The Positronic Man (13 page)

"But they might have, if things had gone on any further."

"That is only a speculation. In my judgment, George-"

"Yes. I know. Most likely they'd never have had the guts to raise a hand against me. But in any case I didn't order you to attack them. I only told you to move toward them. Their own fears did all the rest. That and that prizefighter stance that you were clever enough to adopt."

"But how could they possibly fear robots? The First Law insures that a robot could never-"

"Fear of robots is a disease that much of mankind has, and there doesn't really seem to be any cure for it-not yet, at any rate. But never mind that. They're gone and you're still in one piece and that's all that matters right now. What I'd like to know, though, is what the devil were you doing here in the first place, Andrew?"

"I was going to the library."

"Yes. I know that. I found the note you left. But this isn't the way to the library. The library's back there, in town. And when I phoned the library the librarian said you hadn't been there, that she hadn't heard a thing from you. I went out looking for you on the library road and there wasn't any sign of you there, and nobody I met along the way to town had seen you either. So I knew you were lost. As a matter of fact, you've gotten yourself turned around by 180 degrees."

"I suspected that there was some error in my directional plan," Andrew said.

"There certainly was. I was just about ready to order a sky-search scan for you, do you know that? And then it occurred to me that you might have wandered over this way, somehow. -What were you doing going to the library anyway, Andrew? Sometimes you get the strangest ideas into your head. You know that I'd be happy to bring you any book you needed."

"Yes, I know that, George. But I am a-"

"Free robot. Yes. Yes. With every right to pick himself up and march off to town to use the library, if that's what he wants to do, even though his extraordinary robotic intelligence is mysteriously incapable of keeping him on the right road. And what was it, may I ask, that you wanted to get at the library?"

"A book on modern language."

"Are you planning to give up woodworking for linguistics, Andrew?"

"I feel inadequate in regard to speech."

"But you have a fantastic command of the language! Your vocabulary, your grammar-"

"The language-its metaphors, its colloquialisms, even its grammar-constantly changes, George. My programming does not. If I don't update myself, I will be almost unable to communicate with human beings in another few generations."

"Well-perhaps you have a point there."

"So I must study the patterns of linguistic change. And many other things as well." Suddenly Andrew heard himself saying, "George, I feel it's important that I get to know much more about human beings, about the world, about everything. I have lived such an isolated life all these years, in our beautiful estate here on this little secluded strip of coast. The world beyond my own doorstep is a mystery to me, really. -and I need to know more about robots also, George. I want to write a book about them."

"A book," George said, sounding puzzled. " About robots. A manual of design?"

"Not at all. A history of their development is what I have in mind."

"Ah," George said, nodding and frowning at the same time. "Well, then. Let's walk home, shall we?"

"Of course. May I put my clothes on or shall I simply carry them?"

"Put them on. By all means."

"Thank you."

Andrew dressed quickly and he and George began to walk back up the road.

"You want to write a book on the history of robotics," George said, as if revolving the concept in his mind. "But why, Andrew? There are a million books on robotics already and at least half a million of them go into the history of the robot concept. The world is growing saturated not only with robots but with information about robots."

Andrew shook his head, a human gesture that he had lately begun to make more and more frequently. "Not a history of robotics, George. A history of robots-by a robot. Surely no such book has ever been written. I want to explain how robots feel about themselves. And especially about how it has been for us in our relationships with human beings, ever since the first robots were allowed to work and live on Earth."

George's eyebrows lifted. But he offered no other direct response.

LITTLE MISS was making one of her periodic visits to her family's California estate. She had reached her eighty-third birthday and she seemed frail as a bird these days. But there was nothing about her that was lacking in either energy or determination. Though she carried a cane, she used it more often to gesture with than she did for support.

She listened to the story of Andrew's unhappy attempt to reach the library in a fury of mounting indignation. At the end she tapped her cane vehemently against the floor and said, "George, that's absolutely horrible. Who were those two young ruffians, anyway?"

"I don't know, Mother."

"Then you should make it your business to find out."

"What difference does it make? Just a couple of local hooligans, I suppose. The usual idling foolish kids. In the end they didn't do any damage."

"But they might have. If you hadn't come along when you did, they could have caused serious harm to Andrew. And even when you did come along, you might well have been physically attacked yourself. The only thing that saved you from that, it seems, is that they were so stupid that they failed to realize that Andrew wouldn't be able to harm them even at your direct order."

"Really, Mother. Do you think they would have touched me? People attacking an absolute stranger on a country road? In the Twenty-Third Century?"

"Well-perhaps not. But Andrew was certainly in danger. And that's something we can't allow. You know that I regard Andrew as a member of our family, George."

"Yes, of course. So do I. We always have."

"Then we can't permit a couple of moronic young louts to treat him like some kind of disposable wind-up toy, can we?"

"What would you have me do, Mother?" asked George.

"You're a lawyer, aren't you? Put your legal training to some good use, then! Listen to me: I want you to set up a test case, somehow, that will force the Regional Court to declare for robot rights, and then get the Regional Legislature to pass the necessary enabling bills, and if there are any political problems you carry the whole thing to the World Court, if you have to. I'll be watching, George, and I'll tolerate no shirking. "

"Mother, didn't you say just a short while ago that what you wanted most in the world for me was that I run for the seat that Grandfather held in the Legislature?"

"Yes, of course. But what does that have to do with-"

"And now you want me to launch a controversial campaign for robot rights. Robots can't vote, Mother. But there are plenty of human beings who do, and a lot of them aren't as fond of robots as you are. Do you know what will happen to my candidacy if the main thing that people know about me is that I was the lawyer who forced the Legislature to pass robot-rights laws?"

"So?"

"Which is more important to you, Mother? That I get elected to the Legislature, or that I get myself involved with this test case of yours?"

"The test case, naturally," said Little Miss at once.

George nodded. " All right. I just wanted to make sure we had things perfectly clear. I'll go out there and fight for civil rights for robots, if that's what you want me to do. But it's going to be the end of my political career even before my political career has begun, and you have to realize that."

"Of course I realize that, George. You may find that you're mistaken-I don't know-but in any case, the main thing is that I want Andrew to be protected against a repetition of this brutal incident. First and foremost that is what I want."

"Well, then," said George. "That's what I'll see that you get, Mother. You can count on it "

He began his campaign right away. And what had begun simply as a way of placating the fearsome old lady swiftly turned into the fight of his life.

George Charney had never really yearned for a seat in the Legislature, anyway. So he was able to tell himself that he was off that hook, now that his mother had decided that he should be a civil-rights crusader instead. And the lawyer in him was fascinated by the challenge. There were deep and profound legal implications to the campaign that called for the most careful analysis and calculation.

As senior partner of Feingold and Charney, George plotted much of the strategy, but left the actual work of research and filing papers to his junior partners. He placed his own son Paul, who had become a member of the firm three years before, in charge of piloting the day-by-day maneuvers. Paul had the additional responsibility of making dutiful progress reports virtually every day to his grandmother. She, in turn, discussed the campaign every day with Andrew.

Andrew was deeply involved. He had begun work on his book on robots-he was going back to the very beginning, to Lawrence Robertson and the founding of United States Robots and Mechanical Men-but he put the project aside, now, and spent his time poring over the mounting stacks of legal documents. He even, at times, offered a few very different suggestions of his own.

To Little Miss he said, "George told me the day those two men were harassing me that human beings have always been afraid of robots. ' A disease of mankind,' is what he called it. As long as that is the case, it seems to me that the courts and the legislatures aren't likely to do very much on behalf of robots. Robots have no political power, after all, and people do. Shouldn't something be done about changing the human attitude toward robots, then?"

"If only we could."

"We have to try," Andrew said. "George has to try."

"Yes," said Little Miss. "He does, doesn't he?"

So while Paul stayed in court, it was George who took to the public platform. He gave himself up entirely to the task of campaigning for the civil rights of robots, putting all of his time and energy into it.

George had always been a good speaker, easy and informal, and now he became a familiar figure at conventions of lawyers and teachers and holo-news editors, and on every opinion show on the public airwaves, setting forth the case for robot rights with an eloquence that grew steadily with experience.

The more time George spent on public platforms and in the communications studios, the more relaxed and yet commanding a figure he became. He allowed his side-whiskers to grow again, and swept his hair-white, now-backward in a grandiose plume. He even indulged in the new style of clothing that some of the best-known video commentators were going in for, the loose, flowing style known as "drapery." Wearing it made him feel like a Greek philosopher, he said, or like a member of the ancient Roman Senate.

Paul Charney, who was generally a good deal more conservative in his ways than his father, warned him the first time he saw his father rigged out like that: "Just take care not to trip over it on stage, Dad;"

''I'll try not to," said George.

The essence of his pro-robot argument was this:

"If, by virtue of the Second Law, we can demand of any robot unlimited obedience in all respects not involving harm to a human being, then any human being, any human being at all, has a fearsome power over any robot, any robot. In particular, since Second Law overrides Third Law, any human being can use the law of obedience to defeat the law of self-protection. He can order the robot to damage itself or even destroy itself for any reason, or for no reason whatsoever-purely on whim alone.

"Let us leave the question of property rights out of the discussion here -though it is not a trivial one-and approach the issue simply on the level of sheer human decency. Imagine someone approaching a robot he happens to encounter on the road and ordering it, for no reason other than his own amusement, to remove its own limbs, or to do some other grave injury to itself. Or let us say that the robot's owner himself, in a moment of pique or boredom or frustration, gives such an order.

"Is this just? Would we treat an animal like that? And an animal, mind you, might at least have the capacity to defend itself. But we have made our robots inherently unable to lift a hand against a human being.

"Even an inanimate object which has given us good service has a claim on our consideration. And a robot is far from insensible; it is not a simple machine and it is not an animal. It can think well enough to enable it to speak with us, reason with us, joke with us. Many of us who have lived and worked with robots all our lives have come to regard them as friends -virtually as members of our families, I dare say. We have deep respect for them, even affection. Is it asking too much to want to give our robot friends the formal protection of law?

"If a man has the right to give a robot any order that does not involve doing harm to a human being, he should have the decency never to give a robot any order that involves doing harm to a robot-unless human safety absolutely requires such action. Certainly a robot should not lightly be asked to do purposeless harm to itself. With great power goes great responsibility. If the robots have the Three Laws to protect humans, is it too much to ask that humans subject themselves to a law or two for the sake of protecting robots?"

There was, of course, another side to the issue-and the spokesman for that side was none other than James Van Buren, the lawyer who had opposed Andrew's original petition for free-robot status in the Regional Court. He was old, now, but still vigorous, a powerful advocate of traditional social beliefs. In his calm, balanced, reasonable way, Van Buren was once again a forceful speaker on behalf of those who denied that robots could in any way be considered worthy of having "rights."

He said, "Of course I hold no brief for vandals who would wantonly destroy a robot that does not belong to them, or order it to destroy itself. That is a civil offense, pure and simple, which can readily be punished through the usual legal channels. We no more need a special law to cover such cases than we need a specific law that says it is wrong for people to smash the windows of other people's houses. The general law of the sanctity of property provides sufficient protection.

"But a law preventing one from destroying one's own robot? Ah, now we venture into very different areas of thinking. I have robots in my own law office, and it would no more occur to me to destroy one than it would for me to take an axe to a desk. Still, is there anyone who would argue that I should be stripped of the right to do as I please with my own robots, or my own desks, or any other article of office furniture that I may own? Can the State, in its infinite wisdom, come into my office and say, 'No, James Van Buren, you must be kind to your desks, and spare them from injury. Likewise your filing cabinets: they must be treated with respect, they must be treated as friends. And the same applies, naturally, to your robots. In no way, James Van Buren, may you place the robots you own in jeopardy.' "

Van Buren would pause, then, and smile in his calm and reasonable way, letting everyone know that this was strictly a hypothetical example, that in fact he was not the sort of man who would do injury to anyone or anything.

And then he would say, "I can hear George Charney replying that a robot is fundamentally different from a desk or a filing cabinet, that a robot is intelligent and responsive, that robots should be regarded virtually as human. And I would reply to him that he is mistaken, that he is so bemused by affection for the robot that his own family has kept for many decades that he has lost sight of what robots really are.

"They are machines, my friends. They are tools. They are appliances. What they are is mere mechanical contrivances, neither more nor less deserving of legal protection than any other inanimate object. Yes, I said inanimate. They can speak, yes. They can think, in their own rigid preprogrammed way. But when you prick a robot, does it bleed? If you tickle one, will it laugh? Robots have hands and senses, yes, because we have constructed them that way, but do they have true human affections and passions? Hardly. Hardly! And therefore let us not confuse machines made in the image of mankind with living things.

"And I must point out, too, that humanity in this century has become dependent on robot labor. There are more robots in the world than there are people, now, and in the main they do the jobs that none of us would be willing to touch. They have freed humanity from dreary drudgery and degradation. To confuse the robot issue with the ancient debates over slavery and the later debates over freedom for those slaves and the still later debates over full civil rights for the descendants of the freed slaves will ultimately lead to economic chaos, when our robots begin to demand not simply the protection of the law but independence from their masters. Those slaves of centuries gone by were human beings who were cruelly taken advantage of and mistreated. No one had any right to force them into servitude. But robots were brought into the world to serve. By definition they are here to be used: not to be our friends but to be our servants. And to take any other position is a wrongheaded, sentimental, dangerous way of thinking."

George Charney was a persuasive orator, but so was James Van Buren. And in the end the battle-fought mainly in the court of public opinion, rather than in the Legislature or the Regional Court-ended in something of a stalemate.

There were a great many people now who had been able to transcend the fear or dislike of robots that had been so widespread a couple of generations earlier, and George's arguments struck home with them. They too had begun to look upon their robots with a certain degree of affection, and wanted them afforded some kind of legal security.

But then there were the others, who may not have feared robots themselves so much as they did the financial risks that they might somehow experience as a result of extending civil rights to robots. They urged caution in this new legal arena.

So when the battle at last was over and pro-robot legislation came forth, setting up conditions under which it was illegal to issue an order that might harm a robot, the law that was passed by the Regional Legislature, sent back for revisions by the Regional Court, passed again in a modified way, this time upheld in the Regional Court, and eventually ratified by the World Legislature and upheld after a final appeal to the World Court, was a very tepid one indeed. It was endlessly qualified and the punishments for violating its provisions were totally inadequate.