ANDREW NEVER QUITE MADE IT to the library that day. He had never been there before-he rarely had reason to venture into the little town a short way down the road from the Martin estate-but he had not expected that to be any problem. He had studied the map with great care. And therefore he knew the route, or so he believed.
But everything he saw, once he was more than a short distance from the house, seemed strange to him. The actual landmarks along the road did not resemble the abstract symbols on the map, not to his way of thinking. He hesitated again and again, comparing the things he was seeing out here with the things he had expected to see, and after he had been walking for a little while he realized that he was lost, that he must have taken a wrong turn somewhere without noticing it and could no longer relate his position to anything on the map.
What to do now? Go back and start again? Or keep on in this direction, and hope that his path would somehow link up with the proper route?
The most efficient thing, Andrew decided, was to ask someone for directions. It might be that he could regain the direction he wanted with relatively little effort.
But who was there to ask? Closer to the house he had seen an occasional field robot, but there were none in sight here. A vehicle passed, but did not stop. Perhaps another one would come by soon. He stood irresolute, which meant calmly motionless; and then he saw two human beings walking diagonally across the field that lay to his left.
He turned to face them.
They saw him, and changed course so that now they were heading in his direction. They changed their demeanor, too. A moment before, they had been talking loudly, laughing and whooping, their voices carrying far across the field-but now they had fallen silent. Their faces bore the look that Andrew associated with human uncertainty.
They were young, but not very young, twenty, perhaps? twenty-five? Andrew had never been very good at judging the age of humans.
He said, when they were still some distance away, "Pardon me, sirs. Would you kindly describe to me the route to the town library?"
They halted and stared.
One of them, the taller and thinner of the two, who was wearing a tall narrow black hat that looked like a length of pipe and extended his height still further, almost grotesquely, said-not to Andrew, but to the other-"I think it's a robot."
"I think you're right," said the other, who was short and plump, and had a bulbous nose and heavy eyelids. "It's got a robot kind of face, doesn't it?"
"It certainly does. Definitely a robot kind of face."
"But it's wearing clothes."
"Very fancy clothes too."
"Imagine that. A robot wearing fancy clothes! What will they think of next?"
"Pardon me, sirs," Andrew said again. "I am in need of assistance. I have been trying to locate the town library, but I seem to have lost my way."
"Speaks just like a robot," the taller one said.
"Got a face just like a robot," said the other.
"Then it must be a robot."
"You'd think so, wouldn't you?"
"But he's wearing clothes."
"Clothes. Absolutely. There's no denying the truth of that, is there?"
"Robots don't wear clothes, do they?"
"Not that I know of."
"If it's wearing clothes, do you think it can be a robot?"
"It's got a metal face. Metal everything. But if it's a robot, why is it wearing clothes?"
The taller one snapped his fingers. "You know what we have here? It's the free robot. There's a robot that lives at the old Charney place that isn't owned by anybody, and I bet this is the one. Why else would it be wearing clothes?"
"Ask it," said the one with the nose.
"Good idea," said the other. He took a few steps toward Andrew and said, " Are you the robot from the Charney place?"
"I am Andrew Martin, sir," said Andrew.
"Pretty snotty kind of robot, aren't you?" the tall one said. "Give me a direct answer when I ask you a question."
"The place where I live is the Martin estate, which is owned by the Charney family. It was formerly the home of Mr. Gerald Martin. Therefore my name is Andrew Martin."
"You're a robot, right?"
"Of course I am, sir."
"Then why are you wearing clothes? Robots don't wear clothes, do they?"
"I wear clothes when I choose to wear them," said Andrew quietly.
"That's disgusting. You're a hideous spectacle decked out like that, do you know that? Absolutely hideous. A robot wearing clothes! Who ever heard of that?" He glanced at his companion. "Have you ever seen anything so disgusting?" And to Andrew he said, "Take off your clothes."
Andrew hesitated. He hadn't heard an order in that tone of voice in so long that his Second Law circuits had momentarily jammed.
The tall one said, "Well, what are you waiting for? I told you to take off your clothes, didn't I? I order you to take off your clothes!"
Slowly, Andrew began to obey. He unfastened his shoulder chain and set it down carefully on the ground. Then he removed his satiny blouse and folded it with great care so that it would not look crumpled when he put it on again. He placed it on the ground next to the chain.
"Faster," said the tall one. "Don't bother folding your things. Just drop them, you hear? Get everything off. Everything."
Andrew unfastened the velvety leggings. He removed the elegant boots.
The nose said, "Well, at least he follows orders."
"He has to. Every robot does. There isn't any two ways about it. Following orders is built right into them. You say, 'Go jump in the lake,' and they jump. You say, 'Bring me a plate of strawberries,' and it goes right out and finds you some strawberries somewhere, even if it's the wrong time of year."
"Sounds like a good deal, having something like that around."
"You bet it is. I've always wondered what it would be like to have a robot of my own. Haven't you?"
The tall one shrugged. "Who could afford it?"
"This one's real available. If it doesn't belong to anyone, he could be ours as much as somebody else's. We just have to tell him that he belongs to us. Make it an order, don't you see?"
The tall one blinked. "Hey! That's right!"
"We'll make him run errands for us. Do all sorts of jobs. Anything we like, it'll have to do. And nobody can stop us. It isn't as if we're stealing anybody's property. He isn't anybody's property."
"But what if someone else tries to take him from us the same way?"
"We'll give him an order that says he can't go off with anybody else," said the nose.
The tall one frowned. "I'm not sure that would work. If he has to obey orders from humans, he'll have to obey orders from anybody else just the same as he does ours, right?"
"Well-"
"Let's worry about that later. -Hey! you! You, robot! Stand on your head!"
"The head is not meant-" Andrew began.
"I said, stand on your head. That's an order. If you don't know how to stand on your head, this is a good moment to start learning the way it's done."
Andrew hesitated again. Then he bent his head toward the ground and put his arms out so that they would bear his weight He attempted to lift his legs. But there was nothing in his circuitry to equip Andrew for dealing easily with such an inverted position, and he lost his balance almost at once. He toppled and fell heavily to the ground, landing on his back. For a moment he lay still, struggling to shake off the effects of his fall, before starting slowly to rise.
"No," the tall one said. "Just stay down there. And don't make a sound." To the other he said, "I bet you we could take him apart and put him back together again. You ever take a robot apart?"
"No. you?"
"Never. But I always wanted to."
"You think he'll let us?"
"How can he stop us?"
Indeed there was no way at all that Andrew was able to stop them, if they ordered him not to resist in a forceful enough manner. The Second Law-obedience to humans-would always take precedence over the Third Law of self-preservation. In any case, it was impossible for him to defend himself against them without running the risk of hurting them, and that would mean breaking the First Law. At that thought every motile unit in him contracted slightly and Andrew began to quiver as he lay stretched full length on the ground.
The tall one walked over and shoved at him with the tip of his boot.
"He's heavy. And I think we're going to need tools to do the job."
Bulbous-nose said, "What if we can't put him back the right way again afterward?"
"What of it?"
"Then we've wasted a perfectly good robot that we could have used for all sorts of other things. I think what we ought to do is order him to take himself apart. He's got to know the right way of doing it. It would be fun to watch him try, anyhow. And then we can assemble him again."
"Right," said the tall one thoughtfully. "But let's get him off the road. If someone happens to come along-"
It was too late. Someone had indeed come along and it was George. From where he lay, Andrew could see him topping a small rise in the middle distance. He would have liked to signal for help. But the last order he had received was, "Don't make a sound," and he was bound by that until countermanded by its giver or some other human being.
George was looking this way, though. And now he was breaking into a trot. In another few moments he was there, somewhat winded, standing at Andrew's side looking down at him in dismay.
The two young men stepped back a little and waited, frowning, glancing uncertainly at each other.
George said anxiously, "Andrew, has anything gone wrong with you?"
Andrew said, "I am quite well, George."
"Why are you lying on the ground like that, then? Can't you get up?"
"I would have no difficulty in doing that, if you wished me to," Andrew said.
"Then do it! Don't just lie there!"
Andrew arose, gratefully, when he heard the order.
George said, " And why are your clothes scattered around all over the place? How come you're not wearing them? What's been going on here?"
The tall young man said, "That your robot, Mac?"
George turned sharply. "He's no one's robot. Have you two been playing games with him?"
"Well, we thought it was pretty weird that a robot would be wearing clothes. So we politely asked him to take them off. What's that to you if you don't own him?"
George said, "Were they trying to harm you, Andrew?"
Andrew said, "It was their intention in some way to dismember me. They were about to move me to a quiet spot and require me to dismember myself."
George looked at the two young men. He was attempting to appear fearless and bold even though he was outnumbered, but Andrew saw his chin tremble.
"Is this true?" George asked them sternly.
The two had evidently also noticed George's obvious discomfort, though, and plainly they had begun to decide that he represented no serious threat to them. George was no longer a young man. His children were grown, now, old enough so that his son Paul had joined the family law firm. George's russet hair had turned gray and his cheeks-without their flaring side-whiskers, now-were the soft pink cheeks of a sedentary man. He was hardly likely to put up much of a fight, no matter how fierce his manner might seem. As the two took note of that, their manner changed, becoming less wary and more confident.
The tall one said lightly, with a smirk on his face, "We wanted to see how he'd go about it, yes. Especially how he was going to manage things toward the end, when he only had one arm still attached."
"You have a peculiar way of amusing yourselves."
"Is that any business of yours?"
"As a matter of fact, it is."
The tall one laughed. " And what are you going to do about it, pudgy? Beat us up?"
"No," George said. "I don't have to. This robot has been with my family for over seventy years, are you aware of that? He knows us and he values us more than he values anyone else in the world. What I'm going to do is tell him that you two have been threatening my life, that you're planning to kill me. I'll ask him to defend me. He'll have to choose between my life and yours, and I know very well which choice he's going to make. -Do you know how strong a robot is? Do you know what's going to happen to you when Andrew attacks you?"
"Hey, wait a second-" the bulbous-nosed one said. He looked troubled again, now. So did the other. They were both beginning to back away a little.
George said sharply, "Andrew, I am in direct personal danger. These two young men are about to cause me harm. I order you to move toward them!"
Andrew obediently took a couple of steps forward, though he wondered what he would be able to do by way of defending George beyond that. In sudden inspiration he brought his arms up into what could perhaps have been interpreted as a menacing position. If the whole idea was simply to have him seem formidable, well, he would make himself look as formidable as he could.
He held the fierce pose. His photoelectric eyes glowed their strongest shade of red. His bare metallic form gleamed in the sunlight.
The two young men didn't choose to stay around to see what was going to happen next. They took off across the field as fast as they could run, and it was only when they were something like a hundred meters away and felt that they had reached a safe place that they turned and glared back, shaking their fists and yelling angry curses.
Andrew took a few more steps in their direction. They swung around and sped away over the top of the hill. Within moments they were down the far side and out of sight.
Even now, Andrew remained in his posture of threat.
"All right, Andrew, you can relax," said George. He was shaking and his face was pale and sweaty. He looked very much unstrung. George was well past the age where he could comfortably face the possibility of a physical confrontation with one young man, let alone two of them at once.
Andrew said, "It is just as well that they ran away. You know that I could never have hurt them, George. I could plainly see that they weren't attacking you."
"But they might have, if things had gone on any further."
"That is only a speculation. In my judgment, George-"
"Yes. I know. Most likely they'd never have had the guts to raise a hand against me. But in any case I didn't order you to attack them. I only told you to move toward them. Their own fears did all the rest. That and that prizefighter stance that you were clever enough to adopt."
"But how could they possibly fear robots? The First Law insures that a robot could never-"
"Fear of robots is a disease that much of mankind has, and there doesn't really seem to be any cure for it-not yet, at any rate. But never mind that. They're gone and you're still in one piece and that's all that matters right now. What I'd like to know, though, is what the devil were you doing here in the first place, Andrew?"
"I was going to the library."
"Yes. I know that. I found the note you left. But this isn't the way to the library. The library's back there, in town. And when I phoned the library the librarian said you hadn't been there, that she hadn't heard a thing from you. I went out looking for you on the library road and there wasn't any sign of you there, and nobody I met along the way to town had seen you either. So I knew you were lost. As a matter of fact, you've gotten yourself turned around by 180 degrees."
"I suspected that there was some error in my directional plan," Andrew said.
"There certainly was. I was just about ready to order a sky-search scan for you, do you know that? And then it occurred to me that you might have wandered over this way, somehow. -What were you doing going to the library anyway, Andrew? Sometimes you get the strangest ideas into your head. You know that I'd be happy to bring you any book you needed."
"Yes, I know that, George. But I am a-"
"Free robot. Yes. Yes. With every right to pick himself up and march off to town to use the library, if that's what he wants to do, even though his extraordinary robotic intelligence is mysteriously incapable of keeping him on the right road. And what was it, may I ask, that you wanted to get at the library?"
"A book on modern language."
"Are you planning to give up woodworking for linguistics, Andrew?"
"I feel inadequate in regard to speech."
"But you have a fantastic command of the language! Your vocabulary, your grammar-"
"The language-its metaphors, its colloquialisms, even its grammar-constantly changes, George. My programming does not. If I don't update myself, I will be almost unable to communicate with human beings in another few generations."
"Well-perhaps you have a point there."
"So I must study the patterns of linguistic change. And many other things as well." Suddenly Andrew heard himself saying, "George, I feel it's important that I get to know much more about human beings, about the world, about everything. I have lived such an isolated life all these years, in our beautiful estate here on this little secluded strip of coast. The world beyond my own doorstep is a mystery to me, really. -and I need to know more about robots also, George. I want to write a book about them."
"A book," George said, sounding puzzled. " About robots. A manual of design?"
"Not at all. A history of their development is what I have in mind."
"Ah," George said, nodding and frowning at the same time. "Well, then. Let's walk home, shall we?"
"Of course. May I put my clothes on or shall I simply carry them?"
"Put them on. By all means."
"Thank you."
Andrew dressed quickly and he and George began to walk back up the road.
"You want to write a book on the history of robotics," George said, as if revolving the concept in his mind. "But why, Andrew? There are a million books on robotics already and at least half a million of them go into the history of the robot concept. The world is growing saturated not only with robots but with information about robots."
Andrew shook his head, a human gesture that he had lately begun to make more and more frequently. "Not a history of robotics, George. A history of robots-by a robot. Surely no such book has ever been written. I want to explain how robots feel about themselves. And especially about how it has been for us in our relationships with human beings, ever since the first robots were allowed to work and live on Earth."
George's eyebrows lifted. But he offered no other direct response.