Clifford Simak - Dusty Zebra - And Other Stories

And all the time he kept repeating to himself the line:

I tie this knot, because I’m not the final gentleman.

The Situation lobby was as brilliant as he remembered it and as silent and deserted and he headed for the door that said HARVEY on it.

He had expected that it would be locked, but it wasn’t, and he went through it and closed it carefully behind him.

He was on a narrow catwalk that ran in a circle, with the wall behind him and the railing out in front. And down in the pit circled by the catwalk was something that could be only Harvey.

…Hello, son, it said, or seemed to say, inside his brain.

Hello, son. I’m glad that you’ve come home again.

He stepped forward to the railing eagerly and leaned the maul against it and gripped the railing with both hands to stare down into the pit, enveloped in the feel of father-love that welled up from the thing that squatted in the pit—the old pipe-tweed coat-grizzled whisker love he’d forgotten long ago.

A lump came in his throat and tears smarted in his eyes and he forgot the barren street outside and all the lonely years.

The love kept welling up—the love and understanding and the faint amusement that he should have expected anything but love from an entity to which he had been tied so intimately for all of thirty years.

You did a good job, son. I am proud of you. I’m glad that you’ve come home to me again.

He leaned across the railing, yearning toward the father squatting in the pit, and one of the rails caught against the knotted shirt tail and shoved it hard against his belly.

Reflexes clicked within his brain and he said, almost automatically: I tie this knot because I’m not…

And then he was saying it consciously and with fervor, like a single chant.

I tie this knot because I’m not the final gentleman.

I tie this knot because I’m not…

He was shouting now and the sweat streamed down his face and he fought like a drunken man to push back from the railing, and still he was conscious of the father, not insistent, not demanding, but somewhat hurt and puzzled by this ingratitude.

Harrington’s hand slipped from the top rail and the fingers touched the handle of the maul and seized and closed upon it and lifted it from the floor to throw.

But even as he lifted it, the door catch snicked behind him and he swung around.

Cedric Madison stood just inside the door and his death-head face wore a look of utter calm.

“Get him off my back!” yelled Harrington. “Make him let loose of me or I will let you have it.”

And was surprised to find that he meant every word of it, that a man as mild as he could find it in his heart to kill another man without a second thought.

“All right,” said Madison, and the father-love was gone and the world stood cold and hard and empty, with just the two of them standing face to face.

“I’m sorry that this happened, Harrington. You are the first…”

“You took a chance,” said Harrington. “You tried to turn me loose. What did you expect I would do—moon around and wonder what had happened to me?”

“We’ll take you back again. It was a pleasant life. You can live it out.”

“I have no doubt you would. You and White and all the rest of—”

Madison sighed, a very patient sigh. “Leave White out of this,” he said. “The poor fool thinks that Harvey…”

He stopped what he meant to say and chuckled.

“Believe me, Harrington, it’s a slick and foolproof setup. It is even better than the oracle at Delphi.”

He was sure of himself, so sure that it sent a thrill of apprehension deep through Harrington, a sense of being trapped, of being backed into a corner from which he never could escape.

They had him cold, he thought, between the two of them—Madison in front and Harvey at his rear. Any second now Harvey would throw another punch at him and despite all that he had said, despite the maul he gripped, despite the knotted shirt tails and the silly rhyme, he had grave doubts that he could fight it off.

“I am astonished that you are surprised,” Madison was saying smoothly. “For Harvey has been in fact a father to you for all these many years, or the next thing to a father, maybe better than a father. You’ve been closer to him, day and night, than you’ve ever been to any other creature. He has watched over you and watched out for you and guided you at times and the relationship between the two of you has been more real than you can ever guess.”

“But why?” asked Harrington and he was seeking furiously for some way out of this, for some defense that might be more substantial than a knotted shirt.

“I do not know how to say this so you will believe it,” Madison told him earnestly, “but the father-feeling was no trick at all. You are closer at this moment to Harvey and perhaps even to myself than you can ever be to any other being. No one could work with you as long as Harvey worked with you without forming deep attachments. He, and I, have no thought but good for you. Won’t you let us prove it?”

Harrington remained silent, but he was wavering—even when he knew that he should not waver. For what Madison had said seemed to make some sense.

“The world,” said Madison, “is cold and merciless. It has no pity for you. You’ve not built a warm and pleasant world and now that you see it as it is no doubt you are repelled by it. There is no reason you should remain in it. We can give you back the world you’ve known. We can give you security and comfort. Surely you would be happy then. You can gain nothing by remaining as you are. There is no disloyalty to the human race in going back to this world you love. Now you can neither hurt nor harm the race. Your work is done…”

“No!” cried Harrington.

Madison shook his head. “Your race is a queer one, Harrington.”

“My race!” yelled Harrington. “You talk as if—”

“There is greatness in you,” said Madison, “but you must be pushed to bring it out. You must be cheered and coddled, you must be placed in danger, you must be given problems. You are like so many children. It is my duty, Harrington, my sworn, solemn duty to bring out the greatness in you. And I will not allow you nor anyone to stand against the duty.”

And the truth was there, screaming through the dark, dread corridors of belated recognition. It had been there all the time, Harrington told himself, and he should have seen it.

He swung up the maul in a simple reflex action, as a gesture of horror and revulsion, and he heard his screaming voice as if it were some other voice and not his own at all: “Why, damn you, you aren’t even human!”

And as he brought the maul up in its arc and forward, Madison was weaving to one side so that the maul would miss, and his face and hands were changing and his body, too—although changing was perhaps not the word for it. It was a relaxing, rather, as if the body and the face and hands that had been Madison were flowing back again into their normal mould after being held and prisoned into human shape. The human clothes he wore ripped apart with the pressure of the change and hung on him in tatters.

He was bigger, or he seemed to be, as if he had been forced to compress his bigness to conform to human standards, but he was humanoid and there was no essential change in his skull-like face beyond its taking on a faintly greenish cast.

The maul clanged to the floor and skidded on the steel face of the catwalk and the thing that had been Madison was slouching forward with the alien sureness in it. And from Harvey poured a storm of anger and frustration—a father’s storming anger at a naughty child which must now stand in punishment. And the punishment was death, for no naughty child must bar the great and solemn duty of a sworn and dedicated task. In that storming fury, even as it rocked his mind, Harrington sensed an essential oneness between machine and alien, as if the two moved and thought in unison.