City

by Clifford D. Simak

  Except, there wasn’t any past. No past, that was, except the figment of remembrance that flitted like a night-winged thing in the shadow of one’s mind. No past that one could reach. No pictures painted on the wall of time. No film that one could run backward and see what-once-had-been.

  Joshua got up and shook himself, sat down and scratched a flea. Ichabod sat stiffly at the table, metal fingers tapping.

  “It checks,” the robot said. “There’s nothing we can do about it. The factors check. We can’t travel in the past.”

  “No,” said Joshua.

  “But,” said Ichabod, “we know where the cobblies are.”

  “Yes,” said Joshua, “we know where the cobblies are. And maybe we can reach them. Now we know the road to take.”

  One road was open, but another road was closed. Not closed, of course, for it had never been. For there wasn’t any past, there never had been any, there wasn’t room for one. Where there should have been a past there was another world.

  Like two dogs walking in one another’s tracks. One dog steps out and another dog steps in. Like a long, endless row of ball bearings running down a groove, almost touching, but not quite. Like the links of an endless chain running on a wheel with a billion billion sprockets.

  “We’re late,” said Ichabod, glancing at the clock. “We should be getting ready to go Jenkins’ party.”

  Joshua shook himself again. “Yes, I suppose we should. It’s a great day for Jenkins, Ichabod. Think of it…seven thousand years.”

  “I’m all fixed up,” Ichabod said, proudly. “I shined myself this morning, but you need a combing. You’ve got all tangled up.”

  “Seven thousand years,” said Joshua. “I wouldn’t want to live that long.”

  Seven thousand years and seven thousand worlds stepping in one another’s tracks. Although it would be more than that. A world a day. Three hundred sixty-five times seven thousand. Or maybe a world a minute. Or maybe even one world every second. A second was a thick thing—thick enough to separate two worlds, large enough to hold two worlds. Three hundred sixty-five times seven thousand times twenty-four times sixty times sixty—

  A thick thing and a final thing. For there was no past. There was no going back. No going back to find out about the things that Jenkins talked about—the things that might be truth or twisted memory warped by seven thousand years. No going back to check up on the cloudy legends that hold about a house and a family of websters and a closed dome of nothingness that squatted in the mountains far across the sea.

  Ichabod advanced upon him with a comb and brush and Joshua winced away.

  “Ah, shucks,” said Ichabod, “I won’t hurt you any.”

  “Last time,” said Joshua, “you damn near skinned me alive. Go easy on those snags.”

  The wolf had come in, hoping for a between-meals snack, but it hadn’t been forthcoming and he was too polite to ask. So now he sat, bushy tail tucked neatly around his feet, watching Peter work with the knife upon the slender wand.

  Fatso, the squirrel, dropped from the limb of an overhanging tree, lit on Peter’s shoulder.

  “What you got?” he asked.

  “A throwing stick,” said Peter.

  “You can throw any stick you want to,” said the wolf. “You don’t need a fancy one to throw. You can pick up just any stick and throw it.”

  “This is something new,” said Peter. “Something I thought up. Something that I made. But I don’t know what it is.”

  “It hasn’t got a name?” asked Fatso.

  “Not yet,” said Peter. “I’ll have to think one up.”

  “But,” persisted the wolf, “you can throw a stick. You can throw any stick you want to.”

  “Not so far,” said Peter. “Not as hard.”

  Peter twirled the wand between his fingers, feeling the smooth roundness of it, lifted it and sighted along it to make sure that it was straight.

  “I don’t throw it with my arm,” said Peter. “I throw it with another stick and a cord.”

  He reached out and picked up the thing that leaned against the tree trunk.

  “What I can’t figure out,” said Fatso, “is what you want to throw a stick for.”

  “I don’t know,” said Peter. “It is kind of fun.”

  “You websters,” said the wolf, severely, “are funny animals. Sometimes I wonder if you have good sense.”

  “You can hit any place you aim at,” said Peter, “if your throwing stick is straight and your cord is good. You can’t just pick up any piece of wood. You have to look and look—”

  “Show me,” said Fatso.

  “Like this,” said Peter, lifting up the shaft of hickory. “It’s tough, you see. Springy. Bend it and it snaps back into shape again. I tied the two ends together with a cord and I put the throwing stick like this, one end against the string and then pull back—”

  “You said you could hit anything you wanted to,” said the wolf. “Go ahead and show us.”

  “What shall I hit?” asked Peter. “You pick it out and—”

  Fatso pointed excitedly. “That robin, sitting in the tree.”

  Swiftly Peter lifted his hands, the cord came back and the shaft to which the cord was tied bent into an arc. The throwing stick whistled in the air. The robin toppled from the branch in a shower of flying feathers. He hit the ground with a soft, dull thud and lay there on his back—tiny, helpless, clenched claws pointing at the tree-tops. Blood ran out of his beak to stain the leaf beneath his head.

  Fatso stiffened on Peter’s shoulders and the wolf was on his feet. And there was a quietness, the quietness of unstirring leaf, of floating clouds against the blue of noon.

  Horror slurred Fatso’s words “You killed him! He’s dead! You killed him!”

  Peter protested, numb with dread. “I didn’t know. I never tried to hit anything alive before. I just threw the stick at marks—”

  “But you killed him. And you should never kill.”

  “I know,” said Peter. “I know you never should. But you told me to hit him. You showed him to me. You—”

  “I never meant for you to kill him,” Fatso screamed. “I just thought you’d touch him up. Scare him. He was so fat and sassy—”

  “I told you the stick went hard.”

  The webster stood rooted to the ground.

  Far and hard, he thought. Far and hard—and fast.

  “Take it easy, pal,” said the wolf’s soft voice. “We know you didn’t mean to. It’s just among us three. We’ll never say a word.”

  Fatso leaped from Peter’s shoulder, screamed at them from the branch above. “I will,” he shrieked. “I’m going to tell Jenkins.”

  The wolf snarled at him with a sudden, red-eyed rage. “You dirty little squealer. You lousy tattletale.”

  “I will so,” yelled Fatso. “You just wait and see. I’m going to tell Jenkins.”

  He flickered up the tree and ran along a branch, leaped to another tree.

  The wolf moved swiftly.

  “Wait,” said Peter, sharply.

  “He can’t go in the trees all the way,” the wolf said, swiftly. “He’ll have to come down to the ground to get across the meadow. You don’t need to worry.”

  “No,” said Peter. “No more killings. One killing is enough.”

  “He will tell, you know.”

  Peter nodded. “Yes, I’m sure he will.”

  “I could stop him telling.”

  “Someone would see you and tell on you,” said Peter. “No, Lupus, I won’t let you do it.”

  “Then you better take it on the lam,” said Lupus. “I know a place where you could hide. They’d never find you, not in a thousand years.”

  “I couldn’t get away with it,” said Peter. “There are eyes watching in the woods. Too many eyes. They’d tell where I had gone. The day is gone when anyone can hide.”

  “I guess you’re right,” the wolf said slowly. “Yes, I guess you’re right.”

  He wheeled aroun
d and stared at the fallen robin.

  “What you say we get rid of the evidence?” he asked.

  “The evidence—”

  “Why, sure—” The wolf paced forward swiftly, lowered his head. There was a crunching sound. Lupus licked his chops and sat down, wrapped his tail around his feet.

  “You and I could get along,” he said. “Yes, sir, I have the feeling we could get along. We’re so very much alike.”

  A telltale feather fluttered on his nose.

  The body was a lulu.

  The sledge hammer couldn’t dent it and it would never rust. And it had more gadgets than you could shake a stick at.

  It was Jenkins’ birthday gift. The line of engraving on the chest said so very neatly:

  To Jenkins from the Dogs

  But I’ll never wear it, Jenkins told himself. It’s too fancy for me, too fancy for a robot that’s as old as I am. I’d feel out of place in a gaudy thing like that.

  He rocked slowly back and forth in the rocking chair, listening to the whimper of the wind in the eaves.

  They meant well. And I wouldn’t hurt them for the world. I’ll have to wear it once in a while just for the looks of things. Just to please the Dogs. Wouldn’t be right for me not to wear it when they went to so much trouble to get it made for me. But not for every day—just for my very best.

  Maybe to the Webster picnic. Would want to look my very best when I go to the picnic. It’s a great affair. A time when all the Websters in the world, all the Websters left alive, get together. And they want me with them. Ah, yes, they always want me with them. For I am a Webster robot. Yes, sir, always was and always will be.

  He let his head sink and mumbled words that whispered in the room. Words that he and the room remembered. Words from long ago.

  A rocker squeaked and the sound was one with the time-stained room. One with the wind along the eaves and the mumble of the chimney’s throat.

  Fire, thought Jenkins. It’s been a long time since we’ve had a fire. Men used to like a fire. They used to like to sit in front of it and look into it and build pictures in the flames. And dream—

  But the dreams of men, said Jenkins, talking to himself—the dreams of men are gone. They’ve gone to Jupiter and they’re buried at Geneva and they sprout again, very feebly, in the Websters of today.

  The past, he said. The past is too much with me. And the past has made me useless. I have too much to remember—so much to remember that it becomes more important than the things there are to do. I’m living in the past and that is no way to live.

  For Joshua says there is no past and Joshua should know. Of all the Dogs, he’s the one to know. For he tried hard enough to find a past to travel in, to travel back in time and check up on the things I told him. He thinks my mind is failing and that I spin old robot tales, half-truth, half-fantasy, touched up for the telling.

  He wouldn’t admit it for the world, but that’s what the rascal thinks. He doesn’t think I know it, but I do.

  He can’t fool me, said Jenkins, chuckling to himself. None of them can fool me. I know them from the ground up—I know what makes them tick. I helped Bruce Webster with the first of them. I heard the first word that any of them said. And if they’ve forgotten, I haven’t—not a look or word or gesture.

  Maybe it’s only natural that they should forget. They have done great things. I have let them do them with little interference and that was for the best. That was the way Jon Webster told me it should be, on that night of long ago. That was why Jon Webster did whatever he had to do to close off the city of Geneva. For it was Jon Webster. It had to be he. It could be no one else.

  He thought he was sealing off the human race to leave the earth clear for the dogs. But he forgot one thing. Oh, yes, said Jenkins, he forgot one thing. He forgot his own son and the little band of bow and arrow faddists who had gone out that morning to play at being cavemen—and cavewomen, too.

  And what they played, thought Jenkins, became a bitter fact. A fact for almost a thousand years. A fact until we found them and brought them home again. Back to the Webster House, back to where the whole thing started.

  Jenkins folded his hands in his lap and bent his head and rocked slowly to and fro. The rocker creaked and the wind raced in the eaves and a window rattled. The fireplace talked with its sooty throat, talked of other days and other folks, of other winds that blew from out the west.

  The past, thought Jenkins. It is a footless thing. A foolish thing when there is so much to do. So many problems that the Dogs have yet to meet.

  Overpopulation, for example. That’s the thing we’ve thought about and talked about too long. Too many rabbits because no wolf or fox may kill them. Too many deer because the mountain lions and the wolves must eat no venison. Too many skunks, too many mice, too many wildcats. Too many squirrels, too many porcupines, too many bear.

  Forbid the one great check of killing and you have too many lives. Control disease and succor injury with quick-moving robot medical technicians and another check is gone.

  Man took care of that, said Jenkins. Yes, men took care of that. Men killed anything that stood within their path—other men as well as animals.

  Man never thought of one great animal society, never dreamed of skunk and coon and bear going down the road of life together, planning with one another, helping one another—setting aside all natural differences.

  But the Dogs had. And the Dogs had done it.

  Like a Br’er Rabbit story, thought Jenkins. Like the childhood fantasy of a long gone age. Like the story in the Good Book about the Lion and the Lamb lying down together. Like a Walt Disney cartoon except that the cartoon never had rung true, for it was based on the philosophy of mankind.

  The door creaked open and feet were on the floor. Jenkins shifted in his chair.

  “Hello, Joshua,” he said. “Hello, Ichabod. Won’t you please come in? I was just sitting here and thinking.”

  “We were passing by,” said Joshua, “and we saw a light.”

  “I was thinking about the lights,” said Jenkins, nodding soberly. “I was thinking about the night five thousand years ago. Jon Webster had come out from Geneva, the first man to come here for many hundred years. And he was upstairs in bed and all the Dogs were sleeping and I stood there by the window looking out across the river. And there were no lights. No lights at all. Just one great sweep of darkness. And I stood there, remembering the day when there had been lights and wondering if there ever would be lights again.”

  “There are lights now,” said Joshua, speaking very softly. “There are lights all over the world tonight. Even in the caves and dens.”

  “Yes, I know,” said Jenkins. “It’s even better than it was before.”

  Ichabod clumped across the floor to the shining robot body standing in the corner, reached out one hand and stroked the metal hide, almost tenderly.

  “It was very nice of the Dogs,” said Jenkins, “to give me the body. But they shouldn’t have. With a little patching here and there, the old one’s good enough.”

  “It was because we love you,” Joshua told him. “It was the smallest thing the Dogs could do. We have tried to do other things for you, but you’d never let us do them. We wish that you would let us build you a new house, brand new, with all the latest things.”

  Jenkins shook his head. “It wouldn’t be any use, because I couldn’t live there. You see, this place is home. It has always been my home. Keep it patched up like my body and I’ll be happy in it.”

  “But you’re all alone.”

  “No, I’m not,” said Jenkins. “The house is simply crowded.”

  “Crowded?” asked Joshua.

  “People that I used to know,” said Jenkins.

  “Gosh,” said Ichabod, “what a body! I wish I could try it on.”

  “Ichabod!” yelled Joshua. “You come back here. Keep your hands off that body—”

  “Let the youngster go,” said Jenkins. “If he comes over here some time when I’m not
busy—”

  “No,” said Joshua.

  A branch scraped against the eave and tapped with tiny fingers along the windowpane. A shingle rattled and the wind marched across the roof with tripping, dancing feet.

  “I’m glad you stopped by,” said Jenkins. “I want to talk to you.”

  He rocked back and forth and one of the rockers creaked.

  “I won’t last forever,” Jenkins said. “Seven thousand years is longer than I had a right to expect to hang together.”

  “With the new body,” said Joshua, “you’ll be good for three times seven thousand more.”

  Jenkins shook his head. “It’s not the body I’m thinking of. It’s the brain. It’s mechanical, you see. It was made well, made to last a long time, but not to last forever. Sometime something will go wrong and the brain will quit.”

  The rocker creaked in the silent room.

  “That will be death,” said Jenkins. “That will be the end of me.

  “And that’s all right. That’s the way it should be. For I’m no longer any use. Once there was a time when I was needed.”

  “We will always need you,” Joshua said softly. “We couldn’t get along without you.”

  But Jenkins went on, as if he had not heard him.

  “I want to tell you about the Websters. I want to talk about them. I want you to understand.”

  “I will try to understand,” said Joshua.

  “You Dogs call them websters and that’s all right,” said Jenkins. “It doesn’t matter what you call them, just so you know what they are.”

  “Sometimes,” said Joshua, “you call them men and sometimes you call them websters. I don’t understand.”

  “They were men,” said Jenkins, “and they ruled the earth. There was one family of them that went by the name of Webster. And they were the ones who did this great thing for you.”

  “What great thing?”

  Jenkins hitched the chair around and held it steady.

  “I am forgetful,” he mumbled. “I forget so easily. And I get mixed up.”

  “You were talking about a great thing the websters did for us.”