He said, with more than half truth, “No, please go on, Miss Bige-low. I’m very much interested.”
She smiled; then abruptly her face changed to a frightening scowl. Morey flinched, but evidently the scowl wasn’t meant for him. “Robots!” she hissed. “Supposed to work for us, aren’t they? Hah! We’re their slaves, slaves for every moment of every miserable day of our lives. Slaves! Wouldn’t you like to join us and be free, Morey?”
Morey took cover in his drink. He made an expressive gesture with his free hand—expressive of exactly what, he didn’t truly know, for he was lost. But it seemed to satisfy the woman.
She said accusingly, “Did you know that more than three-quarters of the people in this country have had a nervous breakdown in the past five years and four months? That more than half of them are under the constant care of psychiatrists for psychosis—not just plain ordinary neurosis like my husband’s got and Howland here has got and you’ve got, but psychosis. Like I’ve got. Did you know that? Did you know that forty per cent of the population are essentially manic depressive, thirty-one per cent are schizoid, thirty-eight per cent have an assortment of other unfixed psychogenic disturbances and twenty-four—”
“Hold it a minute, Tan,” Howland interrupted critically. “You’ve got too many per cents there. Start over again.”
“Oh, the hell with it,” the woman said moodily. “I wish my husband were here. He expresses it so much better than I do.” She swallowed her drink. “Since you’ve wriggled off the hook,” she said nastily to Morey, “how about setting up another round—on my ration book this time?”
Morey did; it was the simplest thing to do in his confusion. When that was gone, they had another on Howland’s book.
As near as he could figure out, the woman, her husband and quite possibly Howland as well belonged to some kind of anti-robot group. Morey had heard of such things; they had a quasi-legal status, neither approved nor prohibited, but he had never come into contact with them before. Remembering the hatred he had so painfully relived at the psychodrama session, he thought anxiously that perhaps he belonged with them. But, question them though he might, he couldn’t seem to get the principles of the organization firmly in mind.
The woman finally gave up trying to explain it, and went off to find her husband while Morey and Howland had another drink and listened to two drunks squabble over who bought the next round. They were at the Alphonse-Gaston stage of inebriation; they would regret it in the morning; for each was bending over backward to permit the other to pay the ration points. Morey wondered uneasily about his own points; Howland was certainly getting credit for a lot of Morey’s drinking tonight. Served him right for forgetting his book, of course.
When the woman came back, it was with the large man Morey had encountered in the company of Sam, the counterfeiter, steerer and general man about Old Town.
“A remarkably small world, isn’t it?” boomed Walter Bigelow, only slightly crushing Morey’s hand in his. “Well, sir, my wife has told me how interested you are in the basic philosophical drives behind our movement, and I should like to discuss them further with you. To begin with, sir, have you considered the principle of Twoness?”
Morey said, “Why—”
“Very good,” said Bigelow courteously. He cleared his throat and declaimed:
He shrugged deprecatingly. “Just the first stanza,” he said. “I don’t know if you got much out of it.” “Well, no,” Morey admitted. “Second stanza,” Bigelow said firmly:
There was an expectant pause. Morey said, “I—uh—” “Wraps it all up, doesn’t it?” Bigelow’s wife demanded. “Oh, if only others could see it as clearly as you do! The robot peril and the robot savior. Starvation and surfeit. Always twoness, always!”
Bigelow patted Morey’s shoulder. “The next stanza makes it even clearer,” he said. “It’s really very clever—I shouldn’t say it, of course, but it’s Howland’s as much as it’s mine. He helped me with the verses.” Morey darted a glance at Howland, but Howland was carefully looking away. “Third stanza,” said Bigelow. “This is a hard one, because it’s long, so pay attention.”
Justice, tip your sightless scales; One pan rises, one pan fails.
“Howland,” he interrupted himself, “are you sure about that rhyme? I always trip over it. Well, anyway:
“Dearest!” shrieked Bigelow’s wife. “You’ve never done it better!” There was a spatter of applause, and Morey realized for the first time that half the bar had stopped its noisy revel to listen to them. Bigelow was evidently quite a well-known figure here.
Morey said weakly, “I’ve never heard anything like it.”
He turned hesitantly to Howland, who promptly said, “Drink! What we all need right now is a drink.”
They had a drink on Bigelow’s book.
Morey got Howland aside and asked him, “Look, level with me. Are these people nuts?”
Howland showed pique. “No. Certainly not.”
“Does that poem mean anything? Does this whole business of twoness mean anything?”
Howland shrugged. “If it means something to them, it means something. They’re philosophers, Morey. They see deep into things. You don’t know what a privilege it is for me to be allowed to associate with them.”
They had another drink. On Howland’s book, of course.
Morey eased Walter Bigelow over to a quiet spot. He said, “Leaving twoness out of it for the moment, what’s this about the robots?”
Bigelow looked at him round-eyed. “Didn’t you understand the poem?”
“Of course I did. But diagram it for me in simple terms so I can tell my wife.”
Bigelow beamed. “It’s about the dichotomy of robots,” he explained. “Like the Utile salt mill that the boy wished for: it ground out salt and ground out salt and ground out salt. He had to have salt, but not that much salt. Whitehead explains it clearly—”
They had another drink on Bigelow’s book.
Morey wavered over to Tanaquil Bigelow. He said fuzzily, “Listen. Mrs. Walter Tanaquil Strongarm Bigelow. Listen.”
She grinned smugly at him. “Brown hair,” she said dreamily.
Morey shook his head vigorously. “Never mind hair,” he ordered. “Never mind poem. Listen. In pre-cise and el-e-men-ta-ry terms, explain to me what is wrong with the world today.”
“Not enough brown hair,” she said promptly.
“Never mind hair!”
“All right,” she said agreeably. “Too many robots. Too many robots make too much of everything.”