Highway of Eternity

by Clifford D. Simak

  He took a few more steps down the ramp, but still stayed on it just in case a quick retreat was called for.

  The traveler lay on the slope of a hill, just below the crest. Below was a small valley in which stood a sprawling black building, only one storey high, but with many angles and extensions, as if after its construction a number of haphazard additions had been tacked onto the original structure.

  Looking at it, with something of a shock, Horace realized it was one of the many monasteries that had been built by the Infinites. They might not, in fact, have been monasteries in the strictest sense, but people had called them that because the Infinites had looked considerably like little, hobbling monks.

  Nothing stirred in the valley. It was an empty place. Patches of grass grew here and there, and some thickets of small growth; but there were no trees, although there were some rotting stumps where there had been trees at one time.

  The sun had been behind a heavy bank of clouds. Now, as he watched, the clouds parted for a moment and the sun shone through. All along the crest of the circling hills, reaching far into the sky, was a sparkle and a twinkling, as if someone had hung the sky with glittery tinsel.

  Behind him, Timothy spoke quietly, almost matter-of-factly. “There you see,” he said, “what is left of millions of our race. Each of those little sparkles is an incorporeal human, put in place and waiting through all eternity.”

  “You can’t be sure of that,” said Horace, fighting against the horror and the beauty of it. “You have never seen an incorporeal being.”

  “I have seen our brother Henry,” said Timothy. “He is a cluster of those sparkles, a human who didn’t make it to the final phase of his incorporeality. Had he done so, he would have been one sparkle only and not the many that he is.”

  Timothy was right, Horace told himself. Timothy was always, and irritatingly, right.

  “If I read the dial correctly,” said Timothy, “we are far into the future, some fifty thousand years beyond that time when we fled into the past.”

  “So the Infinites won,” said Horace. “So this is the end of it. We humans didn’t stop them.”

  Emma spoke to them from the doorway. “You two down there get out of the way. Spike is coming out. There isn’t room for all of you.”

  Horace looked quickly over his shoulder. Spike, looking more than ever like a revolving porcupine, already was rolling down the ramp. Horace stepped quickly to the ground and over to one side of the ramp, Timothy moving with him. Spike started rolling down the hill.

  “He’ll get down there and stir up trouble,” said Horace. “He always was a troublemaker. The Infinites in the monastery haven’t seen us yet.”

  “We don’t know if they have or not,” said Timothy. “There may be no Infinites. From the evidence up there on the hill they have done their job and left. This probably is only one array of the incorporeals. Throughout the world there may be many others.”

  Emma came down the ramp to join them. “We waited too long,” she said. “We should have left before. Then we could have picked our time and place and not gone off so frantically, not knowing where we’d end.”

  “I am going back,” said Timothy, “as soon as I am able. I made a mistake in coming along with you. There are all my books and notes and …”

  “I notice,” Horace told him, coldly, “that you didn’t linger in your going. You damn near ran over me. You were scared out of your britches.”

  “Not really. Perhaps only slightly apprehensive. An automatic defensive mechanism, that is all it was.”

  “We never did get around to burying Gahan,” said Emma. “That’s a shameful thing. We just left him lying there, all wrapped up in canvas on his bier and the grave still open.”

  Spike had reached the foot of the hill and was rolling steadily across the plain toward the monastery.

  A few fleecy clouds had moved over the sun. The brilliant glitter of the crystal latticework that crowned the hills and soared into the sky glimmered less brightly.

  Timothy looked up at them speculatively. “Just motes of thought,” he said. “Dust-size philosophers. Tiny theoreticians generating dreams of greatness. No physical functions to consider, only the fine-tuned workings of the human mind …”

  “Oh, shut up!” yelled Horace.

  Something crunched on the hill above them and a loosened pebble went bouncing down the slope. All three turned toward the direction of the disturbance. A robot was coming down the hill toward them. His metal body shone dully in the weak sunlight, and he had an axe slung across one shoulder.

  He raised a hand in salute to them. “Welcome, human ones,” he said in a deep voice. “It has been long since we have seen one of you.”

  “We?” asked Horace. “Then you are not alone.”

  The robot came down the slope to a position where he was slightly downhill from them and swung around to face them.

  “There are many of us,” the robot told them. “Word is spread of you and there are others coming, thankful for the sight of you.”

  “Then there are no humans here?”

  “A few, but only a few,” the robot said. “Scattered very widely, hiding out. A small band here, another there, not too many of them. There are too many of us now. Very few of us have humans we can serve.”

  “So how do you pass your time?” asked Horace.

  “We chop down trees,” the robot told him. “We chop down all we can. But there are too many trees; we cannot chop them all.”

  “I do not understand,” said Timothy. “Once you chop them down, what do you do with them?”

  “We roll them all together and set fire to them once they are dry enough to burn. We destroy them.”

  Another robot came clumping down the hill and ranged himself alongside the first. He took his axe off his shoulder and, placing its head upon the ground, leaned upon the handle.

  He started off as if it had been he, and not the first robot, who had finished talking. “The labor is arduous,” he said, “because we have none of the marvelous labor-saving mechanisms you humans once devised. At one time, there were robots with technical knowledge, but now they all are gone. Once the humans retreated to the simple life to cultivate their minds, there was no need of them. All the humans needed then were very simple robots—gardeners, cooks, and others of that ilk. Those were the ones who were left, as the humans began to disappear.”

  Other robots were streaming down the slope, each one carrying a tool. They came singly and in twos and threes, and all of them grouped themselves behind the two who stood facing the humans.

  “But tell me,” said Timothy, “why this selfless devotion to the destruction of trees? You make no use of them once you cut them down. Surely you have no reasonable quarrel with trees.”

  “They are the enemy,” said the first robot. “We fight against them for our rights.”

  “You mouth madness,” Horace shouted. “How can simple, unassuming trees be enemies of yours?”

  “You must surely know,” said the second robot, “that once all men are gone—and now they’re almost gone—trees will supersede them as the dominant race of Earth.”

  “I have heard some talk of it,” Timothy told the assembled robots. “Loose and speculative talk. I never paid it much attention, although our sister, Enid, thought it a splendid idea. She feels that, as a dominant race, trees would not be aggressive and would do little meddling with other forms of life.”

  “It’s all blathering,” yelled Horace. “Enid is noted for her fuzzy thinking. Why, a tree has no sense—no sense at all. It can’t do anything. It stands there and grows and that is all it does. After a time, it falls down and rots, and that is the end of it.”

  “There are certain fairy stories,” Emma said, speaking in her most timid voice, which was very timid.

  “Fairy stories are nonsense,” yelled Horace. “All of this is nonsense. No one but a stupid robot would believe it.”

  “We are not stupid, sir,” said the second rob
ot.

  “I suppose,” said Timothy, “that your animosity toward the trees is occasioned by the belief that you should be the ones to supersede the humans.”

  “Why, yes, of course,” said the first robot. “That is exactly what we think. It stands to reason we are the ones who should take the humans’ place. We are an extension of the race. We were made in the image of the race. We think the thoughts of humans and our behavior is patterned after humans. We are the heirs of humans and are being cheated of our heritage.”

  Emma said, “Spike is coming back. And there is something with him.”

  “I don’t see him,” Horace said.

  “They’re coming around the far corner of the monastery. The thing with Spike is bigger than he is. He’s bobbing along behind it. They are heading this way.”

  Horace squinted his eyes and finally he made out the two of them. He recognized Spike immediately from his erratic, bounding progress, but for a time he could not make out what the other was. Then something flashed in the weak rays of the sun and there was no doubt at all. Even from as far away as he stood, he could see the spider web and the single gleaming eye.

  Emma said, “It is a killer monster. Spike is playing with a killer monster. He plays with everything.”

  “He is not playing with it,” said Horace, choking with a sudden wrath. “He’s herding it. He’s driving it to us.”

  Down the slope from him, there now were fewer robots, he noted, than there had been before. Even as he watched them, they continued to dribble away, leaving by ones and twos and threes, not seemingly in any hurry, but simply walking off, going up the hill.

  He asked Timothy, “What kinds of guns did you put in the traveler?”

  “I put in no guns,” Timothy told him. “You attended to that detail. You raided my gun collection without a word to me. You simply grabbed up guns, as if they belonged to you.”

  Emma shrilled, “All the robots are leaving. They are running away. They’ll be no help to us.”

  Horace snorted. “I never thought they would. They are a weak-bellied tribe. I never counted on them.”

  He started purposefully up the ramp. “I think there was a thirty-naught-six,” he said. “Not as big a caliber as I might have liked, but if the cartridges are high-power, that should handle almost anything.”

  “The best thing we can do,” wailed Emma, “is get into the traveler and leave.”

  Timothy spoke sharply. “We can’t go without Spike. He is one of us.”

  “He’s the one,” said Emma, tartly, “who is causing all the trouble. He is always causing trouble.”

  The robots all were gone. The slope below the traveler was empty; not a one of them was left. It didn’t matter, Horace told himself after a quick look around. Even if they’d stayed, they would be no help. A flighty bunch of people.

  The monster, herded along by Spike, was closer now. The two of them had covered half the distance between the monastery and the foot of the hill.

  Horace swung about and went up the ramp into the traveler. The guns were there, as he had thought they would be, their barrels protruding from beneath the pile of blankets—a shotgun and a 30.06 rifle.

  He grabbed the 30.06 and eased back the bolt. A cartridge was seated in the breech and the magazine was loaded.

  For some little time, there had been a faint commotion somewhere outside, the soft sound of running feet and the rattle of disturbed pebbles bouncing on the hillside. Horace had been conscious of it while he had inspected the rifle, but now, suddenly, the commotion swelled and boomed. A rock that must have been larger than a pebble banged with a loud metallic clamor against the traveler. Outside the doorway Emma was yelling, although he could not make out the words.

  He spun heavily about and lunged for the doorway. From outside came not only Emma’s bellowing, but the heavy pound of many feet and the thudding sound of heavy objects being hurled against the ground.

  It could not be the killer monster being driven up the slope by that unspeakably perverse Spike, for when Horace had ducked into the traveler, the two of them still had been far out on the plain.

  As he set his feet upon the ramp, he saw a scene of milling nonsense, with what seemed to be hundreds of robots, many of them loaded down with tools or logs. Those with logs were busily engaged in carrying them to several spots, where they hurled their loads down upon the ground and, turning swiftly, fled up the hill again.

  Other robots with shovels, picks, mauls, or axes were making the dirt fly in all directions as they went to work.

  Long logs were rammed into deep holes, canted at sharp angles to the steepness of the hillside. Other logs were being shaped by flashing broadaxes into squared timbers. Augers bit into wood, driving holes for heavy wooden pegs, while other gangs of robots toiled to heave the timbers into place, forming what seemed at first glance to be senseless structures.

  Timothy said, quietly, “Do you realize that we are witnessing what amounts to the mounting of a Roman defense line? Short, flanking fortifications, with ditches dug in front of each fort, so situated as to support one another. Those other structures are catapults, designed to break up enemy attacks in force. The total defense could well be based on a classic Roman model. However, they seem to be rather overdoing it.”

  All around the line of hills that enclosed the circular valley where the monastery stood, other gangs of robots labored at their chores. Here and there, tendrils of smoke rose from campfires the robots had kindled. If the signs meant anything, this robot legion was settling in to stay.

  “I cannot believe these robots are students of Roman history,” said Timothy. “The story of the Roman Empire would be no more than a pinch of history scattered in a pile of blowing dust. But the same thinking and the same principles of engineering are as basic today as they were in very ancient times.”

  “But why?” screeched Emma. “Why are they doing this to us?”

  “Not to us, you ninny,” Horace shouted. “They are doing it for us. They are protecting us. Unnecessarily.” He shook the rifle in a clenched fist thrust above his head. “We could have protected ourselves short of their interference.”

  Out on the plain beyond the slope a small whirlwind was zigzagging, darting here and there.

  “It’s Spike and the monster,” Timothy explained. “The monster, seeing what is happening, is trying to get away, probably back to the safety of the monastery. Spike is just as determined he will drive it up the hill.”

  “It is all utter nonsense,” Horace roared. “Why should Spike want to drive the monster up to us? He knows what kind of thing it is.”

  “Spike was always insane,” Emma said. “David used to stick up for him every now and then, and Henry always had a good word for him. But to me he is just a big nothing.”

  One of the robots was climbing up the hill toward them.

  The robot came to an abrupt halt at the foot of the ramp, upon which Horace stood. He clicked his metal heels together and raised his right arm in a brisk salute. Looking straight up the ramp at Horace, he said, “The situation is secured, sir. We have it well in hand.”

  “To what situation do you refer?” asked Horace.

  “Why,” said the robot, “the Infinites. The dirty Infinites!”

  “We’re not even sure,” said Timothy, “that there are any Infinites. All we saw was the killer monster.”

  “There is the monastery, sir,” said the robot, stiffly, as if somewhat miffed by any questioning of his word. “Where there is a monastery, there are always Infinites. We’ve been watching this place for years. We have been keeping tab on it.”

  “How many Infinites have you sighted?” asked Horace.

  “Not a single one, sir. Not so far, we haven’t.”

  “How long have you been watching?”

  “Not all the time, you understand. But off and on, for two hundred years or so.”

  “In two centuries you have seen no Infinites?”

  “Yes, that is true, sir. But if
we’d been watching all the time …”

  “Oh, come off it,” Emma said. “Cut out the silly games.”

  The robot stiffened violently. “My name is Conrad,” he said, “and I am the commander of this exercise. We are doing nothing more than our primary function, the protection and the care of the human race, carrying out our duty, I might say, with precise competence and dispatch.”

  “Very fine, Conrad,” Horace said. “Please do carry on.”

  The monster and Spike had ceased their dusty waltz and stood together, neither of them stirring. The robots, so many now that the circling hill seemed to be covered with them, still were energetically building a solid defense, ringing in the central valley where the monastery stood.

  “Well, I guess there is nothing we can do about it,” said Emma. “I might as well go in and see to some food. Are either of you hungry?”

  “I am,” said Horace. He was always hungry.

  She went swiftly up the ramp and Horace came slowly down it to stand beside Timothy. “What do you make of it?” he asked.

  “I am sorry for them,” said Timothy. “They’ve been here for centuries without a human to take care of.”

  “And, suddenly, here we are,” said Horace, “dumped slap-dab in their laps.”

  “That’s about it. No humans at all, and then, all at once, three humans who seem utterly defenseless to them, and coming under threat. Part of it an imaginary threat, for it appears quite definite that there are no Infinites. But the killer monster is real enough and extremely dangerous.”

  “So they went hog wild.”

  “It’s natural that they should. Here they’ve been, out of work for years and years.”

  “They’ve not been standing idle. They cut every tree they find, they grub out stumps and tend bonfires where they burn the logs.”

  “Made work,” said Timothy. “To do it, to put any muscle into it, they must sell themselves on the belief that trees would follow humans as the planet’s dominant life force.”

  “You don’t believe that tree business, do you?”