"Vera. My wife. She's not right."
Sam frowned. "Are you serious, Joe? You mean she's--?" He tapped his
temple.
"Oh, no. I mean she's not what I want."
"That's why we have the Center," Sam answered, as if quoting, which he
was. "With the current and growing preponderance of women over men,
something had to be done. I think we've done it."
Sam was the Director of the Domestic Center and a man sold on his job.
"You've done as well as you could," Joe agreed in an argumentative way.
"You've given some reason and order to the marital competition among
women. You've almost eliminated illicit relations. You've established
a basic security for the kids. But the big job? You've missed it
completely."
"Thanks," Sam said. "That's a very small knife you've inserted between
my shoulder blades, but I'm thin-skinned." He took a deep breath.
"What, in the opinion of the Junior Assistant to the Adjutant Science
Director, was the _big_ job?"
Joe looked for some scorn in Sam's words, found it, and said, "The big
job is too big for a sociologist."
Sam seemed to flinch. "I didn't think that axe would fit alongside the
knife. I underestimated you."
"No offense," Joe said. "It's just that you have to deal with human
beings."
"Oh," Sam said. "Now it comes. You know, for a minute I forgot who you
were. I forgot you were the greatest living authority on robots. I was
thinking of you as my boyhood chum, good old Joe. You're beyond that
now, aren't you?"
"Beyond my adolescence? I hope so, though very few people are." Joe
looked at Sam squarely. "Every man wants a perfect wife, doesn't he?"