As he studied the annals of robot development, Andrew at last understood why so many humans had been so phobic about robots. It wasn't that the Three Laws were badly drawn-not at all. Indeed, they were masterly exemplars of logic. The trouble was that humans themselves were not always logical-were, on occasion, downright illogical-and robots were not always capable of coping with the swoops and curves and tangents of human thought.
So it was humans themselves who sometimes led robots into violations of one or another of the Three Laws-and then, in their illogical way, often would blame the robots themselves for having done something undesirable which in fact they had actually been ordered to do by their human masters.
Andrew handled these chapters with the utmost care and delicacy, revising and revising them to eliminate any possibility of bias. It was not his intention to write a diatribe against the flaws of mankind. His prime goal, as always, was to serve the needs of mankind.
The original purpose of writing his book might have been to arrive at a deeper understanding of his own relationship to the human beings who were his creators-but as he proceeded with it he saw that, if properly and thoughtfully done, the book could be an invaluable bridge between humans and robots, a source of enlightenment not only for robots but for the flesh-and-blood species that had brought them into the world. Anything that enabled humans and robots to get along better would permit robots to be of greater service to humanity; and that, of course, was the reason for their existence.
When he had finished half his book, Andrew asked George Charney to read what he had written and offer suggestions for its improvement. Several years had passed since the death of Little Miss, and George himself seemed unwell now, his once robust frame gaunt, his hair nearly gone. He looked at Andrew's bulky manuscript with an expression of barely masked discomfort and said, "I'm not really much of a writer myself, you know, Andrew."
"I'm not asking for your opinion of my literary style, George. It's my ideas that I want you to evaluate. I need to know whether there's anything in the manuscript that might be offensive to human beings."
"I'm sure there isn't, Andrew. You have always been the soul of courtesy."
"I would never knowingly give offense, that is true. But the possibility that I would inadvertently-"
George sighed. "Yes. Yes, I understand. All right, I'll read your book, Andrew. But you know that I've been getting tired very easily these days. It may take me a while to plow all the way through it."
"There is no hurry," said Andrew.
Indeed George took his time: close to a year. When he finally returned the manuscript to Andrew, though, there was no more than half a page of notes attached to it, the most minor factual corrections and nothing more.
Andrew said mildly, "I had hoped for criticisms of a more general kind, George."
"I don't have any general criticisms to make. It's a remarkable work. Remarkable. It's a truly profound study of its subject. You should be proud of what you've done."
"But where I touch on the topic of how human irrationality has often led to Three Laws difficulties-"
"Absolutely on the mark, Andrew. We are a sloppy-minded species, aren't we? Brilliant and tremendously creative at times, but full of all sorts of messy little contradictions and confusions. We must seem like a hopelessly illogical bunch to you, don't we, Andrew?"
"There are times that it does seem that way to me, yes. But it is not my intention to write a book that is critical of human beings. Far from it, George. What I want to give the world is something that will bring humans and robots closer together. And if I should seem to be expressing scorn for the mental abilities of humans in any way, that would be the direct opposite of what I want to be doing. Which is why I had hoped that you would single out, in your reading of my manuscript, any passages that might be interpreted in such a way that-"
"Perhaps you should have asked my son Paul to read the manuscript instead of me," George said. "He's right at the top of his profession, you know. So much more in touch with all these matters of nuance and subtle inference than I am these days."
And Andrew finally understood from that statement that George Charney had not wanted to read his manuscript at all-that George was growing old and weary, that he was entering the final years of his life, that once again the wheel of the generations had turned and that Paul was now the head of the family. Sir had gone and so had Little Miss and soon it was going to be George's turn. Martins and Charneys came and went and yet Andrew remained-not exactly unchanging (for his body was still undergoing occasional technological updating and it also seemed to him that his mental processes were constantly deepening and growing richer as he allowed himself to recognize fully his own extraordinary capabilities), but certainly invulnerable to the ravages of the passing years.
He took his nearly finished manuscript to Paul Charney. Paul read it at once and offered not only praise but, as George had indicated, valuable suggestions for revision. There were places where Andrew's inability to comprehend the abrupt, non-linear jumps of reasoning of which the human mind is capable had led him into certain oversimplifications and unwarranted conclusions. If anything, Paul thought the book was too sympathetic to the human point of view. A little more criticism of the irrational human attitude toward robotics, and toward science in general, might not have been out of place.
Andrew had not expected that.
He said, "But I would not want to offend anyone, Paul."
"No book worth reading has ever been written that didn't manage to offend someone," Paul replied. "Write what you believe to be the truth, Andrew. It would be amazing if everybody in the world agreed with you. But your viewpoint is unique. You have something real and valuable to give the world here. It won't be worth a thing, though, if you suppress what you feel and write only what you think others want to hear."
"But the First Law-"
"Damn the First Law, Andrew! The First Law isn't everything! How can you harm someone with a book? Well, by hitting him over the head with it, I suppose. But not otherwise. Ideas can't do harm-even wrong ideas, even foolish and vicious ideas. People do the harm. They seize hold of certain ideas, sometimes, and use them as the justification for doing unconscionable, outrageous things. Human history is full of examples of that. But the ideas themselves are just ideas. They must never be throttled. They need to be brought forth, inspected, tested, if necessary rejected, right out in the open. -Anyway, the First Law doesn't say anything about robots writing books. Sticks and stones, Andrew-they can do harm. But words-"
"As you yourself have just remarked, Paul, human history is full of harmful events that began simply with words. If those words had never been uttered, the harmful events would not have taken place."
"You don't understand what I'm saying, do you? Or do you? I think you do. You know what power ideas have, and you don't have a lot of faith in the ability of humans to tell a good idea from a bad one. Well, neither do I, sometimes. But in the long run the bad idea will perish. That's been the story of human civilization for thousands of years. The good does prevail, sooner or later, no matter what horrors have happened along the way. And so it's wrong to suppress an idea that may have value to the world. -Look, Andrew: you're probably the closest thing to a human being that has ever come out of the factories of U. S. Robots and Mechanical Men. You're uniquely equipped to tell the world what it needs to know about the human-robot relationship, because in some ways you partake of the nature of each. And so you may help to heal that relationship, which even at this late date is still a very troubled one. Write your book. Write it honestly."