"You raised your voice, Joe."
"I did."
"I'm the Senior Assistant. Junior Assistants do not raise their voices to Senior Assistants."
"I thought you might be deaf, as well as dumb," Joe said.
A silence. The granite face of Burke was marble, then steel and finally chromium. His voice matched it. "I'll have to talk to the Chief before I fire you, of course. Department rule. Good afternoon."
"Go to hell."
Joe went back to his desk and burned. He started with a low flame and fed it with the grievances of the past weeks. When it began to warm his collar, he picked up his hat and left.
Click, burr, click went the airlocks. Very few riders, this time of the afternoon. The brain would go in, intact, and then the knowledge instiller would work during the incubation period, feeding the adolescent memories to the retentive circuits. She would really spend her mental childhood in the mold, while the warmth sent the human spark through her body.
Robot? Huh! What did they know? A human being, a product of science, a flawless human being.