fashion or another contributed greatly to this firm. I might almost say that the firm in its present form would not exist but for the work that I have provided for it to do. I brought that work here because in times past I have been very well served by certain members of this firm, and I have felt myself under an obligation to reciprocate. I am under no obligation to Feingold and Charney now. It is rather the other way around, now, and I am calling in my debts."
DeLong said, "I'll do whatever I can."
Chapter Nineteen
THE CHAIRMAN of the Science and Technology Committee of the World Legislature came from the East Asian Region and she was a woman: a small, delicately built, almost elfin woman who very likely was not nearly as fragile as she appeared. Her name was Chee Li-hsing and her transparent garments (which obscured what she wanted obscured by sheer dazzle alone) gave her the look of being nothing more than an elegant little trinket wrapped in plastic. In the splendor of her huge high-ceilinged office on the eighty-fourth floor of the magnificent green-glass tower that was the New York headquarters of the World Legislature she appeared tiny, almost insignificant. Yet she radiated a look of great competence, efficiency, forcefulness.
She said, "I sympathize with your wish to have full human rights. As perhaps you know, there have been times in history when great segments of the human population have been deprived of their own human rights, and have fought furiously-and ultimately successfully-to regain them. But those people suffered greatly under tyrannies of one kind or another before they won their freedom. You, on the other hand, have enjoyed a successful and rewarding life of unending achievement and reward. I imagine you are a widely envied person. So tell me, please: what rights can you possibly want that you do not already have?"
"As simple a thing as my right to life," Andrew replied. " A robot can be dismantled at any time."
"A human being can be executed at any time."
"And when, I ask you, was the last time that such an execution took place?"
"Why-" Li-hsing shrugged. "Of course, the death penalty is not currently employed in our civilization, and it hasn't been for a long time. But certainly it's been imposed to an enormous extent throughout history. And there's no fundamental reason why it couldn't be reinstated next year, if the citizens and the Legislature saw fit to do so."
"All right. You can all go back to cutting each other's heads off, or giving each other lethal jolts of electricity, or whatever, at a moment's notice, if you like. But the fact remains that no human being has been put to death by legal execution in so many years that nobody can remember the last time, and there's absolutely no agitation that I've ever heard of to start performing such executions again. Whereas even now-right now, here, today-I could be ended merely by the word of a human being in authority. No trial. No appeals procedure. You yourself could ring a bell and call your security guards in and say, 'This robot has displeased me. Take him out and dismantle him.' And they would take me out and dismantle me, just like that."
"Impossible!"
"I assure you it would be perfectly legal."
"But you are the head of a great company-a person of wealth and substance and high reputation-"
"Maybe after it had been done my company would be able to sue the Legislature, then, for loss of my services. But I'd still be terminated, wouldn't I? The only laws that protect robots are property laws. If you terminate somebody else's robot unjustifiably, that person can seek damages against you, and collect the value of the robot and maybe a punitive award as well. Fine. Very fine, if you're the human being in the case who's been damaged. But if you're the robot who happened to be terminated, why, the lawsuit doesn't bring you back into existence, does it? Does it, Madam Chairman?"
"This is a mere reductio ad absurdum. No one would dream of-dismantling-you. Of terminating you."
"Perhaps not. But where is my legal protection against having it done to me?"
"I repeat: a reductio ad absurdum. You've lived for nearly two hundred years, as I understand it. Tell me: how many times during that considerable period have you ever been in danger of-termination?"
"Once, actually. I was rescued. But the order for my dismantling had already been given."