, and the simplest actions kept giving rise to hesitation.
Paul was frantic. “They’ve damaged you, Andrew. We’ll have to institute suit!”
Andrew spoke very slowly. “You- mustn’t. You’ll never be able to prove- something- like m-m-m-m- ”
“Malice?”
“Malice. Besides, I grow- stronger, better. It’s the tr- tr- tr- ”
“Tremble?”
“Trauma. After all, there’s never been such an op-op-op- before.”
Andrew could feel his brain from the inside. No one else could. He knew he was well, and during the months that it took him to learn full coordination and full positronic interplay he spent hours before the mirror.
Not quite human! The face was stiff- too stiff and the motions were too deliberate. They lacked the careless, free flow of the human being, but perhaps that might come with time. At least now he could wear clothes without the ridiculous anomaly of a metal face going along with it.
Eventually, he said, “I will be going back to work.”
Paul laughed. “That means you are well. What will you be doing? Another book?”
“No,” said Andrew, seriously. “I live too long for any one career to seize me by the throat and never let me go. There was a time when I was primarily an artist, and I can still turn to that. And there was a time when I was a historian, and I can still turn to that. But now I wish to be a robobiologist.”
“A robopsychologist, you mean.”
“No. That would imply the study of positronic brains, and at the moment I lack the desire to do that. A robobiologist, it seems to me, would be concerned with the working of the body attached to that brain.”
“Wouldn’t that be a roboticist?”
“A roboticist works with a metal body. I would be studying an organic humanoid body, of which I have the only one, as far as I know.”
“You narrow your field,” said Paul, thoughtfully. “As an artist, all conception is yours; as a historian you deal chiefly with robots; as a robobiologist, you will deal with yourself.”
Andrew nodded. “It would seem so.”
Andrew had to start from the very beginning, for he knew nothing of ordinary biology and almost nothing of science. He became a familiar sight in the libraries, where he sat at the electronic indices for hours at a time, looking perfectly normal in clothes. Those few who knew he was a robot in no way interfered with him.
He built a laboratory in a room which he added to his house; and his library grew, too.
Years passed, and Paul came to him one day and said, “It’s a pity you’re no longer working on the history of robots. I understand U.S. Robots is adopting a radically new policy.”
Paul had aged, and his deteriorating eyes had been replaced with photoptic cells. In that respect, he had drawn closer to Andrew.
“What have they done?” Andrew asked.
“They are manufacturing central computers, gigantic positronic brains, really, which communicate with anywhere from a dozen to a thousand robots by microwave. The robots themselves have no brains at all. They are the limbs of the gigantic brain, and the two are physically separate.”
“Is that more efficient?”
“U.S. Robots claims it is. Smythe-Robertson established the new direction before he died, however, and it’s my notion that it’s a backlash at you. U.S. Robots is determined that they will make no robots that will give them the type of trouble you have, and for that reason they separate brain and body. The brain will have no body to wish changed; the body will have no brain to wish anything.
“It’s amazing, Andrew,” Paul went on, “the influence you have had on the history of. robots. It was your artistry that encouraged U.S. Robots to make robots more precise and specialized; it was your freedom that resulted in the establishment of the principle of robotic rights; it was your insistence on an android body that made U.S. Robots switch to brain-body separation”
Andrew grew thoughtful. “I suppose in the end the corporation will produce one vast brain controlling several billion robotic bodies. All the eggs will be in one basket. Dangerous. Not proper at all.”
“I think you’re right,” said Paul, “but I don’t suspect it will come to pass for a century at least and I won’t live to see it. In fact, I may not live to see next year.”
“Paul!” cried Andrew, in concern.
Paul shrugged. “Men are mortal, Andrew. We’re not like you. It doesn’t matter too much, but it does make it important to assure you on one point. I’m the last of the human Martins. The money I control personally will be left to the trust in your name, and as far as anyone can foresee the future, you will be economically secure.”
“Unnecessary,” Andrew said, with difficulty. In all this time, he could not get used to the deaths of the Martins.
“Let’s not argue. That’s the way it’s going to be. Now, what are you working on?”
“I am designing a system for allowing androids- myself- to gain energy from the combustion of hydrocarbons, rather than from atomic cells.”
Paul raised his eyebrows. “So that they will breathe and eat?”
“Yes.”
“How long have you been pushing in that direction?”
“For a long time now, but I think I have finally designed an adequate combustion chamber for catalyzed controlled breakdown.”
“But why, Andrew? The atomic cell is surely infinitely better.”
“In some ways, perhaps. But the atomic cell is inhuman.”
It took time, but Andrew had time. In the first place, he did not wish to do anything till Paul had died in peace. With the death of the great-grandson of Sir, Andrew felt more nearly exposed to a hostile world and for that reason was all the more determined along the path he had chosen.
Yet he was not really alone. If a man had died, the firm of Feingold and Martin lived, for a corporation does not die any more than a robot does.
The firm had its directions and it followed them soullessly. By way of the trust and through the law firm, Andrew continued to be wealthy. In return for their own large annual retainer, Feingold and Martin involved themselves in the legal aspects of the new combustion chamber. But when the time came for Andrew to visit U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation, he did it alone. Once he had gone with Sir and once with Paul. This time, the third time, he was alone and manlike.
U.S. Robots had changed. The actual production plant had been shifted to a large space station, as had grown to be the case with more and more industries. With them had gone many robots. The Earth itself was becoming park like, with its one-billion-person population stabilized and perhaps not more than thirty percent of its at-least-equally-large robot population independently brained.
The Director of Research was Alvin Magdescu, dark of complexion and hair, with a little pointed beard and wearing nothing above the waist but the breast band that fashion dictated. Andrew himself was well covered in the older fashion of several decades back.
Magdescu offered his hand to his visitor. “I know you, of course, and I’m rather pleased to see you. You’re our most notorious product and it’s a pity old Smythe-Robertson was so set against you. We could have done a great deal with you.”
“You still can,” said Andrew.
“No, I don’t think so. We’re past the time. We’ve had robots on Earth for over a century, but that’s changing. It will be back to space with them, and those that stay here won’t be brained.”