Clifford D. Simak - Epilog.txt

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Epilog

 
Clifford D. Simak

When Harry Harrison suggested I write a final City story for this memorial volume, I found myself instinc­tively shying away from it. Over the years a writer's per­spectives and viewpoints shift and his techniques change. I was fairly certain that in the thirty years since the tales were written I had probably traded for other writing tools the tools that I had used to give them the texture that served to distinguish them from my other work. Yet I realized that if I were to write a story for this book it should be a City story, for those stories were more deeply rooted in the old Astounding era than anything I had ever done.

The eight previous stories, with one exception, were published in John Campbell's Astounding and told the story of the Webster family, the Webster robots and dogs. The tales recounted the breakdown of the city, the development of the Dog civilization by the Websters, the launching of the Ant society by the mad mutant, Joe. Finally, in order not to interfere with the culture being developed by the Dogs, the Websters left their old an­cestral home. Staying behind, however, was the ancient robot, Jenkins, who served as mentor for the Dogs until they too went to one of the alternate Earths when the Ants began taking over.

The other stories recorded the saga of the Websters and the Dogs. This final tale is Jenkins' story. It also is the last story I shall ever write for John. It is my hope it can stand as a small tribute to a man who deserves a much larger one and who was a greater friend to all of us than we may have known.

Things happened all at once on that single day, although what day it might have been is not known, for Jenkins…

As Jenkins walked across the meadow, the Wall came tumbling down…

Jenkins sat on the patio of Webster House and re­membered that long-gone day when the man from Geneva had come back to Webster House and had told a little Dog that Jenkins was a Webster, too. And that, Jenkins told himself, had been a day of pride for him…

Jenkins walked across the meadow to commune with the little meadow mice, to become one with them and run for a time with them in the tunnels they had con­structed in the grass. Although there was not much satis­faction in it. The mice were stupid things, unknowing and uncaring, but there was a certain warmth to them, a quiet sort of security and well-being, since they lived quite alone in the meadow world and there was no danger and no threat. There was nothing left to threaten them. They were all there were, aside from certain insects and worms that were fodder for the mice.

In time past, Jenkins recalled, he had often wondered why the mice had stayed behind when all the other an­imals had gone to join the Dogs in one of the cobbly worlds. They could have gone, of course. The Dogs could have taken them, but there had been no wish in them to go. Perhaps they had been satisfied with where they were; perhaps they had a sense of home too strong to let them go.

The mice and I, thought Jenkins. For he could have gone as well. He could go even now if he wished to go. He could have gone at any time at all. But like the mice, he had not gone, but stayed. He could not leave Webster House. Without it, he was only half a being.

So he had stayed and Webster House still stood. Al­though it would not have stood, he told himself, if it had not been for him. He had kept it clean and neat; he had patched it up. When a stone began to crumble, he had quarried and shaped another and had carefully replaced it, and while it may for a while have seemed new and alien to the house, time took care of that—the wind and sun and weather and the creeping moss and lichens.

He had cut the lawn and tended the shrubs and flower beds. The hedges he'd kept trimmed. The wood­work and the furniture well-dusted, the floors and panel­ing well-scrubbed—the house still stood. Good enough, he told himself with some satisfaction, to house a Webster if one ever should show up. Although there was no hope of that. The Websters who had gone to Jupiter were no longer Websters, and those at Geneva still were sleeping if, in fact, Geneva and the Websters in it existed any longer.

For the Ants now held the world. They had made of the world one building, or so he had presumed, although he could not really know. But so far as he did know, so far as his robotic senses reached (and they reached far), there was nothing but the great senseless building that the Ants had built. Although to call it senseless, he re­minded himself, was not entirely fair. There was no way of knowing what purpose it might serve. There was no way one might guess what purpose the Ants might have in mind.

The Ants had enclosed the world, but had stopped short of Webster House, and why they had done that there was no hint at all. They had built around it, mak­ing Webster House and its adjoining acres a sort of open courtyard within the confines of the building—a five-mile circle centered on the hill where Webster House still stood.

Jenkins walked across the meadow in the autumn sunshine, being very careful where he placed his feet for fear of harming mice. Except for the mice, he thought, he was alone, and he might almost as well have been alone, for the mice were little help. The Websters were gone and the Dogs and other animals. The robots gone as well, some of them long since having disap­peared into the Ants' building to help the Ants carry out their project, the others blasting for the stars. By this time, Jenkins thought, they should have gotten where they were headed for. They all had been long gone, and now he wondered, for the first time in many ages, how long it might have been. He found he did not know and now would never know, for there had been that far-past moment when he had wiped utterly from his mind any sense of time. Deliberately he had decided that he no longer would take account of time, for as the world then stood, time was meaningless. Only later had he understood that what he'd really sought had been forgetfulness. But he had been wrong. It had not brought forgetfulness; he still remembered, but in scrambled and haphazard sequences.

He and the mice, he thought. And the Ants, of course. But the Ants did not really count, for he had no contact with them. Despite the sharpened senses and the new sensory abilities built into his birthday body (now no longer new) that had been given by the Dogs so long ago, he had never been able to penetrate the wall of the Ants' great building to find out what might be going on in there. Not that he hadn't tried.

Walking across the meadow, he remembered the day when the last of the Dogs had left. They had stayed much longer than loyalty and common decency had de­manded, and although he had scolded them mildly for it, it still kindled a warm, glow within him when he re­membered it.

He had been sitting in the sun, on the patio, when they had come trailing up the hill and ranged themselves before him like a gang of naughty boys. "We are leaving, Jenkins," the foremost one of them had said. "Our world is growing smaller. There is no longer room to run."

He had nodded at them, for he'd long expected it. He had wondered why it had not happened sooner.

"And you, Jenkins?" asked the foremost Dog.

Jenkins shook his head. "I must stay," he'd said. "This is my place. I must stay here with the Websters."

"But there are no Websters here."

"Yes, there are," said Jenkins. "Not to you, perhaps. But to me. For me they still live in the very stone of Webster House. They live in the trees and the sweep of hill. This is the roof that sheltered them; this is the land they walked upon. They can never go away."

He knew how foolish it must sound, but the Dogs did not seem to think that it was foolish. They seemed to understand. It had been many centuries, but they still seemed to understand.

He had said the Websters still were there, and at the time they had been. But he wondered as he walked the meadow if now they still were there. How long had it been since he had heard footsteps going down a stairs? How long since there had been voices in the great, fire-placed living room and, when he'd looked, there'd been no one there?

And now, as Jenkins walked in the autumn sunshine, a great crack suddenly appeared in the outer wall of the Ants' building, a mile or two away. The crack grew, snaking downward from the top in a jagged line, spread-ing as it grew, and with smaller cracks moving out from it Pieces of the material of which the wall was fashioned broke out along the crack and came crashing to the ground, rolling and bouncing in the meadow. Then, all at once, the wall on both sides of the crack seemed to eome unstuck and came tumbling down. A cloud of dust rose into the air, and Jenkins stood there looking at the great hole in the wall.

Beyond the hole in the wall, the massive building rose like a circular mountain range, with peaks piercing upward here and there above the plateau of the structure.

The hole stood gaping in the wall and nothing further happened. No ants came pouring out, no robots running frantically. It was as though, Jenkins thought, the Ants did not know, or knowing, care, as if the fact that at last their building had been breached held no significance.

Something had happened, Jenkins told himself with some astonishment. Finally, in this Webster world, an event had come to pass.

He moved forward, heading for the hole in the wall, not moving fast, for there seemed no need to hurry. The dust settled slowly, and now and then additional chunks of the wall broke loose and fell. He came up to the broken place, and, climbing the rubble, walked into the building.

The interior was not as bright as it was outdoors, but...
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