I, Robot - Isaac Asimov [84]
The thin man was directly under the balcony. His words tore unheard against the roar.
Byerley leaned forward. “What do you say? If you have a legitimate question, I’ll answer it.” He turned to a flanking guard. “Bring that man up here.”
There was a tensing in the crowd. Cries of “Quiet” started in various parts of the mob, and rose to a bedlam, then toned down raggedly. The thin man, red-faced and panting, faced Byerley.
Byerley said, “Have you a question?”
The thin man stared, and said in a cracked voice, “Hit me!”
With sudden energy, he thrust out his chin at an angle. “Hit me! You say you’re not a robot. Prove it. You can’t hit a human, you monster.”
There was a queer, flat, dead silence. Byerley’s voice punctured it. “I have no reason to hit you.”
The thin man was laughing wildly. “You can’t hit me. You won’t hit me. You’re not a human. You’re a monster, a make-believe man.”
And Stephen Byerley, tight-lipped, in the face of thousands who watched in person and the millions who watched by screen, drew back his fist and caught the man crackingly upon the chin. The challenger went over backwards in sudden collapse, with nothing on his face but blank, blank surprise.
Byerley said, “I’m sorry. Take him in and see that he’s comfortable. I want to speak to him when I’m through.”
And when Dr. Calvin, from her reserved space, turned her automobile and drove off, only one reporter had recovered sufficiently from the shock to race after her, and shout an unheard question.
Susan Calvin called over her shoulder, “He’s human.”
That was enough. The reporter raced away in his own direction.
The rest of the speech might be described as “Spoken but not heard.”
Dr. Calvin and Stephen Byerley met once again—a week before he took the oath of office as mayor. It was late—past midnight.
Dr. Calvin said, “You don’t look tired.”
The mayor-elect smiled. “I may stay up for a while. Don’t tell Quinn.”
“I shan’t. But that was an interesting story of Quinn’s, since you mention him. It’s a shame to have spoiled it. I suppose you knew his theory?”
“Parts of it.”
“It was highly dramatic. Stephen Byerley was a young lawyer, a powerful speaker, a great idealist—and with a certain flair for biophysics. Are you interested in robotics, Mr. Byerley?”
“Only in the legal aspects.”
“This Stephen Byerley was. But there was an accident. Byerley’s wife died; he himself, worse. His legs were gone; his face was gone; his voice was gone. Part of his mind was—bent. He would not submit to plastic surgery. He retired from the world, legal career gone—only his intelligence, and his hands left. Somehow he could obtain positronic brains, even a complex one, one which had the greatest capacity of forming judgments in ethical problems—which is the highest robotic function so far developed.
“He grew a body about it. Trained it to be everything he would have been and was no longer. He sent it out into the world as Stephen Byerley, remaining behind himself as the old, crippled teacher that no one ever saw—”
“Unfortunately,” said the mayor-elect, “I ruined all that by hitting a man. The papers say it was your official verdict on the occasion that I was human.”
“How did that happen? Do you mind telling me? It couldn’t have been accidental.”
“It wasn’t entirely. Quinn did most of the work. My men started quietly spreading the fact that I had never hit a man; that I was unable to hit a man; that to fail to do so under provocation would be sure proof that I was a robot. So I arranged for a silly speech in public, with all sorts of publicity overtones, and almost inevitably, some fool fell for it. In its essence, it was what I call a shyster trick. One in which the artificial atmosphere which has been created does all the work. Of course, the emotional effects made my election certain, as intended.”
The robopsychologist nodded. “I see you intrude on my field—as every politician must, I suppose. But I’m very sorry it turned out this way. I like robots. I like them considerably