“—and I’m willing to sign a statement to that effect any time you like. I don’t know what the penalty is, but I’ll take it. I’m guilty; I admit my guilt.”
Newman’s eyes were wide. “Guilty?” he repeated. “Penalty?”
Morey was startled. “Why, yes,” he said. “I’m not denying anything.”
“Penalties,” repeated Newman musingly. Then he began to laugh. He laughed, Morey thought, to considerable excess; Morey saw nothing he could laugh at, himself, in the situation. But the situation, Morey was forced to admit, was rapidly getting completely incomprehensible.
“Sorry,” said Newman at last, wiping his eyes, “but I couldn’t help it. Penalties! Well, Mr. Fry, let me set your mind at rest. I wouldn’t worry about the penalties if I were you. As soon as the reports began coming through on what you had done with your robots, we naturally assigned a special team to keep observing you, and we forwarded a report to the national headquarters. We made certain—ah—recommendations in it and—well, to make a long story short, the answers came back yesterday.
“Mr. Fry, the National Ration Board is delighted to know of your contribution toward improving our distribution problem. Pending a further study, a tentative program has been adopted for setting up consuming-robot units all over the country based on your scheme. Penalties? Mr. Fry, you’re a hero!”
A hero has responsibilities. Morey’s were quickly made clear to him. He was allowed time for a brief reassuring visit to Cherry, a triumphal tour of his old office, and then he was rushed off to Washington to be quizzed. He found the National Ration Board in a frenzy of work.
“The most important job we’ve ever done,” one of the high officers told him. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the last one we ever have! Yes, sir, we’re trying to put ourselves out of business for good and we don’t want a single thing to go wrong.”
“Anything I can do to help—” Morey began diffidently.
“You’ve done fine, Mr. Fry. Gave us just the push we’ve been needing. It was there all the time for us to see, but we were too close to the forest to see the trees, if you get what I mean. Look, I’m not much on rhetoric and this is the biggest step mankind has taken in centuries and I can’t put it into words. Let me show you what we’ve been doing.”