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 favour 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 co-existing simultaneously upon Earth?’
Jenkins nodded. ‘I’m beginning to believe so, sir. I have a note-book 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 they are in 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.’
‘So do I,’ said Webster.
And he stared into the darkness and wondered – wondered how man, cooped up in Geneva, should have lost touch with the world. How man should not have known about what the dogs were doing, about the little camps of busy robots, about the castles of the feared and hated mutants.
We lost touch, Webster thought. We locked the world outside. We created ourselves a little niche and we huddled in it – in the last city in the world. And we didn’t know what was happening outside the city – we could have known, we should have known, but we didn’t care.
It’s time, he thought, that we took a hand again.
We were lost and awed and
at first we tried, but finally we just threw in the hand.
For the first time the few that were left realized the greatness of the race, saw for the first time the mighty works the hand of man had reared. And they tried to keep it going and they couldn’t do it. And they rationalized – as man rationalizes almost everything. Fooling himself that there really are no ghosts, calling things that go bumping in the night the first suave, sleek word of explanation that comes into his mind.
We couldn’t keep it going and so we rationalized, we took refuge in a screen of words and Juwainism helped us do it. We came close to ancestor worship. We sought to glorify the race of man. We couldn’t carry on the work of man and so we tried to glorify it, attempted to enthrone the men who had. As we attempt to glorify and enthrone all good things that die.
We became a race of historians and we dug with grubby fingers in the ruins of the race, clutching each irrelevant little fact to our breast as if it were a priceless gem. And that was the first phase, the hobby that bore us up when we knew ourselves for what we really were – the dregs in the tilted cup of humanity.
But we got over it. Oh, sure, we got over it. In about one generation. Man is an adaptable creature – he can survive anything. So we couldn’t build great spaceships. So we couldn’t reach the stars. So we couldn’t puzzle out the secret of life. So what?
We were the inheritors, we had been left the legacy, we were better off than any race had ever been or could hope to be again. And so we rationalized once more and we forgot about the glory of the race, for while it was a shining thing, it was a toilsome and humiliating concept.
‘Jenkins,’ said Webster soberly, ‘we’ve wasted ten whole centuries.’
‘Not wasted, sir,’ said Jenkins. ‘Just resting, perhaps. But now, maybe, you can come out again. Come back to us.’
‘You want us?’
‘The dogs need you,’ Jenkins told him. ‘And the robots, too. For both of them were never anything other than the servants of man. They are lost without you. The dogs are building a civilization, but it is building slowly.’
‘Perhaps a better civilization than we built ourselves,’ said Webster. ‘Perhaps a more successful one. For ours was not successful, Jenkins.’
‘A kinder one,’ Jenkins admitted, ‘but not too practical. A civilization based on the brotherhood of animals – on the psychic understanding and perhaps eventual communication and intercourse with interlocking worlds. A civilization of the mind and of understanding, but not too positive. No actual goals, limited mechanics – just a groping after truth, and the groping is in a direction that man passed by without a second glance.’
‘And you think that man could help?’
‘Man could give leadership,’ said Jenkins.
‘The right kind of leadership?’
‘That is hard to answer.’
Webster lay in the darkness, rubbed his suddenly sweating hands along the blankets that covered his body.
‘Tell me the truth,’ he said and his words were grim. ‘Man could give leadership, you say. But man also could take over once again. Could discard the things the dogs are doing as impractical. Could round the robots up and use their mechanical ability in the old, old pattern. Both the dogs and robots would knuckle down to man.’
‘Of course,’ said Jenkins. ‘For they were servants once. But man is wise – man knows best.’
‘Thank you, Jenkins,’ said Webster. ‘Thank you very much.’
He stared into the darkness and the truth was written there.
His track still lay across the floor and the smell of dust was a sharpness in the air. The radium bulb glowed above the panel and the switch and wheel and dials were waiting, waiting against the day when there would be need of them.
Webster stood in the doorway, smelling the dampness of the stone through the dusty bitterness.
Defence, he thought, staring at the switch. Defence – a thing to keep one out, a device to seal off a place against all the real or imagined weapons that a hypothetical enemy might bring to bear.
And undoubtedly the same defence that would keep an enemy out would keep the defended in. Not necessarily, of course, but—
He strode across the room and stood before the switch and his hand went out and grasped it, moved it slowly, and knew that it would work.
Then his arm moved quickly and the switch shot home. From far below came a low, soft hissing as machines went into action. The dial needles flickered and stood out from the pins.
Webster touched the wheel with hesitant fingertips, stirred it on its shaft and the needles flickered again and crawled across the glass. With a swift, sure hand, Webster spun the wheel and the needles slammed against the farthest pins.
He turned abruptly on his heel, marched out of the vault, closed the door behind him, climbed the crumbling steps.
Now if it only works, he thought. If it only works. His feet quickened on the steps and the blood hammered in his head.
If it only works!
He remembered the hum of machines far below as he had slammed the switch. That meant that the defence mechanism – or at least part of it – still worked.
But even if it worked, would it do the trick? What if it kept the enemy out, but failed to keep men in?
What if—
When he reached the street, he saw that the sky had changed. A grey, metallic overcast had blotted out the sun and the city lay in twilight, only half relieved by the automatic street lights. A faint breeze wafted at his cheek.
The crinkly grey ash of the burned notes and the map that he had found still lay in the fireplace and Webster strode across the room, seized the poker, stirred the ashes viciously until there was no hint of what they once had been.
Gone, he thought. The last clue gone. Without the map, without the knowledge of the city that it had taken him twenty years to ferret out, no one would ever find that hidden room with the switch and wheel and dials beneath the single lamp.
No one would know exactly what had happened. And even if one guessed, there’d be no way to make sure. And even if one were sure, there’d be nothing that could be done about it.
A thousand years before it would not have been that way. For in that day man, given the faintest hint, would have puzzled out any given problem.
But man had changed. He had lost the old knowledge and old skills. His mind had become a flaccid thing. He lived from one day to the next without any shining goal. But he still kept the old vices – the vices that had become virtues from his own viewpoint and raised him by his own bootstraps. He kept the unwavering belief that his was the only kind, the only life that mattered – the smug egoism that made him the self-appointed lord of all creation.
Running feet went past the house on the street outside and Webster swung away from the fireplace, faced the blind panes of the high and narrow windows.
I got them stirred up, he thought. Got them running now. Excited. Wondering what it’s all about. For centuries they haven’t stirred outside the city, but now that they can’t get out – they’re foaming at the mouth to do it.
His smile widened.
Maybe they’ll be so stirred up, they’ll do something about it. Rats in a trap will do some funny things – if they don’t go crazy first.
And if they do get out – well, it’s their right to do so. If they do get out, they’ve earned their right to take over once again.
He crossed the room, stood in the doorway for a moment, staring at the painting that hung above the mantel. Awkwardly, he raised his hand to it, a fumbling salute, a haggard goodbye. Then he let himself out into the street and climbed the hill – the route that Sara had walked only days before.
The Temple robots were kind and considerate, soft-footed and dignified. They took him to the place where Sara lay and showed him the next compartment that she had reserved for him.
‘You will want to choose a dream,’ said the spokesman of the robots. ‘We can show you many samples. We can blend them to your taste. We can
—’
‘Thank you,’ said Webster. ‘I do not want a dream.’
The robot nodded, understanding. ‘I see, sir. You only want to wait, to pass away the time.’
‘Yes,’ said Webster. ‘I guess you’d call it that.’
‘For about how long?’
‘How long?’
‘Yes. How long do you want to wait?’
‘Oh, I see,’ said Webster. ‘How about forever?’
‘Forever!’
‘Forever is the word, I think,’ said Webster. ‘I might have said eternity, but it doesn’t make much difference. There is no use of quibbling over two words that mean about the same.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said the robot.
No use of quibbling. No, of course, there wasn’t. For he couldn’t take the chance. He could have said a thousand years, but then he might have relented and gone down and flipped the switch.
And that was the one thing that must not happen. The dogs had to have their chance. Had to be left unhampered to try for success where the human race had failed. And so long as there was a human element they would not have that chance. For man would take over, would step in and spoil things, would laugh at the cobblies that talked behind a wall, would object to the taming and civilizing of the wild things of the earth.
A new pattern – a new way of thought and life – a new approach to the age-old social problem. And it must not be tainted by the stale breath of man’s thinking.
The dogs would sit around at night when the work was done and they would talk of man. They would spin the old, old story and tell the old, old tales and man would be a god.
And it was better that way.
For a god can do no wrong.
NOTES ON THE SEVENTH TALE
Several years ago an ancient literary fragment came to light. Apparently at one time it had been an extensive body of writing and although only a small part of it was discovered, the few tales that it contained were enough to indicate that it was a group of fables concerning the various members of the animal brotherhood. The tales are archaic and the viewpoints and manner of their telling sound strange to us to-day. A number of scholars who have studied the fragments agree with Tige that they may very well be of non-Doggish origin.
City (S.F. MASTERWORKS) Page 18