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in panic. How had that thought crept
in? He was shaken visibly as he entered the room and greeted the group to which he was assigned.
There were eleven of them: four Freudians, two Reichians, two Jungians, a Gestalter, a
shock therapist and the elderly and rather quiet Sullivanite. Even the members of the majority
groups had their own individual differences in technique and creed, but, despite four years with
this particular group of analysts, Morey hadn't quite been able to keep them separate in his mind.
Their names, though, he knew well enough.
"Morning, Doctors," he said. "What is it today?"
"Morning," said Semmelweiss morosely. "Today you come into the room for the first time
looking as if something is really bothering you, and yet the schedule calls for psychodrama. Dr.
Fairless," he appealed, "can't we change the schedule a little bit? Fry here is obviously under a
strain; that's the time to start digging and see what he can find. We can do your psychodrama next
time, can't we?"
Fairless shook his gracefully bald old head. "Sorry, Doctor. If it were up to me, of
course-but you know the rules."
"Rules, rules," jeered Semmeiweiss. "Ah, what's the use? Here's
a patient in an acute anxiety state if I ever saw one-and believe me,
I saw plenty-and we ignore it because the rules say ignore it. Is that
professional? Is that how to cure a patient?"
Little Blame said frostily, "If I may say so, Dr. Semmeiweiss, there have been a great
many cures made without the necessity of departing from the rules. I myself, in fact-"
"You yourself!" mimicked Semmeiweiss. "You yourself never handled a patient alone in your
life. When you going to get out of a group, Blame?"
Blame said furiously, "Dr. Fairless, I don't think I have to stand for this sort of
personal attack. Just because Semmeiweiss has seniority and a couple of private patients one day a
week, he thinks-"
"Gentlemen," said Fairless mildly. "Please, let's get on with the work. Mr. Fry has come
to us for help, not to listen to us losing our tempers."
"Sorry," said Semmelweiss curtly. "All the same, I appeal from the arbitrary and
mechanistic ruling of the chair."
Fairless inclined his head. "All in favor of the ruling of the chair? Nine, I count. That
leaves only you opposed, Dr. Semmelweiss. We'll
proceed with the psychodrama, if the recorder will read us the notes and comments of the last
session."
The recorder, a pudgy, low-ranking youngster named Sprogue, flipped back the pages of his
notebook and read ~in a chanting voice, "Session of twenty-fourth May, subject, Morey Fry; in
attendance, Doctors Fairless, Bileck, Semmelweiss, Carrado, Weber-"
Fairless interrupted kindly, "Just the last page, if you please, Dr. Sprogue."
"Urn-oh, yes. After a ten-minute recess for additional Rorschachs and an electro-
encephalogram, the group convened and conducted rapid-fire word association. Results were
tabulated and compared with standard deviation patterns, and it was determined that subject's
major traumas derived from, respectively-"
Morey found his attention waning. Therapy was good; everybody knew that, but every once in
a while he found it a little dull. If it weren't for therapy, though, there was no telling what
might happen. Certainly, Morey told himself, he had been helped considerably-at least he hadn't
set fire to his house and shrieked at the firerobots, like Newell down the block when his eldest
daughter divorced her husband and came back to live with him, bringing her ration quota- along, of
course. Morey hadn't even been tempted to do anything as outrageously, frighteningly immoral as
destroy things or waste them-well, he admitted to himself honestly, perhaps a little tempted, once
in a great while. But never anything important enough to worry about; he was sound, perfectly
sound.
He looked up, startled. All the doctors were staring at him. "Mr. Fry," Fairless repeated,
"will you take your place?"
"Certainly," Morey said hastily. "Uh-where?"
Semmelweiss guffawed. "Told you. Never mind, Morey; you didn't miss much. We're going to
run through one of the big scenes in your life, the one you told us about last time. Remember? You
were fourteen years old, you said. Christmas time. Your mother had made you a promise."
Morey swallowed. "I remember," he said unhappily. "Well, all right. Where do I stand?"
"Right here," said Fairless. "You're you, Carrado is your mother, I'm your father. Will
the doctors not participating mind moving back? Fine. Now, Morey, here we are on Christmas
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morning. Merry Christmas, Morey!"
"Merry Christmas," Morey said half-heartedly. "Uh-Father dear, where's my-uh-my puppy that
Mother promised me?"
"Puppy!" said Fairless heartily. "Your mother and I have some-
thing much better than a puppy for you. Just take a look under the tree there-it's a robot! Yes,
Morey, your very own robot-a full-size thirty-eight-tube fully automatic companion robot for you!
Go ahead, Morey, go right up and speak to it. Its name is Henry. Go on, boy."
Morey felt a sudden, incomprehensible tingle inside the bridge of his nose. He said
shakily, "But I-I didn't want a robot."
"Of course you want a robot," Carrado interrupted. "Go on, child, play with your nice
robot."
Morey said violently, "I hate robots!" He looked around him at the doctors, at the gray-
paneled consulting room. He added defiantly, "You hear me, all of you? I still hate robots!"
There was a second's pause; then the questions began.
It was half an hour before the receptionist came in and announced that time was up.
In that half hour, Morey had got over his trembling and lost his wild, momentary passion,
but he had remembered what for thirteen years he had forgotten.
He hated robots.
The surprising thing was not that young Morey had hated robots. It was that the Robot
Riots, the ultimate violent outbreak of flesh against metal, the battle to the death between
mankind and its machine heirs . . . never happened. A little boy hated robots, but the man he
became worked with them hand in hand.
And yet, always and always before, the new worker, the competitor for the job, was at once
and inevitably outside the law. The waves swelled in-the Irish, the Negroes, the Jews, the
Italians. They were squeezed into their ghettoes, where they encysted, seethed and struck out,
until the burgeoning generations became indistinguishable.
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