His long slim limbs then were finely articulated mechanisms fashioned from titanium alloys overlaid by steel and equipped with silicone bushings at the joints to prevent metal-to-metal contact. His limb sockets were of the finest flexible polyethylene. His eyes were photoelectric cells that gleamed with a deep red glow. His face-and to call it that was charitable; it was the merest perfunctory sketch of a face-was altogether incapable of expression. His bare, sexless body was unambiguously a manufactured device. All it took was a single glance to see that he was a machine, no more animate, no more human, no more alive, than a telephone or a pocket calculator or an automobile.
But that was in another era, long, long ago.
It was an era when robots were still uncommon sights on Earth-almost the very dawn of the age of robotics, not much more than a generation after the days when the great early roboticists like Alfred Lanning and Peter Bogert and the legendary robopsychologist Susan Calvin had done their historic work, developing and perfecting the principles by which the first positronic robots had come into being.
The aim of those pioneers had been to create robots capable of taking up many of the dreary burdens that human beings had for so long been compelled to bear. And that was part of the problem that the roboticists faced, in those dawning days of the science of artificial life late in the Twentieth Century and early in the Twenty-First: the unwillingness of a great many human beings to surrender those burdens to mechanical substitutes. Because of that unwillingness, strict laws had been passed in virtually every country-the world was still broken up into a multitude of nations, then-against the use of robot labor on Earth.
By the year 2007 they had been banned entirely everywhere on the planet, except for scientific research under carefully controlled conditions. Robots could be sent into space, yes, to the ever-multiplying industrial factories and exploratory stations off Earth: let them cope with the miseries of frigid Ganymede and torrid Mercury, let them put up with the inconveniences of scrabbling around on the surface of Luna, let them run the bewildering risks of the early Jump experiments that would eventually give mankind the hyperspace road to the stars.
But robots in free and general use on Earth-occupying precious slots in the labor force that would otherwise be available for actual naturally-born flesh-and-blood human beings-no! No! No robots wanted around here!
Well, that had eventually begun to change, of course. And the most dramatic changes had begun to set in around the time that Robot NDR-113, who would someday be known as Andrew Martin, had been undergoing assembly at the main Northern Region factory of United States Robots and Mechanical Men.
One of the factors bringing about the gradual breakdown of the antirobot prejudices on Earth at that time was simple public relations. United States Robots and Mechanical Men was not only a scientifically adept organization, it knew a thing or two about the importance of maintaining its profitability, too. So it had found ways, quiet and subtle and effective, of chipping away at the Frankenstein myth of the robot, the concept of the mechanical man as the dreaded shambling Golem.
Robots are here for our convenience, the U.S.R.M.M. public relations people said. Robots are here to help us. Robots are not our enemies. Robots are perfectly safe, safe beyond any possibility of doubt.
And-because in fact all those things were actually true-people began to accept the presence of robots among them. They did so grudgingly, in the main. Many people-most, perhaps-were still uncomfortable with the whole idea of robots; but they recognized the need for them and they could at least tolerate having them around, so long as tight restrictions on their use continued to be applied.
There was need for robots, like it or not, because the population of Earth had started to dwindle about that time. After the long anguish that was the Twentieth Century, a time of relative tranquility and harmony and even rationality-a certain degree of that, anyway-had begun to settle over the world. It became a quieter, calmer, happier place. There were fewer people by far, not because there had been terrible wars and plagues, but because families now tended to be smaller, giving preference to quality over quantity. Migration to the newly settled worlds of space was draining off some of Earth's population also-migration to the extensive network of underground settlements on the Moon, to the colonies in the asteroid belt and on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and to the artificial worlds in orbit around Earth and Mars.
So there was no longer so much excitement over the possibility of losing one's job to a robot. The fear of job shortages on Earth had given way to the problem of labor shortages. Suddenly the robots that once had been looked upon with such uneasiness, fear, and even hatred became necessary to maintain the welfare of a world that had every material advantage but didn't have enough of a population left to sweep the streets, drive the taxis, cook the meals, stoke the furnaces.
It was in this new era of diminishing population and increasing prosperity that NDR-113-the future Andrew Martin-was manufactured. No longer was the use of robots illegal on Earth; but strict regulations still applied, and they were still far from everyday sights. Especially robots who were programmed for ordinary household duties, which was the primary use that Gerald Martin had in mind for NDR-113.
Hardly anyone in those days had a robot servant around the house. It was too frightening an idea for most people-and too expensive, besides.
But Gerald Martin was hardly just anyone. He was a member of the Regional Legislature, a powerful member at that, Chairman of the Science and Technology Committee: a man of great presence and authority, of tremendous force of mind and character. What Gerald Martin set out to achieve, Gerald Martin inevitably succeeded in achieving. And what Gerald Martin chose to possess, Gerald Martin would invariably come to possess. He believed in robots: he knew that they were an inevitable development, that they would ultimately become inextricably enmeshed in human society at every level.