The sun was beginning to set. It cast a golden track of light across the water. How beautiful it all was! The world was really an extraordinarily splendid place, Andrew told himself. The sea-the sky-a sunset-a glossy leaf shining with the morning dew-everything. Everything!
And, he thought, perhaps he was the only robot who had ever been able to respond to the beauty of the world in this way. Robots were a dull plodding bunch, in the main. They did their jobs and that was that. It was the way they were supposed to be. It was the way everyone wanted them to be.
"You're the only one of you that there is," Magdescu had said.
Yes. It was true. He had a capacity for aesthetic response that went far beyond the emotive range of any other robot that had ever been.
Beauty meant something to him. He appreciated it when he saw it; he had created beauty himself.
And if he never saw any of this again, how very sad that would be.
And then Andrew smiled at his own foolishness. Sad? For whom? He would never know it, if the operation should fail. The world and all its beauty would be lost to him, but what would that matter? He would have ceased to function. He would be permanently out of order. He would be dead, and after that it would make no difference to him at all that he could no longer perceive the beauties of the world. That was what death meant: a total cessation of function, an end to all processing of data.
There were risks, yes. But they were risks he had to take, because otherwise- Otherwise- He simply had to. There was no otherwise. He could not go on as he was, outwardly human in form, more or less, but incapable of the most basic human biological functions-breathing, eating, digesting, excreting- An hour later Andrew was on his way east. Alvin Magdescu met him in person at the U. S. Robots airstrip.
"Are you ready?" Magdescu asked him.
"Totally."
"Well, then, Andrew, so am I."
Obviously they intended to take no chances. They had constructed a wondrous operating theater for him, far more advanced in capability than the earlier room in which they had carried out his transformation from the metallic to the androidal form.
It was a magnificent tetrahedral enclosure illuminated by a cross-shaped cluster of chromed fixtures at its summit that flooded the room with brilliant but not glaring light. A platform midway between floor and ceiling jutted from one wall, dividing the great room almost in half, and atop this platform rested a dazzling transparent aseptic bubble within which the surgery would be performed. Beneath the platform that supported the bubble was the surgical stage's environmental-support apparatus: an immense cube of dull green metal, housing an intricate tangle of pumps, filters, heating ducts, reservoirs of sterilizing chemicals, humidifiers, and other equipment. On the other side of the room was a great array of supplementary machinery covering an entire wall: an autoclave, a laser bank, a host of metering devices, a camera boom and associated playback screens that would allow consulting surgeons outside the operating area to monitor the events.
"What do you think?" Magdescu asked proudly.
"Very impressive. I find it most reassuring. And highly flattering as well."
"You know that we don't want to lose you, Andrew. You're a very important-individual."
Andrew did not fail to notice the slight hesitation in Magdescu's voice before that last word. As though Magdescu had been about to say man, and had checked himself just barely in time. Andrew smiled thinly but said nothing.
The operation took place the next morning, and it was an unqualified success. There turned out to be no need for any of the elaborate safety devices that the U. S. Robots people had set up. The operating team, following procedures that Andrew himself had helped to devise, went briskly about the task of removing his atomic cell, installing the combustion chamber, and establishing the new neural linkages, and performed its carefully choreographed work without the slightest hitch.
Half an hour after it was over Andrew was sitting up, checking his positronic parameters, exploring the altered data-flow surging through his brain as a torrent of messages came in from the new metabolic system.
Magdescu stood by the window, watching him.
"How do you feel?"
"Fine. I told you there'd be no problems."
"Yes. Yes."
"As I said, my faith in the skill of your staff was unwavering. And now it's done. I have the ability to eat."
"So you do. You can sip olive oil, at any rate."
"That's eating. I'm told that olive oil has a delicious taste."
"Well, sip all you want. It'll mean occasional cleaning of the combustion chamber, as of course you already realize. Something of a nuisance, I'd say, but there's no way around it."
"A nuisance for the time being," Andrew said. "But it's not impossible to make the chamber self-cleaning. I've already had some ideas about that. And other things."
"Other things?" Magdescu asked. "Such as?''
"A modification that will deal with solid food."
"Solid food is going to contain incombustible fractions, Andrew-indigestible matter, so to speak, that's going to have to be discarded."
"I'm aware of that."
"You would have to equip yourself with an anus."
"The equivalent."
"The equivalent, yes. -What else are you planning to develop for yourself, Andrew?"
"Everything else."
"Everything?"
"Everything, Alvin."
Magdescu tugged at the point of his beard and raised one eyebrow. "Genitalia, too?"
"I don't see any reason why not. Do you?"
"You aren't going to be able to give yourself any kind of reproductive ability. You simply aren't, Andrew."