In the old dark ages, certain men had claimed the power to make warts disappear, had bought them for a penny, or had traded them for something or had performed other mumbo-jumbo-and in due time, sometimes, the warts would disappear.
Had these queer men listened to the cobblies, too?
The door creaked just a little and Webster straightened suddenly.
A voice came out of the darkness: "Are you comfortable, sir? Is there anything you wish?"
"Jenkins?" asked Webster.
"Yes, sir," said Jenkins.
The dark form padded softly through the door.
"Yes, there's something I want," said Webster. "I want to talk to you."
He stared at the dark, metallic figure that stood beside the bed.
"About the dogs," said Webster.
"They try so hard," said Jenkins. "And it's hard for them. For they have no one, you see. Not a single soul."
"They have you."
Jenkins shook his head. "But I'm not enough, you see. I'm just... well, just a sort of mentor. It is men they want. The need of men is ingrown in them. For thousands of years it has been man and dog. Man and dog, hunting together. Man and dog, watching the herds together. Man and dog, fighting their enemies together. The dog watching while the man slept and the man dividing the last bit of food, going hungry himself so that his dog might eat."
Webster nodded. "Yes, I suppose that is the way it is."
"They talk about men every night," said Jenkins, "before they go to bed. They sit around together and one of the old ones tells one of the stories that have been handed down and they sit and wonder, sit and hope."
"But where are they going? What are they trying to do? Have they got a plan?"
"I can detect one," said Jenkins. "Just a faint glimmer of what may happen. They are psychic, you see. Always have been. They have no mechanical sense, which is understandable, for they have no hands. Where man would follow metal, the dogs will follow ghosts."
"Ghosts?"
"The things you men call ghosts. But they aren't ghosts. I'm sure of that. They're something in the next room. Some other form of life on another plane."
"You mean there may be many planes of life co-existing simultaneously upon Earth?"
Jenkins nodded. "I'm beginning to believe so, sir. I have a note-book full of things the dogs have heard and seen and now, after all these many years, they begin to make a pattern."
He hurried on. "I may be mistaken, sir. You understand I have no training. I was just a servant in the old days, sir. I tried to pick up things after... after Jupiter, but it was hard for me. Another robot helped me make the first little robots for the dogs and now the little ones produce their own kind in the workshop when there are need of more."
"But the dogs – they just sit and listen."
"Oh, no, sir, they do many other things. They try to make friends with the animals and they watch the wild robots and the mutants-"
"These wild robots? There are many of them."
Jenkins nodded. "Many, sir. Scattered all over the world in little camps. The ones that were left behind, sir. The ones man had no further use for when he went to Jupiter. They have banded together and they work-"
"Work. What at?"
"I don't know, sir. Building machines, mostly. Mechanical, you know. I wonder what they'll do with all the machines they have. What they plan to use them for."
"So do I," said Webster.
And he stared into the darkness and wondered – wondered.
How man, cooped up in Geneva, should have lost touch with the world. How man should not have known about what the dogs were doing, about the little camps of busy robots, about the castles of the feared and hated mutants.
We lost touch, Webster thought. We locked the world outside. We created ourselves a little niche and we huddled in it – in the last city in the world. And we didn't know what was happening outside the city – we could have known, we should have known, but we didn't care.
It's time, he thought, that we took a hand again.
We were lost and awed and at first we tried, but finally we just threw in the hand.
For the first time the few that were left realized the greatness of the race, saw for the first time the mighty works the hand of man had reared. And they tried to keep it going and they couldn't do it. And they rationalized – as man rationalizes almost everything. Fooling himself that there really are no ghosts, calling things that go bumping in the night the first suave, sleek word of explanation that comes into his mind.
We couldn't keep it going and so we rationalized, we took refuge in a screen of words and Juwainism helped us do it. We came close to ancestor worship. We sought to glorify the race of man. We couldn't carry on the work of man and so we tried to glorify it, attempted to enthrone the men who had. As we attempt to glorify and enthrone all good things that die.
We became a race of historians and we dug with grubby fingers in the ruins of the race, clutching each irrelevant little fact to our breast as if it were a priceless gem. And that was the first phase, the hobby that bore us up when we knew ourselves for what we really were – the dregs in the tilted cup of humanity.
But we got over it. Oh, sure, we got over it. In about one generation. Man is an adaptable creature – he can survive anything. So we couldn't build great spaceships. So we couldn't reach the sta rs. So we couldn't puzzle out the secret of life. So what?
We were the inheritors, we had been left the legacy, we were better off than any race had ever been or could hope to be again. And so we rationalized once more and we forgot about the glory of the race, for while it was a shining thing, it was a toilsome and humiliating concept.
" Jenkins," said Webster soberly, "we've wasted ten whole centuries."
"Not wasted, sir," said Jenkins. "Just resting, perhaps. But now, maybe, you can come out again. Come back to us."
"You want us?"
"The dogs need you," Jenkins told him. "And the robots, too. For both of them were never anything other than the servants of man. They are lost without you. The dogs are building a civilization, but it is building slowly."
"Perhaps a better civilization than we built ourselves," said Webster. "Perhaps a more successful one. For ours was not successful, Jenkins."
"A kinder one," Jenkins admitted, "but not too practical. A civilization based on the brotherhood of animals – on the psychic understanding and perhaps eventual communication and intercourse with interlocking worlds. A civilization of the mind and of understanding, but not too positive. No actual goals, limited mechanics – just a groping after truth, and the groping is in a direction that man passed by without a second glance."
"And you think that man could help?"
"Man could give leadership," said Jenkins.
"The right kind of leadership?"
"That is hard to answer."
Webster lay in the darkness, rubbed his suddenly sweating hands along the blankets that covered his body.
"Tell me the truth," he said and his words were grim. "Man could give leadership, you say. But man also could take over once again. Could discard the things the dogs are doing as impractical. Could round the robots up and use their mechanical ability in the old, old pattern. Both the dogs and robots would knuckle down to man."