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logically. Perhaps that's what bothers them. Well, it's too late for me
to start hiding my intelligence, if that's the problem. But must we go
on insisting that a human brain has to be made of some officially
approved cellular substance in order to be legally human? Can't we
simply stipulate that a human brain is something--anything, organic
or not--that is capable of attaining a certain complex level of
thought?"
"It won't work," said Li-hsing.
"Because if we defined humanity by brain function alone, too
many humans would fall below the stipulated level of intellectual
ability?" Andrew asked bitterly. "Is that it?"
"Andrew, Andrew, Andrew! Listen to me: there are those who
are determined to keep a barrier up between themselves and robots at
any cost. For the sake of their own self-esteem, if nothing else, they
want to believe that they belong to the only true and lawful human
race and that robots are some sort of inferior creatures. You've spent
the past hundred years beating those people back, and you've won
your way through to a status that would have been utterly
inconceivable in the early years of robotics. But now they've got you
on an issue where you can't win. You've put yourself inside a body
that for all intents and purposes is close enough to being human as
makes no real difference. You eat, you breathe, you sweat. You go to
fine restaurants and order splendid meals and drink the best wines,
I've noticed, though I can't imagine what value that can have for you
other than for appearance's sake."
"That is value enough for me," said Andrew.
"All right. Plenty of humans probably can't appreciate the
expensive wines they drink either, but they drink them all the same,
and for the same reason you do. Your organs are all artificial, but by
now so are many of theirs. Quite possibly there are people out there
living in bodies that are virtually identical to yours, wholesale
artificial replacements for the ones they were born with. But they
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aren't complete replacements, Andrew. Nobody has a prosthetic
brain. No one can. And so you differ from everyone else in one
fundamental respect. Your brain is man-made, the human brain is
not. Your brain was constructed, theirs was naturally developed. They
were born, you were assembled. To any human being who is intent on
keeping up the barrier between himself and robots, those differences
are like a steel wall five kilometers high and five kilometers thick."
"You aren't telling me anything I don't know. My brain is
different in composition from theirs, certainly. But not in its function,
not really. Quantitatively different, maybe, but not qualitatively. It's
just a brain--a very good brain. They're merely using the positronic-
vs. cellular issue as a pretext to keep from admitting that what I am is
a human being of a kind somewhat different from them. --No, Li-
hsing, if we could somehow get at their antipathy toward me because
of my robotic origins--the very source of all their hostility--this
mysterious need they have to proclaim themselves superior to
someone who is by every reasonable definition superior to them--"
"After all your years," said Li-hsing sadly, "you are still trying to
reason out the human being. Poor Andrew, don't be angry at me for
saying this, but it's the robot in you that drives you in that direction."
"You know that there's very little left of the robot in me by this
time."
"But there's some."
"Some, yes. And if I were to get rid of that--"
Chee Li-hsing shot him a look of alarm. "What are you saying,
Andrew?"
"I don't know," he said. "But I have an idea. The problem is, Li-
hsing, that I have human feelings trapped within a robot mind. But
that doesn't make me human, only an unhappy robot. Even after all
that has been done to improve my robot body, I'm still not human.
But there's one more step that can be taken. If I could bring myself--if
I could only bring myself--"
TWENTY-TWO
IF HE COULD ONLY bring hirnself--
And now he had, finally.
Andrew had asked Chee Li-hsing to hold off as long as possible
before bringing her revised bill to the World Legislature floor for
debate and vote, because he planned to undertake a project in the
very near future that might have some significant impact on the issue.
And no, Andrew said, he didn't care to discuss the details of the
project with her. It was a highly technical thing; she wasn't likely to
understand, and he wasn't at the moment willing to take the time to
explain it to her. But it would make him more human, he insisted.
That was the essential detail, the only thing she really needed to
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r r
know. It would make him more human.
She said she would do the best she could to give him enough
time for this mysterious project of his, though she sounded puzzled
and concerned.
Andrew thanked her, and set out at once to have a little talk with
the highly acclaimed robot surgeon whom he had chosen to do the
work. It was a difficult conversation. Andrew found himself putting
off the moment of decision for a long while with a sad line of
questioning that reflected the turmoil within himself, while the
surgeon grew more and more confused by the unusual and probably
impossible nature of what Andrew seemed to be asking him to do.
The First Law of Robotics was the obstacle: the immutable law
that prevented a robot from harming a human being in any way. And
so at last Andrew could delay things no longer, and brought himself to
admit the one necessary fact that made it possible for the robot
surgeon to perform the operation, the one thing that the surgeon had
not suspected: Andrew's own proper status as something other than a
human being.
The surgeon said, "I don't believe I understood you correctly, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]