He let them lie there for a moment, felt the other minds touching them, felt the fingers dabbing at them. And then he thought them aloud—thought them as the cobbly had thought them.
And nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. No click within his brain. No feeling of falling. No vertigo. No sensation at all.
So he had failed. So it was over. So the game was done.
He opened his eyes and the hillside was the same. The sun still shone and the sky was robin’s egg.
He sat stiffly, silently and felt them looking at him.
Everything was the same as it had been before.
Except—
There was a daisy where the clump of Oswego tea had bloomed redly before. There was a pasture rose beside him and there had been none when he had closed his eyes.
“Is that all there’s to it?” asked the giggly girl, plainly disappointed.
“That is all,” said Jenkins.
“Now we can try out the bows and arrows?” asked one of the youths.
“Yes,” said Jenkins, “but be careful. Don’t point them at one another. They are dangerous. Peter will show you how.”
“We’ll unpack the lunch,” said one of the women. “Did you bring a basket, Jenkins?”
“Yes,” said Jenkins. “Esther has it. She held it when we played the game.”
“That’s nice,” said the woman. “You surprise us every year with the things you bring.”
And you’ll be surprised this year, Jenkins told himself. You’ll be surprised at packages of seeds, all very neatly labeled.
For we’ll need seeds, he thought to himself. Seeds to plant new gardens and to start new fields—to raise food once again. And we’ll need bows and arrows to bring in some meat. And spears and hooks for fish. Now other little things that were different began to show themselves. The way a tree leaned at the edge of the meadow. And a new kink in the river far below.
Jenkins sat quietly in the sun, listening to the shouts of the men and boys, trying out the bows and arrows, hearing the chatter of the women as they spread the cloth and unpacked the lunches.
I’ll have to tell them soon, he told himself. I’ll have to warn them to go easy on the food—not to gobble it up all at one sitting. For we will need that food to tide us over the first day or two, until we can find roots to dig and fish to catch and fruit to pick.
Yes, pretty soon I’ll have to call them in and break the news to them. Tell them they’re on their own. Tell them why. Tell them to go ahead and do anything they want to. For this is a brand-new world.
Warn them about the cobblies.
Although that’s the least important. Man has a way with him—a very vicious way. A way of dealing with anything that stands in his path.
Jenkins sighed.
Lord help the cobblies, he said.
Notes on the Eighth Tale
There is some suspicion that the eighth and final tale may be a fraud, that it has no place in the ancient legend, that it is a more recent story made up by some storyteller hungering for public acclamation.
Structurally, it is an acceptable story, but the phraseology of it does not measure up to the narrative skill that goes into the others. Another thing is that it is too patently a story. It is too clever in its assembly of material, works the several angles from the other tales too patly together.
And yet, while no trace of historic basis can be found in any of the other tales, which are indisputably legendary, there is historic basis for this tale.
It is a matter of record that one of the closed worlds is closed because it is a world of ants. It is now an ant world—has been an ant world for uncounted generations.
There is no evidence that the ant world is the original world on which the Dogs arose, but neither is there evidence that it is not. The fact that research has not uncovered any world which can lay claim to being the original world would seem to indicate that the ant world might in fact be the world that was called the Earth.
If that is so, all hope of finding further evidence of the legend’s origin may be gone forever, for only on the first world could there be artifacts which might prove beyond contention the origin of the legend. Only there could one hope to find the answer to the basic question of Man’s existence or his non-existence. If the ant world is the Earth, then the closed city of Geneva and the house on Webster Hill are lost to us forever.
VIII
The Simple Way
A R C H I E, the little renegade raccoon, crouched on the hillside, trying to catch one of the tiny, scurrying things running in the grass. Rufus, Archie’s robot, tried to talk to Archie, but the raccoon was too busy and he did not answer.
Homer did a thing no Dog had ever done before. He crossed the river and trotted into the wild robots’ camp and he was scared, for there was no telling what the wild robots might do to him when they turned around and saw him. But he was worried worse than he was scared, so he trotted on.
Deep in a secret nest, ants dreamed and planned for a world they could not understand. And pushed into that world, hoping for the best, aiming at a thing no Dog, or robot, or man could understand.
In Geneva, Jon Webster rounded out his ten-thousandth year of suspended animation and slept on, not stirring. In the street outside, a wandering breeze rustled the leaves along the boulevard, but no one heard and no one saw.
Jenkins strode across the hill and did not look to either left or right, for there were things he did not wish to see. 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.
And, if one listened closely, one might have heard laughter echoing down the ages…the sardonic laughter of a man named Joe.
Archie caught one of the scurrying things and held it clutched within his tight-shut paw. Carefully he lifted the paw and opened it and the thing was there, running madly, trying to escape.
“Archie,” said Rufus, “you aren’t listening to me.”
The scurrying thing dived into Archie’s fur, streaked swiftly up his forearm.
“Might have been a flea,” said Archie. He sat up and scratched his belly.
“New kind of flea,” he said. “Although I hope it wasn’t. Just the ordinary kind are bad enough.”
“You aren’t listening,” said Rufus.
“I’m busy,” said Archie. “The grass is full of them things. Got to find out what they are.”
“I’m leaving you, Archie.”
“You’re what!”
“Leaving you,” said Rufus. “I’m going to the Building.”
“You’re crazy,” fumed Archie. “You can’t do a thing like that to me. You’ve been tetched ever since you fell into that ant hill…”
“I’ve had the Call,” said Rufus. “I just got to go.”
“I’ve been good to you,” the raccoon pleaded. “I’ve never overworked you. You’ve been like a pal of mine instead of like a robot. I’ve always treated you just like an animal.”
Rufus shook his head stubbornly. “You can’t make me stay,” he said. “I couldn’t stay, no matter what you did. I got the Call and I got to go.”
“It isn’t like I could get another robot,” Archie argued. “They drew my number and I ran away. I’m a deserter and you know I am. You know I can’t get another robot with the wardens watching for me.”
Rufus just stood there.
“I need you,” Archie told him. “You got to stay and help me rustle grub. I can’t go near none of the feeding places or the wardens will nab me and drag me up to Webster Hill. You got to help me dig a den. Winter’s coming on and I will need a den. It won’t have heat or light, but I got to have one. And you’ve got to…”
Rufus had turned around and was walking down the hill, heading for the river trail. Down the river trail…traveling toward the dark smudge above the far horizon.
Archie sat hunched against the wind that ruffled through his fur, tucked hi
s tail around his feet. The wind had a chill about it, a chill it had not held an hour or so before. And it was not the chill of weather, but the chill of other things.
His bright, beady eyes searched the hillside and there was no sign of Rufus.
No food, no den, no robot. Hunted by the wardens. Eaten up by fleas.
And the Building, a smudge against the farther hills across the river valley.
A hundred years ago, so the records said, the Building had been no bigger than the Webster House.
But it had grown since…a place that never was completed. First it had covered an acre. And then a square mile. Now finally a township. And still it grew, sprawling out and towering up.
A smudge above the hills and a cloudy terror for the little, superstitious forest folks who watched it. A word to frighten kid and whelp and cub into sudden quiet.
For there was evil in it…the evil of the unknown, an evil sensed and attributed rather than seen or heard or smelled. A sensed evil, especially in the dark of night, when the lights were out and the wind keened in the den’s mouth and the other animals were sleeping, while one lay awake and listened to the pulsing otherness that sang between the worlds.
Archie blinked in the autumn sunlight, scratched furtively at his side.
Maybe someday, he told himself, someone will find a way to handle fleas. Something to rub on one’s fur so they will stay away. Or a way to reason with them, to reach them and talk things over with them. Maybe set up a reservation for them, a place where they could stay and be fed and not bother animals. Or something of the sort.
As it was, there wasn’t much that could be done. You scratched yourself. You had your robot pick them off, although the robot usually got more fur than fleas. You rolled in the sand or dust. You went for a swim and drowned some of them…well, you really didn’t drown them; you just washed them off and if some of them drowned that was their own tough luck.
You had your robot pick them off…but now there was no robot.
No robot to pick off fleas.
No robot to help him hunt for food.
But, Archie remembered, there was a black haw tree down in the river bottom and last night’s frost would have touched the fruit. He smacked his lips, thinking of the haws. And there was a cornfield just over the ridge. If one was fast enough and bided his time and was sneaky about it, it was no trouble at all to get an ear of corn. And if worse came to worse there always would be roots and wild acorns and that patch of wild grapes over on the sand bar.
Let Rufus go, said Archie, mumbling to himself. Let the Dogs keep their feeding stations. Let the workers go on watching.
He would live his own life. He would eat fruit and grub for roots and raid the cornfields, even as his remote ancestors had eaten fruit and grubbed for roots and raided fields.
He would live as the other raccoons had lived before the Dogs had come along with their ideas about the Brotherhood of Beasts. Like animals had lived before they could talk with words, before they could read the printed books that the Dogs provided, before they had robots that served in lieu of hands, before there was warmth and light for dens.
Yes, and before there was a lottery that told you if you stayed on Earth or went to another world.
The Dogs, Archie remembered, had been quite persuasive about it, very reasonable and suave. Some animals, they said, had to go to the other worlds or there would be too many animals on Earth. Earth wasn’t big enough, they said, to hold everyone. And a lottery, they pointed out, was the fair way to decide which of them would go to the other worlds.
And, after all, they said, the other worlds would be almost like the Earth. For they were just extensions of the Earth. Just other worlds following in the track of Earth. Not quite like it, perhaps, but very close. Just a minor difference here and there. Maybe no tree where there was a tree on Earth. Maybe an oak tree where Earth had a walnut tree. Maybe a spring of fresh, cold water where there was no such spring on Earth.
Maybe, Homer had told him, growing very enthusiastic…maybe the world he would be assigned to would be a better world than Earth.
Archie hunched against the hillside, felt the warmish sun of autumn cutting through the cold chill of autumn’s wind. He thought about the black haws. They would be soft and mushy and there would be some of them lying on the ground. He would eat those that were on the ground, then he’d climb the tree and pick some more and then he’d climb down again and finish off the ones he had shaken loose with his climbing of the tree.
He’d eat them and take them in his paws and smear them on his face. He might even roll in them.
Out of the corner of one eye, he saw the scurrying things running in the grass. Like ants, he thought, only they weren’t ants. At least, not like any ants he’d ever seen before.
Fleas, maybe. A new kind of flea.
His paw darted out and snatched one up. He felt it running in his palm. He opened the paw and saw it running there and closed the paw again.
He raised his paw to his ear and listened.
The thing he’d caught was ticking!
The wild robot camp was not at all the way Homer had imagined it would be. There were no buildings. Just launching ramps and three spaceships and half a dozen robots working on one of the ships.
Although, come to think of it, Homer told himself, one should have known there would be no buildings in a robot camp. For the robots would have no use of shelter and that was all a building was.
Homer was scared, but he tried hard not to show it. He curled his tail over his back and carried his head high and his ears well forward and trotted toward the little group of robots, never hesitating. When he reached them, he sat down and lolled out his tongue and waited for one of them to speak.
But when none of them did, he screwed up his courage and spoke to them, himself.
“My name is Homer,” he said, “and I represent the Dogs. If you have a head robot, I would like to talk to him.”
The robots kept on working for a minute, but finally one of them turned around and came over and squatted down beside Homer so that his head was level with the dog’s head. All the other robots kept on working as if nothing had happened.
“I am a robot called Andrew,” said the robot squatting next to Homer, “and I am not what you would call the head robot, for we have no such thing among us. But I can speak with you.”
“I came to you about the Building,” Homer told him.
“I take it,” said the robot called Andrew, “that you are speaking of the structure to the northeast of us. The one you can see from here if you just turn around.”
“That’s the one,” said Homer. “I came to ask why you are building it.”
“But we aren’t building it,” said Andrew.
“We have seen robots working on it.”
“Yes, there are robots working there. But we are not building it.”
“You are helping someone else?”
Andrew shook his head. “Some of us get a call…a call to go and work there. The rest of us do not try to stop them, for we are all free agents.”
“But who is building it?” asked Homer.
“The ants,” said Andrew.
Homer’s jaw dropped slack.
“Ants? You mean the insects. The little things that live in ant hills?”
“Precisely,” said Andrew. He made the fingers of one hand run across the sand like a harried ant.
“But they couldn’t build a place like that,” protested Homer. “They are stupid.”
“Not any more,” said Andrew.
Homer sat stock still, frozen to the sand, felt chilly feet of terror run along his nerves.
“Not any more,” said Andrew, talking to himself. “Not stupid any more. You see, once upon a time, there was a man named Joe…”
“A man? What’s that?” asked Homer.
The robot made a clucking noise, as if gently chiding Homer.
“Men were animals,” he said. “Animals that went on two legs. They
looked very much like us except they were flesh and we are metal.”
“You must mean the websters,” said Homer. “We know about things like that, but we call them websters.”
The robot nodded slowly. “Yes, the websters could be men. There was a family of them by that name. Lived just across the river.”
“There’s a place called Webster House,” said Homer. “It stands on Webster Hill.”
“That’s the place,” said Andrew.
“We keep it up,” said Homer. “It’s a shrine to us, but we don’t understand just why. It is the word that has been passed down to us…we must keep Webster House.”
“The websters,” Andrew told him, “were the ones that taught you Dogs to speak.”
Homer stiffened. “No one taught us to speak. We taught ourselves. We developed in the course of many years. And we taught the other animals.”
Andrew, the robot, sat hunched in the sun, nodding his head as if he might be thinking to himself.
“Ten thousand years,” he said. “No, I guess it’s nearer twelve. Around eleven, maybe.”
Homer waited and as he waited he sensed the weight of years that pressed against the hills…the years of river and of sun, of sand and wind and sky.
And the years of Andrew.
“You are old,” he said. “You can remember that far back?”
“Yes,” said Andrew. “Although I am one of the last of the man-made robots. I was made just a few years before they went to Jupiter.”
Homer sat silently, tumult stirring in his brain.
Man…a new word.
An animal that went on two legs.
An animal that made the robots, that taught the Dogs to talk.
And, as if he might be reading Homer’s mind, Andrew spoke to him.
“You should not have stayed away from us,” he said. “We should have worked together. We worked together once. We both would have gained if we had worked together.”
“We were afraid of you,” said Homer. “I am still afraid of you.”