"You see?" an engineer exclaimed delightedly. "They can be adjusted to want hats, to wear them lovingly, to wean the hats to pieces. And not just for the sake of wearing them out-the hats are an incentive for them!"
"But how can we go on producing just hats and more hats?" the Ration Board man asked puzzledly. "Civilization does not live by hats alone."
"That," said Morey modestly, "is the beauty of it. Look."
He set the adjustment of the satisfaction circuit as porter robots brought in skids of gloves. The hat-manufacturing robots fought oven the gloves with the same mechanical passion as they had for hats.
"And that can apply to anything we-on the robots-produce," Morey added. "Everything from pins to yachts. But the point is that they get satisfaction from possession, and the craving can be regulated according to the glut in various industries, and the robots show their appreciation by working harder." He hesitated. "That's what I did for my servant-robots. It's a feedback, you see. Satisfaction leads to more work-and better work-and that means more goods, which they can be made to want, which means incentive to work, and so on, all around."
"Closed cycle," whispered the Ration Board man in awe. "A real closed cycle this time!"
And so the inexorable laws of supply and demand were irrevocably repealed. No longer was mankind hampered by inadequate supply on drowned by overproduction. What mankind needed was there. What the race did not require passed into the insatiable-and adjustable-robot maw. Nothing was wasted.
For a pipeline has two ends.
Morey was thanked, complimented, rewarded, given a ticker-tape parade through the city, and put on a plane back home. By that time, the Ration Board had liquidated itself.
Cherry met him at the airport. They jabbered excitedly at each other all the way to the house.
In their own living room, they finished the kiss they had greeted each other with. At last Cherry broke away, laughing.
Morey said, "Did I tell you I'm through with Bradmoor? From now on I work for the Board as civilian consultant. And," he added impressively, "starting right away, I'm a Class Eight!"
"My!" gasped Cherry, so worshipfully that Morey felt a twinge of conscience.
He said honestly, "Of course, if what they were saying in Washington is so, the classes aren't going to mean much pretty soon. Still, it's quite an honor."
"It certainly is," Cherry said staunchly. "Why, Dad's only a Class Eight himself and he's been a judge for I don't know how many years."
Morey pursed his lips. "We can't all be fortunate," he said generously. "Of course, the classes still will count for something-that is, a Class One wifi have so much to consume in a year, a Class Two will have a little less, and so on. But each person in each class will have robot help, you see, to do the actual consuming. The way it's going to be, special facsimile robots will-"
Cherry flagged him down. "I know, dear. Each family gets a robot duplicate of every person in the family."
"Oh," said Morey, slightly annoyed. "How did you know?"
"Ours came yesterday," she explained. "The man from the Board said we were the first in the area-because it was your idea, of course. They haven't even been activated yet. I've still got them in the Green Room. Want to see them?"
"Sure," said Morey buoyantly. He dashed ahead of Cherry to inspect the results of his own brainstorm. There they were, standing statue-still against the wall, waiting to be energized to begin their endless tasks.
"Yours is real pretty," Morey said gallantly. "But-say, is that thing supposed to look like me?" He inspected the chromium face of the man-robot disapprovingly.
"Only roughly, the man said." Cherry was right behind him. "Notice anything else?"
Morey leaned closer, inspecting the features of the facsimile robot at a close range. "Well, no," he said. "It's got a kind of squint that I don't like, but-Oh, you mean that!" He bent over to examine a smaller robot, half hidden between the other pair. It was less than two feet high, big-headed, pudgy-limbed, thick-bellied. In fact, Morey thought wonderingly, it looked almost like- "My God!" Morey spun around, staring wide-eyed at his wife.
"You mean-"
"I mean," said Cherry, blushing slightly.
Morrey reached out to grab her in his arms. "Darling!" he cried. "Why didn't you tell me?"
The Census Takers
IT GETS TO BE A MADHOUSE around here along about the end of the first week. Thank heaven we only do this once a year, that's what I say! Six weeks on, and forty-six weeks off-that's pretty good hours, most people think. But they don't know what those six weeks are like.
It's bad enough for the field crews, but when you get to be an Area Boss like me it's frantic. You work your way up through the ranks, and then they give you a whole C.A. of your own; and you think you've got it made. Fifty three-man crews go out, covering the whole Census Area; a hundred and fifty men in the field, and twenty or thirty more in Area Command-and you boss them all. And everything looks great, until Census Period starts and you've got to work those hundred and fifty men; and six weeks is too unbearably long to live through, and too impossibly short to get the work done; and you begin living on black coffee and thiamin shots and dreaming about the vacation hostel on Point Loma.
Anybody can panic, when the pressure is on like that. Your best field men begin to crack up. But you can't afford to, because you're the Area Boss. .
Take Witeck. We were Enumerators together, and he was as good a man as you ever saw, absolutely nerveless when it came to processing the Overs. I counted on that man the way I counted on my own right arm; I always bracketed him with the greenest, shakiest new cadet Enumerators, and he never gave me a moment's trouble for years. Maybe it was too good to last; maybe I should have figured he would crack.
I set up my Area Command in a plush penthouse apartment. The people who lived there were pretty well off, you know, and they naturally raised the dickens about being shoved out. "Blow it," I told them. "Get out of here in five minutes, and we'll count you first." Well, that took care of that; they were practically kissing my feet on the way out. Of course, it wasn't strictly by the book, but you have to be a little flexible; that's why some men become Area Bosses, and others stay Enumerators.
Like Witeck.
Along about Day Eight things were really hotting up. I was up to my neck in hurry-ups from Regional Control-we were running a little slow-when Witeck called up. "Chief," he said, "I've got an In."
I grabbed the rotary file with one hand and a pencil with the other. "Blue card number?" I asked.
Witeck sounded funny over the phone. "Well, Chief," he said, "he doesn't have a blue card. He says-"
"No blue card?" I couldn't believe it. Come in to a strange C.A. without a card from your own Area Boss, and you're one In that's a cinch to be an Over. "What kind of a crazy C.A. does he come from, without a blue card?"
Witeck said, "He don't come from any C.A., Chief. He says-"
"You mean he isn't from this country?"
"That's right, Chief. He-"
"Hold it!" I pushed away the rotary file and grabbed the immigration roster. There were only a couple of dozen names on it, of course-we have enough trouble with our own Overs, without taking on a lot of foreigners, but still there were a handful every year who managed to get on the quotas. "I.D. number?" I demanded.