Freud stopped behind his servant. His face was red; his mouth had spread itself over his face.
‘I see I shall have to show you who is master again, Bucket. Get me the whip!’
Unhesitatingly, Bucket walked slack-kneed over to a wall cupboard. Opening it, he felt in the back and produced a long Afrikaner ox-whip that Freud had bought on a world tour several years ago. He handed it to his master.
Freud seized it and immediately lashed out with it, catching the roman around his legs so that he staggered. Gratified, Freud said, ‘How was that, eh?’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘I’ll give you “Thank you.” Bend over my desk!’
As the roman leaned forward across the review list, Freud lay to, planting the leather thong with a resonant precision across Bucket’s back at regular fifteen second intervals.
‘Ah, you must feel that, whatever you pretend. Tell me you feel it!’
‘I feel it, sir.’
‘Yes, well, you needn’t think you’re going to get a homing device and be allowed to go home. … You’re not human. Why should you enjoy the privileges of humanity?’
He emphasised his remarks with the whip. Each blow knocked the roman two centimetres along the desk, a movement Bucket always punctiliously corrected. Breathing heavily, Freud said, ‘Cry out in pain, blast you. I know it hurts!’
Punctiliously, Bucket began to imitate a cry of pain, making it coincide with the blows.
‘My God, it’s hot in here,’ said Freud, laying to.
‘Oh dear, it’s hot in here,’ said Birdlip, laying two plates of snacks on his desk. ‘Hippo, go and see what’s the matter with the air-conditioning. … I’m sorry, Mr Gavotte; you were saying …?’
And he looked politely and not without fascination at the little man opposite him. Gavotte, even when sitting nursing a gin corallina, was never still. From buttock to buttock he shifted his weight, or he smoothed back a coif of hair, or brushed real and imaginary dandruff from his shoulders, or adjusted his tie. With a ball-point, with a vernier, and once with a comb, he tapped little tunes on his teeth. This he managed to do even while talking volubly.
It was a performance in notable contrast to the immobility of the new assistant roman that had accompanied him and now stood beside him awaiting orders.
‘Eh, I was saying, Mr Birdlip, how fashionable the homing device has become, very fashionable. I mean, if you’re not contemporary you’re nothing. Firms all over the world are using them – and no doubt the fashion will soon spread to the system, although as you know on the planets there are far more robots than romen – simply because, I think, men are becoming tired of seeing their menials about all day, as you might say.’
‘Exactly how I feel, Mr Gavotte; I have grown tired of seeing my – yes, yes, quite.’ Realising that he was repeating himself, Birdlip closed that sentence down and opened up another. ‘One thing you have not explained. Just where do the romen go when they go home?’
‘Oh ha ha, Mr Birdlip, ha ha, bless you, you don’t have to worry about that, ha ha,’ chuckled Gavotte, performing a quick obligato on his eyeteeth. ‘With this little portable device with which we supply you, which you can carry around or leave anywhere according to whim, you just have to press the button and a circuit is activated in your roman that impels him to return at once to work immediately by the quickest route.’
Taking a swift tonic sip of his gin, Birdlip said, ‘Yes, you told me that. But where do the romen go when they go away?’
Leaning forward, Gavotte spun his glass on the desk with his finger and said confidentially, ‘I’ll tell you, Mr Birdlip, since you ask. As you know, owing to tremendous population drops both here and elsewhere, due to one or two factors too numerous to name, there are far less people about than there were.’
‘That does follow.’
‘Quite so, ha ha,’ agreed Gavotte, gobbling a snack. ‘So, large sections of our big cities are now utterly deserted or unfrequented and falling into decay. This applies especially to London, where whole areas once occupied by artisans stand derelict. Now my company has bought up one of these sections, called Paddington. No humans live there, so the romen can conveniently stack themselves in the old houses – out of sight and out of ha ha harm.’
Birdlip stood up.
‘Very well, Mr Gavotte. And your roman here is ready to start conversions straight away? He can begin on Hippocrates now, if you wish.’
‘Certainly, certainly! Delighted.’ Gavotte beckoned to the new and gleaming machine behind him. ‘This by the way is the latest model from one of our associates, Anglo-Atomic. It’s the “Fleetfeet,” with streamlined angles and heinleined joints. We’ve just had an order for a dozen – this is confidential, by the way, but I don’t suppose it’ll matter if I tell you, Mr Birdlip – we’ve just had an order for a dozen from Buckingham Palace. Can I send you one on trial?’
‘I’m fully staffed, thank you. Now if you’d like to start work … I have another appointment at seventeen-fifty.’
‘Fifty, fifty-one, fifty-two. Fifty-two! What stamina he has!’ exclaimed the RSPCR captain, Warren Pavment, to his assistant.
‘He has finished now,’ said the assistant, a 71 AEI model called Toggle. ‘Do you detect a look of content on his face, Captain?’
Hovering in a copter over the Central area, man and roman peered into the tiny screen by their knees. On the screen, clearly depicted by their spycast, a tiny Freddie Freud collapsed into a chair, rested on his laurels, and gave a tiny Bucket the whip to return to the cupboard.
‘You can stop squealing now,’ his tiny voice rang coldly in the cockpit.
‘I don’t thing he looks content,’ the RSPCR captain said. ‘I think he looks unhappy – guilty even.’
‘Guilty is bad,’ Toggle said, as his superior spun the magnification. Freud’s face gradually expanded, blotting out his body, filling the whole screen. Perspiration stood on his cheeks and forehead, each drop surrounded by its aura on the spycast.
‘I’ll bet that hurt me more than it did you,’ he panted. ‘You wrought-iron wretches, you never suffer enough.’
In the copter, roman and human looked at each other in concern.
‘You heard that? He’s in trouble. Let’s go down and pick him up,’ said the Captain of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Robots.
Cutting the cast, he sent his craft spinning down through a column of warm air.
Hot air ascended from Mr Gavotte. Running a sly finger between collar and neck, he was saying, ‘I’m a firm believer in culture myself, Mr Birdlip. Not that I get much time for reading –’
A knock at the door and Hippo came in. Going to him with relief, Birdlip said, ‘Well, what’s the matter with the air-conditioning?’
‘The heating circuits are on, sir. They have come on in error, three months ahead of time.’
‘Did you speak to them?’
‘I spoke to them, sir, but their auditory circuits are malfunctioning.’
‘Really, Hippo! Why is nobody doing anything about this?’
‘Cogswell is down there, sir. But as you know he is rather an unreliable model and the heat in the control room has deactivated him.’
Birdlip said reflectively, ‘Alas, the ills that steel is heir to. All right, Hippo, you stay here and let Mr Gavotte and his assistant install