"But you won't tell me what's going on?"
"No. Not now. That would be too much like entering into a conspiracy with you."
"But you are entering into a conspiracy with me!"
DeLong grinned. " Are we? All we're doing is refusing to pay your bill. Bear with us, Roger. You won't regret it. You have my promise."
"Well-" said Hennessey, grudgingly.
Hennessey's bill continued to go unpaid. After three months more Hennessey duly notified Feingold and Charney that he could no longer carry their account. He canceled their service contract and filed suit for back charges. Feingold and Charney arranged for a temporary janitorial service to clean the office, and let the Court know that it was ready to defend its position.
When the case of Hennessey vs. Feingold and Charney came to trial, it was one of the junior partners who made the argument in court. He said, simply, that inasmuch as Roger Hennessey could be shown to be a robot rather than a human being Feingold and Charney felt under no obligation to go on honoring its service contract, and had unilaterally abrogated it.
The robot Hennessey, the lawyer continued, had gone on sending in his robot janitorial crews for another few months even so, but Feingold and Charney had not asked him to do so and did not believe that payment was necessary, or that Hennessey, as a robot, had any legal right to force them to pay. Robots, the junior partner pointed out, had none of the constitutional protections that human beings enjoyed. In disputes over contracts involving robots, only their owners could sue, not the robots themselves.
"But my client is not a robot!" Hennessey's lawyer thundered. "It's as plain as the nose on my client's face that he's as human as any of us here!"
"Your client," the Feingold and Charney man replied, "was equipped some years ago with a robotic prosthetic heart, is that not the case?"
"Why-possibly he was. I'd need to check with him on that. But what possible relevance can this-"
"It is quite relevant, I assure you. And I respectfully request the Court to obtain a determination on this point."
The judge looked toward Hennessey. "Well, Mr. Hennessey?"
"I've got a prosthetic ticker, sure. But what-"
The Feingold and Charney man said, "Our position, your honor, is that the presence of a life-sustaining mechanical artifact of that kind in Mr. Hennessey's body changes his entire legal status. It is reasonable to argue that he would not be alive today but for the robotic component of his body. We proceed to assert, therefore, that the partly prosthetic Mr. Hennessey is in fact a robot and has been for some years now, and therefore that all contracts into which he may have entered as a human being became null and void when he attained the status of a robot."
"So that's it!" Hennessey muttered. "Well, may I be dipped! The heart makes me a robot, they say? Do they, now? Do they?" And he threw back his head and began to laugh.
The uproar in the courtroom was tremendous. The judge pounded his gavel and shouted, but he could scarcely be heard for minutes. Then at last what he was saying came through the furor. The case was dismissed, with a directed verdict in favor of the plaintiff. Mr. Roger Hennesseywhom the Court found to be undeniably human-was entitled to his janitorial fees plus interest plus additional compensation.
Feingold and Charney appealed.
The case had a more elaborate debate at the appellate level, with expert witnesses called in to discuss definitions of humanity. The issue was approached from every angle-scientific, theological, semantic, philosophic.
The verdict in favor of Hennessey was affirmed.
Feingold and Charney appealed again.
They fought the matter skillfully and tenaciously, losing at every step but always in such a way that the issue widened steadily, from a simple Shall Hennessey's bill be paid? to, ultimately, What is a human being? At each level they forced the decision to be as broad as possible.
It took years, and millions of dollars. Eventually the case reached the jurisdiction of the World Court.
Which affirmed the original Hennessey ruling and upheld all the accreted rulings having to do with the valid human status of individuals in whom robotic prostheses had been installed. It is the brain, the World Court declared, that is the highest determinant of humanity. The use of auxiliary devices to sustain the life of the brain can in no way invalidate the fundamental and inalienable humanity of that brain. It is unacceptable, the Court said, to argue that the presence of robotic prostheses within a human being's body gives that person the status of a robot.
When the final decision was handed down, Simon DeLong held what amounted to a victory celebration over the definitive legal defeat. Andrew was, of course, present in the company offices for the great occasion.
"Well, Andrew, we can feel completely satisfied. We've accomplished the two things we set out to do. First of all, we have managed to establish the legal point that no number of prosthetic artifacts in the human body causes it to cease being a human body. Secondly, we have engaged public opinion in the question in such a way as to put it fiercely on the side of a broad and loose interpretation of who is human-since there isn't a human being in existence, on this world or any other, who doesn't expect to enjoy a greatly extended life-span as a result of the availability of a wide array of prosthetic devices."
"And do you think the Legislature will now grant me my humanity?" Andrew asked.
DeLong looked a little uneasy.
"Perhaps. Perhaps not."
"Is that the best you can offer, after all these years of legal struggle?"
DeLong said, "I wish that I could be as optimistic as you'd like me to be. But the real battle isn't won yet. There remains the one organ which the World Court has used as the criterion of humanity."
"The mind."
"The brain, Andrew. That's what the Court singled out, not the mind. The mind is an abstract concept; the brain is a bodily organ. And human beings have organic cellular brains whereas robots have a platinum-iridium positronic brain if they have one at all-and you certainly have a positronic brain. -No, Andrew, don't get that look in your eye. I know what you're thinking. But I've been assured that we lack the knowledge to duplicate the functions of a cellular brain in an artificial structure that would be close enough to the organic type to allow it to fall within the Court decision. Not even you could do it."
"What should we do, then?"
"Make the attempt, of course. Congresswoman Chee will be on our side and so will a growing number of other Legislators. The World Coordinator will undoubtedly go along with whatever a majority of the Legislature decides."
"Do we have a majority?"
"No," DeLong said. "Far from it. But we might manage to put one together if the public will allow its desire for a broad interpretation of humanity to extend to you. A small chance, I admit. But you are, after all, the man who gave them the prosthetics on which their lives now depend."
Andrew smiled. "The man, is that what you said?"
"That's what I said, yes. Isn't that what we've been fighting for, Andrew?"
"Of course."
"Then we might as well begin thinking that way here. And carry our thinking onward and outward to the rest of the world until everyone else agrees. It won't be easy, Andrew. None of this has been, and there's no reason to think it will get any better. The odds are very much against us, I warn you. But unless you want to give up, we have to take the gamble."
"I don't want to give up," Andrew said.
Twenty-One
CONGRESSWOMAN CHEE LI-HSING was considerably older now than she had been when Andrew first met her. No longer did she indulge in the coquettishness of shimmering transparent garments. She was dressed in somewhat more chaste tubular coverings, now. Her once lustrous black hair was streaked with gray, and she wore it cut much shorter.
Andrew, though, had of course not changed at all. His face was as unlined as ever; his soft, fine hair was still brown. And he clung, as closely as he could within the limits of reasonable taste, to the loose style of clothing that had prevailed when he first adopted clothing over a century before.