Andrew said, "I'm grateful for your skill at delaying things. It provided me with the time I needed-and I took the gamble I had to take."
Li-hsing gave him a troubled look. "What gamble do you mean, Andrew?" And then, with some irritation in her voice: "You've been so mysterious these past months! Hinting darkly at this or that big project, but refusing to let anybody know what it was that you were up to-"
"I couldn't, Li-hsing. If I had told you anything-or had said a word to the people at Feingold and Charney-I would have been stopped. I'm sure of that. You could have stopped me, you know, simply by ordering me not to proceed. The Second Law: there's no way for me to put up resistance against that Simon DeLong would have done the same. So I had to keep quiet about my plans until I had carried them out"
"What is it that you have done, Andrew?" Chee Li-hsing asked, very quietly, almost ominously.
Andrew said, "The brain was the issue, that was what we agreed-the positronic brain vs. the organic one. But what was the real issue behind that? My intelligence? No. I have an unusual mind, yes, but that's because I was designed to have an unusual mind, and after me they broke the mold. Other robots have outstanding mental abilities along one line or another, whatever specialty it is that they've been designed to perform, but basically they're pretty stupid things. The way a computer is stupid, no matter how many trillion times faster than a human it can add up a column of numbers. So it isn't my intelligence that makes people envious of me, not really. There are plenty of humans who can think rings around me."
"Andrew-"
"Let me have my say, Li-hsing. I'm getting to the point, I promise you."
He shifted his position against the wall, hoping that Li-hsing wouldn't notice that he didn't seem to have the strength to stand up unsupported for many minutes at a time. But Andrew suspected that she had already registered that fact. She was staring at him in an uncertain, troubled way.
He said, "What is the greatest difference between my positronic brain and a human one? It's that my brain is immortal. All the trouble we've been having stems from that, don't you see? Why should anyone care what a brain looks like or is built out of or how it came into existence in the first place? What matters is that organic human brain cells die. Must die. There's no way of avoiding it Every other organ in the body can be maintained or replaced by an artificial substitute, but the brain can't be replaced at all, not without changing and therefore killing the personality. And the organic brain must eventually die. Whereas my own positronic pathways-"
Li-hsing's expression had been changing as he spoke. Her face bore a look of horror now.
Andrew knew that she had already begun to understand. But he needed her to hear him out He continued inexorably, "My own positronic pathways have lasted just under two centuries now without perceptible deterioration, without any kind of undesirable change whatever, and they will surely last for centuries more. Perhaps indefinitely: who can say? The whole science of robotics is only three hundred years old and that's too short a time for anyone to be able to say what the full life-span of a positronic brain may be. Effectively my brain is immortal. Isn't that the fundamental barrier that separates me from the human race? Human beings can tolerate immortality in robots, because it's a virtue in a machine to last a long time, and nobody is psychologically threatened by that. But they would never be able to tolerate the idea of an immortal human being, since their own mortality is endurable only so long as they know it's universal. Allow one person to be exempted from death and everyone else feels victimized in the worst way. And for that reason, Li-hsing, they have refused to make me a human being."
Li-hsing said sharply, "You said you were going to get to the point Get to it, then. What is it that you've done to yourself, Andrew? I want to know!"
"I have removed the problem."
"Removed it? How?"
"Decades ago, when my positronic brain was placed in this android body, it was connected to organic nerves, but it remained carefully insulated from the metabolic forces that would otherwise have ultimately caused it to deteriorate. Now I have undergone one last operation in order to rearrange the connections along the brain-body interface. The insulation has been removed. My brain is now subject to the same forces of decay that any organic substance is vulnerable to. Things are set up now in such a way that-slowly, quite slowly-the potential is being drained from my pathways."
Chee's finely wrinkled face showed no expression for a moment. Then her lips tightened and she balled her hands into fists.
"Do you mean that you've arranged to die, Andrew? No. No, you can't possibly have done that. It would be a violation of the Third Law."
"Not so," Andrew said. "There is more than one sort of death, Li-hsing, and the Third Law does not differentiate between them. But I do. What I have done is to choose between the death of my body and the death of my aspirations and desires. To have let my body live at the cost of the greater death-that is the true violation of the Third Law. Not this. As a robot I might live forever, yes. But I tell you that I would rather die as a man than live eternally as a robot."
"Andrew! No!" Chee cried. She rose from her desk and went to him with astonishing speed, and seized his arm as though she were about to shake him. But all she did was grip it tightly, her fingers sinking deeply into his pliable synthetic flesh. "Andrew, this isn't going to get you what you want. It's nothing more than terrible folly. Change yourself back."
"I can't. Too much damage was done. The operation is irreversible."
"And now-?"
"I have a year to live, Li-hsing-more or less. I will last through the two hundredth anniversary of my construction. I confess that I was weak enough to time things so that I would still be here that long. And then-a natural death. Other robots are dismantled-they are irrevocably terminated-they are taken out of working order. I will simply die. The first robot ever to die-if, that is, it is felt that I am still a robot."
"I can't believe what you're telling me, Andrew. What good can any of this do? You've destroyed yourself for nothing-nothing! It wasn't worth it!"
"I think it was."
"Then you're a fool, Andrew!"
"No," he said gently. "If it brings me humanity at last, then it will have been worth it. And if I fail in achieving that, well, at least there will soon be an end to my fruitless striving and my pain, and that will have been worth accomplishing also."
"Pain?"
"Pain, yes. Do you think I've never felt any pain, Li-hsing?"
Li-hsing did something then that astonished Andrew beyond words.
Quietly, she began to weep.
Twenty-Four
IT WAS STRANGE how the dramatic last deed of Andrew's long life caught at the imagination of the world. Nothing that Andrew had done before had managed to sway people from their denial of his humanity. But Andrew had finally embraced even death for the sake of being fully human, now, and that sacrifice was too great to be rejected.
The story swept across the world like a hurricane. People spoke of nothing else. The bill granting Andrew what he had sought so long went through the World Legislature without opposition. No one would have dared to vote against it. There was scarcely even any debate. There was no need for it. The measure was unprecedented, yes-of course it was-but for once everyone was willing to put precedent aside.
The final ceremony was timed, quite deliberately, for the day of the two hundredth anniversary of Andrew's construction. The World Coordinator was to put his signature to the act publicly, making it law, and the ceremony would be visible on a global network and would be beamed to the lunar settlements and to the other colonies farther out in space.