Dusty Zebra: And Other Stories

by Clifford D. Simak

  And now the men had gone and the family was a name and the dogs carried on as Grant had told Nathaniel that far-gone day they must.

  As if you were men, as if the dog were man. Those were the words that had been handed down for ten full centuries—and at last the time had come.

  The dogs had come home when the men had gone, come from the far corners of the earth back to the place where the first dog had spoken the first word, where the first dog had read the first line of print—back to Webster House where a man, long ago, had dreamed of a dual civilization, of man and dog going down the ages, hand in paw.

  “We’ve done the best we could,” said Ebenezer, almost as if he were speaking to someone. “We still are doing it.”

  From the other side of the hill came the tinkle of a cow bell, a burst of frantic barking. The pups were bringing in the cows for the evening milking.

  The dust of centuries lay within the vault, a gray, powdery dust that was not an alien thing, but a part of the place itself—the part that had died in the passing of the years.

  Jon Webster smelled the acrid scent of the dust cutting through the mustiness of the room, heard the silence humming like a song within his head. One dim radium bulb glowed above the panel with its switch and wheel and half a dozen dials.

  Fearful of disturbing the sleeping silence, Webster moved forward quietly, half awed by the weight of time that seemed to press down from the ceiling. He reached out a finger and touched the open switch, as if he had expected it might not be there, as if he must feel the pressure of it against his fingertip to know that it was there.

  And it was there. It and the wheel and dials, with the single light above them. And that was all. There was nothing else. In all that small, bare vault there was nothing else.

  Exactly as the old map had said that it would be.

  Jon Webster shook his head, thinking: I might have known that it would have been. The map was right. The map remembered. We were the ones that had forgotten—forgotten or never known or never cared. And he knew that more than likely it was the last that would be right. Never cared.

  Although it was probable that very few had ever known about this vault. Had never known because it was best that only few should know. That it never had been used was no factor in its secrecy. There might have been a day—

  He stared at the panel, wondering. Slowly his hand reached out again and then he jerked it back. Better not, he told himself, better not. For the map had given no clue to the purpose of the vault, to the mechanics of the switch.

  “Defense,” the map had said, and that was all.

  Defense! Of course, there would have been defense back in that day of a thousand years ago. A defense that never had been needed, but a defense that had to be there, a defense against the emergency of uncertainty. For the brotherhood of peoples even then was a shaky thing that a single word or act might have thrown out of kilter. Even after ten centuries of peace, the memory of war would have been a living thing—an ever-present possibility in the mind of the World Committee, something to be circumvented, something to be ready for.

  Webster stood stiff and straight, listening to the pulse of history beating in the room. History that had run its course and ended. History that had come to a dead end—a stream that suddenly had flowed into the backwater of a few hundred futile human lives and now was a stagnant pool unrelieved by the eddying of human struggle and achievement.

  He reached out a hand, put it flat against the masonry, felt the slimy cold, the rough crawl of dust beneath his palm.

  The foundation of empire, he thought. The subcellar of empire. The nethermost stone of the towering structure that soared in proud strength on the surface far above—a great building that in olden times had hummed with the business of a solar system, an empire not in the sense of conquest but an empire of orderly human relations based on mutual respect and tolerant understanding.

  A seat of human government lent an easy confidence by the psychological fact of an adequate and foolproof defense. For it would have been both adequate and foolproof, it would have had to be. The men of that day took no chances, overlooked no bets. They had come up through the hard school and they knew their way around.

  Slowly, Webster swung about, stared at the trail his feet had left across the dust. Silently, stepping carefully, following the trail he’d made, he left the vault, closed the massive door behind him and spun the lock that held its secret fast.

  Climbing the tunneled stairs, he thought: Now I can write my history. My notes are almost complete and I know how it should go. It will be brilliant and exhaustive and it might be interesting if anyone should read it.

  But he knew that no one would. No one would take the time or care.

  For a long moment, Webster stood on the broad marble steps before his house, looking down the street. A pretty street, he told himself, the prettiest street in all Geneva, with its boulevard of trees, its carefully tended flower beds, the walks that glistened with the scrub and polish of ever-working robots.

  No one moved along the street and it wasn’t strange. The robots had finished their work early in the day and there were few people.

  From some high treetop a bird sang and the song was one with the sun and flowers, a gladsome song that strained at the bursting throat, a song that tripped and skipped with boundless joy.

  A neat street drowsing in the sun and a great, proud city that had lost its purpose. A street that should be filled with laughing children and strolling lovers and old men resting in the sun. And a city, the last city on Earth, the only city on Earth, that should be filled with noise and business.

  A bird sang and a man stood on the steps and looked and the tulips nodded blissfully in the tiny fragrant breeze that wafted down the street.

  Webster turned to the door, fumbled it open, walked across the threshold.

  The room was hushed and solemn, cathedral-like with its stained glass windows and soft carpeting. Old wood glowed with the patina of age and silver and brass winked briefly in the light that fell from the slender windows. Over the fireplace hung a massive canvas, done in subdued coloring—a house upon a hill, a house that had grown roots and clung against the land with a jealous grip. Smoke came from the chimney, a wind-whipped, tenuous smoke that smudged across a storm-gray sky.

  Webster walked across the room and there was no sound of walking. The rugs, he thought, the rugs protect the quietness of the place. Randall wanted to do this one over, too, but I wouldn’t let him touch it and I’m glad I didn’t. A man must keep something that is old, something he can cling to, something that is a heritage and a legacy and promise.

  He reached his desk, thumbed a tumbler and the light came on above it. Slowly, he let himself into a chair, reached out for the portfolio of notes. He flipped the cover open and stared at the title page: “A study of the Functional Development of the City of Geneva.”

  A brave title. Dignified and erudite. And a lot of work. Twenty years of work. Twenty years of digging among old dusty records, twenty years of reading and comparing, of evaluating the weight and words of those who had gone before, sifting and rejecting and working out the facts, tracing the trend not only of the city but of men. No hero worship, no legends, but facts. And facts are hard to come by.

  Something rustled. No footstep, but a rustle, a sense that someone was near. Webster twisted in his chair. A robot stood just outside the circle of the desk light.

  “Beg pardon, sir,” the robot said, “but I was supposed to tell you. Miss Sara is waiting in the Seashore.”

  Webster started slightly. “Miss Sara, eh? It’s been a long time since she’s been here.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the robot. “It seemed almost like old times, sir, when she walked in the door.”

  “Thank you, Roscoe, for telling me,” said Webster. “I’ll go right out. You will bring some drinks.”

  “She bro
ught her own drinks, sir,” said Roscoe. “Something that Mr. Ballentree fixed up.”

  “Ballentree!” exclaimed Webster. “I hope it isn’t poison.”

  “I’ve been observing her,” Roscoe told him, “and she’s been drinking it and she’s still all right.”

  Webster rose from his chair, crossed the room and went down the hall. He pushed open the door and the sound of the surf came to him. He blinked in the light that shone on the hot sand beach, stretching like a straight white line to either horizon. Before him the ocean was a sun-washed blue tipped with the white of foaming waves.

  Sand gritted underneath his feet as he walked forward, eyes adjusting themselves to the blaze of sunlight.

  Sara, he saw, was sitting in one of the bright canvas chairs underneath the palm trees and beside the chair was a pastel, very ladylike jug.

  The air had a tang of salt and the wind off the water was cool in the sun-warm air.

  The woman heard him and stood up and waited for him, with her hands outstretched. He hurried forward, clasped the outstretched hands and looked at her.

  “Not a minute older,” he said. “As pretty as the day I saw you first.”

  She smiled at him, eyes very bright. “And you, Jon. A little gray around the temples. A little handsomer. That is all.”

  He laughed. “I’m almost sixty, Sara. Middle age is creeping up.”

  “I brought something,” said Sara. “One of Ballentree’s latest masterpieces. It will cut your age in half.”

  He grunted. “Wonder Ballentree hasn’t killed off half Geneva, the drinks that he cooks up.”

  “This one is really good.”

  It was. It went down smooth and it had a strange, half metallic, half ecstatic taste.

  Webster pulled another chair close to Sara’s, sat down and looked at her.

  “You have such a nice place here,” said Sara. “Randall did it, didn’t he?”

  Webster nodded. “He had more fun than a circus, I had to beat him off with a club. And those robots of his! They’re crazier than he is.”

  “But he does wonderful things. He did a Martian room for Quentin and it’s simply unworldly.”

  “I know,” said Webster. “Was set on a deep-space one for here. Said it would be just the place to sit and think. Got sore at me when I wouldn’t let him do it.”

  He rubbed the back of his left hand with his right thumb, staring off at the blue haze above the ocean. Sara leaned forward, pulled his thumb away.

  “You still have the warts,” she said.

  He grinned. “Yes. Could have had them taken off, but never got around to it. Too busy, I guess. Part of me by now.”

  She released the thumb and he went back to rubbing the warts absent-mindedly.

  “You’ve been busy,” she said. “Haven’t seen you around much. How is the book coming?”

  “Ready to write,” said Webster. “Outlining it by chapters now. Checked on the last thing today. Have to make sure, you know. Place way down under the old Solar Administration Building. Some sort of a defense set-up. Control room. You push a lever and—”

  “And what?”

  “I don’t know,” said Webster. “Something effective, I suppose. Should try to find out, but can’t find the heart to do it. Been digging around in too much dust these last twenty years to face any more.”

  “You sound discouraged, Jon. Tired. You shouldn’t get tired. There’s no reason for it. You should get around. Have another drink?”

  He shook his head. “No, Sara, thanks. Not in the mood, I guess. I’m afraid, Sara—afraid.”

  “Afraid?”

  “This room,” said Webster. “Illusion. Mirrors that give an illusion of distance. Fans that blow the air through a salt spray, pumps that stir up the waves. A synthetic sun. And if I don’t like the sun, all I have to do is snap a switch and I have a moon.”

  “Illusion,” said Sara.

  “That’s it,” said Webster. “That is all we have. No real work, no real job. Nothing that we’re working for, no place we’re going. I’ve worked for twenty years and I’ll write a book and not a soul will read it. All they’d have to do would be spend the time to read it, but they won’t take the time. They won’t care. All they’d have to do would be come and ask me for a copy—and if they didn’t want to do that I’d be so glad someone was going to read it that I’d take it to them. But no one will. It will go on the shelves with all the other books that have been written. And what do I get out of it? Wait… I’ll tell you. Twenty years of work, twenty years of fooling myself, twenty years of sanity.”

  “I know,” said Sara, softly. “I know, Jon. The last three paintings—”

  He looked up quickly. “But, Sara—”

  She shook her head. “No, Jon. No one wanted them. They’re out of style. Naturalistic stuff is passé. Impressionalism now. Daubs—”

  “We are too rich,” said Webster. “We have too much. Everything was left for us—everything and nothing. When Mankind went out to Jupiter the few that were left behind inherited the Earth and it was too big for them. They couldn’t handle it. They couldn’t manage it. They thought they owned it, but they were the ones that were owned. Owned and dominated and awed by the things that had gone before.”

  She reached out a hand and touched his arm.

  “Poor Jon,” she said.

  “We can’t flinch away from it,” he said. “Some day some of us must face the truth, must start over again—from scratch.”

  “I—”

  “Yes, what is it, Sara?”

  “I came here to say good-by.”

  “Good-by?”

  “I’m going to take the Sleep.”

  He came to his feet, swiftly, horrified. “No, Sara!”

  She laughed and the laugh was strained. “Why don’t you come with me, Jon. A few hundred years. Maybe it will all be different when we awake.”

  “Just because no one wants your canvases. Just because—”

  “Because of what you said just a while ago. Illusion, Jon. I knew it, felt it, but I couldn’t think it out.”

  “But the Sleep is illusion, too.”

  “I know. But you don’t know it’s illusion. You think it’s real. You have no inhibitions and you have no fears except the fears that are planned deliberately. It’s natural, Jon—more natural than life. I went up to the Temple and it was all explained to me.”

  “And when you awake?”

  “You’re adjusted. Adjusted to whatever life is like in whatever era you awake. Almost as if you belonged, even from the first. And it might be better. Who knows? It might be better.”

  “It won’t be,” Jon told her, grimly. “Until, or unless, someone does something about it. And a people that run to the Sleep to hide are not going to bestir themselves.”

  She shrank back in the chair and suddenly he felt ashamed.

  “I’m sorry, Sara. I didn’t mean you. Nor any one person. Just the lot of us.”

  The palms whispered harshly, fronds rasping. Little pools of water, left by the surging tide, sparkled in the sun.

  “I won’t try to dissuade you,” Webster said. “You’ve thought it out, you know what it is you want.”

  It hadn’t always been like that with the human race, he thought. There would have been a day, a thousand years ago, when a man would have argued about a thing like this. But Juwainism had ended all the petty quarrels. Juwainism had ended a lot of things.

  “I’ve always thought,” Sara told him, softly, “if we could have stayed together—”

  He made a gesture of impatience. “It’s just another thing we’ve lost, another thing that the human race let loose. Come to think it over, we lost a lot of things. Family ties and business, work and purpose.”

  He turned to face her squarely. “If you want to come back, Sara—”

&
nbsp; She shook her head. “It wouldn’t work, Jon. It’s been too many years.”

  He nodded. There was no use denying it.

  She rose and held out her hand. “If you ever decide to take the Sleep, find out my date. I’ll have them reserve a place right next to me.”

  “I don’t think I ever shall,” he told her.

  “All right, then. Good-bye, Jon.”

  “Wait a second, Sara. You haven’t said a word about our son. I used to see him often, but—”

  She laughed brightly. “Tom’s almost a grown man now, Jon. And it’s the strangest thing. He—”

  “I haven’t seen him for so long,” Webster said again.

  “No wonder. He’s scarcely in the city. It’s his hobby. Something he inherited from you, I guess. Pioneering in a way. I don’t know what else you’d call it.”

  “You mean some new research. Something unusual.”

  “Unusual, yes, but not research. Just goes out in the woods and lives by himself. He and a few of his friends. A bag of salt, a bow and arrows—yes, it’s queer,” Sara admitted, “but he has a lot of fun. Claims he’s learning something. And he does look healthy. Like a wolf. Strong and lean and a look about his eyes.”

  She swung around and moved away.

  “I’ll see you to the door,” said Webster.

  She shook her head. “No. I’d rather that you wouldn’t.”

  “You’re forgetting the jug.”

  “You keep it, Jon. I won’t need it where I’m going.”

  Webster put on the plastic “thinking cap,” snapped the button of the writer on his desk.