A Mark IX. He knew that it would have to come someday, knew without wanting to admit it, and had only been kidding himself when he said they couldn't do without him. His hands spread out on the board before him, old hands, networked wrinkles and dark liver spots, always stained a bit with ink and marked with a permanent callus on the inside of his index finger. How many years had he held a pencil or a brush there? He didn't see them shaking.
There was almost an hour left before he had to see Martin, plenty of time to finish up the story he was working on. He pulled the sheet of illustration board from the top of the pile and found the script. Page 3 of a thing called "Prairie Love" for the July issue of Real Rangeland Romances. Love books with their heavy copy were always a snap. By the time Miss Fink had typed in the endless captions and dialogue on her big flatbed varityper at least half of every panel was full. The script, panel 1:
In house, Judy C/U cries and Robert in BG very angry.
A size 3 head for Judy in the foreground, he quickly drew the right size oval in blue pencil, then a stick figure for Robert in the background, hand raised, fist closed, to show anger. The Mark VIII Robot Comic Artist would do all the rest. Pachs slipped the sheet into the machine's holder — then quickly pulled it out again. He had forgotten the balloons. Sloppy, sloppy. He quickly blue-penciled their outlines and V's for tails.
When he thumbed the switch, the machine hummed to life, electronic tubes glowing inside its dark case. He punched the control button for the heads, first the girl — GIRL HEAD, FULL FRONT, SIZE 3, SAD HEROINE. Girls of course all had the same face in comic books, the HEROINE was just a note to the machine not to touch the hair. For a VILLAINESS it would be inked in black, all villainesses have black hair, just as all villains have moustaches as well as the black hair, to distinguish them from the hero. The machine buzzed and clattered to itself while it sorted through the stock cuts, then clicked and banged down a rubber stamp of the correct head over the blue circle he had drawn. MAN HEAD, FULL FRONT, SIZE 6, SAD, HERO brought a smaller stamp banging down on the other circle that topped the stick figure. Of course the script said "angry," but that was what the raised fist was for, since there are only sad and happy faces in comics.
Life isn't that simple, he thought to himself, a very unoriginal idea that he usually brought out at least once a day while sitting at the machine. MAN FIGURE, BUSINESS SUIT, he set on the dial, then hit the DRAW button. The pen-tipped arm dropped instantly and began to quickly ink in a suited man's figure over the blue direction lines he had put down. He blinked and watched it industriously knocking in a wrinkle pattern that hadn't varied a stroke in fifty years, then a collar and tie and two swift necklines to connect the neatly inked torso to the rubber-stamped head. The pen leaped out to the cuff end of the just-drawn sleeve and quivered there. A relay buzzed and a dusty red panel flashed INSTRUCTIONS PLEASE at him. With a savage jab he pushed the button labeled FIST. The light went out and the flashing pen drew a neat fist at the end of the arm.
Pachs looked at the neatly drawn panel and sighed. The girl wasn't unhappy enough; he dipped his crow quill into the inkpot and knocked in two tears, one in the corner of each eye. Better. But the background was still pretty empty in spite of the small dictionary in each balloon. BALLOONS he punched automatically while he thought, and the machine pen darted down and inked the outlines of the balloons that held the lettering, ending each tail the correct distance from the speaker's mouth. A little background, it needed a touch. He pressed code 473 which he knew from long experience stood for HOME WINDOW WITH LACE CURTAINS. It appeared on the paper quickly, automatically scaled by the machine to be in perspective with the man's figure before it. Pachs picked up the script and read panel 2:
Judy falls on couch Robert tries to console her mother rushes in angrily wearing apron.
There was a four-line caption in this panel and after the three balloons had been lettered as well, the total space remaining was just about big enough for a single closeup, a small one. Pachs didn't labor this panel, as he might have, but took the standard way out. He was feeling tired today, very tired. HOUSE, SMALL FAMILY produced a small cottage from which emerged the trails of the three balloons and let the damn reader figure out who was talking.
The story was finished just before eleven and he stacked the pages neatly, put the script into the file and cleaned the ink out of the pen in the Mark VIII; it always clogged if he left it to dry.
