“And do you think the Legislature will now grant me my humanity?” Andrew asked.
DeLong looked faintly uncomfortable. “As to that, I cannot be optimistic. There remains the one organ which the World Court has used as the criterion of humanity. Human beings have an organic cellular brain and robots have a platinum iridium positronic brain if they have one at all-and you certainly have a positronic brain. No, Andrew, don’t get that look in your eye. We lack the knowledge to duplicate the work of a cellular brain in artificial structures close enough to the organic type as to allow it to fall within the court’s decision. Not even you could do it.”
“What should we do, then?”
“Make the attempt, of course. Congresswoman Lihsing will be on our side and a growing number of other congress people. The President will undoubtedly
go along with a majority of the Legislature in this matter.”
“Do we have a majority?”
“No. Far from it. But we might get one if the public will allow its desire for a broad interpretation of humanity to extend to you. A small chance, I admit; but if you do not wish to give up, we must gamble for it.”
“I do not wish to give up.”
20
Congresswoman Li-hsing was considerably older than she had been when Andrew had first met her. Her transparent garments were long gone. Her hair was now close-cropped and her coverings were tubular. Yet still Andrew clung, as closely as he could within the limits of reasonable taste, to the style of clothing that had prevailed when he had first adopted clothing more than a century before.
“We’ve gone as far as we can, Andrew,” Li-hsing admitted. “We’ll try once more after recess, but, to be honest, defeat is certain and then the whole thing will have to be given up. All my most recent efforts have only earned me certain defeat in the coming congressional campaign.”
“I know,” said Andrew, “and it distressed me. You said once you would abandon me if it came to that Why have you not done so?”
“One can change one’s mind, you know. Somehow, abandoning you became a higher price than I cared to pay for just one more term. As it is, I’ve been in the Legislature , for over a quarter of a century. It’s enough.”
“Is there no way we can change minds, Chee?”
“We’ve changed all that are amenable to reason. The rest-the majority-cannot be moved from their emotional antipathies.”
“Emotional antipathy is not a valid reason for voting one way or the other.” “I know that, Andrew, but they don’t advance emotional antipathy as their reason.”
“It all comes down to the brain, then,” Andrew said cautiously. “But must we leave it at the level of cells versus positrons? Is there no way of forcing a functional definition? Must we say that a brain is made of this or that? May we not say that a brain is something anything-capable of a certain level of thought?”
“Won’t work,” said Li-hsing. “Your brain is manmade, the human brain is not. Your brain is constructed, theirs developed. To any human being who is intent on keeping up the barrier between himself and a robot, those differences are a steel wall a mile high and a mile thick.”
“If we could get at the source of their antipathy, the very source-”
“After all your years,” Li-hsing said, sadly, “you are still trying to reason out the human being. Poor Andrew, don’t be angry, but it’s the robot in you that drives you in that direction.”
“I don’t know,” said Andrew. “If I could bring myself . . . ”
I [Reprise
If he could bring himself . . .
He had known for a long time it might come to that, and in the end he was at the surgeon’s. He had found one, skillful enough for the job at hand-which meant a surgeon-robot, for no human surgeon could be trusted in this connection, either in ability or in intention.
The surgeon could not have performed the operation on a human being, so Andrew, after putting off the moment of decision with a sad line of questioning that reflected the turmoil within himself, had put First Law to one side by saying “I, too, am a robot.”