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.
Chapter Twelve
LITTLE MISS was making one of her periodic visits to her family's California estate. She had reached her eighty-third birthday and she seemed frail as a bird these days. But there was nothing about her that was lacking in either energy or determination. Though she carried a cane, she used it more often to gesture with than she did for support.
She listened to the story of Andrew's unhappy attempt to reach the library in a fury of mounting indignation. At the end she tapped her cane vehemently against the floor and said, "George, that's absolutely horrible. Who were those two young ruffians, anyway?"
"I don't know, Mother."
"Then you should make it your business to find out."
"What difference does it make? Just a couple of local hooligans, I suppose. The usual idling foolish kids. In the end they didn't do any damage."
"But they might have. If you hadn't come along when you did, they could have caused serious harm to Andrew. And even when you did come along, you might well have been physically attacked yourself. The only thing that saved you from that, it seems, is that they were so stupid that they failed to realize that Andrew wouldn't be able to harm them even at your direct order."
"Really, Mother. Do you think they would have touched me? People attacking an absolute stranger on a country road? In the Twenty-Third Century?"
"Well-perhaps not. But Andrew was certainly in danger. And that's something we can't allow. You know that I regard Andrew as a member of our family, George."
"Yes, of course. So do I. We always have."
"Then we can't permit a couple of moronic young louts to treat him like some kind of disposable wind-up toy, can we?"