With a booming crash that went echoing around the horizon, another section of the roof fell.
What would an ant strive for, Jenkins wondered. A maintenance of security, and what else? Hoarding, perhaps. Grubbing from the earth everything of value and storing it away against another day. That in itself, he realized, would be no more than another facet to the fetish of security. A religion of some sort, perhaps—the symbols of the kicking foot that stood atop the hills could have been religious. And again security. Security for the souls of ants. The conquest of space? And perhaps the ants had conquered space, Jenkins told himself. For a creature the size of an ant the world itself must have appeared to be a quite sufficient galaxy. Conquering one galaxy with no idea that an even greater galaxy lay beyond. And even the conquering of a galaxy might be another sort of security.
It was all wrong, Jenkins realized. He was attributing to ants the human mental process, and there might be more to it than that. There might lie in the minds of ants a certain ferment, a strange direction, an unknown ethical equation which had never been a part, or could never be a part, of the minds of men.
Thinking this, he realized with horror that in building a picture of an ant he’d built the picture of a human.
He found a chair and sat down quietly to gaze across the meadow to the place where the building of the ants still was falling in upon itself.
But Man, Jenkins remembered, had left something behind him. He had left the Dogs and robots. What, if anything, had the ants left? Nothing, certainly, that was apparent, but how was he to know?
A man could not know, Jenkins told himself, and neither could a robot, for a robot was a man, not blood and flesh as was a man, but in every other way. The ants had built their society in the Jurassic or before and had existed within its structure for millions of years, and perhaps that was the reason they had failed—the society of the hill was so firmly embedded in them they could not break away from it.
And I? he asked himself. How about me? I am embedded as deeply in man’s social structure as any ant in hers. For less than a million years, but for a long, long time, he had lived in, not the structure of man’s society, but in the memory of that structure. He had lived in it, he realized, because it had offered him the security of an ancient memory.
He sat quietly, but stricken at the thought—or at least at the fact that he could allow the thought.
“We never know,” he said aloud. “We never know ourselves.”
He leaned far back in the chair and thought how unrobot-like it was to be sitting in a chair. He never used to sit. It was the man in him, he thought. He allowed his head to settle back against the rest and let his optic filters down, shutting out the light. To sleep, he wondered—what would sleep be like? Perhaps the robot he had found beside the hill—but no, the robot had been dead, not sleeping. Everything was wrong, he told himself. Robots neither sleep nor die.
Sounds came to him. The building still was breaking up, and out in the meadow the autumn breeze was rustling the grasses. He strained a little to hear the mice running in their tunnels, but for once the mice were quiet. They were crouching, waiting. He could sense their waiting. They knew somehow, he thought, that there was something wrong.
And another sound, a whisper, a sound he’d never heard before, an entirely alien sound.
He snapped his filters open and sat erect abruptly, and out in front of him he saw the ship landing in the meadow.
The mice were running now, frightened, running for their lives, and the ship came to rest like floating thistledown, settling in the grass.
Jenkins leaped to his feet and stabbed his senses out, but his probing stopped at the surface of the ship. He could no more probe beyond it than he could the building of the ants before it came tumbling down.
He stood on the patio, utterly confused by this unexpected thing. And well he might be, he thought, for until this day there had been no unexpected happenings. The days had all run together, the days, the years, the centuries, so like one another there was no telling them apart. Time had flowed like a mighty river, with no sudden spurts. And now, today, the building had come tumbling down and a ship had landed.
A hatch came open in the ship and a ladder was run out. A robot climbed down the ladder and came striding up the meadow toward Webster House. He stopped at the edge of the patio, “Hello, Jenkins,” he said. “I thought we’d find you here.”
“You’re Andrew, aren’t you?”
Andrew chuckled at him. “So you remember me.”
“I remember everything,” said Jenkins. “You were the last to go. You and two others finished up the final ship, and then you left the Earth. I stood and watched you go. What have you found out there?”
“You used to call us wild robots,” Andrew said. “I guess you thought we were. You thought that we were crazy.”
“Unconventional,” said Jenkins.
“What is conventional?” asked Andrew. “Living in a dream? Living for a memory? you must be weary of it.”
“Not weary …” said Jenkins, his voice trailing off. He began again. “Andrew, the ants have failed. They’re dead. Their building’s falling down.”
“So much for Joe,” said Andrew. “So much for Earth. There is nothing left.”
“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 as 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 corner, 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.
About the Author
CLIFFORD D. SIMAK, during his fifty-five year career, produced some of the most iconic science fiction stories ever written. Born in 1904 on a farm in southwestern Wisconsin, Simak got a job at a small-town newspaper in 1929 and eventually became news editor of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, writing fiction in his spare time.
Simak was best known for the book City, a reaction to the horrors of World War II, and for his novel Way Station. In 1953 City was awarded the International Fantasy Award, and in following years, Simak won three Hugo Awards and a Nebula Award. In 1977 he became the third Grand Master of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and before his death in 1988, he was named one of three inaugural winners of the Horror Writers Association’s Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement.
DAVID W. WIXON was a close friend of Clifford D. Simak’s. As Simak’s health declined, Wixon, already familiar with science fiction publishing, began more and more to handle such things as his friend’s business correspondence and contract matters. Named literary executor of the estate after Simak’s death, Wixon began a long-term project to secure the rights to all of Simak’s stories and find a way to make them available to readers who, given the fifty-five-year span of Simak’s writing career, might never have gotten the chance to enjoy all of his short fiction. Along the way, Wixon also read the author’s surviving journals and rejected manuscripts, which made him uniquely able to provide Simak’s readers with interesting and thought-provoking commentary that sheds new light on the work and thought of a great writer.
About the Author
During his fifty-five-year career, Clifford D. Simak produced some of the most iconic science fiction stories ever written. Born in 1904 on a farm in southwestern Wisconsin, Simak got a job at a small-town newspaper in 1929 and eventually became news editor of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, writing fiction in his spare time.
Simak was best known for the book City, a reaction to the horrors of World War II, and for his novel Way Station. In 1953 City was awarded the International Fantasy Award, and in following years, Simak won three Hugo Awards and a Nebula Award. In 1977 he became the third Grand Master of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and before his death in 1988, he was named one of three inaugural winners of the Horror Writers Association’s Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this book or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
These are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Grotto of the Dancing Deer and Other Stories copyright © 1980 by Clifford D. Simak
Heritage of Stars copyright © 1977 by Clifford D. Simak
City copyright © 1952, 1980 by Clifford D. Simak
Cover design by Amanda Shaffer
ISBN: 978-1-5040-4900-9
This edition published in 2017 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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The Works of Clifford D. Simak Volume One Page 77
