Footsteps walked across his brain-footsteps from the long ago, footsteps that had been silenced to the final echo centuries before The walking of the Websters. Of the ones that went before me, the ones that Jenkins waited on from their day of birth to the hour of death.
History. Here is history. History stirring in the drapes and creeping on the floor, sitting in the corners, watching from the wall. Living history that a man can feel in the bones of him and against his shoulder blades – the impact of the long dead eyes that come back from the night.
Another Webster, eh? Doesn't look like much. Worthless. The breed's played out. Not like we were in our day. Just about the last of them.
Jon Webster stirred. "No, not the last of them," he said.
"I have a son."
Well, it doesn't make much difference. He says he has a son. But he can't amount to much
Webster started from the chair, Ebenezer slipping from his lap.
"That's not true," cried Webster. "My son-"
And then sat down again.
His son out in the woods with bow and arrows, playing a game, having fun.
A hobby, Sara had said before she climbed the hill to take a hundred years of dreams.
A hobby. Not a business. Not a way of life. Not necessity.
A hobby...
An artificial thing. A thing that had no beginning and no end. A thing a man could drop at any minute and no one would ever notice.
Like cooking up recipes for different kinds of drinks.
Like painting pictures no one wanted.
Like going around with a crew of crazy robots begging people to let you redecorate their homes.
Like writing history no one cares about.
Like playing Indian or caveman or pioneer with bow and arrows.
Like thinking up centuries-long dreams for men and women who are tired of life and yearn for fantasy.
The man sat in the chair, staring at the nothingness that spread before his eyes, the dread and awful nothingness that became to-morrow and to-morrow.
Absent– mindedly his hands came together and the right thumb stroked the back of the left hand.
Ebenezer crept forward through the fire-flared darkness, put his front paws on the man's knee and looked into his face.
"Hurt your hand?" he asked.
"Hurt your hand? You're rubbing it."
Webster laughed shortly. "No, just warts." He showed them to the dog.
"Gee, warts!" said Ebenezer. "You don't want them, do you?"
"No," Webster hesitated. "No, I guess I don't. Never got around to having them taken off."
Ebenezer dropped his nose and nuzzled the back of Webster's hand.
"There you are," he announced triumphantly.
"There I'm what?"
"Look at the warts," invited Ebenezer.
A log fell in the fire and Webster lifted his hand, looked at it in the flare of light.
The warts were gone. The skin was smooth and clean.
Jenkins stood in the darkness and listened to the silence, the soft sleeping silence that left the house to shadows, to the half-forgotten footsteps, the phrase spoken long ago, the tongues that murmured in the walls and rustled in the drapes.
By a single thought the night could have been as day, a simple adjustment in his lenses would have done the trick, but the ancient robot left his sight unchanged. For this was the way he liked it, this was the hour of meditation, the treasured time when the present sloughed away and the past came back and lived.
The others slept, but Jenkins did not sleep. For robots never sleep. Two thousand years of consciousness, twenty centuries of full time unbroken by a single moment of unawareness.
A long time, thought Jenkins. A long time, even for a robot. For even before man had gone to Jupiter most of the older robots had been deactivated, had been sent to their death in favour of the newer models. The newer models that looked more like men, that were smoother and more sightly, with better speech and quicker responses within their metal brains.
But Jenkins had stayed on because he was an old and faithful servant, because Webster House would not have been home without him.
"They loved me," said Jenkins to himself. And the three words held deep comfort – comfort in a world where there was little comfort, a world where a servant had become a leader and longed to be a servant once again.
He stood at the window and stared out across the patio to the night-dark clumps of oaks that staggered down the hill.
Darkness. No light anywhere. There had been a time when there had been lights. Windows that shone like friendly beams in the vast land that lay across the river.
But man had gone and there were no lights. The robots needed no lights, for they could see in darkness, even as Jenkins could have seen, had he but chosen to do so. And the castles of the mutants were as dark by night as they were fearsome by day.
Now man had come again, one man. Had come, but he probably wouldn't stay. He'd sleep for a few nights in the great master bedroom on the second floor, then go back to Geneva. He'd walk the old forgotten acres and stare across the river and rummage through the books that lined the study wall, then he would up and leave.
Jenkins swung around. Ought to see how he is, he thought. Ought to find if he needs anything. Maybe take him up a drink, although I'm afraid the whisky is all spoiled. A thousand years is a long time for a bottle of good whisky.
He moved across the room and a warm peace came upon him, the close and intimate peacefulness of the old days when he had trotted, happy as a terrier, on his many errands.
He hummed a snatch of tune in minor key as he headed for the stairway .
He'd just look in and if Jon Webster were asleep, he'd leave, but if he wasn't, he'd say: "Are you comfortable, sir? Is there anything you wish? A hot toddy, perhaps?"
And he took two stairs at the time.
For he was doing for a Webster once again.
Jon Webster lay propped in bed, with the pillows piled behind him. The bed was hard and uncomfortable and the room was close and stuffy – not like his own bedroom back in Geneva, where one lay on the grassy bank of a murmuring stream and stared at the artificial stars that glittered in an artificial sky. And smelled the artificial scent of artificial lilacs that would go on blooming longer than a man would live. No murmur of a hidden waterfall, no flickering of captive fireflies – but a bed and room that were functional.
Webster spread his hands flat on his blanket covered thighs and flexed his fingers, thinking.
Ebenezer had merely touched the warts and the warts were gone. And it had been no happenstance – it had been intentional. It had been no miracle, but a conscious power. For miracles sometimes fail to happen, and Ebenezer had been sure.
A power, perhaps, that had been gathered from the room beyond, a power that had been stolen from the cobblies Ebenezer listened to.
A laying– on of hands, a power of healing that involved no drugs, no surgery, but just a certain knowledge, a very special knowledge.