Isaac Asimov - The Positronic Man

Of course, not everyone accepted Andrew as free, regardless of what the legal finding had been. The term "free robot" had no meaning to many people: it was like saying "dry water" or "bright darkness." Andrew was inherently incapable of resenting that, and yet he felt a difficulty in his thinking process-a slowing, an inner resistance-whenever he was faced with someone's refusal to allow him the status he had won in court.

When he wore clothing in public, he knew, he risked antagonizing such people. Andrew tried to be cautious about that, therefore.

Nor was it only potentially hostile strangers who had difficulty with the idea of his wearing clothing. Even the person who most loved him in all the world-Little Miss-was startled and, Andrew suspected, more than a little troubled by it. Andrew saw that from the very first time. Like her son George, Little Miss had tried to conceal her feelings of surprise and dismay at the sight of Andrew in clothing. And, like George, she had failed.

Well, Little Miss was old now and, like many old people, she had grown set in her ways. Maybe she simply preferred him to look the way he had looked when she was a girl. Or, perhaps, she might believe on some deep level that robots-all robots, even Andrew-should look like the machines that they were, and therefore should not dress like people.

Andrew suspected that if he ever should question Little Miss on that point she would deny it, probably quite indignantly. But he had no intention of doing that. He simply tended to avoid putting on clothes-or too many of them-whenever Little Miss came to visit him.

Which was none too often, these days, for Little Miss was past seventy now-well past seventy-and had grown very thin and sensitive to cold, and even the mild climate of Northern California was too cool for her most of the year. Her husband had died several years before, and since then Little Miss had begun spending much of her time traveling in the tropical parts of the world-Hawaii, Australia, Egypt, the warmer zones of South America, places like that. She would return to California only occasionally, perhaps once or twice a year, to see George and his family -and, of course, Andrew.

After one of her visits George came down to the cabin to speak with Andrew and said ruefully, "Well, she's finally got me, Andrew. I'm going to be running for the Legislature next year. She won't give me any peace unless I do. And I'm sure you know that the First Law of our family, and the Second Law and the Third Law as well, is that nobody says 'no' to Amanda Charney. So there I am: a candidate. It's my genetic destiny, according to her. Like grandfather, like grandson, is what she says."

"Like grandfather-"

Andrew stopped, uncertain.

"What is it, Andrew?"

"Something about the phrase. The idiom. My grammatical circuit-" He shook his head. "Like grandfather, like grandson. There's no verb in the statement, but I know how to adjust for that. Still-"

George began to laugh. "What a literal-minded hunk of tin you can be sometimes, Andrew"'

"Tin?"

"Never mind about that. What the other expression meant was simply that I, George, the grandson, am expected to do what Sir, the grandfather, did-that is to say, to run for the Regional Legislature and have a long and distinguished career. The usual expression is, 'Like father, like son,' but in this case my father didn't care to go into politics, and so my mother has changed the old clichй so that it says-Are you following all this, Andrew, or am I just wasting my breath?"

"I understand now."

"Good. But of course the thing my mother doesn't take into account is that I'm not really all that much like my grandfather in temperament, and perhaps I'm not as clever as he was, either, because he had a truly formidable intellect, and so there's no necessary reason why I'd automatically equal the record he ran up in the Legislature. There'll never be anyone like him again, I'm afraid."

Andrew nodded. " And how sad for us that he is no longer with is. I would find it pleasant, George, if Sir were still-" He paused, for he did not want to say, "in working order." He knew that that would not be the appropriate expression to use. And yet it was the first phrase that had come into his mind.

"Still alive?" George finished for him. "Yes. Yes, it would be good to have him around. I have to confess I miss the old monster at least as much as you do."

"Monster?"

"In a manner of speaking."

"Ah. Yes. A manner of speaking."

When George had gone, Andrew replayed the conversation in his mind, puzzling over its twists and turns and trying to see why he had been so badly off balance throughout it. It had been George's use of idiomatic phrases and colloquial language, Andrew decided, that had caused the problems.

Even after all this time, it was still difficult sometimes for Andrew to keep pace with humans when they struck out along linguistic pathways that were something other than the most direct ones. He had come into being equipped with an extensive innate vocabulary, a set of grammatical instructions, and the ability to arrange words in intelligible combinations. And through whatever fluke in his generalized positronic pathways it was that made Andrew's intelligence more flexible and adaptable than that of the standard robot, he had been able to develop the knack of conversing easily and gracefully with humans. But there were limits to his abilities along that line.

The problem was only going to get worse as time went along, Andrew realized.

Human languages, he knew, were constantly in a state of flux. There was nothing fixed or really systematic about them. New words were invented all the time, old words would change their meanings, all sorts of short-lived informal expressions slipped into ordinary conversation. That much he had already had ample reason to learn, though he had not done any kind of scientific investigation of the kinds of changes that tended to take place.

The English language, which was the one Andrew used most often, had altered tremendously over the past six hundred years. Now and then he had looked at some of Sir's books, the works of the ancient poets-Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare-and he had seen that their pages were sprinkled with footnotes to explain archaic word usage to modern readers.

What if the language were to change just as significantly in the next six hundred years? How was he going to be able to communicate with the human beings around him, unless he kept up with the changes?

Already, in one brief conversation, George had baffled him three times. "Like grandfather, like grandson." How simple that seemed now that George had explained it-but how mysterious it had been at first.

And why had George called him a "hunk of tin," when George surely knew that there was no tin in Andrew's makeup whatsoever? And-it was the most puzzling one of all-why should George have called Sir a "monster," when that was plainly not an appropriate description of the old man?

Those were not even the latest modern phrases, Andrew knew. They were simply individual turns of phrase, a little too colloquial or metaphorical for instant handling by Andrew's linguistic circuitry. He would face far more mystifying ways of speech in the outside world, he suspected.

Perhaps it was time for him to update some of his linguistic documentation.

His own books would give him no guidance. They were old and most of them dealt with woodworking, with art, with furniture design. There were none on language, none on the ways of human beings. Nor was Sir's library, extensive as it was, likely to be of much use. No one was living in the big house just now-it was sealed, under robot maintenance-but Andrew still could have access to it whenever he wanted. Nearly all of Sir's books, though, dated from the previous century or before. There was nothing there that would serve Andrew's purpose.