City
Page 26
“There are mice,” said Jenkins. “And there is Webster House.”
He thought again of the day the Dogs had given him a brand-new body as a birthday gift. The body had been a lulu. A sledge hammer wouldn’t dent it, and it would never rust, and it was loaded with sensory equipment he had never dreamed of. He wore it even now, and it was good as new, and when he polished the chest a little, the engraving still stood out plain and clear: To Jenkins From the Dogs.
He had seen men go out to Jupiter to become something more than men, and the Websters to Geneva for an eternity of dreams, the Dogs and other animals to one of the cobbly worlds, and now, finally, the ants gone to extinction.
He was shaken to realize how much the extinction of the ants had marked him. As if someone had come along and put a final period to the written story of the Earth.
Mice, he thought. Mice and Webster House. With the ship standing in the meadow, could that be enough? He tried to think: Had the memory worn thin? Had the debt he owed been paid? Had he discharged the last ounce of devotion?
“There are worlds out there,” Andrew was saying, “and life on some of them. Even some intelligence. There is work to do.”
He couldn’t go to the cobbly world that the Dogs had settled. Long ago, at the far beginning, the Websters had gone away so the Dogs would be free to develop their culture without human interference. And he could do no less than Websters, for he was, after all, a Webster. He could not intrude upon them; he could not interfere.
He had tried forgetfulness, ignoring time, and it had not worked, for no robot could forget.
He had thought the ants had never counted. He had resented them, at times even hated them, for if it had not been for them, the Dogs would still be here. But now he knew that all life counted.
There were still the mice, but the mice were better left alone. They were the last mammals left on Earth, and there should be no interference with them. They wanted none and needed none, and they’d get along all right. They would work out their own destiny, and if their destiny be no more than remaining mice, there was nothing wrong with that.
“We were passing by,” said Andrew. “Perhaps we’ll not be passing by again.”
Two other robots had climbed out of the ship and were walking about the meadow. Another section of the wall fell, and some of the roof fell with it. From where Jenkins stood, the sound of falling was muted and seemed much farther than it was.
So Webster House was all, and Webster House was only a Symbol of the life that it once had sheltered. It was only stone and wood and metal. Its sole significance, Jenkins told himself, existed in his mind, a psychological concept that he had fashioned.
Driven into a comer, he admitted the last hard fact: He was not needed here. He was only staying for himself.
“We have room for you,” said Andrew, “and a need of you.”
So long as there had been ants, there had been no question. But now the ants were gone. And what difference did that make? He had not liked the ants.
Jenkins turned blindly and stumbled off the patio and through the door that led into the house. The walls cried out to him. And voices cried out as well from the shadow of the past. He stood and listened to them, and now a strange thing struck him. The voices were there, but he did not hear the words. Once there had been words, but now the words were gone and, in time, the voices as well? What would happen, he wondered, when the house grew quiet and lonely, when all the voices were gone and the memories faded? They were faded now, he knew. They were no longer sharp and clear; they had faded through the years.
Once there had been joy, but now there was only sadness, and it was not, he knew, alone the sadness of an empty house; it was the sadness of all else, the sadness of the Earth, the sadness of the failures and the empty triumphs.
In time the wood would rot and the metal flake away; in time the stone be dust. There would, in time, be no house at all, but only a loamy mound to mark where a house had stood.
It all came from living too long, Jenkins thought—from living too long and not being able to forget. That would be the hardest part of it; he never would forget.
He turned about and went back through the door and across the patio. Andrew was waiting for him, at the bottom of the ladder that led into the ship.
Jenkins tried to say goodbye, but he could not say goodbye. If he could only weep, he thought, but a robot could not weep.