There were things that robots could do as well as people. But there were also, Congressman Fiorello Delano Fitzgerald O'Hare believed with pride, things that required the special human touch. One of them was sitting in the House of Representatives. For him, every election year, the campaign started on the Tuesday after Labor Day. It was a tradition. It was traditional for the Congressman, anyway, feisty little seventy-plus-year-old who liked his own traditions and didn't much care what anyone else's were. The summer was his own and his lady wife's, and when he started to press the flesh and hunt the votes was at the League of Women Voters televised debate and not a minute before. So at six o'clock on the evening of the eighth of September there was Carrie O'Hare one more time, straightening the fidgeting Congressman's tie, dabbing a blob of the Congressman's shaving cream off the lobe of the Congressman's fuzzy pink ear and reassuring the Congressman that he was wiser, juster and, above all, far more beloved by his constituents than that brash new interloper of an opponent, the Mayor of Elk City, could ever hope to be. "Quit fussing," said the Congressman, with his famous impudent elf's smile. "The voters don't mind if a candidate looks a little messy."
"Hold still a minute, hon."
"What for? It all has to come off again for the doctor, maybe."
"Or maybe he'll just take your pulse, so hold still. And listen. Please don't tell them about game-hunting in the Sahara tonight."
"Now, Carrie"—twinkling grin—"we leave the speeches to me and everything else to you, right? They're going to want to know what their Congressman did over the summer, aren't they?"
Carrie sighed and released him. It had been a successful safari—the Congressman had photographed dozens of mules, and even one actual live camel—but what did it have to do with the Congressman's qualifications for one more term in the United States House of Representatives? "Hold it a minute," she said as an afterthought, sent one of the household robots for a fresh pocket handkerchief, repinned the American flag button in his lapel and let it go at that. She needed all the rest of the time available on the larger task of herself. Voters might forgive a Congressman for looking rumpled, true enough, but a Congressman's wife never.
She sat before her mirror and reviewed all the things she had to do. There were plenty, not made easier by the little knot of worry in her stomach. Well, not worry. Normal nervousness, maybe, but not real worry. The Congressman was a winner and always had been. Fiorello Delano Fitzgerald O'Hare, servant of the people for half a century plus one year, eight months and a week, might have been custom-built for politics, as well designed as any robot, and with the further advantage (she thought guiltily that you shouldn't call it an "advantage") of being human. He had the name for it. He had the friendly and trustworthy look, with enough leprechaun mischief to make him interesting. He had the manner that caused each of thirty thousand voters to think himself personally known to the Congressman, and above all he had the disposition. He actually enjoyed such things as eating rubber chicken at a dinner for the B'nai B'rtih, square-dancing at fireman's fair, joining the Policemen's Benevolent Association for a communion breakfast. He even liked getting up at five A.M. to get to a factory gate to shake the hands of nine hundred workers on the early shift. All of these things were a lot less enjoyable for the Congressman's wife, but what she unfailingly enjoyed was the Congressman himself. For he was a sweet man.
Carrie Madeleine O'Hare was quite a sweet woman, too. You could tell that by the way she spoke to the maid tidying up behind her. Carrie had had that same maid since her marriage, forty years before. The Congressman had been thirty-five years old, Carrie herself twenty-two and the maid a wedding present, fresh off the assembly line, an old-style robot with all its brains in some central computation facility—no personality, no feelings to hurt. But Carrie treated the robot just as she would a human being—or one of the new Josephson-junction machines, so close to human that they even had voting rights… for which they had to thank in very large part the Congressman himself and damn well, Carrie thought, better remember it come November.
Carrie's preparations only went as far as makeup, hair and underwear—there was no point in putting on the dress until they were ready to go, and the Congressman's doctor hadn't even arrived yet for his traditional last-minute medical check. So she pulled on a robe and descended the back stairs to the big screened porch for a breath of air. The house was ancient and three stories high. It stood on a little hill in the bend of the river, water on two sides. It would have been a fine house to raise children in—but there hadn't been any children—and it was a first-rate house for a Congressman even without children. All through the years when small was status, the Congressman had stuck to his sixteen rooms because they were so fine for parties, so fine for entertaining delegations of voters and putting up visiting political VIPs and all the other functions of political power. Carrie sat on the porch swing, and found herself shivering. It wasn't the temperature. That had to be at least seventy-five degrees, in the old Fahrenheit system Carrie still used inside her head. It was still summer. But the wind made her feel cold. And that was strange, when you came to think of it. When had the TV weathermen started talking about wind-chill factors even in July and September? Why was it always so windy these days? Was it just because of the simple fact that, without ever willing it to happen, Carrie herself had somehow become sixty-two years old?
And then her husband's angry bellow from inside the house: "Carrie! Where are you? What's this damn thing doing here?"
Carrie ran inside the house. There was her husband, flushed and angry, with that ruffled-sparrow look he got when he was excited, facing down a stranger. The doctor had arrived when she wasn't looking, and it was a new model.
If you looked at the doctor what you saw was a sandy-haired man of youthful maturity, with little laugh wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and the expression of smiling competence that doctors cultivated. If you touched him, his handshake was firm and warm. If you listened to his voice, that was also warm—it was only if you went so far as to sniff him that you could notice a possible lack. There was no human scent of body and sweat. That meant a very recent shower, a foolproof deodorant—or a robot.
And, of course, a robot was what it was. "Oh, come on, Fee," she coaxed, anxiously good-humored, "you know it's just a doctor come to check your blood pressure and so on."
"It's not my regular doctor!" roared the Congressman, standing as tall and strong as possible for a man who, after all, was a shade shorter than Carrie herself. "I want my doctor! I've had the same doctor for thirty-five years, and that's the one I want now!"
It was so bad for him to get upset right before the kickoff debate! "Now, Fee," Carrie scolded humorously, trying to soothe him down, "you know that old dented wreck was due for the scrap heap. I'm sure that Dr.— uh—" She looked at the new robot for a name, and it supplied it, smilingly self-assured.
"I am Dr. William," it said. "I am a fully programmed Josephson-junction autonomous-intellect model robot, Mr. Congressman, with core storage for diagnostics, first aid and general internal medicine, and of course I carry data-chip memory for most surgical procedures and test functions."
The Congressman's cheeks had faded from red to pink; he was not generally an irascible man. "All the same," he began, but the robot was still talking.
"I'm truly sorry if I've caused you any concern, Mr. Congressman. Not only for professional reasons," it added warmly, "but because I happen to be one of your strongest supporters. I haven't yet had the privilege of voting in a congressional election, I'm sorry to say, because I was only activated last week, but I certainly intend to vote for you when I do."