THE COSMIC COMPUTER

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He grinned at her. "You and my mother would get along. She always treats
robots like people."[Pg 84]

"Well, they are, sort of. They aren't alive?at least, I don't think they
are?but they do what you tell them, and they learn tricks, and they have
personalities."

That was true. He didn't think robots were alive, either, though
biophysics professors tended to become glibly evasive when pinned down
to defining life. Robots could learn, if you used the term loosely
enough. And any robot with more than five hundred hours service picked
up a definite and often exasperating personality.

"I've been working with them, and tearing them down and fixing them,
ever since I was in pigtails," she added.

The half-dozen natural leaders among the prisoners?Jacquemont and his