Clifford Simak - Dusty Zebra - And Other Stories

The others slept, but Jenkins did not sleep. For robots never sleep. Two thousand years of consciousness, twenty centuries of full time unbroken by a single moment of unawareness.

A long time, thought Jenkins. A long time, even for a robot. For even before man had gone to Jupiter most of the older robots had been deactivated, had been sent to their death in favor of the newer models. The newer models that looked more like men, that were smoother and more sightly, with better speech and quicker responses within their metal brains.

But Jenkins had stayed on because he was an old and faithful servant, because Webster House would not have been home without him.

“They loved me,” said Jenkins to himself. And the three words held deep comfort—comfort in a world where there was little comfort, a world where a servant had become a leader and longed to be a servant once again.

He stood at the window and stared out across the patio to the night-dark clumps of oaks that staggered down the hill. Darkness. No light anywhere. There had been a time when there had been lights. Windows that shone like friendly beams in the vast land that lay across the river.

But man had gone and there were no lights. The robots needed no lights, for they could see in darkness, even as Jenkins could have seen, had he but chosen to do so. And the castles of the mutants were as dark by night as they were fearsome by day.

Now man had come again, one man. Had come, but he probably wouldn’t stay. He’d sleep for a few nights in the great master bedroom on the second floor, then go back to Geneva. He’d walk the old forgotten acres and stare across the river and rummage through the books that lined the study wall, then he would up and leave.

Jenkins swung around. Ought to see how he is, he thought. Ought to find if he needs anything. Maybe take him up a drink, although I’m afraid the whisky is all spoiled. A thousand years is a long time for a bottle of good whisky.

He moved across the room and a warm peace came upon him, the close and intimate peacefulness of the old days when he had trotted, happy as a terrier, on his many errands.

He hummed a snatch of tune in minor key as he headed for the stairway´.

He’d just look in and if Jon Webster were asleep, he’d leave, but if he wasn’t, he’d say: “Are you comfortable, sir? Is there anything you wish? A hot toddy, perhaps?”

And he took two stairs at the time.

For he was doing for a Webster once again.

Jon Webster lay propped in bed, with the pillows piled behind him. The bed was hard and uncomfortable and the room was close and stuffy—not like his own bedroom back in Geneva, where one lay on the grassy bank of a murmuring stream and stared at the artificial stars that glittered in an artificial sky. And smelled the artificial scent of artificial lilacs that would go on blooming longer than a man would live. No murmur of a hidden waterfall, no flickering of captive fireflies—but a bed and room that were functional.

Webster spread his hands flat on his blanket-covered thighs and flexed his fingers, thinking.

Ebenezer had merely touched the warts and the warts were gone. And it had been no happenstance—it had been intentional. It had been no miracle, but a conscious power. For miracles sometimes fail to happen, and Ebenezer had been sure.

A power, perhaps, that had been gathered from the room beyond, a power that had been stolen from the cobblies Ebenezer listened to.

A laying-on of hands, a power of healing that involved no drugs, no surgery, but just a certain knowledge, a very special knowledge.

In the old dark ages, certain men had claimed the power to make warts disappear, had bought them for a penny, or had traded them for something or had performed other mumbo-jumbo—and in due time, sometimes, the warts would disappear.

Had these queer men listened to the cobblies, too?

The door creaked just a little and Webster straightened suddenly.

A voice came out of the darkness: “Are you comfortable, sir? Is there anything you wish?”

“Jenkins?” asked Webster.

“Yes, sir,” said Jenkins.

The dark form padded softly through the door.

“Yes, there’s something I want,” said Webster. “I want to talk to you.”

He stared at the dark, metallic figure that stood beside the bed.

“About the dogs,” said Webster.

“They try so hard,” said Jenkins. “And it’s hard for them. For they have no one, you see. Not a single soul.”

“They have you.”

Jenkins shook his head. “But I’m not enough, you see. I’m just… well, just a sort of mentor. It is men they want. The need of men is ingrown in them. For thousands of years it has been man and dog. Man and dog, hunting together. Man and dog, watching the herds together. Man and dog, fighting their enemies together. The dog watching while the man slept and the man dividing the last bit of food, going hungry himself so that his dog might eat.”

Webster nodded. “Yes, I suppose that is the way it is.”

“They talk about men every night,” said Jenkins, “before they go to bed. They sit around together and one of the old ones tells one of the stories that have been handed down and they sit and wonder, sit and hope.”

“But where are they going? What are they trying to do? Have they got a plan?”

“I can detect one,” said Jenkins. “Just a faint glimmer of what may happen. They are psychic, you see. Always have been. They have no mechanical sense, which is understandable, for they have no hands. Where man would follow metal, the dogs will follow ghosts.”

“Ghosts?”

“The things you men call ghosts. But they aren’t ghosts. I’m sure of that. They’re something in the next room. Some other form of life on another plane.”

“You mean there may be many planes of life coexisting simultaneously upon Earth?”

Jenkins nodded. “I’m beginning to believe so, sir. I have a notebook full of things the dogs have heard and seen and now, after all these many years, they begin to make a pattern.”

He hurried on. “I may be mistaken, sir. You understand I have no training. I was just a servant in the old days, sir. I tried to pick up things after… after Jupiter, but it was hard for me. Another robot helped me make the first little robots for the dogs and now the little ones produce their own kind in the workshop when there is need of more.”

“But the dogs—they just sit and listen.”

“Oh, no, sir, they do many other things. They try to make friends with the animals and they watch the wild robots and the mutants—”

“These wild robots? There are many of them?”

Jenkins nodded. “Many, sir. Scattered all over the world in little camps. The ones that were left behind, sir. The ones man had no further use for when he went to Jupiter. They have banded together and they work—”

“Work. What at?”

“I don’t know, sir. Building machines, mostly. Mechanical, you know. I wonder what they’ll do with all the machines they have. What they plan to use them for.”

“So do I,” said Webster.

And he stared into the darkness and wondered—wondered how man, cooped up in Geneva, should have lost touch with the world. How man should not have known about what the dogs were doing, about the little camps of busy robots, about the castles of the feared and hated mutants.

We lost touch, Webster thought. We locked the world outside. We created ourselves a little niche and we huddled in it—in the last city in the world. And we didn’t know what was happening outside the city—we could have known, we should have known, but we didn’t care.

It’s time, he thought, that we took a hand again.