`-We Also Walk Dogs’

`-We Also Walk Dogs’

`-We Also Walk Dogs’

`General services – Miss Cormet speaking!’ She addressed the view screen with just the right balance between warm hospitable friendliness and impersonal efficiency. The screen flickered momentarily, then built up a stereo-picture of a dowager, fat and fretful, overdressed and underexercised.

`Oh, my dear,’ said the image, `I’m so upset. I wonder if you can help me.’

`I’m sure we can,’ Miss Cormet purred as she quickly estimated the cost of the woman’s gown and jewels (if real – she made a mental reservation) and decided that here was a client that could be profitable. `Now tell me your trouble. Your name first, if you please.’ She touched a button on the horseshoe desk which enclosed her, a button marked CREDIT DEPARTMENT.

`But it’s all so involved,’ the image insisted. `Peter would go and break his hip.’ Miss Cormet immediately pressed the button marked MEDICAL. `I’ve told him that poio is dangerous. You’ve no idea, my dear, how a mother suffers. And just at this time, too. It’s so inconvenient -`

`You wish us to attend him? Where is he now?’

`Attend him? Why, how silly! The Memorial Hospital will do that. We’ve endowed them enough, I’m sure. It’s my dinner party I’m worried about. The Principessa will be so annoyed.’

The answer light from the Credit Department was blinking angrily. Miss Cormet headed her off. `Oh, I see. We’ll arrange it for you. Now, your name, please, and your address and present location.’

`But don’t you know my name?’

`One might guess,’ Miss Cormet diplomatically evaded, `but General Services always respects the privacy of its clients.’

`Oh, yes, of course. How considerate. I am Mrs Peter van Hogbein Johnson.’ Miss Cormet controlled her reaction. No need to consult the Credit Department for this one. But its transparency flashed at once, rating AAA – unlimited. `But I don’t see what you can do,’ Mrs Johnson continued. `I can’t be two places at once.’

`General Services likes difficult assignments,’ Miss Cormet assured her. `Now – if you will let me have the details . .

She wheedled and nudged the woman into giving a fairly coherent story. Her son, Peter III, a slightly shopworn Peter Pan, whose features were familiar to Grace Gormet through years of stereogravure, dressed in every conceivable costume affected by the richly idle in their pastimes, had been so thoughtless as to pick the afternoon before his mother’s most important social function to bung himself up – seriously. Furthermore, he had been so thoughtless as to do so half a continent away from his mater.

Miss Cormet gathered that Mrs Johnson’s technique for keeping her son safely under thumb required that she rush to his bedside at once, and, incidentally, to select his nurses. But her dinner party that evening represented the culmination of months of careful maneuvering. What was she to do?

Miss Cormet reflected to herself that the prosperity of General Services and her own very substantial income was based largely on the stupidity, lack of resourcefulness, and laziness of persons like this silly parasite, as she explained that General Services would see that her party was a smooth, social success while arranging for a portable full-length stereo screen to be installed in her drawing room in drder that she might greet her guests and make her explanations while hurrying to her son’s side. Miss Cormet would see that a most adept social manager was placed in charge, one whose own position in society was irreproachable and whose connection with General Services was known to no one. With proper handling the disaster could be turned into a social triumph, enhancing Mrs Johnson’s reputation as a clever hostess and as a devoted mother.

`A sky car will be at your door in twenty minutes,’ she added, as she cut in the circuit marked TRANSPORTATION, `to take you to the rocket port. One of our young men will be with it to get additional details from you on the way to the port. A compartment for yourself and a berth for your maid will be reserved on the 16:45 rocket for Newark. You may rest easy now. General Services will do ybur worrying.’

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