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Paul nodded abstractedly. It was as though he was listening
from a very great distance. He seemed to be having a difficult time
absorbing what Andrew was telling him.
"And have you achieved anything significant so far?" he asked,
after a time.
"I am approaching something significant," Andrew said. "It
needs more work but I think I have succeeded in designing a compact
combustion chamber that will be adequate for catalyzed controlled
breakdown."
"But why, Andrew? What's the point of it? You know that it can't
possibly be as efficient as the atomic cell your body uses now."
"Very likely not," said Andrew. "But it ought to be efficient
enough. At least as efficient as the system that the human body uses, I
would say, and not all that different from it in fundamental principle.
The main problem with the atomic cell, Paul, is that it is inhuman. My
energy--my very life, you could say--is drawn from a source that is
wholly other than human. And I am not content with that."
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SIXTEEN
IT TOOK TIME, but Andrew had all the time he needed. And he was in
no hurry to complete his research. He wanted everything to be
properly worked out before he attempted to have it put into service.
There was another reason for going slowly, also. Andrew had decided
not to undergo any further upgrading beyond the android level while
Paul Charney was still alive.
Paul had not expressed any overt criticism of the work Andrew
was doing, other than his initial response that Andrew's new
combustion chamber might be less efficient than the atomic cell that
powered his body now. But Andrew could see that Paul was troubled
by the idea. It was too bold for him, too strange, too great a leap. Even
Paul, it seemed, had his limits when it came to the progress of robot
design. Even Paul!
Perhaps that was one of the side effects of aging, Andrew
thought. Challenging new ideas become too challenging for you, no
matter how open your mind may have been to dynamic change when
you were younger. Everything new comes to seem disturbing and
threatening to you. You feel the world rushing past you in a
frightening stampede; you want things to slow down, you want the
ferocious pace of progress to slacken.
Was that how it was? Andrew wondered.
Did humans inevitably become more conservative with age?
So it would seem. Little Miss had been uneasy about his wearing
clothing. George had thought it odd that he would want to write a
book. And Paul--Paul--
Looking back now, Andrew remembered how startled, even
shocked, Paul had been when he learned for the first time, in Smythe-
Robertson's office, that what Andrew wanted was to be transferred
into an android body. Paul had made a quick enough adaptation to the
idea and had fought furiously and brilliantly to make it a reality. But
that did not necessarily mean that he thought it was a good idea for
Andrew.
They have all let me do what I felt I needed to do, Andrew
thought, even when they privately disagreed with it. They have
granted me my wishes--out of love for me.
Yes, love. For a robot.
Andrew dwelled on that thought for a while, and sensations of
warmth and pleasure went through him. But it was a little troubling,
too, to realize that sometimes the Charneys had supported him not
out of personal convictions of their own but simply because they so
wholeheartedly and unconditionally believed in allowing him to
follow his own path, whether or not they thought it was the correct
one.
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So Paul, then, had won him the right to have an android body.
But that transformation had taken Paul to his own limit of acceptance
of Andrew's upward path. The next step--the metabolic converter--
was beyond him.
Very well. Paul did not have very much longer to live. Andrew
would wait.
And so he did; and in time came news of Paul's death, not as
soon as Paul had supposed it would be, but very soon, all the same.
Andrew was invited to attend Paul's funeral--the public ceremony, he
was aware, that marked the end of a human life--but there was
scarcely anyone there whom he knew, and he felt ill at ease and out of
place, even though everyone was scrupulously polite to him. These
young strangers--friends of Paul's, members of his law firm, distant
relatives of the Charneys--had no more substance than shadows for
Andrew, and he stood among them heavy with the double grief of
having lost his good friend Paul and of finding himself bereft of his
last real connection with the family that had given him his place in
life.
In fact there no longer were any humans in the world with
whom he had close emotional ties. Andrew had come to realize by this
time that he had cared deeply for the Martins and the Charneys in a
way that went beyond the robotic--that his devotion to them was not
merely a manifestation of the First and Second Laws, but something
that might indeed be called love. His love, for them. In his earlier days
Andrew would never have admitted such a thing, even to himself; but
he was different now.
These thoughts led Andrew inevitably, around the time of Paul
Charney's death, to a consideration of the entire concept of family
ties--the love of parent for child, of child for parent--and how that was
related to the inexorable passing of the generations. If you are
human, Andrew told himself, you are part of a great chain, a chain
that hangs suspended across vast spans of time and links you to all
those who have come before you and those who follow after. And you
understand that individual links of the chain may perish--indeed,
must perish--but the chain itself is ever-renewing and will survive.
People died, whole families might become extinct--but the human
race, the species, went on and on through the centuries and the
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