Clifford D. Simak - Horrible Example

Copyright 1961

Tobias staggered down the street and thought how tough it was.

He hadn't any money and Joe, the barkeep, had hurled him out of Happy Hollow tavern before he'd much more than wet his whistle and now all that was left for him was the cold and lonely shack that he called a home and no one gave a damn, no matter what might happen. For, he told himself, with maudlin self-pity, he was nothing but a bum and a drunken one at that and it was a wonder the town put up with him at all.

It was getting dusk, but there still were people on the street and he could sense that they were trying, very consciously, not to look at him.

And that was all right, he told himself. If they didn't want to look, that was all right with him. They didn't have to look. If it helped them any, there was no reason they should look.

He was the town's disgrace. He was its people's social cross. He was their public shame. He was the horrible example. And he was unique, for there never was more than one of him in any little town--there simply wasn't room for more than one like him.

He reeled forlornly down the sidewalk and he saw that Elmer Clark, the village cop, was standing on the corner. Not doing anything. Just standing there and watching. But it was all right. Elmer was a good guy. Elmer knew exactly how it was.

Tobias stood for a moment to get his bearings and finally he had them; he set a dead sight for the corner where Elmer waited for him. He navigated well. He finally reached the corner.

"Tobe," said Elmer, "maybe you should let me take you home. The car's just over there."

Tobias drew himself erect with fly-blown dignity.

"Couldn't think of it," he announced, every inch a gentleman. "Cannot let you do it. Very kindly of you."

Elmer grinned. "Take it easy, then. Sure that you can make it?"

"Poshitive," said Tobias, wobbling quickly off.

He did fairly well. He managed several blocks without incident.

But on the corner of Third and Maple, disaster overtook him. He fell flat upon his face and Mrs Frobisher was standing on her porch where she could see him fall. Tomorrow, he was full aware, she would tell all the women at the Ladies Aid Society what a shameful thing it was. They all would quietly cluck among themselves, pursing up their mouths and feeling extra holy. For Mrs Frobisher was their leader; she could do nothing wrong. Her husband was the banker and her son the star of Millville's football team, which was headed for the Conference championship. And that, without a doubt, was a thing of pride and wonder. It had been years since Millville High had won the Conference crown.

Tobias got up and dusted himself off, none too quietly and rather awkwardly, then managed to make his way to the corner of Third and Oak, where he sat down on the low stone wall that ran along the front of the Baptist church. The pastor, he knew, when he came from his basement study, would be sure to see him there. And it might do the pastor, he told himself, a world of good to see him. It might buck him up no end.

The pastor, he feared, was taking it too easy lately. Everything was going just a bit too smoothly and he might be getting smug, with his wife the president of the local DAR and his leggy daughter making such good progress with her music.

Tobias was sitting there and waiting for the pastor to come out when he heard the footsteps shuffling down the walk. It was fairly dark by now and it was not until the man got closer that he saw it was Andy Donovan, the janitor at the school.

Tobias chided himself a bit. He should have recognised the shuffle.

"Good evening, Andy," he said. "How are things tonight?"

Andy stopped and looked at him. Andy brushed his drooping moustache and spat upon the sidewalk so that if anyone were looking they'd be convinced of his disgust.

"If you're waiting for Mr Halvorsen to come out," he said, "it's a dreadful waste of time. He is out of town."

"I didn't know," Tobias said, contritely.

"You've done quite enough tonight," said Andy, tartly. "You might just as well go home. Mrs Frobisher stopped me as I was going past. She said we simply have to do something firm about you."

"Mrs Frobisher," said Tobias, staggering to his feet, "is an old busybody."

"She's all of that," said Andy. "She's likewise a decent woman."

He scraped around abruptly and went shuffling down the street, moving, it seemed, a trifle more rapidly than was his usual pace.

Tobias wobbled solemnly down the street behind him, with the wobble somewhat less pronounced, and he felt the bitterness and the question grew inside of him.

For it was unfair.

Unfair that he should be as he was when he could just as well be something else entirely--when the whole conglomerate of emotion and desire that spelled the total of himself cried out for something else.

He should not, he told himself, be compelled to be the conscience of this town. He was made for better things, he assured himself, hiccuping solemnly.

The houses became more scattered and infrequent and the sidewalk ended and he went stumbling down the unpaved road, heading for his shack at the edge of town.

His shack stood on a hill set above a swamp just beyond the intersection of this road on which he walked with Highway 49 and it was a friendly place to live, he thought. Often he just sat outside and watched the cars stream past.

But there was no traffic now and the moon was coming up above a distant copse and its light was turning the countryside to a black and silver etching.

He went down the road, his feet plopping in the dust and every now and then something set a bird to twitter and there was the smell of burning autumn leaves.

It was beautiful, Tobias thought--beautiful and lonely. But what the hell, he thought, he was always lonely.

Far off he heard the sound of the car, running hard and fast, and he grumbled to himself at how some people drove.

He went stumbling down the dusty stretch and now, some distance to the east, he saw the headlights of the car, travelling rapidly.

He watched it as he walked and as it neared the intersection there was a squeal of brakes and the headlights swung toward him as the car made a sudden turn into his road.

Then the headlight beams knifed into the sky and swept across it in a rapid arc and he caught the dash of glowing tail lights as the car skidded with the scream of rubber grinding into pavement.

Slowly, almost ponderously, the car was going over, toppling as it plunged toward the ditch.

Tobias found that he was running, legs pumping desperately and no wobble in them now.

Ahead of him the car hit on its side and skidded with a shrill, harsh grinding, then nosed easily, almost deliberately down into the roadside ditch. He heard the gentle splash of water as it slid to a halt and hung there, canted on its side, with its wheels still spinning.

He leaped from the road down onto the side of the car that lay uppermost and wrenched savagely at the door, using both his hands. But the door was a stubborn thing that creaked and groaned, but still refused to stir. He braced himself as best he could and yanked; it came open by an inch or so. He bent and got his fingers hooked beneath the door edge and even as he did he smelled the acrid odour of burning insulation and he knew the time was short. He became aware as well of the trapped and frightened desperation underneath the door.

A pair of hands from inside was helping with the door and he slowly straightened, pulling with every ounce of strength he had within his body and the door came open, but protestingly.

There were sounds now from inside the car, a soft, insistent whimpering, and the smell of burning sharper, and he caught the flare of flame running underneath the hood.

Something snapped and the door came upward, then stuck tight again, but now there was room enough and Tobias reached down into the opening and found an arm and hauled. A man came out.

"She's still in there," gasped the man. "She's still --"

But already Tobias was reaching down blindly into the darkness of the car's interior and now there was smoke as well as smell and the area beneath the hood was a gushing redness.

He found something alive and soft and struggling and somehow got a hold on it and hauled. A girl came out; a limp, bedraggled thing she was and scared out of her wits.

"Get out of here," Tobias yelled and pushed the man so that he tumbled off the car and scrambled up the ditchside until he reached the road.

Tobias jumped, half-carrying, half-dragging the girl, and behind him the car went up in a gush of flame.

They staggered up the road, the three of them, driven by the heat of the burning car. Somewhere, somehow, the man got the girl out of Tobias's grasp and stood her on her feet. She seemed to be all right except for the trickle of darkness that ran out of her hairline, down across her face.

There were people running down the road now. Doors were banging far away and there was shouting back and forth, while the three of them stood in the road and waited, all of them just a little dazed.

And now, for the first time, Tobias saw the faces of those other two. The man, he saw, was Randy Frobisher, Millville's football hero, and the girl was Betty Halvorsen, the musical daughter of the Baptist minister.

Those who were running down the road were getting close by now and the pillar of flame from the burning car was dying down a bit. There was no further need, Tobias told himself, for him to stick around. For it had been a great mistake, he told himself; he never should have done it.

He abruptly turned around and went humping down the road, as rapidly as he could manage short of actual running. He thought he heard one of the two standing in the road call out after him, but he paid them no attention and kept on moving, getting out of there as fast as he was able.

He reached the intersection and crossed it and left the road and went up the path to where his shack perched in all its loneliness on the hill above the swamp.

And he forgot to stagger.

But it didn't matter now, for there was no one watching.

He felt all cold and shivery and there was a sense of panic in him. For this might spoil everything; this might jeopardise his job.

There was a whiteness sticking out of the rusty, battered mail box nailed beside the door and he stared at it with wonder, for it was very seldom that he got a piece of mail.

He took the letter from the box and went inside. He found the lamp and lit it and sat down in the rickety chair beside the table in the centre of the room.

And now his time was his, he thought, to do with as he wished.

He was off the job- although, technically, that was not entirely true, for he was never off the job entirely.

He rose and took off his tattered jacket and hung it on the chair back, then opened up his shirt to reveal a hairless chest. He sought the panel in his chest and pushed against it and it slid open underneath his hand. At the sink, he took out the container and emptied the beer that he had swallowed. Then he put the container back into his chest again and slid the panel shut. He buttoned up his shirt.

He let his breathing die.

He became comfortably himself.

He sat quietly in the chair and let his brain run down, wiping out his day. Then, slowly, he started up his brain again and made it a different kind of brain--a brain oriented to this private life of his, when he no longer was a drunken bum or a village conscience or a horrible example.

But tonight the day failed to be wiped out entirely and there was bitterness again--the old and acid bitterness that he should be used to protect the humans in the village against their human viciousness.

For there could be no more than one human derelict in any single village--through some strange social law there was never room for more than one of them. Old Bill or Old Charlie or Old Tobe--the pity of the people, regarded with a mingled sentiment of tolerance and disgust. And just as surely as there could not be more than one of them, there always was that one.

But take a robot, a Class One humanoid robot that under ordinary scrutiny would pass as a human being--take that robot and make him the village bum or the village idiot and you beat that social law. And it was perfectly all right for a manlike robot to be the village bum. Because in making him the bum, you spared the village a truly human bum, you spared the human race one blot against itself, you forced that potential human bum, edged out by the robot, to be acceptable. Not too good a citizen, perhaps, but at least marginally respectable.

To be a drunken bum was terrible for a human, but it was all right for a robot. Because robots had no souls. Robots didn't count.

And the most horrible thing about it, Tobias told himself, was that you must stay in character--you must not step out of it except for that little moment, such as now, when you were absolutely sure no one could be watching.

But he'd stepped out of it this night. For a few isolated moments he'd been forced to step out of it.

With two human lives at stake, there had been no choice.

Although, he told himself, there might be little harm. The two kids had been so shaken up that there was a chance they'd not known who he was. In the shock of the moment, he might have gone unrecognised.

But the terrible thing about it, he admitted to himself, was that he yearned for that recognition. For there was within himself a certain humanness that called for recognition, for any recognition, for anything at all that would lift him above the drunken bum.

And that was unworthy of himself, he scolded--unworthy of the tradition of the robot.

He forced himself to sit quietly in the chair, not breathing, not doing anything but thinking--being honest with himself, being what he was, not play-acting any more.

It would not be so bad, he thought, if it was all that he was good for--if, in being Millville's horrible example he was working at the limit of his talent.

That, he realised, had been true at one time. It had been true when he'd signed the contract for the job.

But it was true no longer. He was ready now for a bigger job.

For he had grown, in that subtle, inexplicable, curious way that robots grew.

And it wasn't right that he should be stuck with this job when there were other, bigger jobs that he could handle easily.

But there was no remedy. There was no way out of it. There was no one he could go to. There was no way he could quit.

For in order to be effective in this job of his, it was basic that no one--no one, except a single contact, who in turn must keep the secret--knew he was a robot. He must be accepted as a human. For if it should be known that he was not a human, then the effectiveness of his work would collapse entirely. As a drunken human bum he was a shield held between the town and petty, vulgar vice; as a drunken, lousy, no-good robot he would not count at all.

So no one knew, not even the village council which paid the annual fee, grumblingly, perhaps, to the Society for the Advancement and Betterment of the Human Race, not knowing for what specific purpose it might pay the fee, but fearful not to pay it. For it was not every municipality that was offered the unique and distinctive service of SABHR. Once the fee should be refused, it might be a long, long time before Millville could get on the list again.

So here he sat, he thought, with a contract to this town which would run another decade--a contract of which the town knew nothing, but binding just the same.

There was no recourse, he realised. There was no one he could go to. There was none he could explain to, for once he had explained he'd have wiped out his total sum of service. He would have cheaply tricked the town. And that was something no robot could ever bring himself to do. It would not be the proper thing.

He tried to find within himself some logic for this consuming passion to do the proper thing, for the bond of honour involved within a contract. But there was no clear-cut logic; it was just the way it was. It was the robot way, one of the many conditioning factors which went into a robot's make-up.

So there was no way out of it. He faced another decade of carrying out the contract, of getting drunk, of stumbling down the street, of acting out the besotted, ambitionless, degraded human being--and all to the end that there should be no such actual human.

And being all of this, he thought, choked with bitterness, while knowing he was fit for better things, fit under his present rating for sociological engineering at the supervisor level.

He put out his arm and leaned it on the table and heard the rustle underneath his arm.

The letter. He'd forgotten it.

He picked up the envelope and looked at it and there was no return address and he was fairly certain who it might be from.

He tore it open and took out the folded sheet of paper and he had been right. The letterhead was that of the Society for the Advancement and Betterment of the Human Race.

The letter read:

Dear Associate:

You will be glad to know that your recent rating has been analysed and that the final computation shows you to be best fitted as a co-ordinator and expediter with a beginning human colony. We feel that you have a great deal to offer in this type of employment and would be able to place you immediately if there were no other consideration.

But we know that you are under a contractual obligation and perhaps do not feel free to consider other employment at the moment.

If there should be a change in this situation, please let us know at once.

The letter was signed with an undecipherable scrawl.

Carefully, he folded the sheet and stuffed it in his pocket.

He could see it now: Out to another planet that claimed another star for sun, helping to establish a human colony, working with the colonists, not as a robot--for in sociology, one never was a robot--but as another human being, a normal human being, a member of the colony.

It would be a brand-new job and a brand-new group of people and a brand-new situation.

And it would be a straight role. No more comedy, no more tragedy. No more clowning, ever.

He got up and paced the floor.

It wasn't right, he told himself. He shouldn't waste another ten years here. He owed this village nothing--nothing but his contract, a sacred obligation. Sacred to a robot.

And here he was, tied to this tiny dot upon the map, when he might go among the stars, when he might play a part in planting among those stars the roots of human culture.

It would not be a large group that would be going out. There was no longer any massive colonising being done. It had been tried in the early days and failed. Now the groups were small and closely tied together by common interests and old associations.

It was more, he told himself, like homesteading than colonising. Groups from home communities went out to try their luck, even little villages sending out their bands as in the ancient past the eastern communities had sent their wagon trains into the virgin west.

And he could be in on this great adventure if he could only break his contract, if he could walk out on the village, if he could quit this petty job.

But he couldn't. There was nothing he could do. He'd reached the bare and bitter end of ultimate frustration.

There was a knocking on the door and he stopped his pacing, stricken, for it had been years since there'd been a knock upon the door. A knock upon the door, he told himself, could mean nothing else but trouble. It could only mean that he'd been recognised back there on the road -just when he'd been beginning to believe that he'd gone unrecognised.

He went slowly to the door and opened it and there stood the four of them--the village banker, Herman Frobisher; Mrs Halvorsen, the wife of the Baptist minister; Bud Anderson, the football coach, and Chris Lambert, the editor of the weekly paper.

And he knew by the looks of them that the trouble would be big--that here was something he could not brush lightly to one side. They had a dedicated and an earnest look about them--and as well the baffled look of people who had been very wrong and had made up their minds most resolutely to do what they could about it.

Herman held out his pudgy hand with a friendly forcefulness so overdone it was ridiculous.

"Tobe," he said, "I don't know how to thank you, I don't have the words to thank you for what you did tonight."

Tobias took his hand and gave it a quick clasp, then tried to let go of it, but the banker's hand held on almost tearfully.

"And running off," shrilled Mrs Halvorsen, "without waiting to take any credit for how wonderful you were. I can't, for the life of me, know what got into you."

"Oh," Tobias said uncomfortably, "it really wasn't nothing."

The banker let go of Tobias' hand and the coach grabbed hold of it, almost as if he had been waiting for the chance to do so.

"Randy will be all right, thanks to you," he said. "I don't know what we'd have done without him, Tobe, in the game tomorrow night."

"I'll want a picture of you, Tobe," said the editor. "Have you got a picture? No, I suppose you haven't.

We'll take one tomorrow."

"But first," the banker said, "we'll get you out of here."

"Out of here?" asked Tobias, really frightened now. "But, Mr Frobisher, this place is my home!"

"Not any more, it isn't," shrilled Mrs Halvorsen. "We're going to see that you get the chance that you never had. We're going to talk to AA about you."

"AA?" Tobias asked in a burst of desperation.

"Alcoholics Anonymous," the pastor's wife said primly. "They will help you stop your drinking."

"But suppose," the editor suggested, "that Tobe here doesn't want to."

Mrs Halvorsen clicked her teeth, exasperated. "Of course he does," she said. "There never was a man --"

"Now, now," said Herman, "I think we may be going just a bit too fast. We'll talk to Tobe tomorrow --"

"Yeah," said Tobias, reaching for the door, "talk to me tomorrow."

"No, you don't," said Herman. "You're coming home with me. The wife's got a supper waiting, and we have a room for you and you can stay with us until we get this straightened out."

"I don't see," protested Tobias, "there's much to straighten out."

"But there is," said Mrs Halvorsen. "This town has never done a thing for you. We've all stood calmly by and watched you stagger past. And it isn't right. I'll talk to Mr Halvorsen about it."

The banker put a companionable arm around Tobias's shoulder.

"Come on, Tobe," he said. "We never can repay you, but we'll do the best we can."

He lay in bed, with a crisp white sheet beneath him and a crisp white sheet on top and now he had the job, when everyone was asleep, of sneaking to the bathroom and flushing all the food they'd insisted he should eat down the toilet bowl.

And he didn't need white sheets. He didn't need a bed. He had one in his shack, but it was just for the looks of things. But here he had to lie between white sheets and Herman even had insisted that he take a bath and he had needed one, all right, but it had been quite a shock.

His whole life was all loused up, he told himself. His job was down the drain. He'd failed, he thought, and failed most miserably. And now he'd never get a chance to go on a colonising venture--even after his present job was all wrapped up and done, he'd never have a chance at a really good job. He'd just get another piddling one and he'd spend another 20 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 fulfilment 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 patronise 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."

"I don't understand," Tobias told him weakly.

"He'll set up an office, a very proper office for an alert young business man. Insurance and real estate and property management and anything else where he can earn a dollar. He'll skin them blind, but legal. He'll be very sanctimonious, but there's no friendship in him. He'll gyp them one by one and he'll smile most prettily and sincerely while he robs them by the letter of the law. There'll be no trick so low he'll not employ it, no subterfuge so vile that he'll hesitate to use it."

"But it's unfair," Tobias cried. "At least I was an honest bum."

"We must," Andy told him unctuously, "act for the good of all humanity. Surely it would be a shame for Millville to ever have an actual human such as he."

"All right, then," Tobias said. "I wash my hands of it. How about myself?"

"Why, nothing at the moment," Andy told him. "You go back to Herman's place and let nature take its course. Take the job he hunts up for you and be a decent citizen."

Tobias got cold all over. "You mean you're ditching me entirely? You mean you have no further use for me at all? I only did my best. There was nothing else I could have done tonight. You can't just throw me out!"

Andy shook his head. "There's something I should tell you. It's just a little early to be saying anything--but there's quiet talk in the village of sending out a colony."

Tobias stood stiff and straight and hope went pounding through him, then the hope died out.

"But me," he said. "Not me. Not a bum like me!"

"Worse than a bum," said Andy. "Much worse than a bum. As a bum you were a known quantity.

They knew what to expect from you. They could sit down at any time and plot a behaviour curve for you. As a reformed bum, you'll be something else again. You'll be unpredictable. They'll be watching you, wondering what will happen next. You'll make them nervous and uneasy. They'll be wondering all the time if what they did was right. You'll be a burden on their conscience and a rasp across their nerves and they'll be afraid that you'll somehow prove someday that they were awfully stupid."

"Feeling that way," Tobias said, with no final shred of hope, "they'd never let me go out to the colony."

"I think you're wrong," said Andy. "I am sure that you will go. The good and nervous people of this village couldn't pass up a chance like that of getting rid of you."