"He can just forget about it!" Sir cried. "Forget it! Forget it! Forget it!"
"You're getting yourself worked up again, Father."
"What if I am?"
"Slow down, ease back. When did Andrew say anything about leaving you?"
Sir looked confused. "Why, what else could he have meant by wanting his freedom?"
"A piece of paper is all he wants. A legal document. A bunch of words. He doesn't intend to go anywhere. What are you imagining, that he'll run off to Europe and set up a carpentry workshop there? No. No. He'll stay right here. He'll still be as loyal as ever. If you give him an order, he'll obey it without question, as he always has. Whatever you say. That won't change. Nothing will, really. Andrew wouldn't so much as be able to step outside the house if you told him not to. He can't help that. It's built in. All he wants is a form of words, Father. He wants to be called free. Is that so horrible? Is it so threatening to your Hasn't he earned it, Father?"
"So this is what you believe, is it? Some new nonsense that you've gotten into your head?"
"Not nonsense, Father. And not new, either. Heavens, Andrew and I have been talking about this for years!"
"Talking about it for years, have you? Years?"
"For years, yes, discussing it over and over again. It was my idea in the first place, as a matter of fact. I told him it was ridiculous for him to have to think of himself as some sort of walking gadget, when in fact he's so very much more than that. He didn't react at all well when I first proposed it to him. But then we went on talking, and after a time I saw that he was beginning to come around, and then he told me very straightforwardly that he did very much want to be free. 'Good,' I said. 'Tell my father and it'll all be arranged.' But he was afraid to. He kept on postponing it, because he was afraid you would be hurt. Finally I made him put it up to you."
Sir shrugged. "It was a foolish thing to do. He doesn't know what freedom is. How can he? He's a robot."
"You keep underestimating him, Father. He's a very special robot. He reads. He thinks about what he's read. He learns and grows from year to year. Maybe when he came here he was just a simple mechanical man like all the rest of them, but the capacity for growth was there in his pathways, whether his makers knew it or not, and he's made good use of that capacity. Father, I know Andrew and I tell you that he's every bit as complex a creature as-as-you and me."
"Nonsense, girl."
"How can you say that? He feels things inside. You must be aware of that. I'm not sure what he feels, most of the time, but I don't know what you feel inside a lot of the time either, and you've got the capacity for facial expression and all kinds of other body language that he doesn't. When you talk to him you see right away that he reacts to all kinds of abstract concepts-love, fear, beauty, loyalty, a hundred others-just as you and I do. What else counts but that? If someone else's reactions are very much like your own, how can you help but think that that someone else must be very much like yourself?"
"He isn't like us," Sir said. "He's something entirely different."
"He's someone entirely different," Little Miss said. " And not as different as you want to have me believe."
Sir shrugged. His face had turned gray now where it had been mottled with angry red blotches before, and he looked very, very old and weary.
He was silent for a long while, staring at his feet, pulling his lap-robe tighter around him. He still looked like an old emperor sitting sternly upright on his throne, but now he was more like an emperor who was seriously considering the possibility of abdicating.
"All right," he said finally. There was a note of bitterness in his tone. "You win, Mandy. If you want me to agree with you that Andrew is a person instead of a machine, I agree. Andrew is a person. There. Are you happy now?"
"I never said he was a person, Father."
"As a matter of fact, you did. That was precisely the word you used."
"You corrected me. You said he was an artificial person, and I accepted the correction."
"Well, then. So be it. We agree that Andrew is an artificial person. What of it? How does calling him an artificial person instead of a robot change anything? We're just playing games with words. A counterfeit banknote may be regarded as a banknote, but it's still counterfeit. And you can call a robot an artificial person, but he'll still be-"
"Father, what he wants is for you to grant him his freedom. He will continue to live here and do everything in his power to make your life pleasant and comfortable, as he has since the day he came here. But he wants you to tell him that he's free."
"It's a meaningless statement, Mandy."
"To you, maybe. Not to him."
"No. I'm old, yes, but I'm not quite senile, not yet, at least. What we're talking about here is establishing a gigantic legal precedent. Giving robots their freedom isn't going to abolish the Three Laws, but it sure as anything is going to open up a vast realm of legal wrangling about robot rights, robot grievances, robot this and that. Robots will be running into the courts and suing people for making them do unpleasant work, or failing to let them have vacations, or simply being unkind to them. Robots will start suing U. S. Robots and Mechanical Men for building the Three Laws into their brains, because some shyster will claim it's an infringement of their constitutional rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Robots will want to vote. Oh, don't you see, Mandy? It'll be an immense headache for everybody."
"It doesn't have to be," Little Miss replied. "This doesn't have to be a worldwide cause cйlиbre. It's simply an understanding between Andrew and us. All that we actually want is a privately executed legal document, Father, drawn up by John Feingold, signed by you, witnessed by me, given to Andrew, which will stipulate that he-"
"No. That would be utterly worthless. Look, Mandy, I sign the paper and then I die, and Andrew stands up on his hind legs and says, 'So long, everybody, I'm a free robot and I'm heading out now to seek fame and fortune, and here's the paper that proves it,' and the first time he opens his mouth and says that to someone they'll laugh in his face and tear up his little piece of meaningless paper for him and ship him back to the factory to be dismantled. Because the piece of paper won't have given him any kind of protection that has the slightest validity in our society. No. No. If you insist on my doing this nonsensical thing, I have to do it the right way or else I won't bother at all. We can't simply give Andrew his freedom just by drawing up a little paper involving just us. This is a matter for the courts."
"Very well. Then we do it through the courts."
"But don't you realize what that would mean?" Sir demanded. He was angry again. "All the issues that I just raised will be certain to come out. There'll be tremendous controversy. And then the filing of briefs-the appeals-the public outcry-and ultimately the verdict. Which will be against us, without any question."
He glared at Andrew. "See here, you!" There was a harsh grating quality in Sir's voice that Andrew had never heard before. "Do you comprehend what we've been saying here? The only way I can free you, if it's going to have the slightest meaning, is to do it by recognized legal means. But there are no recognized legal means for freeing robots. Once this thing gets into the courts, not only are you going to fail to achieve your goal, but the court will take official cognizance of an the money that you've been amassing, and you're going to lose that too. They'll tell you that a robot has no legal right to earn money or establish bank accounts to keep it in, and either they'll confiscate it outright or they'll force me to take it away from you myself, though I don't have any need for it whatever or any desire to have it. That'll be an embarrassment to me and a dead loss to you. You still won't be free, whatever that may mean to you, and you won't have your precious bank account either. Well, Andrew? Is all this rigmarole worth the chance of losing your money?"