It was challenging work, for, though he himself was untroubled by the lower gravity of the lunar environment, humans in whom standard Earth-model prosthetic devices had been installed tended to have a much more difficult time of it. Andrew was able, though, to meet each difficulty with a useful modification, and one by one the problems were resolved.
Now and then Andrew missed his estate on the California coast-not so much the grand house itself as the cool fogs of summer, the towering redwood trees, the rugged beach, the crashing surf. But it began to seem to him as though he had settled into permanent residence on the Moon. He stayed on into a fourth year, and a fifth.
Then one day he paid a visit to a bubbledome on the lunar 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 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?"
"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 being-a highly intelligent one. I have contributed artistically, literarily, and scientifically to human culture as much as any human being now alive. What more can one ask?"
DeLong flushed. "Forgive me, Andrew: but I have to remind you that you are not part of the human gene pool. You are outside it entirely. You resemble a human being but in fact you are something else, something-artificial."
"Granted, Simon. And the people who are walking around with bodies full of prosthetic devices? Devices which, incidentally, I invented for them? Are those people not artificial at least in part?"
"In part, yes."
"Well, I'm human in part."
DeLong's eyes flashed. "Which part, Andrew?"
"Here," said Andrew. He pointed to his head. "And here." He tapped a finger against his chest. "My mind. My heart. I may be artificial, alien, inhuman so far as your strict genetic definition goes. But I'm human in every way that counts. And I can be recognized as such legally. In the old days when there were a hundred separate countries on the Earth and each one had its own complicated rules of citizenship, it was, even so, possible for a Frenchman to become English or a Japanese to become a Brazilian, simply by going through a set of legal procedures. There was nothing genetically Brazilian about the Japanese, but he became Brazilian all the same, once the law had recognized him as such. The same can be done for me. I can become a naturalized human the way people once became naturalized as citizens of countries not their own."
"You've devoted a lot of thought to all of this, haven't you, Andrew?"
"Yes. I have."