]

mustn’t—

But Ben moved forward.

He took the plastic box on the Old Man’s chest and firmly cut the switch.

H

e

The Old Man, the Robot Old Man, went lifeless and slumped back in his chair as Ben stretched to cut off the Desk-sec. Then he picked up his vacation clearance.

“Robots can’t sell, eh?” he said to the dead machine behind the desk. “Well, you couldn’t sell me that time, could you, Old Man?”

Clumsily, rustily, Ben whistled a cheerful little off-key tune to himself. Hell, they could do anything at all—except sell.

“You can’t fool some of the people all of the time,” he remarked over his shoulder to the still, silent figure of the Old Man as he left the office, “it was a man said that.” He closed the door softly behind him.

Betty would be waiting.

Betty was waiting. Her head ached as she bounced Bennie, the child of Ben, of herself and of an unknown egg cell from an anonymous ovary, on her knees. Betty 3-RC-VIII, secret, wife-style model, the highest development of the art of Robotics had known instantly when Ben cut the Old Man’s switch. She had half expected it. But it made her headache worse.

“But damn my programming!” She spoke abruptly, aloud, nervously fingering the locket around her neck. “Damn it and shift circuit. He’s right! He is my husband and he is right and I’m glad. I’m glad we’re going to the camp and I’m going to help him stay.”

After all, why shouldn’t a man want to do things just as much as a robot? He had energy, circuits, feelings too. She knew he did.

For herself, she loved her Ben and Bennie. But still just that wasn’t enough occupation. She was glad they were going to the new isolation compound for non-psychotic but unstable, hyper-active, socially dangerous individual humans. At the camp there would be things to do.

 Prev. P 16/17 next