There was a gasp from the reporters, even those representing the liberal press.
McGeachin pointed his cigar at them. "Listen," he said. "Autobiographical note." Typopads began to click. "Up until the age of seventeen I hardly knew there was anybody on the planet but robots. My father didn't have time to mess around with kids, since he believed in running all of his multifarious industries personally. I, myself, though I tour the factories only once a year, have succeeded, by means of a computer and a ouija board, in increasing what little remained of his vast fortune after taxes to an amount that is ten times as great as his was at its peak."
"How do you spell ouija?" the man from the World-Post and Journal interrupted.
"So," McGeachin continued, after affably spelling the word and making a few adverse remarks on the sad state of current education, "during my childhood, I was left entirely in the care of robots, and I was a happy, carefree lad until I was sent to Harvard. There I discovered the dark truth which has over-shadowed my life ever since and rendered me a virtual recluse—that there are also large numbers of people in the world. Give me a robot, any time. Trustworthy, hard-working, clean, loyal to a fault, and, in Orville's case, artistic also. Tell 'em how you started in to paint, Orville."
"Well, it was like this, gents," Orville said in a voice like a rusty hinge. "I work for the Perfect Paint Section of the Superior Chemicals Division of the Universal Materials Corporation, which is a subsidiary of the McGeachin interests, and, as I'm getting along in gears, I was put onto artists' oil colors, which are individually ground, like all the artists nowadays want 'em to be—"
"In all McGeachin products, from paints to parliaments," the financier interjected, "the customer comes first, insofar as his desires are compatible with the mass-production methods necessarily imposed upon us by automation."
"—And there was a little left over of some colors what wouldn't fit into the tubes, and the forebot says to me, he says, 'Throw 'em into the disposal, Orville—'"
"—All the McGeachin robots have names. It gives that personal touch I like to have around my plants." There was something extraordinarily odd about McGeachin, Mr. Replogle felt, though he couldn't quite put his finger on just what it was ... something more than mere eccentricity, something curiously sinister.
"—And I says to the forebot, 'Begging your pardon, sir, but if there was no other use for 'em, I would like to try my hand at painting a picture like on the pretty calendars Perfect Paint sends out every Christmas.' And he says to me, laughing-like, 'Well, if that's what you want to do with your restoration period, Orville, more power to you' ... which is—" the robot snickered "—a kind of little joke we have amongst ourselves at the factory."
One of the Cimabue robots gave a laugh which Mr. Replogle cut short with a glance.