Andrew might be free, but there was built into him a carefully detailed program concerning his behavior toward human beings: a neural channel that was not as powerful in its effect as the Three Laws, but nevertheless was there to discourage him from giving any sort of offense. It was only by the tiniest steps that he dared advance. Open disapproval would set him back months. It was an enormous leap for him when he finally allowed himself to leave his house with clothing on.
No one he encountered that day showed any sign of surprise. But perhaps they were too astounded even to react. And indeed even Andrew himself still felt strange about his experiment with clothing.
He had a mirror, now, and he would study himself for long periods of time, turning from side to side, looking at himself from all angles. And sometimes he found himself reacting with disfavor to his own appearance. His metal face, with its glowing photoelectric eyes and its rigidly carved robotic features, sometimes struck Andrew himself as strikingly incongruous now that it rose up out of the soft, brightly colored fabrics of clothing meant for a human body.
But at other times it seemed to him perfectly appropriate for him to be wearing clothing. Like virtually all robots, he had been designed, after all, to be fundamentally humanoid in shape: two arms, two legs, an oval head set upon a narrow neck. The U. S. Robots designers had not needed to give him that form. They could have made him look any way they deemed efficient-with rotors instead of legs, with six arms instead of two, with a swiveling sensor-dome atop his trunk instead of a head with two eyes. But no: they had patterned him after themselves. The decision had been made, very early in the history of robotics, that the best way to overcome mankind's deep-seated fear of intelligent machines was to make them as familiar in form as possible.
In that case, why should he not wear clothing also? That would make him look even more human, wouldn't it?
And in any event Andrew wanted to wear clothing now. It seemed symbolic to him of his new status as a legally free robot.
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."