EIGHTEEN

Wally said, “Well, the truth is, Andy, I’m kind of embarrassed.”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” Andy Kelp agreed, nodding. Seated on the brown Naugahyde sofa in Wally’s cluttered living room, he munched cheese and crackers while Wally sat facing him, frowning in agony. Andy said, “I felt kind of embarrassed, too, Wally. Talking you up to John the way I did. And then we get Zog and all this.”

Wally squirmed. His big wet eyes blinked over and over in discomfort. His little pudgy hands made vague unhappy gestures. He felt very awkward in this whole situation. He said, “Gee, Andy, I think… well, I just think maybe I ought to tell you the truth.”

Andy raised an eyebrow, gazing at him over a cheese-topped cracker. “The truth, Wally?”

Wally hesitated. He hated having to trust his own instincts, particularly when it meant disagreeing with the computer. But on the other hand, this was a computer that didn’t know the difference between Zog and Earth, which was perfectly all right in some applications but kind of a problem in others. So maybe Wally was right to override the computer’s decision this time. On the other other hand, exposing himself to these people was definitely scary. “The warlord has no pity,” the computer had reminded him, more than once.

Did Andy have pity? His eyes seemed very bright, very alert, as he looked at Wally, waiting for the truth, but he didn’t really look—Wally had to admit to himself, reluctantly—what you could call sympathetic. As Wally hesitated, Andy put the cracker and its shipment of cheese back on the plate on the coffee table and said, “What truth was that, Wally?”

So there was nothing for it but to go forward. Wally took a deep breath, swallowed once more, and said, “The treasure is seven hundred thousand dollars in cash stolen from a Securivan armored car in a daring daylight robbery on the New York State Thruway near the North Dudson exit on April twenty-sev—”

Andy, staring at him, said, “What?”

“Tom was one of the robbers,” Wally rushed on, “and he’s been in jail ever since, but not for that, because they never found the people who robbed the armored car.”

Wally, blinking more and more rapidly, sank back in his chair, exhausted. He looked at the plate of cheese and crackers and suddenly desperately wanted to eat all of them; but he was afraid to. He’d have to leave his mouth clear in case he had to talk, in case he had to, for instance, plead for his life. Reluctantly, hesitantly, he looked up away from the food at Andy’s face, and saw him grinning in admiration and astonishment. “Wally!” Andy said in unmistakable pleasure. “How’d you do that?”

Wally gulped and grinned in combined relief and delight. “It was easy,” he said.

“No, come on, Wally,” Andy said. “Don’t be modest. How’d you do it?”

So Wally explained the reasoning he’d worked out with the computer, and then demonstrated his access to the New York Times data bank, and actually brought up the original news item about the armored car robbery, which Andy read with close attention and deep interest, commenting to himself, “Not much finesse there. Just smash and grab.”

“I wanted to tell you so we’d have better communication,” Wally explained, “and better input to help solve the problem. But I was afraid. And the computer advised against.”

“The comput—?” Andy seemed startled, but then he grinned again and said, “How come?” Walking back over to the sofa, he said, “Computer doesn’t like me?”

Wally followed, and they took their seats again, Wally saying, “It wasn’t so much you, Andy. It was mostly Tom the computer was worried about.”

“Smart computer,” Andy said, and frowned, thinking it over. “Do we let Tom in on this?” he asked himself. Absentmindedly he picked up a cheese and cracker, pushed it into his mouth, and talked around it. “In some ways it’s simpler,” he said, more or less intelligibly. “We can talk up front with each other. On the other hand, I can see Tom getting a little testy.”

“That’s what the computer and I thought, too,” Wally agreed.

Andy swallowed his cheese and cracker, thinking. “I tell you what we say,” he decided.

Wally leaned forward, all ears. Well, mostly ears.

Andy reached for another cheese and cracker and pointed at himself with it. “I told you,” he said. “I decided the only way to get good input from you was to give you the whole picture. So I explained to you how Tom had been involved in this robbery years and years ago, brought in to it by bad companions and all, and how now he’s old and not wanting to be a robber anymore, and how he was let out of prison, and all he wants to do is retire, and this money’s all he’s got for his golden years, so we’re all getting together to help him get it back. Because, by now, whose money is it, anyway? So that’s what I told you. Right?”

Wally nodded. “Okay, Andy,” he said. “But, Andy?”

“Yeah?”

“Is, uh,” Wally said. He craved a cracker piled with cheese. “Is, uh,” he said, “any of that the truth?”

Andy laughed, calm and innocent and obviously easy in his mind. “Why, Wally,” he said. “Except for leaving out the part where Tom continues to be a homicidal maniac, it’s all the truth.”