"For years, yes, discussing it over and over again. It was my idea in the first place, as a matter of fact. I told him it was ridiculous for him to have to think of himself as some sort of walking gadget, when in fact he's so very much more than that. He didn't react at all well when I first proposed it to him. But then we went on talking, and after a time I saw that he was beginning to come around, and then he told me very straightforwardly that he did very much want to be free. 'Good,' I said. 'Tell my father and it'll all be arranged.' But he was afraid to. He kept on postponing it, because he was afraid you would be hurt. Finally I made him put it up to you."
Sir shrugged. "It was a foolish thing to do. He doesn't know what freedom is. How can he? He's a robot."
"You keep underestimating him, Father. He's a very special robot. He reads. He thinks about what he's read. He learns and grows from year to year. Maybe when he came here he was just a simple mechanical man like all the rest of them, but the capacity for growth was there in his pathways, whether his makers knew it or not, and he's made good use of that capacity. Father, I know Andrew and I tell you that he's every bit as complex a creature as-as-you and me."
"Nonsense, girl."
"How can you say that? He feels things inside. You must be aware of that. I'm not sure what he feels, most of the time, but I don't know what you feel inside a lot of the time either, and you've got the capacity for facial expression and all kinds of other body language that he doesn't. When you talk to him you see right away that he reacts to all kinds of abstract concepts-love, fear, beauty, loyalty, a hundred others-just as you and I do. What else counts but that? If someone else's reactions are very much like your own, how can you help but think that that someone else must be very much like yourself?"
"He isn't like us," Sir said. "He's something entirely different."
"He's someone entirely different," Little Miss said. " And not as different as you want to have me believe."
Sir shrugged. His face had turned gray now where it had been mottled with angry red blotches before, and he looked very, very old and weary.
He was silent for a long while, staring at his feet, pulling his lap-robe tighter around him. He still looked like an old emperor sitting sternly upright on his throne, but now he was more like an emperor who was seriously considering the possibility of abdicating.
"All right," he said finally. There was a note of bitterness in his tone. "You win, Mandy. If you want me to agree with you that Andrew is a person instead of a machine, I agree. Andrew is a person. There. Are you happy now?"
"I never said he was a person, Father."
"As a matter of fact, you did. That was precisely the word you used."
"You corrected me. You said he was an artificial person, and I accepted the correction."
"Well, then. So be it. We agree that Andrew is an artificial person. What of it? How does calling him an artificial person instead of a robot change anything? We're just playing games with words. A counterfeit banknote may be regarded as a banknote, but it's still counterfeit. And you can call a robot an artificial person, but he'll still be-"
"Father, what he wants is for you to grant him his freedom. He will continue to live here and do everything in his power to make your life pleasant and comfortable, as he has since the day he came here. But he wants you to tell him that he's free."
"It's a meaningless statement, Mandy."
"To you, maybe. Not to him."
"No. I'm old, yes, but I'm not quite senile, not yet, at least. What we're talking about here is establishing a gigantic legal precedent. Giving robots their freedom isn't going to abolish the Three Laws, but it sure as anything is going to open up a vast realm of legal wrangling about robot rights, robot grievances, robot this and that. Robots will be running into the courts and suing people for making them do unpleasant work, or failing to let them have vacations, or simply being unkind to them. Robots will start suing U. S. Robots