«No more than a legend?» Jenkins asked.
«That’s all,» said Homer. «A legend of a robot that looked after us. Although Andrew spoke of Jenkins this afternoon as if he might have known him. And there is a story of how the Dogs gave you a body on your seven thousandth birthday and it was a marvelous body that …»
His voice ran down … for the body of the robot that stood before him with the raccoon perched on his shoulder … that body could be none other than the birthday gift.
«And Webster House?» asked Jenkins. «You still keep Webster House?»
«We still keep Webster House,» said Homer. «We keep it as it is. It’s a thing we have to do.»
«The websters?»
«There aren’t any websters.»
Jenkins nodded at that. His body’s hair-trigger sense had told him there were no websters. There were no webster vibrations. There was no thought of websters in the minds of things he’d touched.
And that was as it should be.
He came slowly across the room, soft-footed as a cat despite his mighty weight, and Homer felt him moving, felt the friendliness and kindness of the metal creature, the protectiveness of the ponderous strength within him.
Jenkins squatted down beside him.
«You are in trouble,» Jenkins said.
Homer stared at him.
«The ants,» said Jenkins. «Archie told me. Said you were troubled by the ants.»
«I went to Webster House to hide,» said Archie. «I was scared you would hunt me down again and I thought that Webster House …»
«Hush, Archie,» Jenkins told him. «You don’t know a thing about it. You told me that you didn’t. You just said the Dogs were having trouble with the ants.»
He looked at Homer.
«I suppose they are Joe’s ants,» he said.
«So you know about Joe,» said Homer. «So there was a man called Joe.»
Jenkins chuckled. «Yes, a troublemaker. But likeable at times. He had the devil in him.»
Homer said: «They’re building. They get the robots to work for them and they are putting up a building.»
«Surely,» said Jenkins, «even ants have the right to build.»
«But they’re building too fast. They’ll push us off the Earth. Another thousand years or so and they’ll cover the whole Earth if they keep on building at the rate they’ve been.»
«And you have no place to go? That’s what worries you.»
«Yes, we have a place to go. Many places. All the other worlds. The cobbly worlds.»
Jenkins nodded gravely. «I was in a cobbly world. The first world after this. I took some websters there five thousand years ago. I just came back tonight. And I know the way you feel. No other world is home. I’ve hungered for the Earth for almost every one of those five thousand years. I came back to Webster House and I found Archie there. He told me about the ants and so I came up here. I hope you do not mind.»
«We are glad you came,» said Homer, softly.
«These ants,» said Jenkins. «I suppose you want to stop them.»
Homer nodded his head.
«There is a way,» said Jenkins. «I know there is a way. The websters had a way if I could just remember. But it’s so long ago. And it’s a simple way, I know. A very simple way.»
His hand came up and scraped back and forth across his chin.
«What are you doing that for?» Archie asked.
«Eh?»
«Rubbing your face that way. What do you do it for?»
Jenkins dropped his hand. «Just a habit, Archie. A webster gesture. A way they had of thinking. I picked it up from them.»
«Does it help you think?»
«Well, maybe. Maybe not. It seemed to help the websters. Now what would a webster do in a case like this? The websters could help us. I know they could …»
«The websters in the cobbly world,» said Homer.
Jenkins shook his head. «There aren’t any websters there.»
«But you said you took some there.»
«I know. But they aren’t there now. I’ve been alone in the cobbly world for almost four thousand years.»
«Then there aren’t websters anywhere. The rest went to Jupiter. Andrew told me that. Jenkins, where is Jupiter?»
«Yes, there are,» said Jenkins. «There are some websters left, I mean. Or there used to be. A few left at Geneva.»
«It won’t be easy,» Homer said. «Not even for a webster. Those ants are smart. Archie told you about the flea he found.»
«It wasn’t any flea,» said Archie.
«Yes, he told me,» Jenkins said. «Said it got onto Hezekiah.»
«Not onto,» Homer told them. «Into is the word. It wasn’t a flea … It was a robot, a tiny robot. It drilled a hole in Hezekiah’s skull and got into his brain. It sealed the hole behind it.»
«And what is Hezekiah doing now?»
«Nothing,» said Homer. «But we are pretty sure what will do as soon as the ant robot gets the setup fixed. He’ll get the Call. He’ll get the call to go and work on the Building.»
Jenkins nodded. «Taking over,» he said. «They can’t do a job like that themselves, so they take control of things that can.»
He lifted his hand again and scraped it across his chin.
«I wonder if Joe knew,» he mumbled. «When he played god to the ants. I wonder if he knew.»
But that was ridiculous. Joe never could have known. Even a mutation like Joe could not have looked twelve thousand years ahead.
So long ago, thought Jenkins. So many things have happened. Bruce Webster was just starting to experiment with dogs, had no more than dreamed his dream of talking, thinking dogs that would go down the path of destiny paw in hand with Man … not knowing then that Man within a few short centuries would scatter to the four winds of eternity and leave the Earth to robot and to dog. Not knowing then that even the name of Man would be forgotten in the dust of years, that the race would come to be known by the name of a single family.
And yet, thought Jenkins, if it was to be any family, the Websters were the ones. I can remember them as if it were yesterday. Those were the days when I thought of myself as a Webster, too.
Lord knows, I tried to be. I did the best I could. I stood by the Webster dogs when the race of men had gone and finally I took the last bothersome survivors of that madcap race into another world to clear the way for Dogs … so that the Dogs could fashion the Earth in the way they planned.
And now even those last bothersome survivors have gone … some place, somewhere … I wish that I could know. Escaped into some fantasy of the human mind. And the men on Jupiter are not even men, but something else.
And Geneva is shut off … blocked off from the world.
Although it can’t be farther away or blocked more tightly than the world from which I came. If only I could learn how it was I travelled from the exile cobbly world back to Webster House … then, maybe, perhaps, somehow or other, I could reach Geneva.
A new power, he told himself. A new ability. A thing that grew upon me without my knowing that it grew. A thing that every man and every robot … and perhaps every dog … could have if he but knew the way.
Although it may be my body that made it possible … this body that the Dogs gave me on my seven thousandth birthday. A body that has more than any body of flesh and blood has ever quite attained. A body that can know what a bear is thinking or a fox is dreaming, that can feel the happy little mouse thoughts running in the grass.
Wish fulfillment. That might be it. The answer to the strange, illogical yearnings for things that seldom are and often cannot be. But all of which are possible if one knows the way, if one can grow or develop or graft onto oneself the new ability that directs the mind and body to the fulfillment of the wish.
I walked the hill each day, he remembered. Walked there because I could not stay away, because the longing was so strong, steeling myself against looking too closely, for there were differences I did not wish to see.