I am as good as Man and almost as smart as Man, for all I act the clown, and would be as treacherous as Man if I had the chance. Except I wear a tattoo mark and I am owned and I have no soul…although sometimes I doubt that.
Herkimer lay very quiet and gazed at the ceiling and tried to remember certain things, but the memories would not come.
First there was the tool and then the machine, which was no more than a complicated tool, and both machine and tool were no more than the extension of a hand.
Man's hand, of course.
Then came the robot and a robot was a machine that walked like a man. That walked and looked and talked like a man and did the things Man wished, but it was a caricature. No matter how sleekly machined, no matter how cleverly designed, there never was a danger that it be mistaken for a man.
And after the robot?
We are not robots, Herkimer told himself, and we are not men. We are not machines and we are not flesh and blood. We are chemicals made into the shapes of our creators and assigned a chemical life so close to the life of our makers that someday one of them will find, to his astonishment, that there is no difference.
Made in the shape of men…and the resemblance is so close that we wear a tattoo mark so that men may know their own.
So close to Man and yet not Man.
Although there is hope. If we can keep the Cradle secret, if we can keep it hidden from the eyes of Man. Someday there will be no difference. Someday a man will talk to an android and think he's talking to a fellow man.