Dusty Zebra: And Other Stories

by Clifford D. Simak

“Yes,” said Jenkins. “and they’ll be glad to see you. They know all about the family. They sit around at night and talk themselves to sleep with stories from the old days and… and—”

  “What is it, Jenkins?”

  “I’ll be glad to see you, too. It has been so lonesome!”

  God had come.

  Ebenezer shivered at the thought, crouching in the dark. If Jenkins knew I was here, he thought, he’d whale my hide for fair. Jenkins said we were to leave him alone, for a while, at least.

  Ebenezer crept forward on fur-soft pads, sniffed at the study door. And the door was open—open by the barest crack!

  He crouched on his belly, listening, and there was not a thing to hear. Just a scent, an unfamiliar, tangy scent that made the hair crawl along his back in swift, almost unbearable ecstasy.

  He glanced quickly over his shoulder, but there was no movement. Jenkins was out in the dining room, telling the dogs how they must behave, and Shadow was off somewhere tending to some robot business.

  Softly, carefully, Ebenezer pushed at the door with his nose and the door swung wider. Another push and it was half open.

  The man sat in front of the fireplace, in the easy-chair, long legs crossed, hands clasped across his stomach.

  Ebenezer crouched tighter against the floor, a low involuntary whimper in his throat.

  At the sound Jon Webster jerked erect.

  “Who’s there?” he asked.

  Ebenezer froze against the floor, felt the pumping of his heart jerking at his body.

  “Who’s there?” Webster asked once more, and then he saw the dog.

  His voice was softer when he spoke again. “Come in, feller. Come on in.”

  Ebenezer did not stir.

  Webster snapped his fingers at him. “I won’t hurt you. Come on in. Where are all the others?”

  Ebenezer tried to rise, tried to crawl along the floor, but his bones were rubber and his blood was water. And the man was striding toward him, coming in long strides across the floor.

  He saw the man bending over him, felt strong hands beneath his body, knew that he was being lifted up. And the scent that he had smelled at the open door—the overpowering god-scent—was strong within his nostrils.

  The hands held him tight against the strange fabric the man wore instead of fur and a voice crooned at him—not words, but comforting.

  “So you came to see me,” said Jon Webster. “You sneaked away and you came to see me.”

  Ebenezer nodded weakly. “You aren’t angry, are you? You aren’t going to tell Jenkins?”

  Webster shook his head. “No, I won’t tell Jenkins.”

  He sat down and Ebenezer sat in his lap, staring at his face—a strong, lined face with the lines deepened by the flare of the flames within the fireplace.

  Webster’s hand came up and stroked Ebenezer’s head and Ebenezer whimpered with doggish happiness.

  “It’s like coming home,” said Webster, and he wasn’t talking to the dog. “It’s like you’ve been away for a long, long time and then you come home again. And it’s so long you don’t recognize the place. Don’t know the furniture, don’t recognize the floor plan. But you know by the feel of it that it’s an old familiar place and you are glad you came.”

  “I like it here,” said. Ebenezer and he meant Webster’s lap, but the man misunderstood.

  “Of course, you do,” he said. “It’s your home as well as mine. More your home, in fact, for you stayed here and took care of it while I forgot about it.”

  He patted Ebenezer’s head and pulled Ebenezer’s ears.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Ebenezer.”

  “And what do you do, Ebenezer?”

  “I listen.”

  “You listen?”

  “Sure, that’s my job. I listen for the cobblies.”

  “And you hear the cobblies?”

  “Sometimes. I’m not very good at it. I think about chasing rabbits and I don’t pay attention.”

  “What do cobblies sound like?”

  “Different things. Sometimes they walk and other times they just go bump. And once in a while they talk. Although oftener, they think.”

  “Look here, Ebenezer, I don’t seem to place these cobblies.”

  “They aren’t any place,” said Ebenezer. “Not on this earth, at least.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Like there was a big house,” said Ebenezer. “A big house with lots of rooms. And doors between the rooms. And if you’re in one room, you can hear whoever’s in the other rooms, but you can’t get to them.”

  “Sure you can,” said Webster. “All you have to do is go through the door.”

  “But you can’t open the door,” said Ebenezer. “You don’t even know about the door. You think this one room you’re in is the only room in all the house. Even if you did know about the door you couldn’t open it.”

  “You’re talking about dimensions.”

  Ebenezer wrinkled his forehead in worried thought. “I don’t know that word you said, dimensions. What I told you was the way Jenkins told it to us. He said it wasn’t really a house and it wasn’t really rooms and the things we heard probably weren’t like us.”

  Webster nodded to himself. That was the way one would have to do. Have to take it easy. Take it slow. Don’t confuse them with big names. Let them get the idea first and then bring in the more exact and scientific terminology. And more than likely it would be a manufactured terminology. Already there was a coined word—Cobblies—the things behind the wall, the things that one hears and cannot identify—the dwellers in the next room.

  Cobblies.

  The cobblies will get you if you don’t watch out.

  That would be the human way. Can’t understand a thing. Can’t see it. Can’t test it. Can’t analyze it. O.K., it isn’t there. It doesn’t exist. It’s a ghost, a goblin, a cobbly.

  The cobblies will get you—

  It’s simpler that way, more comfortable. Scared? Sure, but you forget it in the light. And it doesn’t plague you, haunt you. Think hard enough and you wish it away. Make it a ghost or goblin and you can laugh at it—in the daylight.

  A hot, wet tongue rasped across his chin and Ebenezer wriggled with delight.

  “I like you,” said Ebenezer. “Jenkins never held me this way. No one’s ever held me this way.”

  “Jenkins is busy,” said Webster.

  “He sure is,” agreed Ebenezer. “He writes things down in a book. Things that us dogs hear when we are listening and things that we should do.”

  “You’ve heard about the Websters?” asked the man.

  “Sure. We know all about them. You’re a Webster. We didn’t think there were any more of them.”

  “Yes, there is,” said Webster. “There’s been one here all the time. Jenkins is a Webster.”

  “He never told us that.”

  “He wouldn’t.”

  The fire had died down and the room had darkened. The sputtering flames chased feeble flickers across the walls and floor.

  And something else. Faint rustlings, faint whisperings, as if the very walls were talking. An old house with long memories and a lot of living tucked within its structure. Two thousand years of living. Built to last and it had lasted. Built to be a home and it still was a home—a solid place that put its arms around one and held one close and warm, claimed one for its own.

  Footsteps walked across his brain—footsteps from the long ago, footsteps that had been silenced to the final echo centuries before. The walking of the Websters. Of the ones that went before me, the ones that Jenkins waited on from their day of birth to the hour of death.

  History. Here is history. History stirring in the drapes and creeping on the floor, sitting in the corners, watching from the wall. Living hist
ory that a man can feel in the bones of him and against his shoulder blades—the impact of the long dead eyes that come back from the night.

  Another Webster, eh! Doesn’t look like much. Worthless. The breed’s played out. Not like we were in our day. Just about the last of them.

  Jon Webster stirred. “No, not the last of them,” he said. “I have a son.”

  Well, it doesn’t make much difference. He says he has a son. But he can’t amount to much—

  Webster started from the chair, Ebenezer slipping from his lap.

  “That’s not true,” cried Webster. “My son—”

  And then sat down again.

  His son out in the woods with bow and arrows, playing a game, having fun.

  A hobby, Sara had said before she climbed the hill to take a hundred years of dreams.

  A hobby. Not a business. Not a way of life. Not necessity.

  A hobby.

  An artificial thing. A thing that had no beginning and no end. A thing a man could drop at any minute and no one would ever notice.

  Like cooking up recipes for different kinds of drinks.

  Like painting pictures no one wanted.

  Like going around with a crew of crazy robots begging people to let you redecorate their homes.

  Like writing history no one cares about.

  Like playing Indian or caveman or pioneer with bow and arrows.

  Like thinking up centuries-long dreams for men and women who are tired of life and yearn for fantasy.

  The man sat in the chair, staring at the nothingness that spread before his eyes, the dread and awful nothingness that became tomorrow and tomorrow.

  Absent-mindedly his hands came together and the right thumb stroked the back of the left hand.

  Ebenezer crept forward through the fire-flared darkness, put his front paws on the man’s knee and looked into his face.

  “Hurt your hand?” he asked.

  “Eh?”

  “Hurt your hand? You’re rubbing it.”

  Webster laughed shortly. “No, just warts.” He showed them to the dog.

  “Gee, warts!” said Ebenezer. “You don’t want them, do you?”

  “No,” Webster hesitated. “No, I guess I don’t. Never got around to having them taken off.”

  Ebenezer dropped his nose and nuzzled the back of Webster’s hand.

  “There you are,” he announced triumphantly.

  “There I’m what?”

  “Look at the warts,” invited Ebenezer.

  A log fell in the fire and Webster lifted his hand, looked at it in the flare of light.

  The warts were gone. The skin was smooth and clean.

  Jenkins stood in the darkness and listened to the silence, the soft sleeping silence that left the house to shadows, to the half-forgotten footsteps, the phrase spoken long ago, the tongues that murmured in the walls and rustled in the drapes.

  By a single thought the night could have been as day, a simple adjustment in his lenses would have done the trick, but the ancient robot left his sight unchanged. For this was the way he liked it, this was the hour of meditation, the treasured time when the present sloughed away and the past came back and lived.

  The others slept, but Jenkins did not sleep. For robots never sleep. Two thousand years of consciousness, twenty centuries of full time unbroken by a single moment of unawareness.

  A long time, thought Jenkins. A long time, even for a robot. For even before man had gone to Jupiter most of the older robots had been deactivated, had been sent to their death in favor of the newer models. The newer models that looked more like men, that were smoother and more sightly, with better speech and quicker responses within their metal brains.

  But Jenkins had stayed on because he was an old and faithful servant, because Webster House would not have been home without him.

  “They loved me,” said Jenkins to himself. And the three words held deep comfort—comfort in a world where there was little comfort, a world where a servant had become a leader and longed to be a servant once again.

  He stood at the window and stared out across the patio to the night-dark clumps of oaks that staggered down the hill. Darkness. No light anywhere. There had been a time when there had been lights. Windows that shone like friendly beams in the vast land that lay across the river.

  But man had gone and there were no lights. The robots needed no lights, for they could see in darkness, even as Jenkins could have seen, had he but chosen to do so. And the castles of the mutants were as dark by night as they were fearsome by day.

  Now man had come again, one man. Had come, but he probably wouldn’t stay. He’d sleep for a few nights in the great master bedroom on the second floor, then go back to Geneva. He’d walk the old forgotten acres and stare across the river and rummage through the books that lined the study wall, then he would up and leave.

  Jenkins swung around. Ought to see how he is, he thought. Ought to find if he needs anything. Maybe take him up a drink, although I’m afraid the whisky is all spoiled. A thousand years is a long time for a bottle of good whisky.

  He moved across the room and a warm peace came upon him, the close and intimate peacefulness of the old days when he had trotted, happy as a terrier, on his many errands.

  He hummed a snatch of tune in minor key as he headed for the stairway´.

  He’d just look in and if Jon Webster were asleep, he’d leave, but if he wasn’t, he’d say: “Are you comfortable, sir? Is there anything you wish? A hot toddy, perhaps?”

  And he took two stairs at the time.

  For he was doing for a Webster once again.

  Jon Webster lay propped in bed, with the pillows piled behind him. The bed was hard and uncomfortable and the room was close and stuffy—not like his own bedroom back in Geneva, where one lay on the grassy bank of a murmuring stream and stared at the artificial stars that glittered in an artificial sky. And smelled the artificial scent of artificial lilacs that would go on blooming longer than a man would live. No murmur of a hidden waterfall, no flickering of captive fireflies—but a bed and room that were functional.

  Webster spread his hands flat on his blanket-covered thighs and flexed his fingers, thinking.

  Ebenezer had merely touched the warts and the warts were gone. And it had been no happenstance—it had been intentional. It had been no miracle, but a conscious power. For miracles sometimes fail to happen, and Ebenezer had been sure.

  A power, perhaps, that had been gathered from the room beyond, a power that had been stolen from the cobblies Ebenezer listened to.

  A laying-on of hands, a power of healing that involved no drugs, no surgery, but just a certain knowledge, a very special knowledge.

  In the old dark ages, certain men had claimed the power to make warts disappear, had bought them for a penny, or had traded them for something or had performed other mumbo-jumbo—and in due time, sometimes, the warts would disappear.

  Had these queer men listened to the cobblies, too?

  The door creaked just a little and Webster straightened suddenly.

  A voice came out of the darkness: “Are you comfortable, sir? Is there anything you wish?”

  “Jenkins?” asked Webster.

  “Yes, sir,” said Jenkins.

  The dark form padded softly through the door.

  “Yes, there’s something I want,” said Webster. “I want to talk to you.”

  He stared at the dark, metallic figure that stood beside the bed.

  “About the dogs,” said Webster.

  “They try so hard,” said Jenkins. “And it’s hard for them. For they have no one, you see. Not a single soul.”

  “They have you.”

  Jenkins shook his head. “But I’m not enough, you see. I’m just… well, just a sort of mentor. It is men they want. The need of men is ingrown in them.
For thousands of years it has been man and dog. Man and dog, hunting together. Man and dog, watching the herds together. Man and dog, fighting their enemies together. The dog watching while the man slept and the man dividing the last bit of food, going hungry himself so that his dog might eat.”

  Webster nodded. “Yes, I suppose that is the way it is.”

  “They talk about men every night,” said Jenkins, “before they go to bed. They sit around together and one of the old ones tells one of the stories that have been handed down and they sit and wonder, sit and hope.”

  “But where are they going? What are they trying to do? Have they got a plan?”

  “I can detect one,” said Jenkins. “Just a faint glimmer of what may happen. They are psychic, you see. Always have been. They have no mechanical sense, which is understandable, for they have no hands. Where man would follow metal, the dogs will follow ghosts.”

  “Ghosts?”

  “The things you men call ghosts. But they aren’t ghosts. I’m sure of that. They’re something in the next room. Some other form of life on another plane.”

  “You mean there may be many planes of life coexisting simultaneously upon Earth?”

  Jenkins nodded. “I’m beginning to believe so, sir. I have a notebook full of things the dogs have heard and seen and now, after all these many years, they begin to make a pattern.”

  He hurried on. “I may be mistaken, sir. You understand I have no training. I was just a servant in the old days, sir. I tried to pick up things after… after Jupiter, but it was hard for me. Another robot helped me make the first little robots for the dogs and now the little ones produce their own kind in the workshop when there is need of more.”

  “But the dogs—they just sit and listen.”

  “Oh, no, sir, they do many other things. They try to make friends with the animals and they watch the wild robots and the mutants—”

  “These wild robots? There are many of them?”

  Jenkins nodded. “Many, sir. Scattered all over the world in little camps. The ones that were left behind, sir. The ones man had no further use for when he went to Jupiter. They have banded together and they work—”

  “Work. What at?”

  “I don’t know, sir. Building machines, mostly. Mechanical, you know. I wonder what they’ll do with all the machines they have. What they plan to use them for.”