The Positronic Man Read Online Free PDF Page B

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    Then Little Miss went to the cabinet where she had put the piece of driftwood that she had brought from the beach the day he had gone swimming, and held it out to him.
    "Will you make a pendant for me, Andrew? Out of this?"
    "A wooden pendant?"
    "Well, I don't happen to have any ivorite handy. But this is very pretty wood. You know how to carve, don't you? Or you could learn, I suppose."
    "I'm certain that my mechanical skills would be equal to the job. But I would need certain tools, and-"
    "Here," said Little Miss.
    She had taken a small knife from the kitchen. She handed it to him with an air of great gravity, as if she were giving him a whole set of sculptor's blades.
    "This should be all you need," she said. "I have faith in you, Andrew."
    And she took his metal hand in hers and gave it a squeeze.
    That night, in the quiet of the room where he usually stored himself when his day's chores were done, Andrew studied the piece of driftwood with great care for perhaps fifteen minutes, analyzing its grain, its density, its curvature. He gave the little knife careful scrutiny too, testing it on a piece of wood he had picked up in the garden to see how useful it would be. Then he considered Little Miss's height and what size pendant would be best suited to a girl who was still very small but was not likely to remain that way indefinitely.
    Eventually he sliced a section from the tip of the driftwood piece. The wood was very hard, but Andrew had a robot's physical strength, so the only question was whether the knife itself would withstand the demands he was placing on it. It did.
    He contemplated the section of wood that he had separated from the bigger piece. He held it, turning it, rubbing his fingers over its surface. He closed his eyes and envisioned the way it might look if he removed a bit here, a bit there-just shaved away a little over here-and also here
    Yes.
    He began to work.
    The job took him almost no time at all, once the preliminary planning had been carried out in his mind. Andrew's mechanical coordination was easily equal to such fastidious work and his eyesight was perfect and the wood seemed to yield readily enough to the things he wished to do with it.
    By the time he was finished, though, it was much too late at night to take it to Little Miss. He put it aside and gave it no further thought until morning. Just as Little Miss was about to run outside to meet the bus that took her to school each day, Andrew produced the little carving and held it out to her. She took it from him, staring in perplexity and surprise.
    "I made it for you," he said.
    "You did?"
    "From the wood you gave me last night."
    "Oh, Andrew-Andrew-it's absolutely marvelous, Andrew! Oh, it's so fine! So beautiful! I never imagined you could make anything like it. Wait till Melissa sees it! Just wait! And I'll show it to Daddy, too-!"
    The horn honked outside. Little Miss tucked the carving safely in her purse and hurried out to the bus. But she turned when she was a dozen meters up the path and waved to Andrew-and blew him a kiss.
    In the evening, when Sir had come home from his stint at the Regional Capitol and Little Miss had brought forth the carving, there was a general stir over it in the household. Ma'am exclaimed at great length over its loveliness and Miss was gracious enough to concede that it was nearly as attractive as the pendant she had received for her birthday.
    Sir himself was astounded. He could not believe that Andrew had carved the little trinket.
    "Where did you get this, Mandy?" Mandy was what he called Little Miss, though no one else did.
    "I told you, Daddy. Andrew made it for me. I found a piece of driftwood on the beach and he carved it out of that."
    "He's not supposed to be an artisan robot."
    "A what?"
    "A woodcarver," Sir said.
    "Well, I guess that maybe he is," said Little Miss. "Maybe he's lots of things that we don't know about."
    Sir looked toward Andrew. He was frowning, and he tugged thoughtfully at