City

by Clifford D. Simak

  “Yes,” said Andrew. “Yes, I suppose you would be. I suppose Jenkins kept you afraid of us. For Jenkins was a smart one. He knew that you must start afresh. He knew that you must not carry the memory of Man as a dead weight on your necks.”

  Homer sat silently.

  “And we,” the robot said, “are nothing more than the memory of Man. We do the things he did, although more scientifically, for, since we are machines, we must be scientific. More patiently than Man, because we have forever and he had a few short years.”

  Andrew drew two lines in the sand, crossed them with two other lines. He made an X in the open square in the upper left hand corner.

  “You think I’m crazy,” he said. “You think I’m talking through my hat.”

  Homer wriggled his haunches deeper into the sand.

  “I don’t know what to think,” he said. “All these years…”

  Andrew drew an O with his finger in the center square of the cross-hatch he had drawn in the sand.

  “I know,” he said. “All these years you have lived with a dream. The idea that the Dogs were the prime movers. And the facts are hard to understand, hard to reconcile. Maybe it would be just as well if you forgot what I said. Facts are painful things at times. A robot has to work with them, for they are the only things he has to work with. We can’t dream, you know. Facts are all we have.”

  “We passed fact long ago,” Homer told him. “Not that we don’t use it, for there are times we do. But we work in other ways. Intuition and cobblying and listening.”

  “You aren’t mechanical,” said Andrew. “For you, two and two are not always four, but for us it must be four, and sometimes I wonder if tradition doesn’t blind us. I wonder sometimes if two and two may not be something more or less than four.”

  They squatted in silence, watching the river, a flood of molten silver tumbled down a colored land.

  Andrew made an X in the upper right hand corner of the cross-hatch, an O in the center upper space, and X in the center lower space. With the flat of his hand, he rubbed the sand smooth.

  “I never win,” he said. “I’m too smart for myself.”

  “You were telling me about the ants,” said Homer.

  “About them not being stupid any more.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Andrew. “I was telling you about a man named Joe…”

  Jenkins strode across the hill and did not look to either left or right, for there were things he did not wish to see, things that struck too deeply into memory. There was a tree that stood where another tree had stood in another world. There was the lay of ground that had been imprinted on his brain with a billion footsteps across ten thousand years.

  The weak winter sun of afternoon flickered in the sky, flickered like a candle guttering in the wind, and when it steadied and there was no flicker it was moonlight and not sunlight at all.

  Jenkins checked his stride and swung around and the house was there…low-set against the ground, sprawled across the hill, like a sleepy young thing that clung close to mother earth.

  Jenkins took a hesitant step and as he moved his metal body glowed and sparkled in the moonlight that had been sunlight a short heartbeat ago.

  From the river valley came the sound of a night bird crying and a raccoon was whimpering in a cornfield just below the ridge.

  Jenkins took another step and prayed the house would stay…although he knew it couldn’t because it wasn’t there. For this was an empty hilltop that had never known a house. This was another world in which no house existed.

  The house remained, dark and silent, no smoke from the chimneys, no light from the windows, but with remembered lines that one could not mistake.

  Jenkins moved slowly, carefully, afraid the house would leave, afraid that he would startle it and it would disappear.

  But the house stayed put. And there were other things. The tree at the corner had been an elm and now it was an oak, as it had been before. And it was autumn moon instead of winter sun. The breeze was blowing from the west and not out of the north.

  Something happened, thought Jenkins. The thing that has been growing on me. The thing I felt and could not understand. An ability developing? Or a new sense finally reaching light? Or a power I never dreamed I had.

  A power to walk between the worlds at will. A power to go anywhere I choose by the shortest route that the twisting lines of force and happenstance can conjure up for me.

  He walked less carefully and the house still stayed, unfrightened, solid and substantial.

  He crossed the grass-grown patio and stood before the door.

  Hesitantly, he put out a hand and laid it on the latch. And the latch was there. No phantom thing, but substantial metal.

  Slowly he lifted it and the door swung in and he stepped across the threshold.

  After five thousand years, Jenkins had come home…back to Webster House.

  So there was a man named Joe. Not a webster, but a man. For a webster was a man. And the Dogs had not been first.

  Homer lay before the fire, a limp pile of fur and bone and muscle, with his paws stretched out in front of him and his head resting on his paws. Through half-closed eyes he saw the fire and shadow, felt the heat of the blazing logs reach out and fluff his fur.

  But inside his brain he saw the sand and the squatting robot and the hills with the years upon them.

  Andrew had squatted in the sand and talked, with the autumn sun shining on his shoulders…had talked of men and dogs and ants. Of a thing that had happened when Nathaniel was alive, and that was a time long gone, for Nathaniel was the first Dog.

  There had been a man named Joe…a mutant-man, a more-than-man…who had wondered about ants twelve thousand years ago. Wondered why they had progressed so far and then no farther, why they had reached the dead end of destiny.

  Hunger, perhaps, Joe had reasoned…the ever-pressing need to gather food so that they might live. Hibernation, perhaps, the stagnation of the winter sleep, the broken memory chain, the starting over once again, each year a genesis for ants.

  So, Andrew said, his bald pate gleaming in the sun, Joe had picked one hill, had set himself up as a god to change the destiny of ants. He had fed them, so that they need not strive with hunger. He had enclosed their hill in a dome of glassite and had heated it so they need not hibernate.

  And the thing had worked. The ants advanced. They fashioned carts and they smelted ore. This much one could know, for the carts were on the surface and acrid smelting smoke came from the chimneys that thrust up from the hill. What other things they did, what other things they learned, deep down in their tunnels, there was no way of knowing.

  Joe was crazy, Andrew said. Crazy…and yet, maybe not so crazy either.

  For one day he broke the dome of glassite and tore the hill asunder with his foot, then turned and walked away, not caring any more what happened to the ants.

  But the ants had cared.

  The hand that broke the dome, the foot that ripped the hill had put the ants on the road to greatness. It had made them fight…fight to keep the things they had, fight to keep the bottleneck of destiny from closing once again.

  A kick in the pants, said Andrew. A kick in the pants for ants. A kick in the right direction.

  Twelve thousand years ago a broken, trampled hill. Today a mighty building that grew with each passing year. A building that had covered a township in one short century, that would cover a hundred townships in the next. A building that would push out and take the land. Land that belonged, not to ants, but animals.

  A building…and that was not quite right, although it had been called the Building from the very start. For a building was a shelter, a place to hide from storm and cold. The ants would have no need of that, for they had their tunnels and their hills.

  Why would an ant build a place that sprawled across a township in a hundred years and yet that kept on growing? What possible use could an ant have for a place like that?

  Homer nuzzled his chin deep into his
paws, growled inside his throat.

  There was no way of knowing. For first you had to know how an ant would think. You would have to know her ambition and her goal. You would have to probe her knowledge.

  Twelve thousand years of knowledge. Twelve thousand years from a starting point that itself was unknowable.

  But one had to know. There must be a way to know.

  For, year after year, the Building would push out. A mile across, and then six miles and after that a hundred. A hundred miles and then another hundred and after that the world.

  Retreat, thought Homer. Yes, we could retreat. We could migrate to those other worlds, the worlds that follow us in the stream of time, the worlds that tread on one another’s heels. We could give the Earth to ants and there still would be space for us.

  But this is home. This is where the Dogs arose. This is where we taught the animals to talk and think and act together. This is the place where we created the Brotherhood of Beasts.

  For it does not matter who came first…the webster or the dog. This place is home. Our home as well as webster’s home. Our home as well as ants’.

  And we must stop the ants.

  There must be a way to stop them. A way to talk to them, find out what they want. A way to reason with them. Some basis for negotiation. Some agreement to be reached.

  Homer lay motionless on the hearth and listened to the whisperings that ran through the house, the soft, far-off padding of robots on their rounds of duties, the muted talk of Dogs in a room upstairs, the crackling of the flames as they ate along the log.

  A good life, said Homer, muttering to himself. A good life and we thought we were the ones who made it. Although Andrew says it wasn’t us. Andrew says we have not added one iota to the mechanical skill and mechanical logic that was our heritage…and that we have lost a lot. He spoke of chemistry and he tried to explain, but I couldn’t understand. The study of elements, he said, and things like molecules and atoms. And electronics…although he said we did certain things without the benefit of electronics more wonderfully than man could have done with all his knowledge. You might study electronics for a million years, he said, and not reach those other worlds, not even know they’re there…and we did it, we did a thing a webster could not do.

  Because we think differently than a webster does. No, it’s man, not webster.

  And our robots. Our robots are no better than the ones that were left to us by man. A minor modification here and there…an obvious modification, but no real improvement.

  Who ever would have dreamed there could be a better robot?

  A better ear of corn, yes. Or a better walnut tree. Or a wild rice that would grow a fuller head. A better way to make the yeast that substitutes for meat.

  But a better robot…why, a robot does everything we might wish that it would do. Why should it be better?

  And yet…the robots receive a call and go off to work on the Building, to build a thing that will push us off the Earth.

  We do not understand. Of course, we cannot understand. If we knew our robots better, we might understand. Understanding, we might fix it so that the robots would not receive the call, or, receiving it, would pay it no attention.

  And that, of course, would be the answer. If the robots did not work, there would be no building. For the ants, without the aid of robots, could not go on with their building.

  A flea ran along Homer’s scalp and he twitched his ear.

  Although Andrew might be wrong, he told himself. We have our legend of the rise of the Brotherhood of Beasts and the wild robots have their legend of the fall of man. At this date, who is there to tell which of the two is right?

  But Andrew’s story does tie in. There were Dogs and there were robots and when man fell they went their separate ways…although we kept some of the robots to serve as hands for us. Some robots stayed with us, but no dogs stayed with the robots.

  A late autumn fly buzzed out of a corner, bewildered in the firelight. It buzzed around Homer’s head and settled on his nose. Homer glared at it and it lifted its legs and insolently brushed its wings. Homer dabbed at it with a paw and it flew away.

  A knock came at the door.

  Homer lifted his head and blinked at the knocking sound.

  “Come in,” he finally said.

  It was the robot, Hezekiah.

  “They caught Archie,” Hezekiah said.

  “Archie?”

  “Archie, the raccoon.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Homer. “He was the one that ran away.”

  “They have him out here now,” said Hezekiah. “Do you want to see him?”

  “Send them in,” said Homer.

  Hezekiah beckoned with his finger and Archie ambled through the door. His fur was matted with burs and his tail was dragging. Behind him stalked two robot wardens.

  “He tried to steal some corn,” one of the wardens said, “and we spotted him, but he led us quite a chase.”

  Homer sat up ponderously and stared at Archie. Archie stared straight back.

  “They never would have caught me,” Archie said, “if I’d still had Rufus. Rufus was my robot and he would have warned me.”

  “And where is Rufus now?”

  “He got the call today,” said Archie, “and left me for the Building.”

  “Tell me,” said Homer. “Did anything happen to Rufus before he left? Anything unusual? Out of the ordinary?”

  “Nothing,” Archie told him, “Except that he fell into an ant hill. He was a clumsy robot. A regular stumble bum…always tripping himself, getting tangled up. He wasn’t coordinated just the way he should be. He had a screw loose some place.”

  Something black and tiny jumped off of Archie’s nose, raced along the floor. Archie’s paw went out in a lightning stroke and scooped it up.

  “You better move back a ways,” Hezekiah warned Homer. “He’s simply dripping fleas.”

  “It’s not a flea,” said Archie, puffing up in anger. “It is something else. I caught it this afternoon. It ticks and it looks like an ant, but it isn’t one.”

  The thing that ticked oozed between Archie’s claws and tumbled to the floor. It landed right side up and was off again. Archie made a stab at it, but it zigzagged out of reach. Like a flash it reached Hezekiah and streaked up his leg.

  Homer came to his feet in a sudden flash of knowledge.

  “Quick!” he shouted. “Get it! Don’t let it…”

  But the thing was gone.

  Slowly Homer sat down again. His voice was quiet now, quiet and almost deadly.

  “Wardens,” he said, “take Hezekiah into custody. Don’t leave his side, don’t let him get away. Report to me everything he does.”

  Hezekiah backed away.

  “But I haven’t done a thing.”

  “No,” said Homer, softly. “No, you haven’t yet. But you will. You’ll get the Call and you’ll try to desert us for the Building. And before we let you go, we’ll find out what it is that made you do it. What it is and how it works.”

  Homer turned around, a doggish grin wrinkling up his face.

  “And, now, Archie…”

  But there was no Archie.

  There was an open window. And there was no Archie.

  Homer stirred on his bed of hay, unwilling to awake, a growl gurgling in his throat.

  Getting old, he thought. Too many years upon me, like the years upon the hills. There was a time when I’d be out of bed at the first sound of something at the door, on my feet, with hay sticking in my fur, barking my head off to let the robots know.

  The knock came again and Homer staggered to his feet.

  “Come in,” he yelled. “Cut out the racket and come in.”

  The door opened and it was a robot, but a bigger robot than Homer had ever seen before. A gleaming robot, huge and massive, with a polished body that shone like slow fire even in the dark. And riding on the robot’s shoulder was Archie, the raccoon.

  “I am Jenkins,” said the robot. “I came
back tonight.”

  Homer gulped and sat down very slowly.

  “Jenkins,” he said. “There are stories…legends…from the long ago.”

  “No more than a legend?” Jenkins asked.

  “That’s all,” said Homer. “A legend of a robot that looked after us. Although Andrew spoke of Jenkins this afternoon as if he might have known him. And there is a story of how the Dogs gave you a body on your seven thousandth birthday and it was a marvelous body that…”

  His voice ran down…for the body of the robot that stood before him with the raccoon perched on his shoulder…that body could be none other than the birthday gift.

  “And Webster House?” asked Jenkins. “You still keep Webster House?”

  “We still keep Webster House,” said Homer. “We keep it as it is. It’s a thing we have to do.”

  “The websters?”

  “There aren’t any websters.”

  Jenkins nodded at that. His body’s hair-trigger sense had told him there were no websters. There were no webster vibrations. There was no thought of websters in the minds of things he’d touched.

  And that was as it should be.

  He came slowly across the room, soft-footed as a cat despite his mighty weight, and Homer felt him moving, felt the friendliness and kindness of the metal creature, the protectiveness of the ponderous strength within him.

  Jenkins squatted down beside him.

  “You are in trouble,” Jenkins said.

  Homer stared at him.

  “The ants,” said Jenkins. “Archie told me. Said you were troubled by the ants.”

  “I went to Webster House to hide,” said Archie. “I was scared you would hunt me down again and I thought that Webster House…”

  “Hush, Archie,” Jenkins told him. “You don’t know a thing about it. You told me that you didn’t. You just said the Dogs were having trouble with the ants.”

  He looked at Homer.

  “I suppose they are Joe’s ants,” he said.

  “So you know about Joe,” said Homer. “So there was a man called Joe.”

  Jenkins chuckled. “Yes, a troublemaker. But likeable at times. He had the devil in him.”

  Homer said: “They’re building. They get the robots to work for them and they are putting up a building.”