The Positronic Man (2 page)

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 moments.

And it had had the desired effect on Miss.

"You're a wonderful swimmer, Andrew," she told him. Her eyes were shining. "I'm sure you'd break all the records if you ever entered a swimming meet."

"There are no swimming meets for robots, Miss," Andrew told her gravely.

Miss giggled. "I mean a human swimming meet! Like in the Olympics!"

"Oh, Miss, Miss! How unfair that would be, if they allowed a robot to compete in the Olympics against humans! It could never happen."

She considered that for a moment.

"I suppose not," she said. Wistfully she looked toward the cormorant rock. "Are you sure you won't swim out there? I bet you could get there and back in two minutes. What could possibly happen to us in two minutes?"

"Melissa-" Little Miss said again.

Andrew said, "I completely understand your desire to have me do it, Miss. But I am not able to fulfill your wish. Again, I deeply regret-"

"Oh, all right. I'm sorry I asked."

"You aren't," Little Miss said. "I am."

"And you called Andrew a dumb machine! That wasn't nice!"

"It's true, isn't it?" Miss asked. "He told us himself that it was true!"

"He is a machine, I suppose," Little Miss conceded. "But he isn't dumb at all. And anyway it wasn't a polite thing for you to say."

"I don't have to be polite to robots. It's like being polite to a television set."

"It's different!" Little Miss insisted. "It's entirely different!"

And then she was crying, and Andrew had to scoop her up and whirl her around until she was so distracted by the vast cloudless sweep of the sky and the strangeness of the upside-down ocean that she forgot why she had been upset.

A little while afterward Miss came up to him, while Little Miss was poking in the tide pools again, and said in a low, contrite voice, "I'm sorry I said what I did, Andrew."

"That's all right, Miss. "

"Will you forgive me? I know I wasn't nice. I really wanted you to swim out there and I didn't stop to think that you aren't allowed to leave us alone when we're down here. I'm very sorry, Andrew."

"There is no need for you to apologize, Miss. Truly there isn't."

Nor was there. How could a robot possibly take offense at anything a human said or did? But somehow Andrew thought it best not to point that out to her just now. If Miss felt a need to apologize, he must permit her to fulfill that need-even though her cruel words had not disturbed him in the first place.

It would be absurd for him to deny that he was a machine. That was exactly what he was.

And as for being a dumb machine, well, he had no real idea of what she had meant by that. He had adequate intelligence capacity to meet the needs placed upon him. Doubtless there were robots more intelligent than he was, but he had not encountered them. Had she meant that he was less intelligent than humans are? The statement was meaningless to him. He knew no way of comparing robot intelligence with human intelligence. Quantitatively and qualitatively, their manners of thinking were two entirely different processes-everyone was agreed on that.

Soon the wind became chillier. It whipped the girls' dresses about and hurled showers of sand in their faces and against Andrew's shining hull. The girls decided that they had had enough of playing on the beach.

As they started toward the path, Little Miss picked up the piece of driftwood that she had found before, and tucked it through her belt. She was always collecting strange little treasures of that sort.

That evening, when he was off duty, Andrew went down to the beach by himself and swam out to the cormorant rock simply to see how long it would take. Even in the darkness, he managed it easily and swiftly. Very likely, Andrew realized now, he could have managed it without exposing Miss and Little Miss to any great period of risk. Not that he would have done so, but it would have been possible.