Morey said dazedly, “I what?
Walter nodded. It was a valedictory. He turned to his wife. “Tanaquil, we’ll have to call an emergency meeting.”
“Of course, Walter,” she said devotedly.
“And Morey will have to be there. Yes, you’ll have to, Morey; no excuses. We want the Brotherhood to meet you. Right, Howland?”
Howland coughed uneasily. He nodded noncommittally and took another drink.
Morey demanded desperately, “What are you talking about? Howland, you tell me!”
Howland fiddled with his drink. “Well,” he said, “it’s like Tan was telling you that night. A few of us, well, politically mature persons have formed a little group. We—”
“Little group!” Tanaquil Bigelow said scornfully. “Howland, sometimes I wonder if you really catch the spirit of the thing at all! It’s everybody, Morey, everybody in the world. Why, there are eighteen of us right here in Old Town! There are scores more all over the world! I knew you were up to something like this, Morey. I told Walter so the morning after we met you. I said, ‘Walter, mark my words, that man Morey is up to something.’ But I must say,” she admitted worshipfully, “I didn’t know it would have the scope of what you’re proposing now! Imagine—a whole world of consumers, rising as one man, shouting the name of Morey Fry, fighting the Ration Board with the Board’s own weapon—the robots. What poetic justice!”
Bigelow nodded enthusiastically. “Call Uncle Piggotty’s, dear,” he ordered. “See if you can round up a quorum right now! Meanwhile, Morey and I are going belowstairs. Let’s go, Morey—let’s get the new world started!”
Morey sat there open-mouthed. He closed it with a snap. “Bigelow,” he whispered, “do you mean to say that you’re going to spread this idea around through some kind of subversive organization?”
“Subversive?” Bigelow repeated stiffly. “My dear man, all creative minds are subversive, whether they operate singly or in such a group as the Brotherhood of Freemen. I scarcely like—”
“Never mind what you like,” Morey insisted. “You’re going to call a meeting of this Brotherhood and you want me to tell them what I just told you. Is that right?”
“Well-yes.”
Morey got up. “I wish I could say it’s been nice, but it hasn’t. Good night!”
And he stormed out before they could stop him.
Out on the street, though, his resolution deserted him. He hailed a robot cab and ordered the driver to take him on the traditional time-killing ride through the park while he made up his mind.
The fact that he had left, of course, was not going to keep Bigelow from going through with his announced intention. Morey remembered, now, fragments of conversation from Bigelow and his wife at Uncle Piggotty’s, and cursed himself. They had, it was perfectly true, said and hinted enough about politics and purposes to put him on his guard. All that nonsense about twoness had diverted him from what should have been perfectly clear: They were subversives indeed.
He glanced at his watch. Late, but not too late; Cherry would still be at her parents’ home.
He leaned forward and gave the driver their address. It was like beginning the first of a hundred-shot series of injections: you know it’s going to cure you, but it hurts just the same.
Morey said manfully: “And that’s it, sir. I know I’ve been a fool. I’m willing to take the consequences.”
Old Elon rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. “Ura,” he said.
Cherry and her mother had long passed the point where they could say anything at all; they were seated side by side on a couch across the room, listening with expressions of strain and incredulity.
Elon said abruptly, “Excuse me. Phone call to make.” He left the room to make a brief call and returned. He said over his shoulder to his wife, “Coffee. We’ll need it. Got a problem here.”
Morey said, “Do you think—I mean what should I do?”
Elon shrugged, then, surprisingly, grinned. “What can you do?” he demanded cheerfully. “Done plenty already, I’d say. Drink some coffee. Call I made,” he explained, “was to Jim, my law clerk. He’ll be here in a minute. Get some dope from Jim, then we’ll know better.”
Cherry came over to Morey and sat beside him. All she said was, “Don’t worry,” but to Morey it conveyed all the meaning in the world. He returned the pressure of her hand with a feeling of deepest relief. Hell, he said to himself, why should I worry? Worst they can do to me is drop me a couple of grades and what’s so bad about that?
He grimaced involuntarily. He had remembered his own early struggles as a Class One and what was so bad about that.
The law clerk arrived, a smallish robot with a battered stainless-steel hide and dull coppery features. Elon took the robot aside for a terse conversation before he came back to Morey.
“As I thought,” he said in satisfaction. “No precedent. No laws prohibiting. Therefore no crime.”
“Thank heaven!” Morey said in ecstatic relief.
Elon shook his head. “They’ll probably give you a reconditioning and you can’t expect to keep your Grade Five. Probably call it antisocial behavior. Is, isn’t it?”
Dashed, Morey said, “Oh.” He frowned briefly, then looked up. “All right, Dad, if I’ve got it coming to me, I’ll take my medicine.”
“Way to talk,” Elon said approvingly. “Now go home. Get a good night’s sleep. First thing in the morning, go to the Ration Board. Tell ’em the whole story, beginning to end. They’ll be easy on you.” Elon hesitated. “Well, fairly easy,” he amended. “I hope.”
The condemned man ate a hearty breakfast.
He had to. That morning, as Morey awoke, he had the sick certainty that he was going to be consuming triple rations for a long, long time to come.
He kissed Cherry good-by and took the long ride to the Ration Board in silence. He even left Henry behind.
At the Board, he stammered at a series of receptionist robots and was finally brought into the presence of a mildly supercilious young man named Hachette.
“My name,” he started, “is Morey Fry. I—I’ve come to—talk over something I’ve been doing with—”
“Certainly, Mr. Fry,” said Hachette. “I’ll take you in to Mr. Newman right away.”
“Don’t you want to know what I did?” demanded Morey.
Hachette smiled. “What makes you think we don’t know?” he said, and left.
That was Surprise Number One.
Newman explained it. He grinned at Morey and ruefully shook his head. “All the time we get this,” he complained. “People just don’t take the trouble to learn anything about the world around them. Son,” he demanded, “what do you think a robot is?”
Morey said, “Huh?”
“I mean how do you think it operates? Do you think it’s just a kind of a man with a tin skin and wire nerves?”
“Why, no. It’s a machine, of course. It isn’t human.”
Newman beamed. “Fine!” he said. “It’s a machine. It hasn’t got flesh or blood or intestines—or a brain. Oh”—he held up a hand—“robots are smart enough. I don’t mean that. But an electronic thinking machine, Mr. Fry, takes about as much space as the house you’re living in. It has to. Robots don’t carry brains around with them; brains are too heavy and much too bulky.”
“Then how do they think?”
“With their brains, of course.”