The Positronic Man Read Online Free PDF

understanding. He knew that humans placed high importance on the owning of things, specific objects that belonged only to them, but it was very hard to comprehend what value most of those objects had for them, or why they placed such emphasis on having them.
    Little Miss, who had learned how to read only a year or two before, gave her sister a book. Not a cassette, not an infodisk, not a holocube, but an actual book, with a cover and binding and pages. Little Miss was very fond of books. So was Miss-especially books of poetry, which was a way of writing things in cryptic phrases arranged in uneven lines that Andrew found extremely mysterious.
    "How marvelous!" Miss cried, when she had taken her book from its gaily covered wrapper. "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam! I've always wanted it! But how did you even know there was such a thing? Who told you about it, Amanda?"
    "I read about it," said Little Miss, looking a trifle put out. "You think I don't know anything at all, just because I'm five years younger than you, but let me tell you, Melissa-"
    "Girls! Girls!" Sir called warningly. "Let's have no bickering at the birthday dinner!"
    The next present Miss opened was from her mother: a fine cashmere sweater, white and fluffy. Miss was so excited that she put it on over the sweater she was already wearing.
    And then she opened the small package that was her father's gift, and gasped; for Sir had bought her an intricate pendant of pink ivorite, carved with marvelous scrollwork so delicately worked that even Andrew's flawless vision was hard pressed to follow all its curving and interlocking patterns. Miss looked radiantly happy. She lifted it by its fine golden chain and slipped it over her head, lowering it carefully until it lay perfectly centered on the front of her new sweater.
    "Happy birthday, Melissa," Sir said. And Ma'am chimed in, and Little Miss too, and they all sang the birthday song. Then Ma'am called for another round of the song, and this time she gestured to Andrew, who joined in, singing along with them.
    For a moment he wondered whether he should have given Amanda some sort of present also. No, he thought, she did not seem to have expected it from him. And why should she? He wasn't a member of the family. He was an item of household machinery. The giving of birthday presents was entirely a human thing.
    It was a lovely birthday dinner. There was only one thing wrong with it, which was that Little Miss seemed bitterly envious of Miss's lovely ivorite pendant.
    She tried to hide it, of course. It was her sister's birthday dinner, after all, and she didn't want to spoil it. But all during the course of the evening Little Miss kept stealing glances at the pendant that gleamed warmly in pink and gold atop Melissa's sweater, and it took no great subtlety of perception on Andrew's part to know how unhappy she was.
    He wished there was something he could do to cheer her up. But this whole affair of birthdays, and presents, and sisters, and envy, and other such human concepts-they were really beyond his comprehension. He was a very capable robot of the kind that he was designed to be, but his designers had seen no need to give him the capacity to understand why one little girl would be upset about a beautiful object that had been given to another little girl who was her sister on the occasion of her birthday.
    A day or two later, though, Little Miss came to Andrew and said, "Can I speak to you, Andrew?"
    "Of course you can."
    "Did you like that pendant that Daddy gave Melissa?"
    "It seemed to be very beautiful."
    "It is very beautiful. It's the most gorgeous thing I've ever seen."
    "It is quite beautiful, yes," Andrew said. " And I am sure that Sir will give you something every bit as beautiful when it is the time of your birthday."
    "My birthday is three months from now," Little Miss said.
    She said it as though that were an eternity away.
    Andrew waited, not quite able to determine where this conversation was