"Then put me down for three for sure," he said with executive finality.
Gulbrandson paid dearly for his piggishness later, but at the time it
seemed only natural that if one Soth could run a household efficiently,
then the Chairman of the Board should have at least two spares in case
one blew a fuse or a vesicle or whatever it was they might blow.
* * * * *
A small, dignified riot almost broke up the meeting right there, and
when they quieted down again I had orders for twenty-six Soths from the
board members and one from my own secretary.
"How soon," I asked Ollie Johnson, "can you begin deliveries?"
He dry-washed his hands and admitted it would be five months, and a sigh
of disappointment ran around the table. Then someone asked him how many
units a month they could turn out.
He stared at the carpet and held out his hands like a pawn-broker
disparaging a diamond ring: "Our techniques are so slow. The first
month, maybe a hundred. Of course, once our cultures are all producing
in harmony, almost any number. One thousand? Ten thousand? Whatever your
needs suggest."
One of the officers asked, "Is your process entirely biological? You
mentioned cultures."
For a moment, I thought Ollie Johnson was going to break out in tears.
His face twisted.
"Abysmally so," he grieved. "Our synthetic models have never proved
durable. Upkeep and parts replacements are prohibitive. Our brain units
are much similar to your own latest developments in positronics, but we
have had to resort to organic cellular structure in order to achieve the
mobility which Mr. Collins admired last Friday."
The upshot of the meeting was a hearty endorsement over my signature on
the Ollies' contract, plus an offer of any help they might need to get
production rolling.
As the meeting broke up, they pumped my hand and stared enviously at my
Soth. Several offered me large sums for him, up to fifteen thousand
dollars, and for the moment I sweated out the rack of owning something
my bosses did not. Their understandable resentment, however, was
tempered by their recognition of my genius in getting a signed contract
before the Ollies went shopping to our competitors.
What none of us understood right then was that the Ollies were hiring
us, not the other way around.
When I told Vicki about my hour of triumph and how the officers bid up
our Soth, she glowed with the very feminine delight of exclusive
possession. She hugged me and gloated, "Old biddy Gulbrandson--won't she
writhe? And don't you dare take _any_ offer for our Soth. He's one of
the family now, eh, Soth, old boy?"
He was serving soup to her as she slapped him on the hip. Somehow he
managed to retreat so fast she almost missed him, yet he didn't spill a
drop of bouillon from the poised tureen.
"Yes, Mrs. Collins," he said, not a trace more nor less aloof than
usual.
"Oops, sorry!" Vicki apologized. "I forgot. The code."
I had the feeling that warm-hearted Vicki would have had the Soth down
on the bearskin rug in front of the big fireplace, scuffling him like
she did Clumsy, if it hadn't been for the Soth's untouchable code--and I
was thankful that it existed. Vicki had a way of putting her hand on you
when she spoke, or hugging anyone in sight when she was especially
delighted.
And I knew something about Soth that she didn't. Something that
apparently hadn't bothered her mind since the day of her striptease.
* * * * *
Summer was gone and it was mid-fall before Ollie paid me another visit.
When he showed up again, it was with an invoice for 86 Soths, listed by
serial numbers and ready to ship. He had heard about sight drafts and
wanted me to help him prepare one.
"To hell with that noise," I told him. I wrote a note to purchasing and
countersigned the Ollie's invoice for some $103,000. I called my
secretary and told her to take Ollie and his bill down to disbursing and
have him paid off.
I had to duck behind my desk before the Ollie dreamed up some new
obscenity of gratitude to heap on me. Then I cleared shipping
instructions through sales for the Soths already on order and dictated a
memo to our promotion department. I cautioned them to go slowly at
first--the Soths would be on tight allotment for a while.
One snarl developed. The Department of Internal Revenue landed on us
with the question: Were the Soths manufactured or grown? We beat them
out of a manufacturer's excise tax, but it cost us plenty in legal fees.
The heads of three labor unions called on me the same afternoon of the
tax hearing. They got their assurances in the form of a clause in the
individual purchase contracts, to the effect that the "consumer" agreed
not to employ a Soth for the purpose of evading labor costs in the arts,
trades and professions as organized under the various unions, and at all
times to be prepared to withdraw said Soth from any unlisted job in
which the unions might choose to place a member human worker.
Before they left, all three union men placed orders for household Soths.
"Hell," said one, "that's less than the cost of a new car. Now maybe my
wife will get off my back on this damfool business of organizing a
maid's and butler's union. Takes members to run a union, and the only
real butler in our neighborhood makes more than I do."
* * * * *
That's the way it went. The only reason we spent a nickel on advertising
was to brag up the name of W. W. M. and wave our coup in the faces of
our competitors. By Christmas, production was up to two thousand units a
month, and we were already six thousand orders behind.
The following June, the Ollies moved into a good hunk of the old
abandoned Willow Run plant and got their production up to ten thousand a
month. Only then could we begin to think of sending out floor samples of
Soths to our distributors.
It was fall before the distributors could place samples with the most
exclusive of their retail accounts. The interim was spent simply
relaying frantic priority orders from high-ranking people all over the
globe directly to the plant, where the Ollies filled them right out of
the vats.
Twenty thousand a month was their limit, it turned out. Even when they
had human crews completely trained in all production phases, the
fifty-six Ollies could handle only that many units in their secret
conditioning and training laboratories.
For over two more years, business went on swimmingly. I got a fancy
bonus and a nice vacation in Paris, where I was the rage of the
continent. I was plagued with requests for speaking engagements, which
invariably turned out to be before select parties of V. I. P.s whose
purpose was to twist my arm for an early priority on a Soth delivery.
When I returned home, it was just in time to have the first stink land
in my lap.
An old maid claimed her Soth had raped her.
Before our investigators could reveal our doctors' findings that she was
a neurotic, dried up old virgin and lying in her teeth, a real crime
occurred.
A New Jersey Soth tossed a psychology instructor and his three students
out of a third floor window of their university science building, and
all four ended an attempted morbid investigation on the broad,
unyielding cement of the concourse.
My phone shrieked while they were still scraping the inquiring minds off
the pavement. The Soth was holed up in the lab, and would I come right
away?
* * * * *
I picked up Ollie Johnson, who was now sort of a public relations man
for his tribe, and we arrived within an hour.
The hallway was full of uniforms and weapons, but quite empty of
volunteers to go in and capture the "berserk" robot.
Ollie and I went in right away, and found him standing at the open
window, staring down at the people with hoses washing off the stains for
which he was responsible.
Ollie just stood there, clenching and unclenching his hands and shaking
hysterically. I had to do the questioning.