Big end to everything. Pachs tried to make himself believe that this was just another one of Martin's royal commands: a lecture, a chewing-out, a complaint. That's what he had thought when he had knocked out this reminder for himself, before Miss Fink's large watery eyes had blinked at him as she had whispered hoarsely.
"It's on order, Mr. Pachs, coming today. I saw the receipt on his desk. A Mark Nine." She had blinked moistly again, rolled her eyes toward the closed door of Martin's office, then scurried away.
A Mark IX. He knew that it would have to come someday, knew without wanting to admit it. He had only been kidding himself when he said that they couldn't do without him. His hands spread out on the board before him, old hands, networked wrinkles and dark liver spots. Always stained a bit with ink and marked with a permanent callus on the inside of his index finger. How many years had he held a pencil, or a brush there? He closed his hands into fists when he saw that they were shaking.
There was almost an hour left before he had to see Martin, plenty of time to finish up the story he was working on. He pulled the sheet of illustration board from the top of the pile and found the script. Page three of a piece of crap called "Prairie Love." For the July issue of Real Rangeland Romances. Love books with their heavy copy were always a snap. By the time Miss Fink had typed in the endless captions and dialogue on her big flatbed varityper at least half of every panel was full. He picked up the script, read panel one:
In house, Judy C/U cries and Robert in BG very angry.
A size-three head for Judy in the foreground — he quickly drew the right size oval in blue pencil — then a stick figure for Robert in the background. Hand raised, fist closed, to show anger. The Mark VIII Robot Comic Artist would do all the rest. Pachs slipped the sheet of illustration board into the machine's holder — then quickly pulled it out again. He had forgotten the balloons. Sloppy, sloppy. He quickly blue-penciled their outlines and Vs for tails.
When he thumbed the switch, the machine hummed to life, the operating lights came on, there was a dee-buzzing from inside its dark case. He punched the control button for the heads, first the girl — girl head, full front, size three, sad heroine. Girls, of course, all had the same face in comic books; the heroine was just a note to the machine not to touch the hair. For a villainess it would be inked in black since all villainesses have black hair. Just as all villains have mustaches as well as the black hair, to distinguish them from the hero. The machine buzzed and clattered to itself while it sorted through the stock cuts, then clicked and banged down a rubber stamp of the correct head over the blue circle he had drawn, man head, full front, size six, sad, hero brought a smaller stamp banging down on the other circle that topped the stick figure. Of course the script said angry, but that was what the raised fist was for. Since there are only sad and happy faces in comics.
Life isn't that simple, he thought to himself, a very unoriginal idea that he usually brought out at least once a day while sitting at the machine, man figure, business suit, he set on the dial, then hit the draw button. The pen-tipped arm dropped instantly and began to quickly ink in a suited man's figure over the blue direction lines he had put down. He blinked and watched it industriously knocking in a wrinkle pattern that hadn't varied a stroke in fifty years, then a collar and tie and two swift neck lines to connect the neatly inked torso to the rubber-stamped head. The pen leaped out to the cuff end of the just-drawn sleeve and quivered there. A relay buzzed and a dusty red panel flashed instructions please at him. With a savage jab he pushed the button labeled fist. The light went out and the flashing pen drew a neat fist at the end of the arm.
Pachs looked at the neatly drawn panel and sighed. The girl wasn't unhappy enough; he dipped his crow quill into the inkpot and knocked in two tears, one in the corner of each eye. Better. But the background was still pretty empty in spite of the small dictionary in each balloon. balloons, he punched automatically while he thought, and the machine pen darted down and inked the outlines of the balloons that held the lettering, ending each tail the correct distance from the speaker's mouth.
A little background, it needed a touch. He pressed code 473, which he knew from long experience stood for home window with lace curtains. It appeared on the paper quickly, automatically scaled by the machine to be in perspective with the man's figure before it. Pachs picked up the script and read panel two:
Judy falls on couch Robert tries to console her moth «r rushes in angrily wearing apron.
There was a four-line caption in this panel and, after the three balloons had been lettered as well, the total space remaining was just about big enough for a single close-up, a small one. Pachs didn't labor this panel, as he might have, but took the standard way out. He was feeling tired today, very tired. house, small family produced a tiny cottage from which emerged the tails of the three balloons. Let the damn reader figure out who was talking.
The story was finished just before eleven. He stacked the pages neatly, put the script into the file, and cleaned the ink out of the pen in the Mark VIII; it always clogged if he left it to dry.
Then it was eleven and time to see Martin. Pachs fussed a bit, rolling down his sleeves and hanging his green eyeshade from the arm of his dazor lamp; yet the moment could not be avoided. Pulling his shoulders back a bit he went out past Miss Fink, hammering away industriously on the varityper, and walked in through the open door to Martin's voice.
"Come ON, Louis," Martin wheedled into the phone in his most syrupy voice. "If it's a matter of taking the word of some two-bit shoestring salesman in Kansas City, or of taking my word, who you gonna doubt? That's right. okay. right Louis. I'll call you back in the morning. right, you too… my best to Helen." He banged the phone back onto the desk and glared up at Pachs with his hard beebee eyes.
"What do you want?"
"You told me you wanted to see me, Mr. Martin."
"Yeah, yeah," Martin mumbled half to himself. He scratched flakes of dandruff loose from the back of his head with the chewed end of a pencil, rocked from side to side in his chair.
"Business is business, Pachs, you know that, and expenses go up all the time. Paper — you know how much it costs a ton? So we gotta cut corners. "
"If you're thinking of cutting my salary again, Mr. Martin, I don't think I could. well, maybe not much. "
"I'm gonna have to let you go, Pachs. I've bought a Mark Nine to cut expenses and I already hired some kid to run it."
"You don't have to do that, Mr. Martin," Pachs said hurriedly, aware that his words were tumbling one over the other and that he was pleading, but not caring. "I could run the machine I'm sure, just give me a few days to catch on. "
"Outta the question. In the first place I'm paying the kid beans because she's just a kid and that's the starting salary, and in the other place she's been to school about this thing and can really grind the stuff out. You know I'm no bastard, Pachs, but business is business. And I'll tell you what, this is only Tuesday, still I'm gonna pay you for the rest of the week. How's that? And you can take off right now."
"Very generous, particularly after eight years," Pachs said, forcing his voice to be calm.
"That's all right, it's the least I could do." Martin was congenitally immune to sarcasm.
The lost feeling hit Pachs then, a dropping away of his stomach, a sensation that everything was over. Martin was back on the phone again and there was really nothing that Pachs could say. He walked out of the office, walking very straight, and behind him he heard the banging of Miss Fink's machine halt for an instant. He did not want to see her, to face those tender and damp eyes, not now. Instead of turning to go back to the studio, where he would have to pass her desk, he opened the hall door and stepped out. He closed it slowly behind him and stood with his back to it for an instant, until he realized it was frosted glass and she could see his figure from the inside: he moved hurriedly away.