William W. Stuart

“ 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. ”

“ The Old Man would give them a pre-paid vacation clearance to any resort in the world or out. Why gloom?
He rubbed Bennie’s unruly hair, kissed Betty and conveyed over from Guest-ville to office.
Message-sec, in tone respect-admiration A, told him the Old Man was waiting for him. Susan, the human receptionist in the outer office, favored him with a dazzling smile. There was a girl who could sell; and had a product of her own, too.
The Old Man was at his big, oak desk but, a signal honor, he got up and came half across the room to grab Ben’s hand and shake it. ”

“ It’s in the air, things are just ripe for a new, super-soft-sell pitch. Selling you’ve got to do by feel, eh Ben? By sales genius and the old seat of the pants. Good. After tonight I’m going all out, a hemisphere-wide, thirty day campaign. I’ll put the top sales artist of every regional office on it. They can train on your test pattern tapes. I believe we can turn over billions before everybody picks up the signal and it senilesces. ”

“ A tiny robot Statue of Liberty climbed from the cylinder, walked across Ben’s hand, smiled, curtsied and reached out to light the reducegar with her torch, piping in a high, thin voice, “Amalgamated reducegars are cooler, lighter, finer.”
“Ben! How simply darling!”
“Do you like it? It’s a new thing from Amalgamated NovelDiv. You can program it for up to a hundred selective sell phrases, audio or visio key. Every salesman should have one. Makes a marvelous gift, and surprisingly reasonable.” ”

“ No reason for everyone to live in the suburban centers any more. With millions of empty apartments in them, high time we built something else, eh? Trouble with people today, no initiative in obsolescing. But we’ll move them.”
Home, Ben left the kart out and conveyed up the walk. The front door opened. Betty had been watching for him. He walked to the family vueroom, as usual declining to convey in the house. The hell with the conveyor’s feelings, if so simple a robot really had any. He liked to walk.
“Color pattern,” Betty ordered the vuescreen as he came in, “robot audio out.” ”

“ Nobody can sell me on leaving. We like it here. No robot can force us out. Here we are. Here we stay.”
They pulled into the Guest-ville ramp. Bennie was fussy; the nursery Nana was strange to him. On impulse, Betty took him in to sleep in their room, ignoring the disapproving stares of both the Nana and the Roboy with their things.
They were tired, let down. They went to bed quietly.
In the morning Betty was already up when Ben stumbled out of bed. ”

“ Grandma and Ma Burley cleaning, washing, cooking on the ancient electric stove; little Donnie, being a nuisance, poking at the keys on his father’s crude, manual typewriter, a museum piece; Donnie and his brothers wasting away childhood digging and piling sand on the beach, paddling a boat and actually building a play house. It was mad. People playing robots. ”

“ Tilman!”
“Nana! And what’s this about your wanting Bennie spanked because he drew a few pictures?”
“Surely you realize these are the child’s formative years, Mr. Tilman. He should be learning to think in terms of selling now—not doing things. That’s robot work, Mr. Tilman. Robots can’t sell, you know, and what will people, let alone robots think if you let your boy grow up—”
“He’s growing up fine ”