"This," said Mr. Ditmars, "is a proud day in the life of the Cimabue Gallery."

"It is a proud day in the life of modern art," added Mr. Replogle, feeling that Mr. Ditmars was giving too parochial a picture of the situation, "for it proves with more force than ever that the machine will not conquer man."

Both partners gazed with varying degrees of complacency at the large, brightly-colored oil paintings that covered the refined pastel walls of the Cimabue. There was almost nothing machine-made about the gallery—the thick, soft rugs had been hand-woven at fabulous expense by workmen in the less industrialized areas of the Middle East, the furnishings hand-carved by tribesmen deep in the heart of the Australian bush. The only exception was the robot attendants, which were, unfortunately, necessary, for no one paid attention to human beings any more unless they were top management or very high in the hierarchy of handcrafters.

Cimabue could afford all this luxury, and more too, for, now that big business had become an art, art had become a big business. People saved the excess from their government subsidies—or, if they were lucky enough to have professional status, their salaries—to buy a painting, a holograph manuscript ... anything to distinguish their homes from the uniform grey mass of material comforts which the government bestowed on everyone alike. As a result, the partners were as wealthy as anyone outside the ruling class could hope to be. However, Mr. Replogle, at least, was not happy. He suffered from nightmares.

"But where is Orville?" demanded the man from the Times-Herald-Mirror . "We haven't come to interview you two—you always say the same thing about every new artist you discover. In fact, we already have your words set up in type."

Mr. Ditmars gave him a benign smile. "Orville's case is different. Never before in history has an absolutely unknown artist received such an immediate ovation from the public. Why, almost every picture on exhibit is already sold—the buyers have kindly allowed us to retain them on our walls for the duration of the show as a service to the public."

"Cimabue is more than a mere commercial venture," Mr. Replogle added, wishing he could slip off for a paraspirin; his head hurt most mechanically. "It is a cultural institution."

"Yeah, Orville did get pretty good write-ups," the World-Post and Journal man conceded, "though any half-way decent artist sells like hotcakes these days. People naturally go for anything that's hand-made." And he fingered his hand-painted tie self-consciously. "But it can't last."

This disturbed Mr. Replogle more than it should have. But he had been bothered for many years by his recurring dream—a dream so frightful that he did not dare to confide it to anyone because of its terrifying plausibility. And anything said or done by day that seemed to approach that midnight horror roused him to immediate defensiveness. "Oh, yes it can last!" he protested. "It will! It must! For art is the people's last bulwark against the machine—the one area which cannot be mechanized, which reassures the human race that it still is pre-eminent."

"Kindly do not touch the pictures," the roboguard droned.

"I was only feeling Orville's impasto," the lady from the Woman's Own News defended herself. "Very thick."

I couldn't have told her to stop , Mr. Replogle reflected bitterly. Coming from me it would have been rude, but from a robot it's all right. Everyone knows a robot's only aim is to serve man. Our altruism depends on our individual consciences; theirs is built-in and, hence, more reliable.

"But where is Orville?" the man from the Times-Herald-Mirror persisted. "He was supposed to be here at three-thirty, and it's almost four now."

"Softly, softly," said Mr. Ditmars. "The robobar doesn't open itself until four anyway, so you know you're in no hurry.... And, remember, a great artist mustn't be rushed—he is not a machine, you know."

"Hervey McGeachin is bringing him," Mr. Replogle explained. "One could hardly hurry McGeachin," he added ... unnecessarily, for everyone knew that one didn't hurry the richest man in the United States—one awaited his pleasure. Beside being fabulously wealthy, McGeachin had the reputation of being something of a recluse, but this did not make him more newsworthy, for all members of top management tended to be a bit eccentric. The rank was hereditary—it took more than one generation for a family to begin to understand its machines—and there was a lot of inbreeding, with the usual results.

"Orville is a protege of Mr. McGeachin's, isn't he?" asked the lady from Woman's Own .

"Yes," Mr. Ditmars said. "All that was in the press release. He's one of Mr. McGeachin's employees. Mr. McGeachin discovered him personally, and he got in touch with us ." Mr. Ditmars almost swelled with visible pride; Mr. Replogle wished he would exercise a bit more self-restraint. Such an open display of emotion was vulgar—almost mechanical, one might say. Especially since they themselves were management, in a way, although one didn't, of course, apply such a word to those who dealt in the arts and crafts. The general public feared and respected the management which governed them, but they loved entrepreneurs.

"A factory hand!" Woman's Own gushed. "What a story that will make!"

The male reporters laughed as one male. "Where have you been all these years, cookie?" asked the World-Post and Journal . "I doubt if there's a factory left in the United States that isn't mechanized to the very hilt by now—with robot labor for the more specialized operations."

"I know," she sighed. "Deep down inside of me I really know. I was just hoping. I suppose I am—" and she batted her eyelashes "—like all females, an incurable romantic. What do you suppose Orville is, then?"

"Might be a clerk," Time-week suggested. "A lot of the big places still use live clerical help for tone, and, of course, you always need a few human beings around in case the machines break down."

"I somehow got the impression that he was an executive," Mr. Ditmars said frostily.

"Let's hope not. It would ruin the human element in the story. You can't expect our readers to identify with management."

"A minor executive, that is," Mr. Replogle hastened to inform them, before Ditmars could open his big mouth again. "More like a shipping clerk."

"Is Orville his first or his last name?" Woman's Own wanted to know.

"Just Orville," Mr. Ditmars said. "Like Rembrandt."

"Of course Rembrandt did have a last name," Mr. Replogle pointed out. "He just isn't known by it."

"And Orville's more like Grandma Moses, anyhow, I would say," commented the Times-Herald-Mirror .

"He is a primitive, true," Mr. Replogle said judiciously. "If you insist upon pinning a label on him, you might call him a post pre-Raphaelite, with just a soupcon of Rousseau."

"I didn't know Rousseau painted," the World-Post and Journal man said, busily clicking on his typopad.

"Not that one," Mr. Replogle told him kindly. "The other two."

"How old is Orville?" Woman's Own held her typopad at the ready. "How many children does he have? Is he married? Fond of animals? What does he eat for breakfast?"

"For heaven's sake," Mr. Ditmars exploded, "it isn't the man himself that matters—it's the man as interpreted through his art! And you can see that art for yourself." He waved his arms toward the pale gallery walls. "Drink it in and absorb the essence of the artist."

"But we'd like a little more factual data, as a point of departure. After all, our readers—"

"All right, all right," Mr. Ditmars said before Mr. Replogle could stop him, "I'll give you all the facts we have—to wit, none. All we know about Orville we put into the release. McGeachin's been keeping him under wraps. We don't know a thing about him. He's eccentric—McGeachin, I mean."

"Could be Orville also," the World-Post and Journal suggested.

Mr. Ditmars sighed. "Could be Orville also," he conceded.

"It's more of a story if Orville is eccentric. You more or less expect it from management."

"Well," Mr. Replogle said, unable to contain himself further—his head was really blasting off—"artists can be pretty peculiar people too."

It was Mr. Ditmars' turn to glare at him.

"Make way for Hervey McGeachin III and Orville," the robot at the door declaimed. "Make way...."

Every head swivelled to catch sight of the well-known but seldom-seen financier, as he came jerkily through the crowd. All the journalists were dressed in the maroon or beige or navy synthetics of almost similar cut that mass production had enforced upon the entire population, save for the very wealthy. Gay knitted mittens, colorful plumed hats, rainbow-hued scarves—all of which were ostentatiously hand-made—showed that the pressmen were professionals and not mere government pensioners who could do nothing that a machine could not do as well or better. However, although there were no sumptuary laws as such, few of the journalists could afford more than one or two of these costly, status-making accessories.

McGeachin was completely costumed in rugged individualist style. His scarlet silk hose, emerald satin knee breeches, swallow-tailed plum velvet coat, and starched white ruff made Mr. Replogle, who had been rather proud of his own pale blue brocade waistcoat and seal-skin mukluks almost sick with envy. He's so hand-made he's practically mechanical , he said bitterly to himself.

McGeachin was followed by a Class Three, All-Purpose Manual Labor Robot, well-burnished but of rather an early pattern. Surely, Mr. Replogle thought, if the financier had to use a mechanical man, and personal attendants were far more hand-made, he could at least have got a more recent model.

"Welcome to Cimabue, Mr. McGeachin," Mr. Ditmars and Mr. Replogle said almost simultaneously.

"But where is Orville?" the senior partner added.

McGeachin pointed with his long green cigar. "This is Orville," he said in a crisp metallic voice.

Mr. Replogle could feel himself growing pale all the way down to his mukluks. This was precisely the way his nightmare had always begun. Only now it was reality ... or was it? Perhaps he was back in the dream again. He could close his eyes and, when he opened them, he would be lying in his own standard air-conditioned toti-comfort sleeplounge under his own satin-covered, goose-down filled luxury quilt.

"A robot!" he could hear Mr. Ditmars wail, as the typopads began to click thinly, his voice somehow sounding far away. "How could you—why didn't you let us know he was a robot beforehand?"

Mr. Replogle opened his eyes and nothing had changed; it was all real—it was the end.

"Because you would have discriminated against him," Hervey McGeachin was saying, his grey face shiny with excessive emotion. "Everybody discriminates against my poor robots. Trustworthy, hard-working, clean, loyal to a fault—yet everybody discriminates against them merely because they're machines. I knew that, if I had told you he was a robot, you would never have hung his pictures in Cimabue, in spite of the fact that it was I who recommended him."

Top management or no, Mr. Replogle felt he must speak; there were principles at stake. The dismal future of humanity rested somehow in his own shaking hands. "Sir," he said, in a hoarse voice, "you have not dealt fairly with us. You said that this Orville was a protege of yours."

"And so he is." McGeachin put a thick, unmuscular arm around the robot's hard shoulders. "He is my protege and friend and I don't care if people do call me a robot-lover."

There was a gasp from the reporters, even those representing the liberal press.

McGeachin pointed his cigar at them. "Listen," he said. "Autobiographical note." Typopads began to click. "Up until the age of seventeen I hardly knew there was anybody on the planet but robots. My father didn't have time to mess around with kids, since he believed in running all of his multifarious industries personally. I, myself, though I tour the factories only once a year, have succeeded, by means of a computer and a ouija board, in increasing what little remained of his vast fortune after taxes to an amount that is ten times as great as his was at its peak."

"How do you spell ouija ?" the man from the World-Post and Journal interrupted.

"So," McGeachin continued, after affably spelling the word and making a few adverse remarks on the sad state of current education, "during my childhood, I was left entirely in the care of robots, and I was a happy, carefree lad until I was sent to Harvard. There I discovered the dark truth which has over-shadowed my life ever since and rendered me a virtual recluse—that there are also large numbers of people in the world. Give me a robot, any time. Trustworthy, hard-working, clean, loyal to a fault, and, in Orville's case, artistic also. Tell 'em how you started in to paint, Orville."

"Well, it was like this, gents," Orville said in a voice like a rusty hinge. "I work for the Perfect Paint Section of the Superior Chemicals Division of the Universal Materials Corporation, which is a subsidiary of the McGeachin interests, and, as I'm getting along in gears, I was put onto artists' oil colors, which are individually ground, like all the artists nowadays want 'em to be—"

"In all McGeachin products, from paints to parliaments," the financier interjected, "the customer comes first, insofar as his desires are compatible with the mass-production methods necessarily imposed upon us by automation."

"—And there was a little left over of some colors what wouldn't fit into the tubes, and the forebot says to me, he says, 'Throw 'em into the disposal, Orville—'"

"—All the McGeachin robots have names. It gives that personal touch I like to have around my plants." There was something extraordinarily odd about McGeachin, Mr. Replogle felt, though he couldn't quite put his finger on just what it was ... something more than mere eccentricity, something curiously sinister.

"—And I says to the forebot, 'Begging your pardon, sir, but if there was no other use for 'em, I would like to try my hand at painting a picture like on the pretty calendars Perfect Paint sends out every Christmas.' And he says to me, laughing-like, 'Well, if that's what you want to do with your restoration period, Orville, more power to you' ... which is—" the robot snickered "—a kind of little joke we have amongst ourselves at the factory."

One of the Cimabue robots gave a laugh which Mr. Replogle cut short with a glance.

"But I didn't know they could do that," the Times-Herald-Mirror said plaintively. "Laugh, I mean."

"Ah," McGeachin told him, "that's because you never bothered to understand the real robot. You don't look beyond the metal to the wires that vibrate underneath."

"So I painted a picture on a piece of cardboard," Orville continued patiently, "—the side of a carton it was—and the picture was much admired in the plant, though I says it as shouldn't, and Mr. Pembroke, the superintendent, went so far as to ask if he might have it to hang in his office, which, of course, I was glad to have him do. And there it come to the attention of Mr. McGeachin when he was making his annual tour of the plant.... Mr. McGeachin is—" Orville approximated a modest cough "—by way of being a connoissoor."

"When I saw that picture, I knew I was standing in the presence of solid genius," McGeachin took over. "Mind you, when I heard it had been painted by a robot, I was surprised myself, I admit it freely. But I was not prejudiced. I had spent all my life with machines and I knew of what fine handcraft they were capable. 'Why shouldn't a robot paint a picture?' I asked myself. 'No reason whatsoever,' I answered. And I was right, as is amply evidenced by this splendid and tastefully arranged display." He beamed at Mr. Ditmars, who groaned.

"But it's impossible," the lady from Woman's Own protested, looking as if only the dignity of her profession kept her from bursting into tears. "How could a robot paint a picture. How could it want to paint a picture?"

"I dunno," Orville, as the only one who could conceivably be expected to answer this question, said. "It just come to me like that. You could say I was inspired, I guess."

"But inspiration is a human prerogative! If a robot can be inspired, what is left for people now?"

"'Tisn't for me to say, miss," Orville said modestly, "only I don't see why we both couldn't be inspired. Peaceful coexistence, like. If robots are designed to serve man, they could do a better job of it if both—man and machine—work side by side harmoniously."

" Work! " exclaimed the male reporters unharmoniously.

Mr. Replogle closed his eyes. He had never expected to hear such a mechanical word in the chaste purlieux of his gallery—his and Mr. Ditmars' gallery, that was, but it didn't matter, soon it wouldn't be anybody's gallery. Reality was following the inexorable course of the dream and they were doomed.

"No offense intended," Orville said hastily. "I meant work like maybe painting or knitting. I didn't mean machine work."

"And why not machine work?" McGeachin demanded. "Why shouldn't man work with his hands instead of just crafting?"

A little man, Replogle thought, would be lynched for saying a more than mechanical thing like that—mechanical, why it was down-right subversive!—but McGeachin was secure because of the position that he maintained only as a result of the sweat and toil of others. Only, of course, robots don't sweat. The light film that had begun to cover Orville was doubtless only excess oil. Disgusting, nevertheless.

"Listen," McGeachin said, pointing his long, green cigar at the reporters. "Important announcement. I have decided to replace all my feedback equipment, except where the most delicate operations are involved, by people."

The typopads clicked furiously.

"You ask me why?" although no one had; they were much too stunned. "Because robots, though trustworthy, hard-working, clean, and loyal to a fault, have one drawback—they're expensive. A worker dies or gets sick, it's no extra money out of my pocket—I got to pay taxes for his welfare anyway. A robot breaks down, his loss is all mine. A human worker I got to take care of maybe six, seven hours a day, a robot twenty-four hours—and it isn't as if they worked all that time; they got to have rest periods too, or they wear out too fast. A human worker isn't my responsibility—a robot I got to look out for all the time."

"But I thought you liked machines better than people," Mr. Replogle said.

"So, is management expected to like labor? Is labor supposed to like management? Traditional enemies. I just figured out why I've been so unhappy most of my life—I like my employees. It's unnatural. It's—"

"Wrong, Mr. McGeachin?" quavered Woman's Own . "What do you mean?"

"I'm going to put people in my factories and have robots at my dinner table.... They don't eat—" McGeachin chuckled fruitily "—so you can see what an economy move that would be."

Nobody laughed. If McGeachin hadn't been top management—really top management—Mr. Replogle knew, he would have been torn to pieces. But top management was boss; it was government; it was divine right. Nobody did anything.

"If the machine can replace man," Orville suggested, "why can't man replace the machine? Plenty of room for both.... Did I say something wrong?" he added, seeing the expressions on the human faces that surrounded him.

"You're just ahead of your time, boy." McGeachin clapped him on the shoulder. "But you're right. Why can't man co-exist with the machine? Why can't robots paint pictures and write books and compose operas, while people work in the factories? Don't know just yet how it'll work out in the factories, but it'll be a great day for art!"

"We're going to have to give the money back," Mr. Replogle said dully.

"What money?" McGeachin asked, obviously annoyed by this anticlimactic remark.

"The money paid for Orville's pictures. We cheated the buyers—unwittingly, it is true, but we cheated them nonetheless. We sold the pictures as hand-mades. They're machined."

"But I have hands," Orville protested.

Mr. Ditmars shook his head. "You're a machine. Replogle is right. Cimabue is ruined."

"I'll make good your losses," McGeachin said in his crisp, metallic voice, and just then Mr. Replogle knew what had been bothering him all along about the financier. Despite his completely hand-made costume McGeachin looked exactly like a robot. The triumph of environment over heredity—or was it as simple as that, Mr. Replogle wondered. Everyone knew who Hervey McGeachin's father was, but who had his mother been?

"No one can make good our losses," Mr. Ditmars told him. "Modern art has suffered a crushing blow from which it will never recover. The handwriting is on the wall."

"You mean the typewriting," Mr. Replogle said.