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surface, and saw the Earth in all its wondrous beauty hanging in the
sky--tiny, at this distance, but vivid, glowing, a blue jewel that
glistened brilliantly in the night.
It is my home, he thought suddenly. The mother world--the
fountain of humanity--
Andrew felt it pulling him--calling him home. At first it was a
pull he could scarcely understand. It seemed wholly irrational to him.
And then understanding came. His work on the Moon was done,
basically. But he still had unfinished business down there on Earth.
The following week, Andrew booked his passage home on a
liner that was leaving at the end of the month. And then he called back
and arranged to take an even earlier flight.
He returned to an Earth that seemed cozy and ordinary and
quiet in comparison to the dynamic life of the lunar settlement.
Nothing of any significance appeared to have changed in the five years
of his absence. As his Moon-ship descended toward it, the Earth
seemed to Andrew like a vast placid park, sprinkled here and there
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r r
with the small settlements and minor cities of the decentralized Third
Millennium civilization.
One of the first things Andrew did was to visit the offices of
Feingold and Charney to announce his return.
The current senior partner, Simon DeLong, hurried out to greet
him. In Paul Charney's time, DeLong had been a very junior clerk,
callow and self-effacing, but that had been a long time ago and he had
matured into a powerful, commanding figure whose unchallenged
ascent to the top rung of the firm had been inevitable. He was a broad-
shouldered man with heavy features, who wore his thick dark hair
shaven down the middle in the tonsured style that had lately become
popular.
There was a surprised look on DeLong's face. "We had been told
you were returning, Andrew," he said--with just a bit of uncertainty in
his voice at the end, as though he too had briefly considered calling
him "Mr. Martin"--"but we weren't expecting you until next week."
"I became impatient," said Andrew brusquely. He was anxious
to get to the point. "On the Moon, Simon, I was in charge of a research
team of twenty or thirty human scientists. I gave orders and nobody
questioned my authority. Many of them referred to me as 'Dr. Martin'
and I was treated in all ways as an individual worthy of the highest
respect. The lunar robots deferred to me as they would to a human
being. For all practical purposes I was a human being for the entire
duration of my stay on the Moon."
A wary look entered DeLong's eyes. Plainly he had no idea
where Andrew was heading with all this, and it was the natural
caution of a lawyer who did not quite understand yet the troublesome
new direction in which an important client seemed to be veering.
"How unusual that must have seemed, Andrew," he said, in a
flat, remote way.
"Unusual, yes. But not displeasing. Not displeasing at all,
Simon."
"Yes. I'm sure that's so. How interesting, Andrew."
Andrew said sharply, "Well, now I'm back on Earth and I'm a
robot again. Not even a second-class citizen--not a citizen at all,
Simon. Nothing. I don't care for it. If I can be treated as a human
being while I'm on the Moon, why not here?"
Without varying his careful, cautious tone DeLong said, "But
you are treated as a human being here, my dear Andrew! You have a
fine home and title to it is vested in your name. You are the head of a
great research laboratory. Your income is so huge it staggers the
mind, and no one would question your right to it. When you come
here to the offices of Feingold and Charney, the senior partner
himself is at your beck and call, as you see. In every de facto way you
have long since won acceptance for yourself as a human being, on
Earth and on the Moon, by humans and by robots. What more can you
want?"
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r r
"To be a human being de facto isn't enough. I want not only to
be treated as one, but to have the legal status and rights of one. I want
to be a human being de jure. "
"Ah," DeLong said. He looked extremely uncomfortable. " Ah. I
see."
"Do you, Simon?"
"Of course. Don't you think I know the whole background of the
Andrew Martin story? Years ago, Paul Charney spent hours going
over your files with me--showing your step-by-step evolution,
beginning as a metallic robot of the--NDR series, was it?--and going
on to the transformation into your android identity. And of course
I've been apprised of each new upgrading of your present body. Then
the details of the legal evolution as well as the physical--the winning of
your freedom, and the other civil rights that followed. I'd be a fool,
Andrew, if I didn't realize that it's been your goal from the start to
turn yourself into a human being."
"Perhaps not from the start, Simon. I think there was a long
period when I was content simply to be a superior robot--a period
when I denied even to myself any awareness of the full capabilities of
my brain. But I deny it no longer. I'm the equal of any human being in
any ability you could name, and superior to most. I want the full legal
status that I'm entitled to."
"Entitled?"
"Entitled, yes."
DeLong pursed his lips, toyed nervously with one earlobe, ran
his hand down the middle of his scalp where a swath of thick black
hair had been mowed away.
"Entitled," he said again, after a moment or two. "Now that's
another matter altogether, Andrew. We have to face the undeniable
fact that, however much you may be like a human being in intelligence
and capabilities and even appearance, nevertheless you simply are
not a human being."
"In what way not?" Andrew demanded. "I have the shape of a
human being and bodily organs equivalent to some of those that a
prosthetized human being has. I have the mental ability of a human [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]