If there is anything more boring than mopping floors and emptying out shredding machines-it is watching someone else doing it. Including an extraordinary amount of standing about, nose and bum scratching, since the workbots did most of the cleaning. I had some fun when I speeded the film up, but even that grew tiresome. I memorized everything I needed then, since I would not be leaving until close to midnight, I lay on my cot and dozed off in front of the television.

“Time go,” was my chauffeur’s shouted suggestion.

We went. Trundling through the dark and empty streets. The contact lens in my eye itched and I had to strongly resist the temptation to scratch it. My palm print gloves were pulled on and the trapper kit was in my pocket. Igor stopped the truck finally and pointed ahead. “Around corner.”

To work. A few other night workers, also in uniform, were climbing the steps to the depository. I ignored them just as Iba had done in my training film.

“How’s your girlfriend?” one of them shouted, a question that promoted great glee among the other mental giants. I answered, as did Iba in the film.

“Bowb off.”

These were the only words I ever heard him speak. Quite often. A bored guard held open an outer door: I walked slower in order to make sure that I would be last one in. If my fake identification did not work I wanted to get out of this place just as quickly as I could. As I walked towards the glowing eye of the retinal pattern detector I blinked inadvertently, my eye irritated by the contact lens. Which slid out of position.

I cursed, walked even slower, trying to push it back into position, watched the last man before me walk away from the detector.

“Move it, big-butt,” the guard helpfully suggested. “I ain’t got all night.”

Thus encouraged I pressed the contact lens hard, hoping it was in the right place, bent and looked into the opening. There was a brief flash of light.

I stood up, holding my breath, waiting for the alarm bells.

The entry light flashed green. I walked slowly towards the locked door. Pressed my palm on the plate next to it.

The door clicked open and I walked in.

The other night workers fanned out and disappeared in the dark and silent building. I pushed open the door to the service steps and went down two flights. The lights came on when I entered the battery room, illuminating the peaceful ranks of silent robots.

“Bowb off,” I said, as my double always did. Hanging by the door was my lightning prod, fully charged. I unplugged it and jabbed the nearest robot. “Bowb off.”

A great spark snapped into the thing’s receiver plate, closing a relay and bringing it to robotic life. Its charging cable disconnected and slid back into its container. The robot turned and exited the room as I danced about my charges, goosing them electrically, until they were all under way.

Through office after office. The rattle and thud of shredders being emptied, clatter of ashtrays. Behind us was the swish of mops cleaning the floor as we went. Occasionally one of the brainless robots would freeze in a feedback cycle, picking up and emptying a container over and over. A quick spark in the right place would jolt it back to work. I imagined doing this job for the rest of my life and shuddered. I had been at it for a little over an hour and was bored to stupidity. I stuck with it. Sparking and cursing monotonously until we reached the vault level.

“All stop. Take a ten-minute break.”

They kept going and I cursed again. What was the correct order?

“Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop.” On the fourth repetition they did. I leaned my lightning prod against the wall and trotted down the dimly lit hall. Counting the entrances as I went past them, rewalking in reality the virtual reality that I had walked through so many times before. There it was.

The outer door had an uncomplicated lock and no alarms; I opened it easily. The inner, metal-barred gate, would not be that simple. Thank goodness all of the alarms were antiques. More suitable for a museum than their guardian function.

First a length of wire to short the alarm on the electronic lock. There were supposed to be millions of combinations possible on this ancient mechanism, making it impossible to open without hours of computer time. My machine broke the code in less than three minutes. I punched the numbers into the thing’s memory and relocked the gate.

The alarms built into the door frame would not be a problem; I had passed through their type often in the past. However, when I put on infrared goggles the room beyond lit up with a pattern of interlaced beams. Break one beam and all the alarms would sound.

But if I put a beam generator of the correct frequency in front of the receiver lens I would be able walk around the room undetected, no matter how many beams I cut.

That was it. I could get into the room. I could remove the bonds from their shelves. Load the robots down and take the bonds away. To where? And, even more important, how could I get them out of the building?

“Bowb off!” I said, with some feeling this time, as I sparked my robots back to life. I had until the end of my shift to figure out a way.

Time dragged. Time crawled its sluggish track. Robots mopped, dumped, clattered, sparked and, eventually, my midshift break came. I zapped my horde into frozen silence and looked for a pleasant place to dine. The office of some major executive seemed fine. Seated in his leather chair, gazing across many square meters of glistening desktop, I looked out through his crystal window at the light-sparkled bulk of a bank building. And tried not to taste what I was eating. For some perverse reason Iba had a passion for pickled and smoked porcuswine tails, and always brought a container to work. For verities’ sake I had to do the same. I chewed and gagged on the gristly bits, pulled a quill from a piece of attached skin, used it to dig horrible fragments from between my teeth.

But, even as I suffered through my grisly repast, my subconscious was at work. Analyzing, plotting, scheming, working.

I finished quickly, threw the porcine remains into the contraterrene disposal unit-where they flared into cosmic rays-and stood to leave.

Then sat down again as the solution to my problems surfaced in my brain and bobbed about in my cerebral cortex.

Yes, it could be done. Not easily, and there were some very risky factors involved. I was probably the only person in the known galaxy, I thought humbly, who could even imagine a crime like this, much less pull it off.

And all for no profit. There must be a way to get out of Kaia’s clutching grasp.

Dawn was lightening the western sky when I exited the repository. I shuffled off to our meeting place where Igor was already waiting. We rode in silence back to the warehouse where I saw, as the door swung open, that Kaia’s car was there already. He strode out and stopped the truck with the upraised palm of his hand. I climbed wearily down.

“Igor,” he commanded. “Machine empty. Go buy beer.” “No money.”

“Here money. Go.”

I was sure that it was privacy he wanted, not beer.

“How did it go?” he asked as soon as the door was closed. “A piece of cake. I can get into that vault and have those bearer bonds out of there within ten minutes. Most of that time will be spent in carrying them away.”

“Splendid.”

“It is, isn’t it? However there is one slight problem in this otherwise most successful robbery plan.”

“Problem? What do you mean?”

He looked worried. I turned the knife in the wound.

“Although I can get the bonds out of the vault-there is no way to get them out of the building the same night.”

“I don’t know what you are taking about.” He spoke the words slowly through tight-clamped teeth: