Clifford Simak - A Heritage of Stars

Halfway down the bluff side a voice spoke to him from the tangle of fallen trees.

"Friend," it said. Not a loud voice, but clearly spoken, pitched to reach his ear.

At the sound, he froze his stride, glanced swiftly about.

"Friend," the voice spoke again, "could you find it in your heart to succor a most unfortunate?"

A trick? Cushing wondered. He reached swiftly over his shoulder for an arrow from the quiver.

"There is no need to fear," the voice spoke again. "Even had I the wish, lam in no position to bring you any harm. lam hard pinned beneath a tree and I would be grateful for any help that you could render me.

Cushing hesitated. "Where are you?" he asked.

"To your right," the voice said. "At the edge of the fallen trees. I can see you from where I lie. Should you hunker down, you undoubtedly could glimpse me."

Cushing put the arrow aside and hunkered down, squinting into the maze of fallen branches. A face stared out at him and at the sight of it he sucked in his breath in astonishment. Such a face he had never seen before. A skull-like face, fashioned of hard planes that shone in the sunlight that filtered through the branches.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"I am Rollo, the robot."

"Rollo? A robot? You can't be a robot. There are no longer any robots."

"There is I," said Rollo. "I would not be surprised if I were the last of them."

"But if you're a robot, what are you doing here?"

"I told you, remember? I am pinned beneath a tree. A small tree, luckily, but still impossible to escape from it. My leg is caught, and free I've tried to pull it, but that's impossible. I have tried to dig the soil to release my leg by which I'm trapped, but that is impossible as well. Beneath the leg lies a ledge or rock; upon it lies the tree. I cannot squirm around to lift the tree. I've tried everything and there is nothing I can do."

Cushing bent over and ducked beneath the overhanging branches. Squirming forward, he reached the fallen robot and squatted on his heels to look at the situation.

There had been imaginative drawings of robots, he recalled, in some of the magazines he'd found in the library—robots that had been drawn before there were any actual robots. The drawings had represented great, ungainly metal men who undoubtedly would have done a lot of clanking when they walked. Rollo was nothing like them. He was a slender creature, almost spindly. His shoulders were broad and heavy and his head atop the shoulders seemed a bit too large, somewhat out of proportion, but the rest of him tapered down to a narrow waist, with a slight broadening of the hips to accommodate the sockets of the legs. The legs were trim and neat; looking at them, Cushing thought of the trim legs of a deer. One of the legs, he saw, was pinned beneath a heavy branch that had split off the mighty maple when it had struck the ground. The branch was somewhat more than a foot in diameter.

Rollo saw Cushing looking at the branch. "I could have lifted it enough to pull my leg out," he said, "but there was no way I could twist around to get a good grip on it."

"Let's see what I can do," said Cushing.

He moved forward on hands and knees, got his hands beneath the branch. He hefted it gingerly, found he could barely move it.

"Maybe I can lift it enough," he said. "I'll let you know when I'm ready to lift. Then you try to pull the leg out."

Cushing crept closer, settling his knees solidly under him, bent and got both arms around the branch.

"Now, ~ he said. Straining, he heaved up, felt the branch move slightly, heaved again.

"I'm out," said Rollo. "You didn't have to move it much." Carefully, Cushing slid his arms free, let the branch drop back into place.

Rollo was crawling around on the ground. He retrieved a leather bag from where it lay beneath a pile of leaves, scrabbled around some more and came up with an iron-tipped Spear.

"I couldn't reach them before," he said. "When the branch fell on me, they flew out of my hands."

"You all right?" asked Cushing.

"Sure, I'm all right," the robot said. He sat up, hoisted the formerly trapped foot into his lap and examined it.

"Not even dented," he said. "The metal's tough."

"Would you mind telling me how you got into this mess?"

"Not at all," said Rollo. "I was walking along when a storm came up. I wasn't worried much. A little rain won't hurt me. Then the tornado hit. I heard it coming and I tried to run. I guess what I did was run right into it. There were trees crashing all around me. The wind started to lift me, then set me down again. When I came down, I fell, sort of sprawled out. That's when I was pinned. The limb broke off and caught me. Then it was all over. The storm passed on, but I couldn't move. I thought at first it was just a small inconvenience. I was confident I could work free. But, as you see, there was no way of working free."

"How long ago did all this happen?"

"I can tell you that exactly. I kept count. Eighty-seven days. The thing I was worried about was rust. I had some bear oil in my bag

"Bear oil?"

"Sure, bear oil. First you kill a bear, then build a fire and render out his fat. Any fat will do, but bear oil is the best. Where else would you get oil except from animals? Once we used a petro-product, but there's not been any of that for centuries. Animal fat isn't good, but it serves its purpose. You have to take care of a body such as mine. You can allow no rust to get a start. The metal's fairly good, but even so, rust can get a start. The eighty-seven days were no great problem, but if you hadn't come along, I'd have been in trouble. I had it figured out that in time the wood would rot and then I could work free. But that might have taken several years. I don't know how many.

"It was a little boresome, too. The same things to look at all the time. Nothing to talk with. I had this Shivering Snake that hung around for years. Never doing anything, of course, of no use whatever, but always skittering around and sneaking up on you and then sort of backing off, as if it were playing games with you, or whatnot. But when I got pinned underneath that tree, Old Shivering disappeared and I haven't seen it since. If it d stuck around, it would have been some sort of company, something at least to watch, and I could talk to it. It never answered back, of course, but I talked to it a lot. It was something one could talk to. But once I got pinned underneath that tree, it lit out, and I haven't seen it since.

"Would you mind telling me," said Cushing, "just what is a Shivering Snake?"

"I don't know," said Rollo. "It was the only one I ever saw. I never heard of anyone ever seeing one before. Never even heard any talk of one. It was really not much of anything at all. Just a shimmer. It didn't walk or run, just shivered in the air, sparkling all the time. In the sunlight you couldn't see it sparkle very well, but in the dark it was spectacular. Not any kind of shape. No shape at all, I guess, or anything at all. Just a blob of sparkling, dancing in the air.

"You have no idea what it was or where it came from? Or why it hung out with you?"

"At times I thought it was a friend of mine," said Rollo, "and I was glad of that, for I tell you, mister, as possibly the last robot, I'm not exactly up to my hips in friends. Most people, if they saw me, would think of me as no more than an opportunity to collect another brain case. You don't happen to have any designs on my brain case, do you?"

"None at all," said Cushing.

"That is good," said Rollo, "because if you had, I'd have to warn you that if forced to, I would kill you to protect myself. Robots, in case you didn't know, were inhibited against killing anything at all, against any kind of violence. It was implanted in us. That's why there aren't any robots left. They allowed themselves to be run down and killed without the lifting of a hand to protect themselves. Either that or they hid out and caught the rust. Even when they could get hold of some lubricant to keep away the rust, the supply didn't last forever, and when it was gone, they could get no more. So they rusted and that was the end of them, except for the brain case, which could not rust. And after many years, someone came along and found the brain case and collected it.