And yet he had been getting more sour and edgy ever since about six
months after the baby came home from the Center and the novelty of
responsibility for wife and child had worn off. He had now quit three
jobs, good enough sales jobs where he was doing well, in a year. For no
reason? For petty, pointless reasons.

With Ancestral Insurance, "Generations of Protection," he'd made the
Billion Dollar Club--and immediately begun to feel dissatisfied with
it--just before cute, sexy, blonde Betty had suddenly come from nowhere
into his life and he had married her. That had helped, sure. But as soon
after that as he had started paying serious attention to his job again,
he was fed up with it. "Too much paper work. All those forms. It's work
for a robot, not a man," he'd told Betty when he quit. A lie. The paper
work was, as he looked back on it, not bad at all; pleasant even, in a
way. It was just--nothing. Anything.

Indoor-Outdoor Climatizers--sniffles, he said, kept killing his sales
presentation even though his record was good enough. Ultra-sonic
toothbrushes, then, were a fine product. Only the vibration, with his
gold inlay, seemed to give him headaches after every demonstration. He
didn't _have_ a gold inlay. But the headaches were real enough. So he
quit.

So now he had a great new job with a great organization, Amalgamated
Production for Living--ALPRODLIV. He was about to take on his first big
assignment.

For that he had felt a spark of the old enthusiasm and it had carried
him into working out a bright new sales approach for the deal tonight.
The Old Man himself had taken a personal interest, which was a terrific
break. And still Ben Tilman felt that uneasy dissatisfaction. Damn.

"Mr. Robb will see you now, Mr. Tilman," said the cool robot voice from
the Elec-Sec Desk. It was after customer hours and the charming human
receptionist had gone. The robot secretary, like most working robots,
was functional in form--circuits and wires, mike, speaker, extension
arms to type and to reach any file in the room, wheels for intra-office
mobility.

"Thanks, hon," said Ben. Nevertheless, robot secretaries were all
programmed and rated female--and it was wise to be polite to them. After
all, they could think and had feelings. There were a lot of important
things they could do for a salesman--or, sometimes, not do. This one,
being helpful, stretched out a long metal arm to open the door to the
inner office for Ben. He smile