City (S.F. MASTERWORKS)

by Clifford D. Simak

  Ebenezer stood very still and panted, red rag of a tongue lolling out, a little faint and sick at the sight before him.

  It had been such a nice rabbit!

  Feet pattered on the trail behind him and Shadow whizzed around the bush, slid to a stop alongside Ebenezer.

  The wolf flicked his glare from the dog to the pint-size robot, then back to the dog again. The yellow light of wildness slowly faded from his eyes.

  ‘You shouldn’t have done that, Wolf,’ said Ebenezer softly. ‘The rabbit knew I wouldn’t hurt him and it was all in fun. But he ran straight into you and you snapped him up.’

  ‘There’s no use talking to him,’ Shadow hissed out of the corner of his mouth. ‘He doesn’t know a word you’re saying. Next thing you know, he’ll be gulping you.’

  ‘Not with you around, he won’t,’ said Ebenezer. ‘And, anyhow, he knows me. He remembers last winter. He was one of the pack we fed.’

  The wolf paced forward slowly, step by cautious step, until less than two feet separated him from the little dog. Then, very slowly, very carefully, he laid the rabbit on the ground, nudged it forward with his nose.

  Shadow made a tiny sound that was almost a gasp. ‘He’s giving it to you!’

  ‘I know,’ said Ebenezer calmly. ‘I told you he remembered. He’s the one that had a frozen ear and Jenkins fixed it up.’

  The dog advanced a step, tail wagging, nose outstretched. The wolf stiffened momentarily, then lowered his ugly head and sniffed. For a second the two noses almost rubbed together, then the wolf stepped back.

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ urged Shadow. ‘You high-tail it down the trail and I’ll bring up the rear. If he tries anything—’

  ‘He won’t try anything,’ snapped Ebenezer. ‘He’s a friend of ours. It’s not his fault about the rabbit. He doesn’t understand. It’s the way he lives. To him a rabbit is just a piece of meat.’

  Even, he thought, as it once was for us. As it was for us before the first dog came to sit with a man before a cave-mouth fire – and for a long time after that. Even now a rabbit sometimes—

  Moving slowly, almost apologetically, the wolf reached forward, gathered up the rabbit in his gaping jaws. His tail moved – not quite a wag, but almost.

  ‘You see!’ cried Ebenezer and the wolf was gone. His feet moved and there was a blur of grey fading through the trees – a shadow drifting in the forest.

  ‘He took it back,’ fumed Shadow. ‘Why, the dirty—’

  ‘But he gave it to me,’ said Ebenezer triumphantly. ‘Only he was so hungry he couldn’t make it stick. He did something a wolf has never done before. For a moment he was more than an animal.’

  ‘Indian giver,’ snapped Shadow.

  Ebenezer shook his head. ‘He was ashamed when he took it back. You saw him wag his tail. That was explaining to me – explaining he was hungry and he needed it. Worse than I needed it.’

  The dog stared down the green aisles of the fairy forest, smelled the scent of decaying leaves, the heady perfume of hepatica and bloodrot and spidery windflower, the quick, sharp odour of the new leaf, of the woods in early spring.

  ‘Maybe some day—’ he said.

  ‘I know,’ said Ebenezer calmly. ‘I told you he remembered. He’s the one that had a frozen ear and Jenkins fixed it up.’

  The dog advanced a step, tail wagging, nose outstretched. The wolf stiffened momentarily, then lowered his ugly head and sniffed. For a second the two noses almost rubbed together, then the wolf stepped back.

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ urged Shadow. ‘You high-tail it down the trail and I’ll bring up the rear. If he tries anything—’

  ‘He won’t try anything,’ snapped Ebenezer. ‘He’s a friend of ours. It’s not his fault about the rabbit. He doesn’t understand. It’s the way he lives. To him a rabbit is just a piece of meat.’

  Even, he thought, as it once was for us. As it was for us before the first dog came to sit with a man before a cave-mouth fire – and for a long time after that. Even now a rabbit sometimes—

  Moving slowly, almost apologetically, the wolf reached forward, gathered up the rabbit in his gaping jaws. His tail moved – not quite a wag, but almost.

  ‘You see!’ cried Ebenezer and the wolf was gone. His feet moved and there was a blur of grey fading through the trees – a shadow drifting in the forest.

  ‘He took it back,’ fumed Shadow. ‘Why, the dirty—’

  ‘But he gave it to me,’ said Ebenezer triumphantly. ‘Only he was so hungry he couldn’t make it stick. He did something a wolf has never done before. For a moment he was more than an animal.’

  ‘Indian giver,’ snapped Shadow.

  Ebenezer shook his head. ‘He was ashamed when he took it back. You saw him wag his tail. That was explaining to me – explaining he was hungry and he needed it. Worse than I needed it.’

  The dog stared down the green aisles of the fairy forest, smelled the scent of decaying leaves, the heady perfume of hepatica and bloodrot and spidery windflower, the quick, sharp odour of the new leaf, of the woods in early spring.

  ‘Maybe some day—’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ said Shadow. ‘Maybe some day the wolves will be civilized, too. And the rabbits and squirrels and all the other wild things. The way you dogs go mooning around—’

  ‘It isn’t mooning,’ Ebenezer told him. ‘Dreaming, maybe. Men used to dream. They used to sit around and think up things. That’s how we happened. A man named Webster thought us up. He messed around with us. He fixed up our throats so we could talk. He rigged up contact lenses so that we could read. He—’

  ‘A lot of good it did men for all their dreaming,’ said Shadow, peevishly.

  And that, thought Ebenezer, is the solemn truth. Not many men left now. Just the mutants squatting in their towers and doing no one knows what and the little colony of real men still living in Geneva. The others, long ago, had gone to Jupiter. Had gone to Jupiter and changed themselves into things that were not human.

  Slowly, tail drooping, Ebenezer swung around, clumped slowly up the path.

  Too bad about the rabbit, he thought. It had been such a nice rabbit. It had run so well. And it really wasn’t scared. He had chased it lots of times and it knew he wouldn’t catch it.

  But even at that, Ebenezer couldn’t bring himself to blame the wolf. To a wolf a rabbit wasn’t just something that was fun to chase. For the wolf had no herds for meat and milk, no fields of grain for meal to make dog biscuits.

  ‘What I ought to do,’ grumbled the remorseless Shadow, treading at his heels, ‘is tell Jenkins that you ran out. You know that you should be listening.’

  Ebenezer did not answer, kept on trudging up the trail. For what Shadow said was true. Instead of rabbit-chasing, he should have been sitting up at Webster House listening – listening for the things that came to one – sounds and scents and awareness of something that was near. Like listening on one side of a wall to the things that were happening on the other, only they were faint and sometimes far away and hard to catch. Even harder, most times, to understand.

  It’s the animal in me, thought Ebenezer. The old flea-scratching, bone-chewing, gopher-digging dog that will not let me be – that sends me sneaking out to chase a rabbit when I should be listening, out prowling the forest when I should be reading the old books from the shelves that line the study wall.

  Too fast, he told himself. We came up too fast. Had to come up too fast.

  It took Man thousands of years to turn his grunts into the rudiments of speech. Thousands of years to discover fire and thousands more of years to invent the bow and arrow – thousands of years to learn to till the soil and harvest food, thousands of years to forsake the cave for a house he built himself.

  But in a little more than a thousand years from the day we learned to talk we were on our own – our own, that is, except for Jenkins.

  The forest thinned out into gnarled, scattered oaks that straggled up the hill, like hobbling old men
who had wandered off the path.

  The house stood on the hilltop, a huddled structure that had taken root and crouched close against the earth. So old that it was the colour of the things around it, of grass and flowers and trees, of sky and wind and weather. A house built by men who loved it and the surrounding acres even as the dogs now loved them. Built and lived in and died in by a legendary family that had left a meteoric trail across centuries of time. Men who lent their shadows to the stories that were told around the blazing fireplace of stormy nights when the wind sucked along the eaves. Stories of Bruce Webster and the first dog, Nathaniel; of a man named Grant who had given Nathaniel a word to pass along; of another man who had tried to reach the stars and of the old man who had sat waiting for him in the wheelchair on the lawn. And other stories of the ogre mutants the dogs had watched for years.

  And now the men had gone and the family was a name and the dogs carried on as Grant had told Nathaniel that far-gone day they must.

  As if you were men, as if the dog were man. Those were the words that had been handed down for ten full centuries – and at last the time had come.

  The dogs had come home when the men had gone, come from the far corners of the earth back to the place where the first dog had spoken the first word, where the first dog had read the first line of print – back to Webster House where a man, long ago, had dreamed of a dual civilization, of man and dog going down the ages, hand in paw.

  ‘We’ve done the best we could,’ said Ebenezer, almost as if he were speaking to someone. ‘We still are doing it.’

  From the other side of the hill came the tinkle of a cow bell, a burst of frantic barking. The pups were bringing in the cows for the evening milking.

  The dust of centuries lay within the vault, a grey, powdery dust that was not an alien thing, but a part of the place itself – the part that had died in the passing of the years.

  Jon Webster smelled the acrid scent of the dust cutting through the mustiness of the room, heard the silence humming like a song within his head. One dim radium bulb glowed above the panel with its switch and wheel and half a dozen dials.

  Fearful of disturbing the sleeping silence, Webster moved forward quietly, half awed by the weight of time that seemed to press down from the ceiling. He reached out a finger and touched the open switch, as if he had expected it might not be there, as if he must feel the pressure of it against his fingertip to know that it was there.

  And it was there. It and the wheel and dials, with the single light above them. And that was all. There was nothing else. In all that small, bare vault there was nothing else.

  Exactly as the old map had said that it would be.

  Jon Webster shook his head, thinking: I might have known that it would have been. The map was right. The map remembered. We were the ones that had forgotten – forgotten or never known or never cared. And he knew that more than likely it was the last that would be right. Never cared.

  Although it was probable that very few had ever known about this vault. Had never known because it was best that only a few should know. That it never had been used was no factor in its secrecy. There might have been a day—

  He stared at the panel, wondering. Slowly his hand reached out again and then he jerked it back. Better not, he told himself, better not. For the map had given no clue to the purpose of the vault, to the mechanics of the switch.

  ‘Defence,’ the map had said, and that was all.

  Defence! Of course, there would have been defence back in that day of a thousand years ago. A defence that never had been needed, but a defence that had to be there, a defence against the emergency of uncertainty. For the brotherhood of peoples even then was a shaky thing that a single word or act might have thrown out of kilter. Even after ten centuries of peace, the memory of war would have been a living thing – an ever-present possibility in the mind of the World Committee, something to be circumvented, something to be ready for.

  Webster stood stiff and straight, listening to the pulse of history beating in the room. History that had run its course and ended. History that had come to a dead end – a stream that suddenly had flowed into the backwater of a few hundred futile human lives and now was a stagnant pool unrelieved by the eddying of human struggle and achievement.

  He reached out a hand, put it flat against the masonry, felt the slimy cold, the rough crawl of dust beneath his palm.

  The foundation of empire, he thought. The sub-cellar of empire. The nethermost stone of the towering structure that soared in proud strength on the surface far above – a great building that in olden times had hummed with the business of a solar system, an empire not in the sense of conquest but an empire of orderly human relations based on mutual respect and tolerant understanding.

  A seat of human government lent an easy confidence by the psychological fact of an adequate and foolproof defence. For it would have been both adequate and foolproof, it would have had to be. The men of that day took no chances, overlooked no bets. They had come up through the hard school and they knew their way around.

  Slowly, Webster swung about, stared at the trail his feet had left across the dust. Silently, stepping carefully, following the trail he’d made, he left the vault, closed the massive door behind him and spun the lock that held its secret fast.

  Climbing the tunnelled stairs, he thought: Now I can write my history. My notes are almost complete and I know how it should go. It will be brilliant and exhaustive and it might be interesting if anyone should read it.

  But he knew that no one would. No one would take the time or care.

  For a long moment, Webster stood on the broad marble steps before his house, looking down the street. A pretty street, he told himself, the prettiest street in all Geneva, with its boulevard of trees, its carefully tended flower beds, the walks that glistened with the scrub and polish of ever-working robots.

  No one moved along the street and it wasn’t strange. The robots had finished their work early in the day and there were few people.

  From some high tree-top a bird sang and the song was one with the sun and flowers, a gladsome song that strained at the bursting throat, a song that tripped and skipped with boundless joy.

  A neat street drowsing in the sun and a great, proud city that had lost its purpose. A street that should be filled with laughing children and strolling lovers and old men resting in the sun. And a city, the last city on Earth, the only city on Earth, that should be filled with noise and business.

  A bird sang and a man stood on the steps and looked and the tulips nodded blissfully in the tiny fragrant breeze that wafted down the street.

  Webster turned to the door, fumbled it open, walked across the threshold.

  The room was hushed and solemn, cathedral-like with its stained glass windows and soft carpeting. Old wood glowed with the patina of age and silver and brass winked briefly in the light that fell from the slender windows. Over the fireplace hung a massive canvas, done in subdued colouring – a house upon a hill, a house that had grown roots and clung against the land with a jealous grip. Smoke came from the chimney, a wind-whipped, tenuous smoke that smudged across a storm-grey sky.

  Webster walked across the room and there was no sound of walking. The rugs, he thought, the rugs protect the quietness of the place. Randall wanted to do this one over, too, but I wouldn’t let him touch it and I’m glad I didn’t. A man must keep something that is old, something he can cling to, something that is a heritage and a legacy and promise.

  He reached his desk, thumbed a tumbler and the light came on above it. Slowly, he let himself into a chair, reached out for the portfolio of notes. He flipped the cover open and stared at the title page: ‘A Study of the Functional Development of the City of Geneva.’

  A brave title. Dignified and erudite. And a lot of work. Twenty years of work. Twenty years of digging among old dusty records, twenty years of reading and comparing, of evaluating the weight and words of those who had gone before, sifting and rejecting and working out th
e facts, tracing the trend not only of the city but of men. No hero worship, no legends, but facts. And facts are hard to come by.

  Something rustled. No footstep, but a rustle, a sense that someone was near. Webster twisted in his chair. A robot stood just outside the circle of the desk light.

  ‘Beg pardon, sir,’ the robot said, ‘but I was supposed to tell you. Miss Sara is waiting in the Seashore.’

  Webster started slightly. ‘Miss Sara, eh? It’s been a long time since she’s been here.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said the robot. ‘It seemed almost like old times, sir, when she walked in the door.’

  ‘Thank you, Oscar, for telling me,’ said Webster. ‘I’ll go right out. You will bring some drinks.’

  ‘She brought her own drinks, sir,’ said Oscar. ‘Something that Mr Ballentree fixed up.’

  ‘Ballentree!’ exclaimed Webster. ‘I hope it isn’t poison.’

  ‘I’ve been observing her,’ Oscar told him, ‘and she’s been drinking it and she’s still all right.’

  Webster rose from his chair, crossed the room and went down the hall. He pushed open the door and the sound of the surf came to him. He blinked in the light that shone on the hot sand beach, stretching like a straight line white to either horizon. Before him the ocean was a sun-washed blue tipped with the white of foaming waves.

  Sand gritted underneath his feet as he walked forward, eyes adjusting themselves to the blaze of sunlight.

  Sara, he saw, was sitting in one of the bright canvas chairs underneath the palm trees and beside the chair was a pastel, very ladylike jug.

  The air had a tang of salt and the wind off the water was cool in the sun-warm air.

  The woman heard him and stood up and waited for him, with her hands outstretched. He hurried forward, clasped the out-stretched hands and looked at her.

  ‘Not a minute older,’ he said. ‘As pretty as the day I saw you first.’

  She smiled at him, eyes very bright. ‘And you, Jon. A little grey around the temples. A little handsomer. That is all.’

  He laughed. ‘I’m almost sixty, Sara. Middle age is creeping up.’