The Bicentennial Man and Other Stories

for him; let him enjoy it.”

“Enjoy? He’s a robot.”

“I’m not talking about the robot. I’m talking about the brain—the brain—that’s living here.”

The Mercury Computer, enclosed in glass, carefully and delicately wired, its integrity most subtly preserved, breathed and lived.

“It’s Randall who’s in paradise,” said William. “He’s found the world for whose sake he autistically fled this one. He has a world his new body fits perfectly in exchange for the world his old body did not fit at all.”

Anthony watched the screen in wonder. “He seems to be quieting.”

“Of course,” said William, “and he’ll do his job all the better for his joy.”

Anthony smiled and said, “We’ve done it, then, you and I? Shall we join the rest and let them fawn on us, William?”

William said, “Together?”

And Anthony linked arms. “Together, brother!”

***

I won’t deny that the unworthy thought crossed my mind that Jim was young and that when he took STRANGER IN PARADISE he might, unconsciously, have been more impressed by my name than by the story. That thought, fugitive at best, vanished completely when Donald Wollheim, of DAW Books, picked it up for one of his anthologies. It simply passes the bounds of belief that Don, hardened and cynical veteran that he is, could possibly be impressed by my name under any circumstances or, in fact, by anything about me. (Right, Don?) So if he wanted the story, it was for the story’s sake.

I have on occasion written articles for The New York Times Magazine but my batting average with them is less than .500.

Ordinarily that sort of thing would be disheartening and I would get to feel that I didn’t have the range on that particular market and that I ought to concentrate my efforts elsewhere. However, the Times is a special case, and I kept trying.

By the fall of 1974, however, I had received three rejections in a row and I made up my mind to turn down the next request for an article that I received from them. That’s not as easy as it sounds, because the request usually comes from Gerald Walker, who is as nice a fellow as was ever invented.

When he called, I tried desperately to steel myself to a refusal whatever he said, and then he mentioned the magic phrase “science fiction.”

“A science fiction story?” I said.

“Yes,” he said.

“For the magazine section?”

“Yes. We want a four-thousand-word story that looks into the future and has something to say about the relationship between man and machine.”

“I’ll try,” I said. What else could I do? The chance of hitting the Times with a science fiction story was too interesting to pass up. I began working on the story on November 18, 1974, sent it in. to the Times without any real confidence concerning the outcome, and damned if they didn’t take it. It appeared in the January 5, 1975, issue of the Sunday Times and, as far as I could find out, it was the first piece of fiction the Times had ever commissioned and published.

The Life and Times of Multivac

The whole world was interested. The whole world could watch. If anyone wanted to know how many did watch, Multivac could have told them. The great computer Multivac kept track—as it did of everything.

Multivac was the judge in this particular case, so coldly objective and purely upright that there was no need of prosecution or defense. There was only the accused, Simon Hines, and the evidence, which consisted, in part, of Ronald Bakst.

Bakst watched, of course. In his case, it was compulsory.He would rather it were not. In his tenth decade, he was showing signs of age and his rumpled hair was distinctly gray.

Noreen was not watching. She had said at the door, “If we had a friend left—” She paused, then added, “Which I doubt!” and left.

Bakst wondered if she would come back at all, but at the moment, it didn’t matter.

Hines had been an incredible idiot to attempt actual action, as though one could think of walking up to a Multivac outlet and smashing it—as though he didn’t know a world-girdling computer, the world-girdling Computer (capital letter, please) with millions of robots at its command, couldn’t protect itself. And even if the outlet had been smashed, what would that have accomplished?

And Hines did it in Bakst’s physical presence, too!

He was called precisely on schedule—“Ronald Bakst will give evidence now.”

Multivac’s voice was beautiful, with a beauty that never quite vanished no matter how often it was heard. Its timbre was neither quite male nor, for that matter, female, and it spoke in whatever language its hearer understood best.

“I am ready to give evidence,” Bakst said.

There was no way to say anything but what he had to say. Hines could not avoid conviction. In the days when Hines would have had to face his fellow human beings, he would have been convicted more quickly and less fairly—and would have been punished more crudely.

Fifteen days passed, days during which Bakst was quite alone. Physical aloneness was not a difficult thing to envisage in the world of Multivac. Hordes had died in the days of the great catastrophes and it had been the computers that had saved what was left and directed the recovery—and improved their own designs till all were merged into Multivac—and the five million human beings were left on Earth to live in perfect comfort.

But those five million were scattered and the chances of one seeing another outside the immediate circle, except by design, was not great. No one was designing to see Bakst, not even by television.

For the time, Bakst could endure the isolation. He buried himself in his chosen way—which happened to be, these last twenty-three years, the designing of mathematical games. Every man and woman on Earth could develop a way of life to self-suit, provided always that Multivac, weighing all of human affairs with perfect skill, did not judge the chosen way to be subtractive to human happiness.

But what could be subtractive in mathematical games? It was purely abstract—pleased Bakst—harmed no one else.

He did not expect the isolation to continue. The Congress would not isolate him permanently without a trial —a different kind of trial from that which Hines had experienced, of course, one without Multivac’s tyranny of absolute justice.

Still, he was relieved when it ended, and pleased that it was Noreen coming back that ended it. She came trudging over the hill toward him and he started toward her, smiling. It had been a successful five-year period during which they had been together. Even the occasional meetings with her two children and two grandchildren had been pleasant.

He said, “Thank you for being back.”

She said, “I’m not back.” She looked tired. Her brown hair was windblown, her prominent cheeks a trifle rough and sunburned.

Bakst pressed the combination for a light lunch and coffee. He knew what she liked. She didn’t stop him, and though she hesitated for a moment, she ate.

She said, “I’ve come to talk to you. The Congress sent me.”

“The Congress!” he said. “Fifteen men and women—counting me. Self-appointed and helpless.”

“You didn’t think so when you were a member.”

“I’ve grown older. I’ve learned.”

“At least you’ve learned to betray your friends.”