“You can’t really mean it, Bill! Are all human beings like you?”
Now that was an interesting philosophical question! Bill considered it carefully—or as carefully as he could in view of the warm, rosy glow that was now beginning to envelop him. After all, things might be worse. He could get another job, if only for the pleasure of telling General Porter what he could do with his three stars. And as for Brenda—well, women were like streetcars: there’d always be another along in a minute.
Best of all, there was a second bottle of whisky in the Top Secret file. Oh, frabjous day! He rose unsteadily to his feet and wavered across the room.
For the last time, Thaar spoke to Earth.
“Bill!” it repeated desperately. “Surely all human beings can’t be like you!”
Bill turned and looked into the swirling tunnel. Strange—it seemed to be lighted with flecks of starlight, and was really rather pretty. He felt proud of himself: not many people could imagine that.
“Like me?” he said. “No, they’re not.” He smiled smugly across the light-years, as the rising tide of euphoria lifted him out of his despondency. “Come to think of it,” he added, “there are a lot of people much worse off than me. Yes, I guess I must be one of the lucky ones, after all.”
He blinked in mild surprise, for the tunnel had suddenly collapsed upon itself and the whitewashed wall was there again, exactly as it had always been. Thaar knew when it was beaten.
“So much for that hallucination,” thought Bill. “I was getting tired of it, anyway. Let’s see what the next one’s like.”
As it happened, there wasn’t a next one, for five seconds later he passed out cold, just as he was setting the combination of the file cabinet.
The next two days were rather vague and bloodshot, and he forgot all about the interview.
On the third day something was nagging at the back of his mind: he might have remembered if Brenda hadn’t turned up again and kept him busy being forgiving.
And there wasn’t a fourth day, of course.