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devices, with factories on several continents and in low orbit.
Marketing experts from the parent company were brought in to
develop plans for distributing the new products everywhere on Earth
and the space settlements. Surgeons, both human and robot,
underwent courses of instruction at the U. S. Robots prosthetics
facility so that they would be able to carry out the complicated
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r r
installation procedures.
Demand for Andrew's prosthetic devices was immense. The
flow of royalties was heavy right from the start and within a few years
became overwhelming.
Andrew now owned the entire Martin-Charney estate, and much
of the surrounding land--a wondrous stretch of clifftop terrain
overlooking the Pacific Ocean for eight or ten kilometers. He lived in
Sir's big house, but maintained his own old cottage nearby as a
sentimental reminder of his early days of independent life after
gaining free-robot status.
Farther down the property he built the imposing research
facilities of Andrew Martin Laboratories. There was a little trouble
with the zoning authorities about that, because this was supposed to
be a quiet residential area and the research center that Andrew
wanted to set up would be the size of a small university campus. There
was also, perhaps, some lingering anti-robot feeling at work among
the opposition.
But when his application came up for approval, Andrew's
lawyer simply said, "Andrew Martin has given the world the
prosthetic kidney, the prosthetic lung, the prosthetic heart, the
prosthetic pancreas. In return all he asks is the right to continue his
research in peace on the property where he has lived and worked for
well over a hundred years. Who among us would refuse such a small
request when it comes from so great a benefactor of mankind?" And
after a certain amount of debate the zoning variance was granted and
the buildings of the Andrew Martin Laboratories Research Center
began to rise amid the somber cypresses and pines of what had, long
ago, been the wooded estate of Gerald Martin.
Every year or two, Andrew would return to the gleaming
operating theater at u. S. Robots for additional prosthetic upgrading
of his own. Some of the changes were utterly trivial ones: the new
fingernails and toenails, for example, virtually indistinguishable now
from those of humans. Some of the changes were major: the new
visual system, which although synthetically grown was able to
duplicate the human eyeball in virtually every respect.
"Don't blame us if you come out of this permanently blind,"
Magdescu told him sourly, when Andrew went to him for the eye
transplant.
"You aren't looking at this rationally, my friend," replied
Andrew. "The worst that can happen to me is that I will be forced to
go back to photo-optic cells. There is no risk whatever that I will
suffer complete loss of eyesight."
"Well--" Magdescu said, and shrugged.
Andrew was right, of course. No one was forced to be
permanently blind any more. But there were artificial eyes and then
there were artificial eyes, and the photo-optic cells that had been a
feature of Andrew's original android body were replaced with the new
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r r
synthetic-organic eyes that Andrew Martin Laboratories had
perfected. The fact that hundreds of thousands of aging human beings
had been content for more than a generation to use photo-optic cells
was irrelevant to Andrew. To him they looked artificial; they looked
inhuman. He had always wanted true eyes. And now he had them.
Magdescu, after a while, gave up protesting. He had come to see
that Andrew was destined to have his way in all things and that there
was no point in raising objections to Andrew's schemes for new
prosthetic upgrades. Besides, Magdescu was beginning to grow old
now, and much of the fire and zeal that had been characteristic of him
when Andrew first came to him had gone out of him by now. Already
he had had several major prosthetic operations himself--a double
kidney replacement, first, and then a new liver. Soon Magdescu would
reach retirement age.
And then, no doubt, he would die, in ten or twenty years more,
Andrew told himself. Another friend gone, swept away by the
remorseless river of time.
Andrew himself, naturally, showed no signs of aging at all. For a
time that troubled him enough that he debated having some cosmetic
wrinkles added--a touch of crow's feet around his eyes, for example--
and graying his hair. After giving the matter a little thought, though,
he decided that to go in for such things would be a foolish affectation.
Andrew did not see his upgrades that way at all: they represented his
continued attempt to leave his robot origins behind and approach the
physical form of a human being. He did not deny to himself that it had
become his goal to do that But there was no sense in becoming more
human than the humans themselves. It struck him as pointless and
absurd to subject his ever-more-human but still ageless android body
to the external marks of aging.
Vanity had nothing to do with Andrew's decision--only logic. He
was aware that humans had always tried to do everything in their
power to conceal the effects that growing old had on their
appearance. Andrew realized that it would be altogether ridiculous
for him, exempted as he was from aging by his inherent android
nature, to go out of his way deliberately to take those effects upon
himself.
So he remained ever youthful-looking. And, of course, there was
never any slackening of his physical vigor: a careful maintenance
program made certain of that But the years were passing, and passing
swiftly now. Andrew was approaching the one hundred and fiftieth
anniversary of his construction.
By this time Andrew was not only exceedingly wealthy but [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]