He greeted Mrs. Lardner with a kind of puzzled respect and said, “That was a peculiar robot who took my hat and coat.”
“That is Max,” said Mrs. Lardner.
“He is quite maladjusted, and he's a fairly old model. How is it you did not return it to the factory?”
“Oh, no,” said Mrs. Lardner. “It would be too much trouble.”
“None at all, Mrs. Lardner,” said Travis. “You would be surprised how simple a task it was. Since I am with U. S. Robots, I took the liberty of adjusting him myself. It took no time and you'll find he is now in perfect working order.”
A queer change came over Mrs. Lardner's face. Fury found a place on it for the first time in her gentle life, and it was as though the lines did not know how to form.
“You adjusted him?” she shrieked. “But it was he who created my light-sculptures. It was the maladjustment, the maladjustment, which you can never restore, that-that-”
It was really unfortunate that she had been showing her collection at the time and that the jeweled dagger from Cambodia was on the marble tabletop before her.
Travis's face was also distorted. “You mean if I had studied his uniquely maladjusted positronic brain-paths I might have learned-”
She lunged with the knife too quickly for anyone to stop her and he did not try to dodge. Some said he came to meet it-as though he wanted to die.
In sending the story to The Saturday Evening Post I was anxious to make it clear that I had not sent them an old story. I explained rather emphatically that “I have written it today.”
In doing this I had forgotten the prejudice many people have against any story that is written quickly. There is the legend that a good story must be written and rewritten and must take days and days of agony for each pain-wracked paragraph. I think writers spread that piece of embroidery to collect public sympathy for themselves.
Anyway, I don't write slowly, but editors who don't have much experience with me don't realize it. I got a letter from the Post people raving about the story and expressing the utmost astonishment that I had managed to write it in one day. I kept quiet and said nothing.
However, I can tell you because you're my friends. From the moment of sitting down at the typewriter to the moment of placing the envelope in the mailbox, it did not take me one day. It took me two and a half hours. But don't tell the Post.
What, then, is left to tell you to bring you up to date?
Well, on November 30, 1973, I married a second time. My wife is Janet Jeppson. She is a psychiatrist, a writer, and a wonderful woman, in order of increasing importance. She has published a science fiction novel of her own, THE SECOND EXPERIMENT (Houghton Mufflin, 1974) and received final word of the acceptance of that novel on November 30, 1973, half an hour after we had been married. It was a big day.
I, for one, wish that her professional career left her a little more time for writing. Then we could perhaps work up a man-and-wife collection someday.