City by Clifford D. Simak
“Eh,” said Jenkins. “Oh, so I was. So I was. You must watch them. You must care for them and watch them. Especially you must watch them.”
He rocked slowly to and fro and thoughts ran in his brain, thoughts spaced off by the squeaking of the rocker.
You almost did it then, he told himself. You almost spoiled the dream.
But I remembered in time. Yes. Jon Webster, I caught myself in time. I kept faith, John Webster.
I did not tell Joshua that the Dogs once were pets of men, that men raised them to the place they hold today. For they must never know. They must hold up their heads. They must carry on their work. The old fireside tales are gone and they must stay gone forever.
Although I’d like to tell them. Lord knows, I’d like to tell them. Warn them against the thing they must guard against. Tell them how we rooted out the old ideas from the cavemen we brought back from Europe. How we untaught them the many things they knew. How we left their minds blank of weapons, how we taught them love and peace.
And how we must watch against the day when they’ll pick up those trends again—the old human way of thought.
“But, you said…” persisted Joshua.
Jenkins waved his hand. “It was nothing, Joshua. Just an old robot’s mumbling. At times my brain gets fuzzy and I say things that I don’t mean. I think so much about the past—and you say there isn’t any past.”
Ichabod squatted on his haunches on the floor and looked up at Jenkins.
“There sure ain’t none,” he said. “We checked her, forty ways from Sunday, and all the factors check. They all add up. There isn’t any past.”
“There isn’t any room,” said Joshua. “You travel back along the line of time and you don’t find the past, but another world, another bracket of consciousness. The earth would be the same, you see, or almost the same. Same trees, same rivers, same hills, but it wouldn’t be the world we know. Because it has lived a different life, it has developed differently. The second back of us is not the second back of us at all, but another second, a totally separate sector of time. We live in the same second all the time. We move along within the bracket of that second, that tiny bit of time that has been allotted to our particular world.”
“The way we keep time was to blame,” said Ichabod. “It was the thing that kept us from thinking of it in the way it really was. For we thought all the time that we were passing through time when we really weren’t, when we never have. We’ve just been moving along with time. We said, there’s another second gone, there’s another minute and another hour and another day, when, as a matter of fact the second or the minute or the hour was never gone. It was the same one all the time. It had just moved along and we had moved with it.”
Jenkins nodded. “I see. Like driftwood on the river. Chips moving with the river. And the scene changes along the river bank, but the water is the same.”
“That’s roughly it,” said Joshua. “Except that time is a rigid stream and the different worlds are more firmly fixed in place than the driftwood on the river.”
“And the cobblies live in those other worlds?”
Joshua nodded. “I’m sure they must.”
“And now,” said Jenkins, “I suppose you are figuring out a way to travel to those other worlds.”
Joshua scratched softly at a flea.
“Sure he is,” said Ichabod. “We need the space.”
“But the cobblies—”
“The cobblies might not be on all the worlds,” said Joshua. “There might be some empty worlds. If we can find them, we need those empty worlds. If we don’t find space, we are up against it. Population pressure will bring on a wave of killing. And a wave of killing will set us back to where we started out.”
“There’s already killing,” Jenkins told him quietly.
Joshua wrinkled his brow and laid back his ears. “Funny killing. Dead, but not eaten. No blood. As if they just fell over. It has our medical technicians half crazy. Nothing wrong. No reason that they should have died.”
“But they did,” said Ichabod.
Joshua hunched himself closer, lowered his voice. “I’m afraid, Jenkins. I’m afraid that—”
“There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
“But there is. Angus told me. Angus is afraid that one of the cobblies…that one of the cobblies got through.”
A gust of wind sucked at the fireplace throat and gamboled in the eaves. Another gust hooted in some near, dark corner. And fear came out and marched across the roof, marched with thumping, deadened footsteps up and down the shingles.
Jenkins shivered and held himself tight and rigid against another shiver. His voice grated when he spoke.
“No one has seen a cobbly.”
“You might not see a cobbly.”
“No,” said Jenkins. “No. You might not see one.”
And that is what Man had said before. You did not see a ghost and you did not see a haunt—but you sensed that one was there. For the water tap kept dripping when you had shut it tight and there were fingers scratching at the pane and the dogs would howl at something in the night and there’d be no tracks in the snow.
And there were fingers scratching on the pane.
Joshua came to his feet and stiffened, a statue of a dog, one paw lifted, lips curled back in the beginning of a snarl. Ichabod crouched, toes dug into the floor—listening, waiting.
The scratching came again.
“Open the door,” Jenkins said to Ichabod. “There is something out there wanting to get in.”
Ichabod moved through the hushed silence of the room. The door creaked beneath his hand. As he opened it, the squirrel came bounding in, a gray streak that leaped for Jenkins and landed in his lap.
“Why, Fatso,” Jenkins said.
Joshua sat down again and his lip uncurled, slid down to hide his fangs. Ichabod wore a silly metal grin.
“I saw him do it,” screamed Fatso. “I saw him kill the robin. He did it with a throwing stick. And the feathers flew. And there was blood upon the leaf.”
“Quiet,” said Jenkins, gently. “Take your time and tell me. You are too excited. You saw someone kill a robin.”
Fatso sucked in a breath and his teeth were chattering.
“It was Peter,” he said.
“Peter?”
“Peter, the Webster.”
“You said he threw a stick?”
“He threw it with another stick. He had the two ends tied together with a cord and he pulled on the cord and the stick bent—”
“I know,” said Jenkins. “I know.”
“You know! You know all about it?”
“Yes,” said Jenkins, “I know all about it. It was a bow and arrow.”
And there was something in the way he said it that held the other three to silence, made the room seem big and empty and the tapping of the branch against the pane a sound from far away, a hollow, ticking voice that kept on complaining without the hope of aid.
“A bow and arrow?” Joshua finally asked. “What is a bow and arrow?”
And what was it, thought Jenkins.
What is a bow and arrow?
It is the beginning of the end. It is the winding path that grows to the roaring road of war.
It is a plaything and a weapon and a triumph in human engineering.
It is the first faint stirring of an atom bomb.
It is a symbol of a way of life.
And it’s a line in a nursery rhyme.
Who killed Cock Robin?
I, said the sparrow.
With my bow and arrow,
I killed Cock Robin.
And it was a thing forgotten. And a thing relearned.
It is the thing that I’ve been afraid of.
He straightened in his chair, came slowly to his feet.
“Ichabod,” he said, “I will need your help.”
“Sure,” said Ichabod. “Anything you like.”
“The body,” said Jenkins. “I want to wear my new body.
Ichabod nodded. “I know how to do it, Jenkins.”
Joshua’s voice had a sudden edge of fear. “What is it, Jenkins? What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to the Mutants,” Jenkins said, speaking very slowly. “After all these years, I’m going to ask their help.”
The shadow slithered down the hill, skirting the places where the moonlight flooded through forest openings. He glimmered in the moonlight—and he must not be seen. He must not spoil the hunting of the others that came after.
There would be others. Not in a flood, of course, but carefully controlled. A few at a time and well spread out so that the life of this wondrous world would not take alarm.
Once it did take alarm, the end would be in sight.
The shadow crouched in the darkness, low against the ground, and tested the night with twitching, high-strung nerves. He separated out the impulses that he knew, cataloguing them in his knife-sharp brain, filing them neatly away as a check against his knowledge.
And some he knew and some were mystery and others he could guess at. But there was one that held a hint of horror.
He pressed himself close against the ground and held his ugly head out straight and flat and closed his perceptions against the throbbing of the night, concentrating on the thing that was coming up the hill.
There were two of them and the two were different. A snarl rose in his mind and bubbled in his throat and his tenuous body tensed into something that was half slavering expectancy and half cringing outland terror.
He rose from the ground, still crouched, and flowed down the hill, angling to cut the path of the two who were coming up.
Jenkins was young again, young and strong and swift—swift of brain and body. Swift to stride along the windswept, moon-drenched hills. Swift to hear the talking of the leaves and the sleepy chirp of birds—and more than that.
Yes, much more than that, he admitted to himself.
The body was a lulu. A sledge hammer couldn’t dent it and it would never rust. But that wasn’t all.
Never figured a body’d make this much difference to me. Never knew how ramshackle and worn out the old one really was. A poor job from the first, although it was the best that could be done in the days when it was made. Machinery sure is wonderful, the tricks they can make it do.
It was the robots, of course. The wild robots. The Dogs had fixed it up with them to make the body. Not very often the Dogs had much truck with the robots. Got along all right and all of that—but they got along because they let one another be, because they didn’t interfere, because neither one was nosey.
There was a rabbit stirring in his den—and Jenkins knew it. A raccoon was out on a midnight prowl and Jenkins knew that, too—knew the cunning, sleek curiosity that went on within the brain behind the little eyes that stared at him from the clump of hazel brush. And off to the left, curled up beneath a tree, a bear was sleeping and dreaming as he slept—a glutton’s dream of wild honey and fish scooped out of a creek, with ants licked from the underside of an upturned rock as relish for the feast.
And it was startling—but natural. As natural as lifting one’s feet to walk, as natural as normal hearing was. But it wasn’t hearing and it wasn’t seeing. Nor yet imagining. For Jenkins knew with a cool, sure certainty about the rabbit in the den and the coon in the hazel brush and the bear who dreamed in his sleep beneath the tree.
And this, he thought, is the kind of bodies the wild robots have—for certainly if they could make one for me, they’d make them for themselves.
They have come a long ways, too, in seven thousand years, even as the Dogs have traveled far since the exodus of humans. But we paid no attention to them, for that was the way it had to be. The robots went their way and the Dogs went theirs and they did not question what one another did, had no curiosity about what one another did. While the robots were building spaceships and shooting for the stars, while they built bodies, while they worked with mathematics and mechanics, the Dogs had worked with animals, had forged a brotherhood of the things that had been wild and hunted in the days of Man—had listened to the cobblies and tried to probe the depths of time to find there was no time.
And certainly if the Dogs and robots had gone as far as this, the Mutants had gone farther still. And they will listen to me, Jenkins said, they will have to listen, for I’m bringing them a problem that falls right into their laps. Because the Mutants are men—despite their ways, they are the sons of Man. They can bear no rancor now, for the name of Man is a dust that is blowing with the wind, the sound of leaves on a summer day—and nothing more.
Besides, I haven’t bothered them for seven thousand years—not that I ever bothered them. Joe was a friend of mine, or as close to a friend as a Mutant ever had. He’d talk with me when he wouldn’t talk with men. They will listen to me—they will tell me what to do. And they will not laugh.
Because it’s not a laughing matter. It’s just a bow and arrow, but it’s not a laughing matter. It might have been at one time, but history takes the laugh out of many things. If the arrow is a joke, so is the atom bomb, so is the sweep of disease-laden dust that wipes out whole cities, so is the screaming rocket that arcs and falls ten thousand miles away and kills a million people.
Although now there are no million people. A few hundred, more or less, living in the houses that the Dogs built for them because then the Dogs still knew what human beings were, still knew the connection that existed between them and looked on men as gods. Looked on men as gods and told the old tales before the fire of a winter evening and built against the day when Man might return and pat their heads and say, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.”
And that wasn’t right, said Jenkins striding down the hill, that wasn’t right at all. For men did not deserve that worship, did not deserve the godhood. Lord knows I loved them well enough, myself. Still love them, for that matter—but not because they are men, but because of the memory of a few of the many men.
It wasn’t right that the Dogs should build for Man. For they were doing better than Man had ever done. So I wiped the memory out and a long, slow work it was. Over the long years I took away the legends and misted the memory and now they call men websters and think that’s what they are.
I wondered if I had done right. I felt like a traitor and I spent bitter nights when the world was asleep and dark and I sat in the rocking chair and listened to the wind moaning in the eaves. For it was a thing I might not have the right to do. It was a thing the Websters might not have liked. For that was the hold they had on me, that they still have on me, that over the stretch of many thousand years I might do a thing and worry that they might not like it.
But now I know I’m right. The bow and arrow is the proof of that. Once I thought that Man might have got started on the wrong road, that somewhere in the dim, dark savagery that was his cradle and his toddling place, he might have got off on the wrong foot, might have taken the wrong turning. But I see that I was wrong. There’s one road and one road alone that Man may travel—the bow and arrow road.
I tried hard enough, Lord knows I really tried.
When we rounded up the stragglers and brought them home to Webster House, I took away their weapons, not only from their hands but from their minds. I re-edited the literature that could be re-edited and I burned the rest. I taught them to read again and sing again and think again. And the books had no trace of war or weapons, no trace of hate or history, for history is hate—no battles or heroics, no trumpets.
But it was wasted time, Jenkins said to himself. I know now that it was wasted time. For a man will invent a bow and arrow, no matter what you do.
He had come down the long hill and crossed the creek that tumbled toward the river and now he was climbing again, climbing against the dark, hard uplift of the cliff-crowned hill.
There were tiny rustlings and his new body told his mind that it was mice, mice scurrying in the tunnels they had fashi
A weasel crouched for a moment on the bole of a fallen tree and his mind was evil, evil with the thought of mice, evil with remembrance of the old days when weasels made a meal of mice. Blood hunger and fear, fear of what the Dogs might do if he killed a mouse, fear of the hundred eyes that watched against the killing that once had stalked the world.
But a man had killed. A weasel dare not kill, and a man had killed. Without intent, perhaps, without maliciousness. But he had killed. And the Canons said one must not take a life.
In the years gone by others had killed and they had been punished. And the man must be punished, too. But punishment was not enough. Punishment, alone, would not find the answer. The answer must deal not with one man alone, but with all men, with the entire race. For what one of them had done, the rest were apt to do. Not only apt to do, but bound to do—for they were men, and men had killed before and would kill again.
The Mutant castle reared black against the sky, so black that it shimmered in the moonlight. No light came from it and that was not strange at all, for no light had come from it ever. Nor, so far as anyone could know, had the door ever opened into the outside world. The Mutants had built the castles, all over the world, and had gone into them and that had been the end. The Mutants had meddled in the affairs of men, had fought a sort of chuckling war with men and when the men were gone, the Mutants had gone, too.
Jenkins came to the foot of the broad stone steps that led up to the door and halted. Head thrown back, he stared at the building that reared its height above him.
I suppose Joe is dead, he told himself. Joe was long-lived, but he was not immortal. He would not live forever. And it will seem strange to meet another Mutant and know it isn’t Joe.
He started to climb, going very slowly, every nerve alert, waiting for the first sign of chuckling humor that would descend upon him.
But nothing happened.
He climbed the steps and stood before the door and looked for something to let the Mutants know that he had arrived.