about that before today, so far as I know. Is this something new?"
"Reasonably new."
"A week? A month? A year? -What's going on, Andrew?"
"It is hard for me to explain. I have begun to feel-different. "
"Different! Different from whom? It isn't as though a robot is any novelty any more. Andrew, there are millions of robots on Earth now. In this Region, according to the last census, there are almost as many robots as there are humans."
"I know that, George. There are robots doing every conceivable kind of work."
"And not a single one of them wears clothes."
"But none of them is free, George."
"So that's it! You feel different because you are different!"
"Exactly."
"But to wear clothes-"
"Indulge me, George. I want to do this."
George let out his breath in a long, slow exhalation.
"Whatever you say. You're a free robot, Andrew."
"Yes. I am."
After his initial skepticism George seemed to find Andrew's venture into wearing clothes curious and amusing. He cooperated by bringing him, little by little, new additions to his wardrobe. Andrew could hardly go into town to purchase clothing himself, and he felt ill at ease even about ordering it from the computer catalogs, because he knew that his name was widely known in many places ever since the court decision, and he didn't want some shipping clerk in a storeroom far away to recognize it on an order form and begin spreading the word that the free robot was now going in for wearing clothing.
So George would supply him with the articles he requested: a shirt first, then shoes, a fine pair of gloves, a set of decorative epaulets.
"What about underwear?" George asked. "Should I get you some of that too?" But Andrew had no idea of the existence or purpose of underwear, and George had to explain it to him. Andrew decided that he had no need of it.
He tended to wear his new clothes only when he was alone at home. He was hardly ready to go outdoors in them; and even in his own cabin he stopped wearing them in the presence of others after a few preliminary experiments. He was inhibited by George's patronizing smile, which with the best will in the world George continued to be unable to conceal, and by the bewildered stares of the first few customers who saw him dressed when they came to him to commission work.
Andrew might be free, but there was built into him a carefully detailed program concerning his behavior toward human beings: a neural channel that was not as powerful in its effect as the Three Laws, but nevertheless was there to discourage him from giving any sort of offense. It was only by the tiniest steps that he dared advance. Open disapproval would set him back months. It was an enormous leap for him when he finally allowed himself to leave his house with clothing on.
No one he encountered that day showed any sign of surprise. But perhaps they were too astounded even to react. And indeed even Andrew himself still felt strange about his experiment with clothing.
He had a mirror, now, and he would study himself for long periods of time, turning from side to side, looking at himself from all angles. And sometimes he found himself reacting with disfavor to his own appearance. His metal face, with its glowing photoelectric eyes and its rigidly carved robotic features, sometimes struck Andrew himself as strikingly incongruous now that it rose up out of the soft, brightly colored fabrics of clothing meant for a human body.
But at other times it seemed to him perfectly appropriate for him to be wearing clothing. Like virtually all robots, he had been designed, after all, to be fundamentally humanoid in shape: two arms, two legs, an oval head set upon a narrow neck. The U. S. Robots designers had not needed to give him that form. They could have made him look any way they deemed efficient-with rotors instead of legs, with six arms instead of two, with a swiveling sensor-dome atop his trunk instead of a head with two eyes. But no: they had patterned him after themselves. The decision had been made, very early in the history of robotics, that the best way to overcome mankind's deep-seated fear of intelligent machines was to make them as familiar in form as possible.
In that case, why should he not wear clothing also? That would make him look even more human, wouldn't it?
And in any event Andrew wanted to wear clothing now. It seemed