THE BICENTENNIAL MAN

by Isaac Asimov

  Eisenmuth was a tall man whose long sad face was coarsely textured and coarsely featured. He spoke Global with a pronounced American accent, although he had never been in the United States prior to his taking office.

  “It seems perfectly clear to me, Mr. Robertson. There is no difficulty. The products of your company are always rented, never sold. If the rented property on the Moon is now no longer needed, it is up to you to receive the products back and transfer them.”

  “Yes, Conserver, but where? It would be against the law to bring them to Earth without a government permit and that has been denied.”

  “They would be of no use to you here. You can take them to Mercury or to the asteroids.”

  “What would we do with them there?”

  Eisenmuth shrugged. “The ingenious men of your company will think of something.”

  Robertson shook his head. “It would represent an enormous loss for the company.”

  “I’m afraid it would,” said Eisenmuth, unmoved. “I understand the company has been in poor financial condition for several years now.”

  “Largely because of government imposed restrictions, Conserver.”

  “You must be realistic, Mr. Robertson. You know that the climate of public opinion is increasingly against robots.”

  “Wrongly so, Conserver.”

  “But so, nevertheless. It may be wiser to liquidate the company. It is merely a suggestion, of course.”

  “Your suggestions have force, Conserver. Is it necessary to tell you that our Machines, a century ago, solved the ecological crisis?”

  “I’m sure mankind is grateful, but that was a long time ago. We now live in alliance with nature, however uncomfortable that might be at times, and the past is dim.”

  “You mean what have we done for mankind lately?”

  “I suppose I do.”

  “Surely we can’t be expected to liquidate instantaneously; not without enormous losses. We need time.”

  “How much?”

  “How much can you give us?”

  “It’s not up to me.”

  Robertson said softly. “We are alone. We need play no games. How much time can you give me?”

  Eisenmuth’s expression was that of a man retreating into inner calculations. “I think you can count on two years. I’ll be frank. The Global government intends to take over the firm and phase it out for you if you don’t do it by then yourself, more or less. And unless there is a vast turn in public opinion, which I greatly doubt--” He shook his head.

  “Two years, then,” said Robertson softly.

  2a.

  Robertson sat alone. There was no purpose to his thinking and it had degenerated into retrospection. Four generations of Robertsons had headed the firm. None of them was a roboticist. It had been men such as Lanning and Bogert and, most of all, most of all, Susan Calvin, who had made U. S. Robots what it was, but surely the four Robertsons had provided the climate that had made it possible for them to do their work.

  Without U. S. Robots, the Twenty-first Century would have progressed into deepening disaster. That it didn’t was due to the Machines that had for a generation steered mankind through the rapids and shoals of history.

  And now for that, he was given two years. What could be done in two years to overcome the insuperable prejudices of mankind? He didn’t know.

  Harriman had spoken hopefully of new ideas but would go into no details. Just as well, for Robertson would have understood none of it.

  But what could Harriman do anyway? What had anyone ever done against man’s intense antipathy toward the imitation. Nothing--

  Robertson drifted into a half sleep in which no inspiration came.

  3.

  Harriman said, “You have it all now, George Ten. You have had everything I could think of that is at all applicable to the problem. As far as sheer mass of information is concerned, you have stored more in your memory concerning human beings and their ways, past and present, than I have, or than any human being could have.”

  “That is very likely.”

  “Is there anything more that you need, in your own opinion?”

  “As far as information is concerned, I find no obvious gaps. There may be matters unimagined at the boundaries. I cannot tell. But that would be true no matter how large a circle of information I took in.”

  “True. Nor do we have time to take in information forever. Robertson has told me that we only have two years, and a quarter of one of those years has passed. Can you suggest anything?”

  “At the moment, Mr. Harriman, nothing. I must weigh the information and for that purpose I could use help.”

  “From me?”

  “No. Most particularly, not from you. You are a human being, of intense qualifications, and whatever you say may have the partial force of an order and may inhibit my considerations. Nor any other human being, for the same reason, especially since you have forbidden me to communicate with any.”

  “But in that case, George, what help?”

  “From another robot, Mr. Harriman.”

  “What other robot?”

  “There are others of the JG series which were constructed. I am the tenth, JG-10.”

  “The earlier ones were useless, experimental--”

  “Mr. Harriman, George Nine exists.”

  “Well, but what use will he be? He is very much like you except for certain lacks. You are considerably the more versatile of the two.”

  “I am certain of that,” said George Ten. He nodded his head in a grave gesture. “Nevertheless, as soon as I create a line of thought, the mere fact that I have created it commends it to me and I find it difficult to abandon it. 1f I can, after the development of a line of thought, express it to George Nine, he would consider it without having first created it. He would therefore view it without prior bent. He might see gaps and shortcomings that I might not.”

  Harriman smiled. “Two heads are better than one, in other words, eh, George?”

  “If by that, Mr. Harriman, you mean two individuals with one head apiece, yes.”

  “Right. Is there anything else you want?”

  “Yes. Something more than films. I have viewed much concerning human beings and their world. I have seen human beings here at U. S. Robots and can check my interpretation of what I have viewed against direct sensory impressions. Not so concerning the physical world. I have never seen it and my viewing is quite enough to tell me that my surroundings here are by no means representative of it. I would like to see it.”

  “The physical world?” Harriman seemed stunned at the enormity of the thought for a moment. “Surely you don’t suggest I take you outside the grounds of U. S. Robots?”

  “Yes, that is my suggestion.”

  “That’s illegal at any time. In the climate of opinion today, it would be fatal.”

  “If we are detected, yes. I do not suggest you take me to a city or even to a dwelling place of human beings. I would like to see some open region, without human beings.”

  “That, too, is illegal.”

  “If we are caught. Need we be?”

  Harriman said, “How essential is this, George?”

  “I cannot tell, but it seems to me it would be useful.”

  “Do you have something in mind?”

  George Ten seemed to hesitate. “I cannot tell. It seems to me that I might have something in mind if certain areas of uncertainty were reduced.”

  “Well, let me think about it. And meanwhile, I’ll check out George Nine and arrange to have you occupy a single cubicle. That at least can be done without trouble.”

  3a.

  George Ten sat alone.

  He accepted statements tentatively, put them together, and drew a conclusion; over and over again; and from conclusions built other statements which he accepted and tested and found a contradiction and rejected; or not, and tentatively accepted further.

  At none of the conclusions he reached did he feel wonder, surprise, satisfaction; merely a note
of plus or minus.

  4.

  Harriman’s tension was not noticeably decreased even after they had made a silent downward landing on Robertson’s estate.

  Robertson had countersigned the order making the dyna-foil available, and the silent aircraft, moving as easily vertically as horizontally, had been large enough to carry the weight of Harriman, George Ten, and, of course, the pilot.

  (The dyna-foil itself was one of the consequences of the Machine-catalyzed invention of the proton micro-pile which supplied pollution-free energy in small doses. Nothing had been done since of equal importance to man’s comfort--Harriman’s lips tightened at the thought--and yet it had not earned gratitude for U. S. Robots.)

  The air flight between the grounds of U. S. Robots and the Robertson estate had been the tricky part. Had they been stopped then, the presence of a robot aboard would have meant a great set of complications. It would be the same on the way back. The estate itself, it might be argued--it would be argued--was part of the property of U. S. Robots and on that property, robots, properly supervised, might remain.

  The pilot looked back and his eyes rested with gingerly briefness on George Ten. “You want to get out at all, Mr. Harriman?”

  “Yes.”

  “It, too?”

  “Oh, yes.” Then, just a bit sardonically, “I won’t leave you alone with him.”

  George Ten descended first and Harriman followed. They had come down on the foil-port and not too far off was the garden. It was quite a showplace and Harriman suspected that Robertson used juvenile hormone to control insect life without regard to environmental formulas.

  “Come, George,” said Harriman. “Let me show you.” Together they walked toward the garden.

  George said, “It is a little as I have imaged it. My eyes are not properly designed to detect wavelength differences, so I may not recognize different objects by that alone.”

  “I trust you are not distressed at being color-blind. We needed too many positronic paths for your sense of judgment and were unable to spare any for sense of color. In the future--if there is a future--”

  “I understand, Mr. Harriman. Enough differences remain to show me that there are here many different forms of plant life.”

  “Undoubtedly. Dozens.”

  “And each coequal with man, biologically.”

  “Each is a separate species, yes. There are millions of species of living creatures.”

  “Of which the human being forms but one.”

  “By far the most important to human beings, however.”

  “And to me, Mr. Harriman. But I speak in the biological sense.”

  “I understand.”

  “Life, then, viewed through all its forms, is incredibly complex.”

  “Yes, George, that’s the crux of the problem. What man does for his own desires and comforts affects the complex total-of-life, the ecology, and his short-term gains can bring long-term disadvantages. The Machines taught us to set up a human society which would minimize that, but the near-disaster of the early Twenty-first Century has left mankind suspicious of innovations. That, added to its special fear of robots--”

  “I understand, Mr. Harriman....That is an example of animal life, I feel certain.”

  “That is a squirrel; one of many species of squirrels.”

  The tail of the squirrel flirted as it passed to the other side of the tree

  “And this,” said George, his arm moving with flashing speed, “is a tiny thing indeed.” He held it between his fingers and peered at it.

  “It is an insect, some sort of beetle. There are thousands of species of beetles.”

  “With each individual beetle as alive as the squirrel and as yourself?”

  “As complete and independent an organism as any other, within the total ecology. There are smaller organisms still; many too small to see.”

  “And that is a tree, is it not? And it is hard to the touch--”

  4a.

  The pilot sat alone. He would have liked to stretch his own legs but some dim feeling of safety kept him in the dyna-foil. If that robot went out of control, he intended to take off at once. But how could he tell if it went out of control?

  He had seen many robots. That was unavoidable considering he was Mr. Robertson’s private pilot. Always, though, they had been in the laboratories and warehouses, where they belonged, with many specialists in the neighborhood.

  True, Dr. Harriman was a specialist. None better, they said. But a robot here was where no robot ought to be; on Earth; in the open; free to move--He wouldn’t risk his good job by telling anyone about this--but it wasn’t right.

  5.

  George Ten said, “The films I have viewed are accurate in terms of what I have seen. Have you completed those I selected for you, Nine?”

  “Yes,” said George Nine. The two robots sat stiffly, face to face, knee to knee, like an image and its reflection. Dr. Harriman could have told them apart at a glance, for he was acquainted with the minor differences in physical design. If he could not see them, but could talk to them, he could still tell them apart, though with somewhat less certainty, for George Nine’s responses would be subtly different from those produced by the substantially more intricately patterned positronic brain paths of George Ten.

  “In that case,” said George Ten, “give me your reactions to what I will say. First, human beings fear and distrust robots because they regard robots as competitors. How may that be prevented?”

  “Reduce the feeling of competitiveness,” said George Nine, “by shaping the robot as something other than a human being.”

  “Yet the essence of a robot is its positronic replication of life. A replication of life in a shape not associated with life might arouse horror.”

  “There are two million species of life forms. Choose one of those as the shape rather than that of a human being.”

  “Which of all those species?” George Nine’s thought processes proceeded noiselessly for some three seconds. “One large enough to contain a positronic brain, but one not possessing unpleasant associations for human beings.”

  “No form of land life has a braincase large enough for a positronic brain but an elephant, which I have not seen, but which is described as very large, and therefore frightening to man. How would you meet this dilemma?”

  “Mimic a life form no larger than a man but enlarge the braincase.”

  George Ten said, “A small horse, then, or a large dog, would you say? Both horses and dogs have long histories of association with human beings.”

  “Then that is well.”

  “But consider--A robot with a positronic brain would mimic human intelligence. If there were a horse or a dog that could speak and reason like a human being, there would be competitiveness there, too. Human beings might be all the more distrustful and angry at such unexpected competition from what they consider a lower form of life.”

  George Nine said, “Make the positronic brain less complex, and the robot less nearly intelligent.”

  “The complexity bottleneck of the positronic brain rests in the Three Laws. A less complex brain could not possess the Three Laws in full measure.”

  George Nine said at once, “That cannot be done.”

  George Ten said, “I have also come to a dead end there. That, then, is not a personal peculiarity in my own line of thought and way of thinking. Let us start again....Under what conditions might the Third Law not be necessary?”

  George Nine stirred as if the question were difficult and dangerous. But he said, “If a robot were never placed in a position of danger to itself; or if a robot were so easily replaceable that it did not matter whether it were destroyed or not.”

  “And under what conditions might the Second Law not be necessary?”

  George Nine’s voice sounded a bit hoarse. “If a robot were designed to respond automatically to certain stimuli with fixed responses and if nothing else were expected of it, so that no order need ever be given it.”

&
nbsp; “And under what conditions”--George Ten paused here-- “might the First Law not be necessary?”

  George Nine paused longer and his words came in a low whisper, “If the fixed responses were such as never to entail danger to human beings.”

  “Imagine, then, a positronic brain that guides only a few responses to certain stimuli and is simply and cheaply made--so that it does not require the Three Laws. How large need it be?”

  “Not at all large. Depending on the responses demanded, it might weigh a hundred grams, one gram, one milligram.”

  “Your thoughts accord with mine. I shall see Dr. Harriman.”

  5a.

  George Nine sat alone. He went over and over the questions and answers. There was no way in which he could change them. And yet the thought of a robot of any kind, of any size, of any shape, of any purpose, without the Three Laws, left him with an odd, discharged feeling.

  He found it difficult to move. Surely George Ten had a similar reaction. Yet he had risen from his seat easily.

  6.

  It had been a year and a half since Robertson had been closeted with Eisenmuth in private conversation. In that interval, the robots had been taken off the Moon and all the far-flung activities of U. S. Robots had withered. What money Robertson had been able to raise had been placed into this one quixotic venture of Harriman’s.

  It was the last throw of the dice, here in his own garden. A year ago, Harriman had taken the robot here--George Ten, the last full robot that U. S. Robots had manufactured. Now Harriman was here with something else

  Harriman seemed to be radiating confidence. He was talking easily with Eisenmuth, and Robertson wondered if he really felt the confidence he seemed to have. He must. In Robertson’s experience, Harriman was no actor.

  Eisenmuth left Harriman, smiling, and came up to Robertson. Eisenmuth’s smile vanished at once. “Good morning, Robertson,” he said. “What is your man up to?”

  “This is his show,” said Robertson evenly. “I’ll leave it to him.” Harriman called out, “I am ready, Conserver.”