The Positronic Man Read online

  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 tread
s. 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?"