Webster chuckled in his brain. ‘What is it, Jenkins?’
‘It’s about ants,’ said Jenkins. ‘Ants used to trouble men. What did you do about it?’
‘Why, we poisoned them,’ said Webster.
Jenkins gasped. ‘Poisoned them!’
‘Yes,’ said Webster. ‘A very simple thing. We used a base of syrup, sweet, to attract the ants. And we put poison in it, a poison that was deadly to ants. But we did not put in enough of it to kill them right away. A slow poison, you see, so they would have time to carry it to the nest. That way we killed many instead of just two or three.’
Silence hummed in Webster’s head . . . the silence of no thought, no words.
‘Jenkins,’ he said. ‘Jenkins, are you . . .’
‘Yes, Jon Webster, I am here.’
‘That is all you want?’
‘That is all I want.’
‘I can go to sleep again.’
‘Yes, Jon Webster. Go to sleep again.’
Jenkins stood upon the hilltop and felt the first rough forerunning wind of winter whine across the land. Below him the slope that ran down to the river was etched in black and grey with the leafless skeletons of trees.
To the north-east rose the shadow-shape, the cloud of evil omen that was called the Building. A growing thing spawned in the mind of ants, built for what purpose and to what end no thing but an ant could even closely guess.
But there was a way to deal with ants.
The human way.
The way Jon Webster had told him after ten thousand years of sleep. A simple way and a fundamental way, a brutal, but efficient way. You took some syrup, sweet, so the ants would like it, and you put some poison in it . . . slow poison so it wouldn’t work too fast.
The simple way of poison, Jenkins said. The very simple way.
Except it called for chemistry and the Dogs knew no chemistry.
Except it called for killing and there was no killing.
Not even fleas, and the Dogs were pestered plenty by the fleas. Not even ants . . . and the ants threatened to dispossess the animals of the world they called their birthplace.
There had been no killing for five thousand years or more. The idea of killing had been swept from the minds of things.
And it is better that way, Jenkins told himself. Better that one should lose a world than go back to killing.
He turned slowly and went down the hill.
Homer would be disappointed, he told himself.
Terribly disappointed when he found the websters had no way of dealing with the ants . . .
IX
Epilog
When Harry Harrison suggested I write a final CITY story for this memorial volume (Astounding: The John W. Campbell Memorial Anthology), I found myself instinctively shying away from it. Over the years a writer’s perspectives and viewpoints shift and his techniques change. I was fairly certain that in the thirty years since the tales were written I probably had traded for other writing tools the tools that I had used to give them the texture that served to distinguish them from my other work. Yet I realized that if I were to write a story for this book it should be a CITY story, for those stories were more deeply rooted in the old Astounding era than anything I had ever done.
The eight previous stories, with one exception, were published in John Campbell’s Astounding, and told the story of the Webster family, the Webster robots and dogs. The tales recounted the breakdown of the city, the development of the Dog civilization by the Websters, the launching of the Ant society by the mad mutant, Joe. Finally, in order not to interfere with the culture being developed by the Dogs, the Websters left their old ancestral home. Staying behind, however, was the ancient robot, Jenkins, who served as mentor for the Dogs until they too went to one of the alternate Earths when the Ants began taking over.
The other stories recorded the saga of the Websters and the Dogs. This final tale is Jenkins’ story. It also is the last story I shall ever write for John. It is my hope it can stand as a small tribute to a man who deserves a much larger one and who was a greater friend to all of us than we may have known.
CLIFFORD D. SIMAK
Things happened all at once on that single day, although what day it might have been is not known, for Jenkins . . .
As Jenkins walked across the meadow, the Wall came tumbling down . . .
Jenkins sat on the patio of Webster House and remembered that long-gone day when the man from Geneva had come back to Webster House and had told a little Dog that Jenkins was a Webster, too. And that, Jenkins told himself, had been a day of pride for him . . .
Jenkins walked across the meadow to commune with the little meadow mice, to become one with them and run for a time with them in the tunnels they had constructed in the grass. Although there was not much satisfaction in it. The mice were stupid things, unknowing and uncaring, but there was a certain warmth to them, a quiet sort of security and well being since they lived quite alone in the meadow world and there was no danger and no threat. There was nothing left to threaten them. They were all there were, aside from certain insects and worms that were fodder for the mice.
In time past, Jenkins recalled, he had often wondered why the mice had stayed behind when all the other animals had gone to join the Dogs in one of the cobbly worlds. They could have gone, of course. The Dogs could have taken them, but there had been no wish in them to go. Perhaps they had been satisfied with where they were; perhaps they had a sense of home too strong to let them go.
The mice and I, thought Jenkins. For he could have gone as well. He could go even now if he wished to go. He could have gone at any time at all. But like the mice, he had not gone, but stayed. He could not leave Webster House. Without it, he was only half a being.
So he had stayed and Webster House still stood. Although it would not have stood, he told himself, if it had not been for him. He had kept it clean and neat; he had patched it up. When a stone began to crumble he had quarried and shaped another and had carefully replaced it and while it may for a while have seemed new and alien to the house, time took care of that – the wind and sun and weather and the creeping moss and lichens.
He had cut the lawn and tended the shrubs and flower beds. The hedges he’d kept trimmed. The woodwork and the furniture well dusted, the floors and panelling well scrubbed – the house still stood. Good enough, he told himself with some satisfaction, to house a Webster if one ever should show up. Although there was no hope of that. The Websters who had gone to Jupiter were no longer Websters and those at Geneva still were sleeping if, in fact, Geneva and the Websters in it existed any longer.
For the Ants now held the world. They had made of the world one building, or so he had presumed, although he could not really know. But so far as he did know, so far as his robotic senses reached (and they reached far), there was nothing but the great senseless building that the Ants had built. Although to call it senseless, he reminded himself, was not entirely fair. There was no way of knowing what purpose it might serve. There was no way one might guess what purpose the Ants might have in mind.
The Ants had enclosed the world, but had stopped short of Webster House and why they had done that there was no hint at all. They had built around it, making Webster House and its adjoining acres a sort of open courtyard within the confines of the building – a five mile circle centered on the hill where Webster House still stood.
Jenkins walked across the meadow in the autumn sunshine, being very careful where he placed his feet for fear of harming mice. Except for the mice, he thought, he was alone, and he might almost as well have been alone, for the mice were little help. The Websters were gone and the Dogs and other animals. The robots gone as well, some of them long since having disappeared into the Ants’ building to help the Ants carry out their project, the others blasting for the stars. By this time, Jenkins thought, they should have gotten where they were headed for. They all had been long gone and now he wondered, for the first time in many ages, how long it might have
been. He found he did not know and now would never know, for there had been that far-past moment when he had wiped utterly from his mind any sense of time. Deliberately he had decided that he no longer would take account of time, for as the world then stood, time was meaningless. Only later had he understood that what he’d really sought had been forgetfulness. But he had been wrong. It had not brought forgetfulness; he still remembered, but in scrambled and haphazard sequences.
He and the mice, he thought. And the Ants, of course. But the Ants did not really count, for he had no contact with them. Despite the sharpened senses and the new sensory abilities built into his birthday body (now no longer new) that had been given by the Dogs so long ago, he never had been able to penetrate the walls of the Ants’ great building to find out what might be going on in there. Not that he hadn’t tried.
Walking across the meadow, he remembered the day when the last of the Dogs had left. They bad stayed much longer than loyalty and common decency had demanded, and although he had scolded them mildly for it, it still kindled a warm glow within him when he remembered it.
He had been sitting in the sun, on the patio, when they had come trailing up the hill and ranged themselves before him like a gang of naughty boys.
‘We are leaving, Jenkins,’ the foremost one of them had said. ‘Our world is growing smaller. There is no longer room to run.’
He had nodded at them, for he’d long expected it. He had wondered why it had not happened sooner.
‘And you, Jenkins?’ asked the foremost Dog.
Jenkins shook his head. ‘I must stay,’ he’d said. ‘This is my place. I must stay here with the Websters.’
‘But there are no Websters here.’
‘Yes, there are,’ said Jenkins. ‘Not to you, perhaps. But to me. For me they still live in the very stone of Webster House. They live in the trees and the sweep of hill. This is the roof that sheltered them; this is the land they walked upon. They can never go away.’
He knew how foolish it must sound, but the Dogs did not seem to think that it was foolish. They seemed to understand. It had been many centuries, but they still seemed to understand.
He had said the Websters still were there and at the time they had been. But, he wondered, as he walked the meadow, if now they still were there. How long had it been since he had heard footsteps going down a stairs? How long since there had been voices in the great, fireplaced living-room and when he’d looked, there’d been no one there?’
And now, as Jenkins walked in the autumn sunshine, a great crack suddenly appeared in the outer wall of the Ants’ building, a mile or two away. The crack grew, snaking downward from the top in a jagged line, spreading as it grew, and with smaller cracks moving out from it. Pieces of the material of which the wall was fashioned broke out along the crack and came crashing to the ground, rolling and bouncing in the meadow. Then, all at once, the wall on both sides of the crack seemed to come unstuck and came tumbling down. A cloud of dust rose into the air and Jenkins stood there, looking at the great hole in the wall.
Beyond the hole in the wall, the massive building rose like a circular mountain range, with peaks piercing upward here and there above the plateau of the structure.
The hole stood gaping in the wall and nothing further happened. No Ants came pouring out, no robots running frantically. It was as though, Jenkins thought, the Ants did not know, or knowing, care, as if the fact that at last their building had been breached held no significance.
Something had happenened. Jenkins told himself, with some astonishment. Finally, in this Webster world, an event had come to pass.
He moved forward, heading for the hole in the wall, not moving fast, for there seemed no need to hurry. The dust settled slowly and now and then additional chunks of the wall broke loose and fell. He came up to the broken place, and climbing the rubble, walked into the building.
The interior was not as bright as it was outdoors, but considerable light still filtered through what might be thought of as the ceiling of the building. For the building, at least in this portion of it, was not partitioned into floors, but was open to the upper reaches of the structure, a great gulf of space soaring to the topmost towers.
Once inside, Jenkins stopped in amazement, for it seemed at first glance that the building was empty. Then, he saw, that was not the case, for while the greater part of the building might be empty, the floor of it was most uneven and the unevenness, he saw, was made up of monstrous anthills, and on top of each of them stood a strange ornament made of metal that shone in the dim light coming through the ceiling. The hills were crisscrossed here and there by what appeared to be tiny roads, but all of them were out of repair and broken, parts of them wiped out by the miniature landslides that scarred the hills. Here and there, as well, were chimneys, but no smoke poured out of them, some had fallen and others were plainly out of plumb and sagging.
There was no sign of Ants.
Small aisles lay between the anthills and, walking carefully, Jenkins made his way between them, working deeper into the building. All the hills were like the first one – all of them lay dead, with their chimneys sagging and their roads wiped out and no sign of any life.
Now, finally, he made out the ornaments that stood atop each hill and for, perhaps, the first time in his life, Jenkins felt laughter shaking him. If he had ever laughed before he could not remember it, for he had been a serious and a dedicated robot. But now he stood between the dead hills and held his sides, as a laughing man might hold his sides, and let the laughter rumble through him.
For the ornament was a human foot and leg, extending midway from the thigh down through the foot, with the knee bent and the foot extended, as if it were in the process of kicking something violently.
Joe’s foot! The kicking foot of the crazy mutant, Joe!
It has been so long ago that he had forgotten it and he was a little pleased to find there had been something that he had forgotten, that he was capable of forgetting, for he had thought that he was not.
But he remembered now the almost legendary story from the far beginning, although he knew it was not legendary, but had really happened, for there had been a mutant human by the name of Joe. He wondered what had happened to such mutants. Apparently not too much. At one time there had been a few of them, perhaps too few of them, and then there had been none of them and the world had gone on as if they’d never been.
Well, not exactly as if they’d never been, for there was the Ant world and there was Joe. Joe, so the story ran, had experimented with an anthill. He had covered it with a dome and had heated it and perhaps done other things to it as well – certain things that no one knew but Joe. He had changed the ants’ environment and in some strange way had implanted in them some obscure spark of greatness, and in time they had developed an intellectual culture, if ants could be said to be capable of intelligence. Then Joe had come along and kicked the hill, shattering the dome, devastating the hill, and had walked away with that strange, high, almost insane laughter that was characteristic of him. He had destroyed the hill and turned his back upon it, not caring any longer. But he had kicked the ants to greatness. Facing adversity, they had not gone back to their old, stupid, ant-like ways, but had fought to save what they had gained. As the Ice Age of the Pleistocene had booted the human race to greatness, so had the swinging foot of the human mutant, Joe, set the ants upon their way.
Thinking this, a suddenly sobering thought came to Jenkins. How could the Ants have known? What ant or ants had sensed or seen, so long ago, the kick that had come out of nothingness? Could some ant astronomer, peering through his glass have seen it all? And that was ridiculous, for there could have been no ant astronomers. But otherwise how could they have tied up the connection between the blurred shape that had loomed, momentarily, so far above them, and the true beginning of the culture they had built?
Jenkins shook his head. Perhaps this was a thing that never would be known. But the ants, somehow, had known, and had built atop each h
ill the symbol of that mystic shape. A memorial, he wondered or a religious symbol? Or perhaps something else entirely, carrying some obscure purpose or meaning that could be conceived by nothing but an ant.
He wondered rather idly if the recognition by the ants of the true beginning of their greatness might have anything to do with their not overrunning Webster House, but he did not follow up the thought because he realized it was too nebulous to be worth the time.
He went deeper into the building, making his way along the narrow paths that lay between the hills and with his mind he searched for any sign of life, but there was none – there was no life at all, not even the feeblest, smallest flicker denoting the existence of those tiny organisms that should be swarming in the soil.
There was a silence and a nothingness that compounded into horror, but he forced himself to continue on his way, thinking that surely he would find, just a little farther on, some evidence of life. He wondered if he should shout in an attempt to attract attention, but reason told him that the ants, even were they there, would not hear a shout, and aside from that, he felt a strange reluctance to make any kind of noise. As if this were a place where one should stay small and furtive.
Everything was dead.
Even the robot that he found.
It was lying in one of the paths, propped up against a hill, and he came upon it as he came around the hill. It dangled and was limp, if it could be said that a robot could be limp, and Jenkins, at the sight of it, stood stricken in the path. There was no doubt that it was dead; he could sense no stir of life within the skull and in that moment of realization it seemed to him the world stumbled to a halt.
For robots do not die. Wear out, perhaps, or be damaged beyond possible repair, but even then the life would keep ticking in the brain. In all his life he had never heard of a robot dead and if there had been one he surely would have heard of it.
City (S.F. MASTERWORKS) Page 25
