The nurseries were a shock to Morey; it had never occurred to him that the Bigelows had children. But they did and, though the ■children were only five and eight, they were still up, under the care of a brace of robot nursemaids, doggedly playing with their overstuffed animals and miniature trains.
“You don’t know what a comfort Tony and Dick are,” Tanaquil Bigelow told Morey. “They consume so much more than their rations. Walter says that every family ought to have at least two or three children to, you know. Help out. Walter’s so intelligent about these things, it’s a pleasure to hear him talk. Have you heard his poem, Morey? The one he calls The Twoness of—”
Morey hastily admitted that he had. He reconciled himself to a glum evening. The Bigelows had been eccentric but fun back at Uncle Piggotty’s. On their own ground, they seemed just as eccentric, but painfully dull.
They had a round of cocktails, and another, and then the Bigelows no longer seemed so dull. Dinner was ghastly, of course; Morey was nouveau-riche enough to be a snob about his relatively Spartan table. But he minded his manners and sampled, with grim concentration, each successive course of chunky protein and rich marinades. With the help of the endless succession of table wines and liqueurs, dinner ended without destroying his evening or his strained digestive system.
And afterward, they were a pleasant company in the Bigelows’ ornate drawing room. Tanaquil Bigelow, in consultation with the children, checked over their ration books and came up with the announcement that they would have a brief recital by a pair of robot dancers, followed by string music by a robot quartet. Morey prepared himself for the worst, but found before the dancers were through that he was enjoying himself. Strange lesson for Morey: When you didn’t have to watch them, the robot entertainers were fun!
“Good night, dears,” Tanaquil Bigelow said firmly to the children when the dancers were done. The boys rebelled, naturally, but they went. It was only a matter of minutes, though, before one of them was back, clutching at Morey’s sleeve with a pudgy hand.
Morey looked at the boy uneasily, having little experience with children. He said, “Uh-what is it, Tony?”
“Dick, you mean,” the boy said. “Gimme your autograph.” He poked an engraved pad and a vulgarly jeweled pencil at Morey.
Morey dazedly signed and the child ran off, Morey staring after him. Tanaquil Bigelow laughed and explained, “He saw your name in Porfirio’s column. Dick loves Porfirio, reads him every day. He’s such an intellectual kid, really. He’d always have his nose in a book if I didn’t keep after him to play with his trains and watch tri-D.”
“That was quite a nice write-up,” Walter Bigelow commented—a little enviously, Morey thought. “Bet you make Consumer of the Year. I wish,” he signed, “that we could get a little ahead on the quotas the way you did. But it just never seems to work out. We eat and play and consume like crazy, and somehow at the end of the month we’re always a little behind in something—everything keeps piling up—and then the Board sends us a warning, and they call me down and, first thing you know, I’ve got a couple of hundred added penalty points and we’re worse off than before.”