surgeon's positronic brain was being swept by troublesome conflicting potentials.
He said, after a little while, 'I would not presume to contradict you, sir. But I must tell you that I see nothing at all robotic about your external appearance.'
'You are correct. My external appearance has been altered extensively to make me appear human. But that does not mean I am human. Indeed, I have put myself to a great deal of extraordinary legal expense over the past few years for the sake of clarifying my status and it appears, after all of that, that I remain a robot, despite everything.'
'I would never have thought it, sir.'
'No. You never would.'
Andrew had not selected this surgeon for his dazzling personality, his quick wit, his readiness to cope with difficult social situations. None of that was important. What mattered was his skill as a surgeon, and by all accounts he had plenty of that. And also that he was a robot. A robot surgeon was the only possible choice for what Andrew had in mind, for no human surgeon could be trusted in this connection, neither in ability nor in intention. The robot could do the job.
The robot would do the job, too. Andrew intended to see to that.
'As I have told you, sir-'
'Stop calling me sir!'
The robot halted, plainly perplexed. Then he began again. ' As I have told you, Mr. Martin, to perform an operation such as you request on a human being would be a blatant violation of the First Law and I could in no way carry it out. But if you are, as you claim, a robot, then there is still a problem. Performing the operation would constitute inflicting damage on property, you see, and I would be unable to do it except at the direct instructions of your owner.'
'I am my owner,' Andrew said. 'I'm a free robot and I have the papers to prove it.'
'A-free-robot?'
'Listen to me,' Andrew said. He was seething with inner anguish now and his own positronic mind was being swept by troublesome potentials indeed. 'Enough of this chatter. I won't pretend to be human, and you'd discover soon enough when you operated that I'm not, anyway, so we can leave First Law considerations entirely out of this. But Second Law will apply. I am a free robot and you will do as I say. You will not oppose my wishes. Is that clear?' And he declared, with all the firmness that he had learned how to use even with human beings over these past decades, 'I order you to carry out this operation on me.'
The robot surgeon's red eyes turned brighter than ever with inner confusion and conflict and for a long moment he was unable to reply.
Andrew knew what the surgeon must be going through. Before him was a man who insisted that he was not a man, or else a robot who claimed to have as much authority over him as a human being, and either way the surgeon's pathways must be abuzz with incomprehension.
If this were indeed a man, then First Law would override Second and the surgeon could not accept the commission. But if this were a robot, did Second Law govern the situation or not? What was there in Second Law that gave one robot the right to order another one around-even a free robot? This was a robot, though, who denied being a man but looked entirely like one. That was an almost incomprehensible situation. The ambiguity of it was probably overwhelming the surgeon's positronic pathways. All his visual responses were crying out that his visitor was human; his mind was trying to process the datum that his visitor was not. The visual evidence would tend to activate the First and Second Laws, the other evidence would not.
Faced with chaotic contradictions of that sort, it was conceivable that the surgeon's mind would short out altogether. Or perhaps, Andrew hoped, the safest way out of the crisis for the surgeon would be to take a Second Law position: that this visitor, while by his own admission not human enough to invoke First Law prohibitions, had sufficiently human characteristics to be able to demand obedience from the surgeon.
Which was the path that the surgeon ultimately took, after a lengthy period of hesitation.
'Very well,' the surgeon said, and there was an unmistakable undertone of relief in his voice. 'I will do what you have asked me to do.'
'Fine.'
'The fee will not be small.'
'I'd be worried if it was,' said Andrew.
Twenty-Three
THE OPERATING ROOM was nothing nearly as grand as the one in which U. S. Robots and Mechanical Men had performed its various upgrades on Andrew in recent years, but Andrew could tell that the facility was superbly equipped and completely equal to the task. He looked with admiration and approval at the laser bank, the board of measuring dials and control panel, the spidery maze of auxiliary needles and tubes and pipes, and the main surgical stage itself, dais and bed and lights and instruments, white linens and dazzling chrome-steel fixtures, everything in readiness for the unusual patient.
And the surgeon himself was magnificently calm. Quite clearly he had been able in the interim to resolve whatever conflicts he had felt over the irregularities of Andrew's request and the ambiguities of Andrew's appearance, and now he was focused entirely on the professional task at hand. Andrew was more than ever convinced that he had made the only possible choice by selecting a robot surgeon to perform this operation.
Still, he felt a flicker of uncertainty-just a flicker-as the actual moment for the start of the operation arrived. What if something went wrong? What if he came out of the operation incapacitated in some way? What if the operation failed and he terminated right on the operating table?
No. None of that mattered. There was no way for the operation to fail, none. And even if it did-no. That simply did not matter.
The surgeon was watching him carefully.
'Are you ready?' he asked.
'Absolutely,' Andrew told the surgeon. 'Let's get down to it.'
'Very well,' said the surgeon phlegmatically, and with a quick, sweeping gesture took his laser-scalpel into his splendidly designed right hand.
Andrew had chosen to remain completely conscious throughout the entire process. He had no wish to shut down awareness even for an instant. Pain was not an issue for him, and he needed to be certain that his instructions were being followed precisely. But of course they were. The surgeon's nature, being robotic, was not one that would permit any capricious deviation from the agreed-upon course of action.
What Andrew was not prepared for was the unexpectedly intense weakness and fatigue that came after the job had been done.
He had never known such sensations as those that came over him in the early hours of his recovery period. Even when they had transferred his brain from the robot body to the android one, Andrew had experienced nothing like this.
Instead of walking normally, he lurched and staggered. Often he felt as though the floor before him was rising up to strike him in the face. There were times when his fingers trembled so violently that he had difficulty holding things. His vision, which had always been flawless, suddenly would grow blurry for long minutes at a stretch. Or he would try to remember someone's name, and nothing would come to mind except a tantalizing blankness that glimmered at him from around the corners of his memory.
He spent an entire afternoon, the first week after the operation, searching his mind for the full name of the man he had known as Sir. Then, suddenly, the name was there: Gerald Martin. But now Andrew had forgotten the name of Little Miss's dark-haired older sister, and it took him hours more of diligent searching before 'Melissa Martin' popped abruptly into his brain. Two hours! It should not have taken him two milliseconds!
It was all more or less what Andrew should have expected, and in an abstract way he had expected it. And yet the reality of the feelings themselves was far beyond anything that Andrew had anticipated. Physical weakness was something new to him. So were poor coordination, uncertain reflexes, imperfect eyesight, and episodes of impaired memory. It was humiliating to feel so imperfect-so human
