Dusty Zebra: And Other Stories

by Clifford D. Simak

  Chapter Twenty-six, he thought and the writer clicked and chuckled and wrote “Chapter XXVI.”

  For a moment Webster held his mind clear, assembling his data, arranging his outline, then he began again. The writer clicked and gurgled, hummed into steady work:

  The machines ran on, tended by the robots as they had been before, producing all the things they had produced before.

  And the robots worked as they knew it was their right to work, their right and duty, doing the things they had been made to do.

  The machines went on and the robots went on, producing wealth as if there were men to use it, just as if there were millions of men instead of a bare five thousand.

  And the five thousand who had stayed behind or who had been left behind suddenly found themselves the masters of a world that had been geared to the millions, found themselves possessed of the wealth and services that only months before had been the wealth and services that had been due the millions.

  There was no government, but there was no need of government, for all the crimes and abuses that government had held in check were as effectively held in check by the sudden wealth the five thousand had inherited. No man will steal when he can pick up what he wants without the bother of thievery. No man will contest with his neighbor over real estate when the entire world is real estate for the simple taking. Property rights almost overnight became a phrase that had no meaning in a world where there was more than enough for all.

  Crimes of violence long before had been virtually eliminated from human society and with the economic pressure eased to a point where property rights ceased to be a point of friction, there was no need of government. No need, in fact, of many of the encumbrances of custom and convenience which man had carried forward from the beginnings of commerce. There was no need of currency, for exchange had no meaning in a world where to get a thing one need but ask for it or take it.

  Relieved of economic pressure, the social pressures lessened, too. A man no longer found it necessary to conform to the standards and the acts of custom which had played so large a part in the post-Jovian world as an indication of commercial character.

  Religion, which had been losing ground for centuries, entirely disappeared. The family unit, held together by tradition and by the economic necessity of a provider and protector, fell apart. Men and women lived together as they wished, parted when they wished. For there was no economic reason, no social reason why they shouldn’t.

  Webster cleared his mind and the machine purred softly at him. He put up his hands, took off the cap, reread the last paragraph of the outline.

  There, he thought, there is the root of it. If the families had stayed together. If Sara and I had stayed together.

  He rubbed the warts on the back of his hand, wondering:

  Wonder if Tom goes by my name or hers. Usually they take their mother’s name. I know I did at first until my mother asked me to change it. Said it would please my father and she didn’t mind. Said he was proud of the name he bore and I was his only child. And she had others.

  If only we had stayed together. Then there’d be something worth living for. If we’d stayed together, Sara wouldn’t be taking the Sleep, wouldn’t be lying in a tank of fluid in suspended animation with the “dream cap” on her head.

  Wonder what kind of dream she chose—what kind of synthetic life she picked out to live. I wanted to ask her, but I didn’t dare. It’s not the kind of thing, after all, that one can ask.

  He reached out and picked up the cap again, put it on his head, marshaled his thoughts anew. The writer clicked into sudden life:

  Man was bewildered. But not for long. Man tried. But not for long.

  For the five thousand could not carry on the work of the millions who had gone to Jupiter to enter upon a better life in alien bodies. The five thousand did not have the skill, nor the dreams, nor the incentive.

  And there were the psychological factors. The psychological factor of tradition which bore like a weight upon the minds of the men who had been left behind. The psychological factor of Juwainism which forced men to be honest with themselves and others, which forced men to perceive at last the hopelessness of the things they sought to do. Juwainism left no room for false courage. And false, foolhardy courage that didn’t know what it was going up against was the one thing the five thousand needed most.

  What they did suffered by comparison with what had been done before and at last they came to know that the human dream of millions was too vast a thing for five thousand to attempt.

  Life was good. Why worry? There was food and clothes and shelter, human companionship and luxury and entertainment—there was everything that one could ever wish.

  Man gave up trying. Man enjoyed himself. Human achievement became a zero factor and human life a senseless paradise.

  Webster took off the cap again, reached out and clicked off the writer.

  If someone would only read it once I get it done, he thought. If someone would read and understand. If someone could realize where human life is going.

  I could tell them, of course. I could go out and buttonhole them one by one and hold them fast until I told them what I thought. And they would understand, for Juwainism would make them understand. But they wouldn’t pay attention. They’d tuck it all away in the backs of their brains somewhere for future reference and they’d never have the time or take the trouble to drag it out again.

  They’d go on doing the foolish things they’re doing, following the footless hobbies they have taken up in lieu of work. Randall with his crew of zany robots going around begging to be allowed to re-design his neighbors’ homes. Ballentree spending hours on end figuring out new alcoholic mixtures. Yes, and Jon Webster wasting twenty years digging into the history of a single city.

  A door creaked faintly and Webster swung around. The robot catfooted into the room.

  “Yes, what is it, Roscoe?”

  The robot halted, a dim figure in the half-light of the dusk-filled room.

  “It’s time for dinner, sir. I came to see—”

  “Whatever you can think up,” said Webster. “And, Roscoe, you can lay the fire.”

  “The fire is laid, sir.”

  Roscoe stalked across the room, bent above the fireplace. Flame flickered in his hand and the kindling caught.

  Webster, slouched in his chair staring at the flames crawling up the wood, heard the first, faint hiss and crackle of the wood, the suction mumble at the fireplace throat.

  “It’s pretty, sir,” said Roscoe.

  “You like it, too?”

  “Indeed I do.”

  “Ancestral memories,” said Webster, soberly. “Remembrance of the forge that made you.”

  “You think so, sir?” asked Roscoe.

  “No, Roscoe, I was joking. Anachronisms, that’s what you and I are. Not many people have fires these days. No need for them. But there’s something about them, something that is clean and comforting.”

  He stared at the canvas above the mantelpiece, lighted now by the flare of burning wood. Roscoe saw his stare.

  “Too bad about Miss Sara, sir.”

  Webster shook his head. “No, Roscoe, it was something that she wanted. Like turning off one life and starting on another. She will lie up there in the Temple, asleep for years, and she will live another life. And this one, Roscoe, will be a happy life. For she would have it planned that way.”

  His mind went back to other days in this very room.

  “She painted that picture, Roscoe,” he said. “Spent a long time at it, being very careful to catch the thing she wanted to express. She used to laugh at me and tell me I was in the painting, too.”

  “I don’t see you, sir,” said Roscoe.

  “No. I’m not. And yet, perhaps, I am. Or part of me. Part of what and where I came from. That house in the painting, Roscoe, is the Webster
House in North America. And I am a Webster. But a long ways from the house—a long ways from the men who built that house.”

  “North America’s not so far, sir.”

  “No,” Webster told him. “Not so far in distance. But far in other ways.”

  He felt the warmth of the fire steal across the room and touch him.

  Far. Too far—and in the wrong direction.

  The robot moved softly, feet padding on the rug, leaving the room.

  She worked a long time, being very careful to catch the thing she wanted to express.

  And what was that thing? He had never asked her and she had never told him. He had always thought, he remembered, that it probably had been the way the smoke streamed, wind-whipped across the sky, the way the house crouched against the ground, blending in with the trees and grass, huddled against the storm that walked above the land.

  But it may have been something else. Some symbolism. Something that made the house synonymous with the kind of men who built it.

  He got up and walked closer, stood before the fire with head tilted back. The brush strokes were there and the painting looked less a painting than when viewed from the proper distance. A thing of technique, now. The basic strokes and shadings the brushes had achieved to create illusion.

  Security. Security by the way the house stood foursquare and solid. Tenacity by the way it was a part of the land itself. Sternness, stubbornness and a certain bleakness of the spirit.

  She had sat for days on end with the visor beamed on the house, sketching carefully, painting slowly, often sitting and watching and doing nothing at all. There had been dogs, she said, and robots, but she had not put them in, because all she wanted was the house. One of the few houses left standing in the open country. Through centuries of neglect, the others had fallen in, had given the land back to the wilderness.

  But there were dogs and robots in this one. One big robot, she had said, and a lot of little ones.

  Webster had paid no attention—he had been too busy.

  He swung around, went back to the desk again.

  Queer thing, once you came to think of it. Robots and dogs living together. A Webster once had messed around with dogs, trying to put them on the road to a culture of their own, trying to develop a dual civilization of man and dog.

  Bits of remembrance came to him—tiny fragments, half recalled, of the legends that had come down the years about the Webster House. There had been a robot named Jenkins who had served the family from the very first. There had been an old man sitting in a wheel chair on the front lawn, staring at the stars and waiting for a son who never came. And a curse had hung above the house, the curse of having lost to the world the philosophy of Juwain.

  The visor was in one corner of the room, an almost forgotten piece of furniture, something that was scarcely used. There was no need to use it. All the world was here in the city of Geneva.

  Webster rose, moved toward it, stopped and thought. The dial settings were listed in the log book, but where was the log book? More than likely somewhere in his desk.

  He went back to the desk, started going through the drawers.

  Excited now, he pawed furiously, like a terrier digging for a bone.

  Jenkins, the ancient robot, scrubbed his metallic chin with metallic fingers. It was a thing he did when he was deep in thought, a meaningless, irritating gesture he had picked up from long association with the human race.

  His eyes went back to the little dog sitting on the floor beside him.

  “So the wolf was friendly,” said Jenkins. “Offered you the rabbit.”

  Ebenezer jigged excitedly upon his bottom. “He was one of them we fed last winter. The pack that came up to the house and we tried to tame them.”

  “Would you know the wolf again?”

  Ebenezer nodded. “I got his scent,” he said. “I’d remember him.”

  Shadow shuffled his feet against the floor. “Look, Jenkins, ain’t you going to smack him one? He should have been listening and he ran away. He had no business chasing rabbits—”

  Jenkins spoke sternly. “You’re the one that should get the smacking, Shadow. For your attitude. You are assigned to Ebenezer, you should be part of him. You aren’t an individual. You’re just Ebenezer’s hands. If he had hands, he’d have no need of you. You aren’t his mentor nor his conscience. Just his hands. Remember that.”

  Shadow shuffled his feet rebelliously. “I’ll run away,” he said.

  “Join the wild robots, I suppose,” said Jenkins.

  Shadow nodded. “They’d be glad to have me. They’re doing things. They need all the help that they can get.”

  “They’d bust you up for scrap,” Jenkins told him sourly. “You have no training, no abilities that would make you one of them.”

  He turned to Ebenezer. “We have other robots.”

  Ebenezer shook his head. “Shadow is all right. I can handle him. We know one another. He keeps me from getting lazy, keeps me on my toes.”

  “That’s fine,” said Jenkins. “You two run along. And if you ever happen to be out chasing rabbits, Ebenezer, and run onto this wolf again, try to cultivate him.”

  The rays of the westering sun were streaming through the windows, touching the age-old room with the warmth of a late spring evening.

  Jenkins sat quietly in the chair, listening to the sounds that came from outside—the tinkle of cowbells, the yapping of the puppies, the ringing thud of an axe splitting fireplace logs.

  Poor little fellow, thought Jenkins. Sneaking out to chase a rabbit when he should have been listening. Too far—too fast. Have to watch that. Have to keep them from breaking down. Come fall and we’ll knock off work for a week or two and have some coon hunts. Do them a world of good.

  Although there’d come a day when there’d be no coon hunts, no rabbit chasing—the day when the dogs finally had tamed everything, when all the wild things would be thinking, talking, working beings. A wild dream and a far one—but, thought Jenkins, no wilder and no farther than some of the dreams of man.

  Maybe even better than the dreams of man, for they held none of the ruthlessness that the human race had planned, aimed at none of the mechanistic brutality the human race spawned. A new civilization, a new culture, a new way of thought. Mystic, perhaps, and visionary, but so had man been visionary. Probing into mysteries that man had brushed by as unworthy of his time, as mere superstition that could have no scientific basis.

  Things that go bump in the night. Things that prowl around a house and the dogs get up and growl and there are no tracks in the snow. Dogs howling when someone dies.

  The dogs knew. The dogs had known long before they had been given tongues to talk, contact lenses to read. They had not come along the road as far as men—they were not cynical and skeptic. They believed the things they heard and sensed. They did not invent superstition as a form of wishful thinking, as a shield against the things unseen.

  Jenkins turned back to the desk again, picked up the pen, bent above the notebook in front of him. The pen screeched as he pushed it along.

  Ebenezer reports friendliness in wolf. Recommend council detach Ebenezer from listening and assign him to contact the wolf.

  Wolves, mused Jenkins, would be good friends to have. They’d make splendid scouts. Better than the dogs. Tougher, faster, sneaky. They could watch the wild robots across the river and relieve the dogs. Could keep an eye on the mutant castles.

  Jenkins shook his head. Couldn’t trust anyone these days. The robots seemed to be all right. Were friendly, dropped in at times, helped out now and then. Real neighborly, in fact. But you never knew. And they were building machines.

  The mutants never bothered anyone, were scarcely seen, in fact. But they had to be watched, too. Never knew what devilment they might be up to. Remember what they’d done to man. That dirty trick with Juwainism, handing
it over at a time when it would doom the race.

  Men. They were gods to us and now they’re gone. Left us on our own. A few in Geneva, of course, but they can’t be bothered, have no interest in us.

  He sat in the twilight, thinking of the whiskies he had carried, of the errands he had run, of the days when Websters had lived and died within these walls.

  And now—father-confessor to the dogs. Cute little devils and bright and smart—and trying hard.

  A bell buzzed softly and Jenkins jerked upright in his seat. It buzzed again and a green light winked on the televisor. Jenkins came to his feet, stood unbelieving, staring at the winking light.

  Someone calling!

  Someone calling after almost a thousand years!

  He staggered forward, dropped into the chair, reached out with fumbling fingers to the toggle, tripped it over.

  The wall before him melted away and he sat facing a man across a desk. Behind the man the flames of a fireplace lighted up a room with high, stained-glass windows.

  “You’re Jenkins,” said the man and there was something in his face that jerked a cry from Jenkins.

  “You … you—”

  “I’m Jon Webster,” said the man.

  Jenkins pressed his hands flat against the top of the televisor, sat straight and stiff, afraid of the unrobotlike emotions that welled within his metal being.

  “I would have known you anywhere,” said Jenkins. “You have the look of them. I should recognize one of you. I worked for you long enough. Carried drinks and … and—”

  “Yes, I know,” said Webster. “Your name has come down with us. We remembered you.”

  “You are in Geneva, Jon?” And then Jenkins remembered. “I meant, sir.”

  “No need of it,” said Webster. “I’d rather have it Jon. And, yes, I’m in Geneva. But I’d like to see, you. I wonder if I might.”

  “You mean come out here?”

  Webster nodded.

  “But the place is overrun with dogs, sir.”

  Webster grinned. “The talking dogs?” he asked.