But he done more in other lines. Educational, say. None of my kids are old enough to be int’rested, but Joe bypassed all censor-circuits because they hampered the service he figured logics should give humanity. So the kids an’ teenagers who wanted to know what comes after the bees and flowers found out. And there is certain facts which men hope their wives won’t do more’n suspect, an’ those facts are just what their wives are really curious about. So when a woman dials: “How can I tell if Oswald is true to me?” and her logic tells her—your can figure out how many rows got started that night when the men come home!
All this while Joe goes on buzzin’ happy to himself, showin’ the Korlanovitch kids the animated funnies with one circuit while with the others he remote-controls the tank so that all the other logics can give people what they ask for and thereby raise merry hell.
An’ then Laurine gets onto the new service. She turn on the logic in her hotel room, probably to see the week’s style forecast. But the logic says, dutifuclass="underline" “If you want to do something and don’t know how to do it—ask your logic!” So Laurine probably looks enthusiastic—she would!—And tries to figure out something to ask. She already knows all about everything she cares about—ain’t she had four husbands and shot one?—So I occur to her. She knows this is the town I live in. So she punches, “How can I find Ducky?”
O.K., guy! But that is what she used to call me. She gets a service question. “Is Ducky known by any other name?” So she gives my regular name. And the logic can’t find me. Because my logic ain’t, listed under my name on account of I am in Maintenance and don want to be pestered when I’m home, and there ain’t an data plates on code-listed logics, because the codes changed so often—like a guy gets plastered an’ tells redhead to call him up, an’ on gettin’ sober hurried has the code changed before she reaches his wife on screen.
Well! Joe is stumped. That’s probably the first question logics service hasn’t been able to answer. “How can I find Ducky?” ! ! Quite a problem! So Joe throw over it while showin’ the Korlanovitch kids the animated comic about the cute little boy who carries stick of dynamite in his hip pocket and plays practical joke on everybody. Then he gets the trick. Laurine’s screen suddenly flashes:
“Logics special service will work upon your question. Please punch your logic designation and leave it turned on. You will be called back.”
Laurine is merely mildly interested, but she punches her hotel-room number and has a drink and takes a nap. Joe sets to work. He has been given a idea.
My wife calls me at Maintenance and hollers. She is fit to be tied. She says I got to do something. She was gonna make a call to the butcher shop. Instead of the butcher or even the “If you want to do something” flash, she got a new one. The screen says, “Service question: What is your name?” She is kinda puzzled, but she punches it. The screen sputters an’ then says: “Secretarial Service Demonstration! You—” It reels off her name, address, age, sex, coloring, the amounts of all her charge accounts in all the stores, my name as her husband, how much I get a week, the fact that I’ve been pinched three times—twice was traffic stuff, and once for a argument I got in with a guy—and the interestin’ item that once when she was mad with me she left me for three weeks an’ had her address changed to her folks’ home. Then it says, brisk: “Logics Service will hereafter keep your personal accounts, take messages, and locate persons you may wish to get in touch with. This demonstration is to introduce the service.” Then it connects her with the butcher.
But she don’t want meat, then. She wants blood. She calls me.
“If it’ll tell me all about myself,” she says, fairly boilin’, “it’ll tell anybody else who punches my name! You’ve got to stop it!”.
“Now, now, honey!” I says. “I didn’t know about all this! It’s new! But they musta fixed the tank so it won’t give out information except to the logic where a person lives!”.
“Nothing of the kind!” she tells me, furious. “I tried! And you know that Blossom woman who lives next door! She’s been married three times and she’s forty-two years old and she says she’s only thirty! And Mrs. Hudson’s had her husband arrested four times for nonsupport and once for beating her up. And—”
“Hey!” I says. “You mean the logic told you this?”
“Yes!” she walls. “It will tell anybody anything! You’ve got to stop it! How long will it take?”
“I’ll call up the tank;” I says. “It can’t take long.”
“Hurry!” she says, desperate, “before somebody punches my name! I’m going to see what it says about that hussy across the street.”
She snaps off to gather what she can before it’s stopped. So I punch for the tank and I get this new “What is your name?” flash. I got a morbid curiosity and I punch my name, and the screen says: “Were you ever called Ducky?” I blink. I ain’t got no suspicions. I say, “Sure!” And the screen says, “There is a call for you.”
Bingo! There’s the inside of a hotel room and Laurine is rectinin’ asleep on the bed. She’d been told to leave her logic turned on an’ she’d done it. It is a hot day and she is trying to be cool. I would say that she oughta not suffer from the heat. Me, being human, I do not stay as cool as she looks. But there ain’t no need to go into that. After I get my breath I say, “For Heaven’s sake!” and she opens her eyes.
At first she looks puzzled, like she was thinking is she getting absent-minded and is this guy somebody she married lately. Then she grabs a sheet and drapes it around herself and beams at me.
“Ducky!” she says. “How marvelous!”
I say something like “Ugmph!” I am sweating.
She says:
“I put in a call for you, Ducky, and here you are! Isn’t It romantic? Where are you really, Ducky? And when can you come up? You’ve no idea how often I’ve thought of you!”
I am probably the only guy she ever knew real well that she has not been married to at some time or another.
I say “Ugmph!” again, and swallow.
“Can you come up instantly?” asks Laurine brightly.
“I’m … workin’,” I say. “I’ll … uh … call you back.”
“I’m terribly lonesome,” says Laurine. “Please make it quick, Ducky! I’ll have a drink waiting for you. Have you ever thought of me?”
“Yeah,” I say, feeble. “Plenty!”
“You darling!” says Laurine.“Here’s a kiss to go on with until you get here! Hurry, Ducky!”
Then I sweat! I still don’t know nothing about Joe, understands or cuss out the guys at the tank because I blame them for this. If Laurine was just another blonde—well—when it comes to ordinary blondes I can leave ’em alone or leave them alone, either one. A married man gets that way or else. But Laurine has a look of unquenched enthusiasm that gives a man very strange weak sensations at the back of his knees. And she’d had four husbands and shot one and got acquitted.
So I punch the keys for the tank technical room, fumbling. And the screen says: “What is your name?” but I don’t want any more. I punch the name of the old guy who’s stock clerk in Maintenance, and the screen gives me some pretty interestin’ dope—I never woulda thought the old fella had ever had that much pep—and winds up by mentionin’ a unclaimed deposit now amountin’ to two hundred eighty credits in the First National Bank, which he should look into. Then it spiels about the new secretarial service and gives me the tank at last.