The Positronic Man (Page 66)

One of the prosthetologists explained it to him: "It’s a genetic thing, Andrew. Everyone on Earth with any get-up-and-go got up and went a long time ago, and here we all are out on the edge of civilization, inventing our way as we go along, while those who remained behind have raised a race that’s been bred to remain behind and do things the most familiar comfortable way possible. From here on in, I think, the future belongs to those of us who live in space. Earth will become a mere backwater world."

"You really believe that?" Andrew asked.

"Yes. I do."

He wondered what would become of him, living on and on through the decades and centuries ahead, if any such decadence and decline truly was going to overcome the world. His immediate answer was that it made no difference to him if Earth became some sort of sleepy backwater where "progress" was an obscene word. He no longer had need of progress now that he had attained the upgrade he had most deeply desired. His body was virtually human in form; he had his estate; he had his work, in which he had achieved enormous success; he would live as he always had, no matter what might be going on around him.

But then he sometimes thought wistfully of the possibility of remaining on the Moon, or even going deeper out into space. On Earth he was Andrew the robot, forced to go into court and do battle every time he wanted one of the rights or privileges that he felt his intelligence and contributions to society entitled him to have. Out here, though, where everything was starting with a fresh slate, it was quite conceivable that he could simply leave his robot identity behind and blend into the human population as Dr. Andrew Martin.

Nobody here seemed to be troubled by that possibility. From his very first moments on the Moon they had virtually been inviting him to step across the invisible boundary between human and robot if that was what he wanted to do.

It was tempting.

It was very tempting indeed.

The months turned into years-three of them, now-and Andrew remained on the Moon, working with the lunar prosthetologists, helping them make the adaptations that were necessary in order that the Andrew Martin Laboratories artificial organs could function at perfect efficiency when installed in human beings who lived under low-gravity conditions.

It was challenging work, for, though he himself was untroubled by the lower gravity of the lunar environment, humans in whom standard Earth-model prosthetic devices had been installed tended to have a much more difficult time of it. Andrew was able, though, to meet each difficulty with a useful modification, and one by one the problems were resolved.

Now and then Andrew missed his estate on the California coast-not so much the grand house itself as the cool fogs of summer, the towering redwood trees, the rugged beach, the crashing surf. But it began to seem to him as though he had settled into permanent residence on the Moon. He stayed on into a fourth year, and a fifth.

Then one day he paid a visit to a bubbledome on the lunar surface, and saw the Earth in all its wondrous beauty hanging in the sky-tiny, at this distance, but vivid, glowing, a blue jewel that glistened brilliantly in the night.

It is my home, he thought suddenly. The mother world-the fountain of humanity- Andrew felt it pulling him-calling him home. At first it was a pull he could scarcely understand. It seemed wholly irrational to him.

And then understanding came. His work on the Moon was done, basically. But he still had unfinished business down there on Earth.

The following week, Andrew booked his passage home on a liner that was leaving at the end of the month. And then he called back and arranged to take an even earlier flight.

He returned to an Earth that seemed cozy and ordinary and quiet in comparison to the dynamic life of the lunar settlement. Nothing of any significance appeared to have changed in the five years of his absence. As his Moon-ship descended toward it, the Earth seemed to Andrew like a vast placid park, sprinkled here and there with the small settlements and minor cities of the decentralized Third Millennium civilization.

One of the first things Andrew did was to visit the offices of Feingold and Charney to announce his return.

The current senior partner, Simon DeLong, hurried out to greet him. In Paul Charney’s time, DeLong had been a very junior clerk, callow and self-effacing, but that had been a long time ago and he had matured into a powerful, commanding figure whose unchallenged ascent to the top rung of the firm had been inevitable. He was a broad-shouldered man with heavy features, who wore his thick dark hair shaven down the middle in the tonsured style that had lately become popular.

There was a surprised look on DeLong’s face. "We had been told you were returning, Andrew," he said-with just a bit of uncertainty in his voice at the end, as though he too had briefly considered calling him "Mr. Martin"-"but we weren’t expecting you until next week."

"I became impatient," said Andrew brusquely. He was anxious to get to the point. "On the Moon, Simon, I was in charge of a research team of twenty or thirty human scientists. I gave orders and nobody questioned my authority. Many of them referred to me as ‘Dr. Martin’ and I was treated in all ways as an individual worthy of the highest respect. The lunar robots deferred to me as they would to a human being. For all practical purposes I was a human being for the entire duration of my stay on the Moon."

A wary look entered DeLong’s eyes. Plainly he had no idea where Andrew was heading with all this, and it was the natural caution of a lawyer who did not quite understand yet the troublesome new direction in which an important client seemed to be veering.

"How unusual that must have seemed, Andrew," he said, in a flat, remote way.

"Unusual, yes. But not displeasing. Not displeasing at all, Simon."