She said accusingly, “Did you know that more than three-quarters of the people in this country have had a nervous breakdown in the past five years and four months? That more than half of them are under the constant care of psychiatrists for psychosis—not just plain ordinary neurosis like my husband’s got and Howland here has got and you’ve got, but psychosis. Like I’ve got. Did you know that? Did you know that forty per cent of the population are essentially manic depressive, thirty-one per cent are schizoid, thirty-eight per cent have an assortment of other unfixed psychogenic disturbances and twenty-four—”
“Hold it a minute, Tan,” Howland interrupted critically. “You’ve got too many per cents there. Start over again.”
“Oh, the hell with it,” the woman said moodily. “I wish my husband were here. He expresses it so much better than I do.” She swallowed her drink. “Since you’ve wriggled off the hook,” she said nastily to Morey, “how about setting up another round—on my ration book this time?”
Morey did; it was the simplest thing to do in his confusion. When that was gone, they had another on Howland’s book.
As near as he could figure out, the woman, her husband and quite possibly Howland as well belonged to some kind of anti-robot group. Morey had heard of such things; they had a quasi-legal status, neither approved nor prohibited, but he had never come into contact with them before. Remembering the hatred he had so painfully relived at the psychodrama session, he thought anxiously that perhaps he belonged with them. But, question them though he might, he couldn’t seem to get the principles of the organization firmly in mind.
The woman finally gave up trying to explain it, and went off to find her husband while Morey and Howland had another drink and listened to two drunks squabble over who bought the next round. They were at the Alphonse-Gaston stage of inebriation; they would regret it in the morning; for each was bending over backward to permit the other to pay the ration points. Morey wondered uneasily about his own points; Howland was certainly getting credit for a lot of Morey’s drinking tonight. Served him right for forgetting his book, of course.
When the woman came back, it was with the large man Morey had encountered in the company of Sam, the counterfeiter, steerer and general man about Old Town.
“A remarkably small world, isn’t it?” boomed Walter Bigelow, only slightly crushing Morey’s hand in his. “Well, sir, my wife has told me how interested you are in the basic philosophical drives behind our movement, and I should like to discuss them further with you. To begin with, sir, have you considered the principle of Twoness?”
Morey said, “Why—”
“Very good,” said Bigelow courteously. He cleared his throat and declaimed: