"A person, Mrs. Charney?" Judge Kramer interjected.
Little Miss looked momentarily discomforted. " As I said at the beginning, your honor, I lay no claim to Andrew's being anything but a robot. Certainly I accept the reality of that. But I have known him so long, and so closely, that to me he is like a person. Let me amend what I said a moment before, then. By what right, I should say, are we enabled to set ourselves up as the absolute masters of such an extraordinary robot?"
The judge frowned. "So the purpose of this petition-am I correct, Mrs. Charney?-is to have the Three Laws removed from Andrew's brain in order that he be no longer subject to human control?"
"Not at all," replied Little Miss, sounding shocked. The question had taken her completely off guard. "I'm not even sure that such a thing would be possible. And look-look: even Andrew is shaking his head. There you are. It isn't possible. And it certainly never has been what we had in mind when the petition was filed."
"Then just what did you have in mind, may I ask?" the judge said.
"Only this. That Andrew be awarded a legally binding document which says that he is a free robot who owns himself, that if he chooses to continue serving the Martin family, it is by his own choice and not because we elect to exercise the rights vested in us by our original contract with his manufacturers. It's a purely semantic issue, really. Nothing involving the Three Laws would be changed-even if it could be. We are simply trying to invalidate the condition of involuntary servitude in which we are compelled to keep Andrew now. After which he, on his part, would continue to serve us just as he does now-of that I'm quite sure. But he would do it entirely because he wanted to, which I believe that he does, and not because we require him to. Don't you see, your honor, how much that would mean to him? It would give him everything and cost us nothing. And none of the immense and tragic problems of the overthrow of humanity by its own machines that the Labor Federation speaker so dramatically alluded to would enter into the case in the slightest way, I assure you."
For a moment the judge seemed to be suppressing a smile. "I think I see your point, Mrs. Charney. I appreciate the warmth and passion with which you've spoken as your robot's advocate. -You are aware, are you not, that there's really nothing in the law codes of this Region or of any other that deals with the question of whether robots can be free in the sense that you propose? There's simply no body of precedent at all."
"Yes," Little Miss said. "Mr. Feingold has made that quite clear to me already. But every departure from established precedent has to begin somewhere, after all."
"So it does. And I could make a ruling that would establish new law here. It would be subject to reversal in a higher court, naturally, but it would be within my powers to give my assent to the petition as it is now constituted, and thus to make your robot 'free' in the sense of a waiver by the Martin family of its inherent right to give him orders. For whatever that would be worth to him and to you, I could do that. But I need, first, to come to grips with the point that Mr. Van Buren has raised: the unspoken assumption in our society that only a human being can enjoy freedom, virtually by definition of the word. Judges who run counter to fundamental assumptions of that kind-who make rulings that sound impressive but are inherently meaningless-tend to be regarded as fools. Obviously I don't want to turn this court into a laughing-stock. And therefore there are still some aspects of this case that I need to understand more clearly."
"If there's anything else you want to ask me, your honor-" Little Miss said.
"Not you. Andrew. Let the robot come forward." Little Miss gasped. She looked toward Stanley Feingold and saw him sit up suddenly with a look of excitement on his face for the first time since she had told him that she intended to pre-empt his turn to address the court.
As for Andrew, he had risen and was striding toward the front of the room with an air of the greatest dignity and nobility about him. He was completely calm-not only externally, where he had no way of displaying visible emotion anyway, but within.
Judge Kramer said, "For the record: you are Robot NDR-113, but you prefer to be known as Andrew, is that correct?"
"Yes, your honor."
The timbre of Andrew's voice had come through the series of successive updatings to sound entirely human by this time. Little Miss had grown quite accustomed to that, but the judge seemed astonished, as though he had expected some sort of clanking grinding metallic tone to emerge. So it was a moment before the proceedings continued.
Then the judge said, peering at Andrew with intense interest, "Tell me one thing, Andrew, if you will. Why do you want to be free? In what way will this matter to you?"
Andrew replied, "Would you wish to be a slave, your honor?"
"Is that how you see yourself? A slave?"
"Little Miss-Mrs. Charney-used the term 'involuntary servitude' to describe my condition. That is exactly what it is. I must obey. I must. I have no choice. That is nothing other than slavery, your honor."
"Even if I pronounced you free this minute, Andrew, you would still be subject to the Three Laws."
"I understand that completely. But I would not be subject to Sir and Little Miss-to Mr. Martin and Mrs. Charney. I could, at any time, leave the household where I have lived for many years and take up residence anywhere else I chose. They would have waived their right to order me back into service. Thus I would cease to be a slave."
"Is that what you want, Andrew? To leave the Martin house and go somewhere else?"
"Not in the least. All I want is the right to choose to do so, if I should feel the desire."