“Four?” gasped one old Councillor.
“Yes,” said the Chief of Thieves. “Four Rod Mc-Bans. There was a human one too, but we could tell that one was a decoy. It had originally been a woman and was enjoying itself hugely after having been transformed into a young man. So we got four Rod Mc-Bans. All four of them were Earth-robots, very well made.”
“You stole them?” said a Councilor.
“Of course,” said the Chief of Thieves, grinning like a human wolf. “And the Earth government made no objection at all. The Earth government simply sent us a bill for them when we tried to leave — something like one-fourth megacredit ‘for the use of custom-designed robots.’ ”
“That’s a low honest trick!” cried the Chairman of the Guild of Thieves. “What did you do?” His eyes stared wide open and his voice dropped. “You didn’t turn honest and charge the bill to us, did you? We’re already in debt to those honest rogues!”
The Chief of Thieves squirmed a little. “Not quite that bad, your tricky highnesses! I cheated the Earth some, though I fear it may have bordered on honesty, the way I did it.”
“What did you do? Tell us quick, man!”
“Since I did not get the real Rod McBan, I took the robots apart and taught them how to be thieves. They stole enough money to pay all the penalties and recoup the expense of the voyage.”
“You show a profit?” cried a Councilor.
“Forty minicredits,” said the Chief of Thieves. “But the worst is yet to come. You know what Earth does to real thieves.”
A shudder went through the room. They all knew about Earth reconditioners which had changed bold thieves into dull honest rogues.
“But, you see, Sirs and Honored Ones,” the Chief of Thieves went on, apologetically, “the Earth authorities caught us at that, too. They liked the thief-robots. They made wonderful pickpockets and they kept the people stirred up. The robots also gave everything back. So,” said the Chief of Thieves, blushing, “we have a contract to turn two thousand humanoid robots into pickpockets and sneakthieves. Just to make life on Earth more fun. The robots are out in orbit, right now.”
“You mean,” shrilled the chairman, “you signed an honest contract? You, the Chief of Thieves!”
The Chief really blushed and choked. “What could I do? Besides, they had me. I got good terms, though. Two hundred and twenty credits for processing each robot into a master thief. We can live well on that for a while.”
For a long time there was dead silence.
At last one of the oldest Thieves on the Council began to sob: “I’m old. I can’t stand it. The horror of it! Us — us, doing honest work!”
“We’re at least teaching the robots how to be thieves,” said the Chief of Thieves, starkly.
No one commented on that.
Even the herald had to step aside and blow his nose.
Roderick Henry McBan, the former Eleanor, had become only imperceptibly older with the years. He had sent away his favorite, the little dancer, and he wondered why the Instrumentality, not even the Earth government, had sent him official warning to “stay peacably in the dwelling of the said stated person, there to await an empowered envoy of this Instrumentality and to comply with orders subsequently to be issued by the envoy hereinbefore indicated.
Roderick Henry McBan remembered the long years of virtue, independence and drudgery on Norstrilia with unconcealed loathing. He liked being a rich, wild young man on Earth ever so much better than being a respectable spinster under the grey skies of Old North Australia. When he dreamed, he was sometimes Eleanor again, and he sometimes had long morbid periods in which he was neither Eleanor nor Rod, but a nameless being cast out from some world or time of irrecoverable enchantments. In these gloomy periods, which were few but very intense, and usually cured by getting drunk and staying drunk for a few days, he found himself wondering who he was. What could he be? Was he Eleanor, the honest workwoman from the Station of Doom? Was he an adoptive cousin of Rod McBan, the man who had bought Old Earth itself? What was this self — this Roderick Henry Mc-Ban? He maundered about it so much to one of his girl-friends, a calypso singer, that she set his own words, better arranged, to an ancient time and sang them back to him:
Rod/Eleanor had moments of desperation, and sometimes wondered if the Earth authorities or the Instrumentality would take him/her away from reconditioning.
The warning today was formal, fierce, serene in its implacable self-assurance.
Against his/her better judgment, Roderick Henry McBan poured out a stiff drink and waited for the inevitable.
Destiny came as three men, all of them strangers, but one wearing the uniform of an Old North Australia consul. When they got close, she recognized the consul as Lord William Not-from-here, with whose daughter Ruth he/she had disported on these very sands many years before.
The greetings were wearisomely long, but Rod/ Eleanor had learned, both on Old North Australia and here on Manhome Earth, never to discount ceremony as the salvager of difficult or painful occasions. It was the Lord William Not-from-here who spoke.
“Hear now, Lord Roderick Eleanor, the message of a plenum of the Instrumentality, lawfully and formally assembled, to wit—
“That you, the Lord Roderick Eleanor be known to be and be indeed a Chief of the Instrumentality until the day of your death—
“That you have earned this status by survival capacity, and that the strange and difficult lives which you have already led with no thought of suicide have earned you a place in our terrible and dutiful ranks—