He had hours of time before he had to be there, and nothing else to do. The bed was nearby and inviting, he dropped wearily onto it.
Why had he stolen that damned payroll? He knew the answer. Because he had wanted things he could never afford on a telephone technician's salary. It had looked so tempting and foolproof. He damned the accident that had led him to it. The memory still tortured him.
It had been a routine addition of telephone lines in one of the large office buildings.
When he first went there he had been by himself, he would not need the robots until after the preliminary survey was done. The phone circuits were in a service corridor just off the main lobby. His passkey let him in through the inconspicuous door and he switched on the light. A maze, of wiring and junction boxes covered one wall, leading to cables that vanished down the corridor out of sight. Carl opened his wiring diagrams and began to trace leads. The rear wall seemed to be an ideal spot to attach the new boxes and he tapped it to see if it could take the heavy bolts. It was hollow.
Carl's first reaction was disgust. The job would be twice as difficult if the leads had to be extended. Then he felt a touch of curiosity as to what the wall was there for. It was just a panel he noticed on closer inspection, made up of snap-on sections fitted into place. With his screwdriver he pried one section out and saw what looked like a steel grid supporting metal plates. He had no idea of what their function was, and didn't really care now that his mild curiosity had been settled. After slipping the panel back into place he went on with his work. A few hours later he looked at his watch, then dropped his tools for lunch.
The first thing he saw when he stepped back into the lobby was the bank cart.
Walking as close as he was, Carl couldn't help but notice the two guards who were taking thick envelopes from the cart and putting them into a bank of lockers set into the wall. One envelope to each locker, then a slam of the thick door to seal it shut. Besides a momentary pang at the sight of all that money Carl had no reaction.
Only when he came back from lunch did he stop suddenly as a thought struck him. He hesitated a fraction of a moment, then went on. No one had noticed him. As he entered the corridor again he looked surreptitiously at the messenger who was opening one of the lockers. When Carl had closed the door behind him and checked the relative position of the wall with his eyes he knew he was right.
What he had thought was a metal grid with plates was really the backs of the lockers and their framework of supports. The carefully sealed lockers in the lobby had unguarded backs that faced into the service corridor.
He realized at once that he should do nothing at the time, nor act in any way to arouse suspicion. He did, however, make sure that the service robots came in through the other end of the corridor that opened onto a deserted hallway at the rear of the building, where he had made a careful examination of the hall. Carl even managed to make himself forget about the lockers for over six months.
After that he began to make his plans. Casual observation at odd times gave him all the facts he needed. The lockers contained payrolls for a number of large companies in the building. The bank guards deposited the money at noon every Friday. No envelopes were ever picked up before one P.M. at the earliest. Carl noticed what seemed to be the thickest envelope and made his plans accordingly.
Everything went like clockwork. At ten minutes to twelve on a Friday he finished a job he was working on and left. He carried his toolbox with him. Exactly ten minutes later he entered the rear door of the corridor without being seen. His hands were covered with transparent and nearly invisible gloves. By 12:10 he had the panel off and the blade of a long screwdriver pressed against the back of the selected locker, the handle of the screwdriver held to the bone behind his ear. There was no sound of closing doors so he knew the bank men had finished and gone. >
The needle flame of his torch ate through the steel panel like soft cheese. He excised a neat circle of metal and pulled it free. Beating out a smoldering spot on the money envelope, he transferred it to another envelope from his toolbox. This envelope he had addressed to himself and was already stamped. One minute after leaving the building he would have the envelope in the mail and would be a rich man.
Carefully checking, he put all the tools and the envelope back into his toolbox and strode away. At exactly 12:35 he left through the rear-corridor door and locked it behind him. The corridor was still empty, so he took the extra seconds to jimmy the door open with a tool from his pocket. Plenty of people had keys to that door, but it didn't hurt to widen the odds a bit.
Carl was actually whistling when he walked out into the street.
Then the peace officer took him by the arm.
"You are under arrest for theft.” the officer told him in a calm voice.
The shock stopped him in his tracks and he almost wished it had stopped his heart the same way. He had never planned to be caught and never considered the consequences. Fear and shame made him stumble as the policeman led him to the waiting car. The crowd watched in fascinated amazement.
When the evidence had been produced at his trial he found out, a little late, what his mistake had been. Because of the wiring and conduits in the corridor it was equipped with infrared thermocouples. The heat of his torch had activated the alarm and an observer at Fire Central had looked through one of their video pickups in the tunnel. He had expected to see a short circuit and had been quite surprised to see Carl removing the money. His surprise had not prevented him from notifying the police. Carl had cursed fate, under his breath.
The grating voice of the speaker cut through Carl's bad-tasting memories.
"1730 hours. It is time for you to leave for your employment."
Wearily, Carl pulled on his shoes, checked the address, and left for his new job. It took him almost the full half hour to walk there. He wasn't surprised in the slightest when the address turned out to be the Department of Sanitation.
"You'll catch on fast," the elderly and worn supervisor told him. "Just go through this list and kind of get acquainted with it. Your truck will be along in a moment."
The list was in reality a thick volume of lists, of all kinds of waste materials. Apparently everything in the world that could be discarded was in the book. And each item was followed by a key number. These numbers ran from one to thirteen and seemed to be the entire purpose of the volume. While Carl was puzzling over their meaning there was a sudden roar of a heavy motor. A giant robot-operated truck pulled up the ramp and ground to a stop near them.
"Garbage truck," the supervisor said wearily. "She's all yours." Carl had always known there were garbage trucks, but of course he had never seen one. It was a bulky, shining cylinder over twenty meters long. A robot driver was built into the cab. Thirty other robots stood on footsteps along the sides. The supervisor led the way to the rear of the truck and pointed to the gaping mouth of the receiving bin.
"Robots pick up the garbage and junk and load it in there.” he said, "then they press one of these here thirteen buttons keying whatever they have dumped into one of the thirteen bins, inside the truck. They're just plain lifting robots and not too brainy, but good enough to recognize most things they pick up. But not all the time. That's where you come in, riding along right there."
The grimy thumb was now aiming at a transparent-walled cubicle that also projected from the back of the truck. There was a padded seat inside, facing a shelf set with thirteen buttons.
"You sit there, just as cozy as a bug in a rug I might say, ready to do your duty at any given moment. Which is whenever one of the robots finds something it can't identify straight off. So it puts whatever it is into the hopper outside your window. You give it a good look, check the list for the proper category if you're not sure, then press the right button and in she goes. It may sound difficult at first but you'll soon catch onto the ropes."