The woman, with a tigerish look at Morey, said, “Don’t stop, Everett. That was one of your most beautiful things.”
“Oh, Morey’s heard my poetry,” Howland said. “Morey, I’d like you to meet a very lovely and talented young lady, Tanaquil Bigelow. Morey works in the office with me, Tan.”
“Obviously,” said Tanaquil Bigelow in a frozen voice, and Morey hastily withdrew the hand he had begun to put out.
The conversation stuck there, impaled, the woman cold, Howland relaxed and abstracted, Morey wondering if, after all, this had been such a good idea. He caught the eye-cell of the robot bartender and ordered a round of drinks for the three of them, politely putting them on Howland’s ration book. By the time the drinks had come and Morey had just got around to deciding that it wasn’t a very good idea, the woman had all of a sudden become thawed.
She said abruptly, “You look like the kind of man who thinks, Morey, and I like to talk to that kind of man. Frankly, Morey, I just don’t have any patience at all with the stupid, stodgy men who just work in their offices all day and eat all their dinners every night, and gad about and consume like mad and where does it all get them, anyhow? That’s right, I can see you understand. Just one crazy rush of consume, consume from the day you’re born plop to the day you’re buried pop! And who’s to blame if not the robots?”
Faintly, a tinge of worry began to appear on the surface of How-land’s relaxed calm. “Tan,” he chided, “Morey may not be very interested in politics.”
Politics, Morey thought; well, at least that was a clue. He’d had the dizzying feeling, while the woman was talking, that he himself was the ball in the games machine he had designed for the shop earlier that day. Following the woman’s conversation might, at that, give his next design some valuable pointers in swoops, curves and obstacles.
He said, with more than half truth, “No, please go on, Miss Bige-low. I’m very much interested.”
She smiled; then abruptly her face changed to a frightening scowl. Morey flinched, but evidently the scowl wasn’t meant for him. “Robots!” she hissed. “Supposed to work for us, aren’t they? Hah! We’re their slaves, slaves for every moment of every miserable day of our lives. Slaves! Wouldn’t you like to join us and be free, Morey?”
Morey took cover in his drink. He made an expressive gesture with his free hand—expressive of exactly what, he didn’t truly know, for he was lost. But it seemed to satisfy the woman.