He’d just get another piddling one and he’d spend another twenty years at it and he’d maybe fail in that one, too—for if you had a weakness, it would seek you out.
And he had a weakness. Tonight he’d found it out.
But what should he have done, he asked himself. Should he have hurried past and leave the kids to die inside the flaming car?
He lay between the clean white sheets and looked at the clean, white moonlight streaming through the window and asked himself the question for which there was no answer.
Although there was a hope and he thought about the hope and it became a brighter hope and he felt a good deal better.
He could beat this thing, he told himself—all he had to do was get drunk again, or pretend to get drunk again, for he was never really drunk. He could go on a binge that would be an epic in the history of the village. He could irretrievably disgrace himself. He could publicly and willfully throw away the chance that had been offered him to become a decent citizen. He could slap the good intentions of all these worthy people right smack in the puss and he’d become, because of that, a bigger stinker than he’d ever been before.
He lay there and thought about it. It was a good idea and he would have to do it—but perhaps not right away.
It might look a little better if he waited for a while. It might have more effect if he played at being decent for a week or so. Then when he fell out of grace, the shock might be the greater. Let them wallow for a while in all the holiness of feeling that they had rescued him from a vicious life, let them build up hope before he, laughing in their faces, staggered back to the shack above the swamp.
And when he did that it would be all right. He’d be back on the job again, better than before.
A week or two, perhaps. Or maybe more than that.
And suddenly he knew. He fought against the knowing, but it stood out plain and clear.
He wasn’t being honest.
He didn’t want to go back to the person he had been.
This was what he’d wanted, he admitted to himself. It was something he had wanted for a long time now—to live in the respect of his fellow villagers, to win some acceptance from them, to win contentment with himself.
Henry had talked after supper about a job for him—an honest, steady job.
And lying there, he knew that he yearned to have that job, to become in all reality a humble, worthy citizen of Millville.
But it was impossible and he knew it was and the entire situation was worse than ever now. For he was no longer a simple fumbler, but a traitor, self-confessed.
It was ironical, he told himself, that in failure he should find his heart’s desire, a fulfillment he could not consider keeping.
If he’d been a man, he’d have wept.
But he couldn’t weep. He lay cold and rigid in the crisp white bed with the crisp white moonlight pouring through the window.
He needed help. For the first time in his life, he was in need of friendly help.
There was one place that he could go, one place of last resort.
Moving softly, he got into his clothes and eased out of the door and went on tiptoe down the stairs.
A block from the house he figured that it was safe to run and he ran in slobbering haste, with the wild horsemen of fear running at his heels.
Tomorrow was the game—the big game that Randy Frobisher was still alive to play in—and Andy Donovan would work late tonight so that he’d have time off from his janitoring to take in the game.
He wondered what the time was and he knew it must be late. But, he told himself, Andy must still be there at his chores of janitoring—he simply must be there.
He reached the school and ran up the curving walk toward the building, looming in all its massive darkness. He wondered, with a sinking feeling, if he had come in vain, if he’d run all this way for nothing.
Then he saw the dim light shining in one of the basement windows—down in the storage room—and he knew it was all right.
The door was locked and he raised a fist and hammered on it, then waited for a while, then hammered once again.
Finally he heard the shuffling footsteps come scuffing up the stairs and a moment later saw the wavering of a shadow just beyond the door.
There was a fumbling of the keys and the snicking of the lock and the door came open.
A hand reached out and dragged him quickly in. The door sighed to behind him.
«Tobe!» cried Andy Donovan. «I am glad you came.»
«Andy, I made a mess of it!»
«Yes,» Andy said impatiently. «Yes, I know you did.»
«I couldn’t let them die. I couldn’t stand there and do nothing for them. It wouldn’t have been human.»
«It would have been all right,» said Andy. «For you aren’t human.»
He led the way down the stairs, clinging to the rail and shuffling warily.
And all around them, silence echoing in emptiness, Tobias sensed the eerie terror of a school waiting through the night.
They turned right at the foot of the stairs into the storage room.
The janitor sat down on an empty crate and waved the robot to another.
Tobias did not sit immediately. He had quick amends to make.
«Andy,» he said, «I’ve got it figured out. I’ll go on the biggest drunk—»
Andy shook his head, «It would do no good,» he said. «You have shown a spark of goodness, a certain sense of greatness. Remembering what you’ve done, they’d make excuses for you. They’d say there was some good in you, no matter what you did. You couldn’t do enough, you couldn’t be big enough a louse for them ever to forget.»
«Then,» said Tobias, and it was half a question.
«You are all washed up,» said Andy. «You are useless here.»
He sat silently for a moment, staring at the stricken robot.
«You’ve done a good job here,» Andy finally said. «It’s time that someone told you. You’ve been conscientious and unsparing of yourself. You’ve had a fine influence on the town. No one else could have forced himself to be so low-down and despicable and disgusting—»
«Andy,» said Tobias bitterly, «don’t go pinning medals on me.»
«I wish,» said the janitor, «you wouldn’t feel like that.»
Out of the bitterness, Tobias felt a snicker—a very ghastly snicker—rising in his brain.
And the snicker kept on growing—a snicker at this village if it could only know that it was being engineered by two nondescripts, by a shuffling janitor and a filthy bum.
And with him, Tobias, robot, it probably didn’t matter, but the human factor would. Not the banker, nor the merchant, nor the pastor, but the janitor—the cleaner of the windows, the mopper of the floors, the tender of the fires. To him had been assigned the keeping of the secret; it was he who had been appointed the engineering contact. Of all the humans in the village, he was the most important.
But the villagers would never know, neither their debt nor their humiliation. They’d patronize the janitor. They’d tolerate the bum—or whatever might succeed the bum.
For there’d be a bum no longer. He was all washed up. Andy Donovan had said so.
And they were not alone. He could sense they weren’t.
He spun swiftly on his heel and there stood another man.
He was young and polished and most efficient-looking. His hair was black and smooth and he had an eager look about him that made one ill at ease.
«Your replacement,» said Andy, chuckling just a little. «This one, let me tell you, is a really dirty trick.»
«But he doesn’t look—»
«Don’t let his appearance fool you,» Andy warned. «He is worse than you are. He’s the latest gimmick. He is the dirtiest of all. They’ll despise him more than they ever despised you. He’ll earn an honest hatred that will raise the moral tone of Millville to a degree as yet undreamed of. They’ll work so hard to be unlike him that we’ll make honest men out of every one of them—even Frobisher.»