"But you said you meant to restore all the houses, make the lawns and gardens exactly like they were before," said Webster. "That will take a fortune. And, after that, another fortune to keep them in shape."
"I have too much money," said Adams. "Entirely too much money. Remember, my grandfather and father got into atomics on the ground floor."
"Best crap player I ever knew, your granddaddy was," said Gramp. "Used to take me for a cleaning every pay day."
"In the old days," said Adams, "when a man had too much money, there were other things he could do with it. Organized charities, for example. Or medical research or something like that. But there are no organized charities today. Not enough business to keep them going. And since the World Committee has hit its stride, there is ample money for all the research, medical or otherwise, anyone might wish to do.
"I didn't plan this thing when I came back to see my grandfather's old house. Just wanted to see it, that was all. He'd told me so much about it. How be planted the tree in the front lawn. And the rose garden he had out back.
"And then I saw it. And it was a mocking ghost. It was something that had been left behind. Something that had meant a lot to someone and had been left behind. Standing there in front of that house with Gramp that day, it came to me that I could do nothing better than preserve for posterity a cross section of the life their ancestors lived."
A thin blue thread of smoke rose above the trees far below.
Webster pointed to it. "What about them?"
"The Squatters stay," said Adams, "if they want to. There will be plenty of work for them to do. And there'll always be a house or two that they can have to live in.
"There's just one thing that bothers me. I can't be here all the time myself. I'll need someone to manage the project. It'll be a lifelong job."
He looked at Webster.
"Go ahead, Johnny," said Gramp.
Webster shook his head. "Betty's got her heart set on that place out in the country."
"You wouldn't have to stay here," said Adams. "You could fly in every day."
From the foot of the hill came a hail.
"It's Ole," yelled Gramp.
He waved his cane "Hi, Ole. Come on up."
They watched Ole striding up the hill, waiting for him, silently.
"Wanted to talk to you, Johnny," said Ole. "Got an idea. Waked me out of a sound sleep last night."
"Go ahead," said Webster.
Ole glanced at Adams. "He's all right," said Webster. "He's Henry Adams. Maybe you remember his grandfather, old F. J."
"I remember him," said Ole. "Nuts about atomic power, he was. How did he make out?"
"He made out rather well," said Adams.
"Glad to hear that," Ole said. "Guess I was wrong. Said he never would amount to nothing. Day-dreamed all the time."
"How about that idea?" Webster asked.
"You heard about dude ranches, ain't you?" Ole asked.
Webster nodded.
"Place," said Ole, "where people used to go and pretend they were cowboys. Pleased them because they really didn't know all the hard work there was in ranching and figured it was romantic-like to ride horses and-"
"Look," asked Webster, "you aren't figuring on turning your farm into a dude ranch, are you?"
"Nope," said Ole. "Not a dude ranch. Dude farm, maybe: Folks don't know too much about farms any more, since there ain't hardly no farms. And they'll read about the frost being on the pumpkin and how pretty a-"
Webster stared at Ole. "They'd go for it, Ole," be declared. "They'd kill one another in the rush to spend their vacation on a real, honest-to-God, old-time farm."
Out of a clump of bushes down the hillside burst a shining thing that chattered and gurgled and screeched, blades flashing, a cranelike arm waving.
"What the-" asked Adams.
"It's that dadburned lawn mower!" yelped Gramp. "I always knew the day would come when it would strip a gear and go completely off its nut!"
NOTES ON THE SECOND TALE
Still alien by all other standards, the second tale strikes a more familiar note than did the first. Here, for the first time, the reader gains an impression that this tale might have been born about a Doggish campfire, a situation unthinkable so far as the first tale is concerned.
Here is voiced some of the high moral and ethical concepts which the Dogs have come to value. Here, too, is a struggle which a Dog can understand, even though the struggle does reveal the mental and moral deterioration of its central character.
For the first time, too, a character emerges which has a familiar ring – the robot. In the robot Jenkins, first introduced in this story, one comes to know a character which for thousands of years has been a puppish favourite. Jenkins is regarded by Tige as the real hero of the legend. In him he sees an extension of Man's influence beyond the day of Man's disappearance, a mechanical device by which human thought continued to guide the Dogs long after Man himself was gone.
We still have our robots, valuable and lovable little contraptions that exist for one purpose only – to furnish us with hands. Throughout the years, however, a Dog's robot has become so much a part of him that no Dog now regards his robot as a thing apart.
Tige's insistence that the robot is an invention of Man, a heritage that our race carries forward from Man, has been sturdily attacked by most other students of the legend.
The idea that the robot may have been fashioned and given to the Dogs as an aid to the development of their culture, Bounce believes, is an idea which must be summarily ruled out by the very virtue of its romanticism. It is, he contends, a story device on the face of it and as such must necessarily be suspect from the first.
There is no way now of knowing how the Dogs evolved a robot. Those few scholars who have given some time to a study of the development of robotry, point out that the highly specialized use to which the robot is put does indeed argue that it was invented by a Dog. To be so specialized, they argue, the robot must necessarily have been invented and developed by the race for whose particular use it is so singularly fitted. No one other than a Dog, they contend, could have done so good a job on so intricate a tool.
To say that no Dog today could build a robot is begging the question. No Dog today could build a robot because there is no need to build one, since the robots build themselves. When there was a need, it is quite evident that a Dog did build a robot and, by building a robot endowed with the reproductive urge which resulted in his building others like himself, solved the problem in a typically Doggish manner.
In this story likewise is introduced an idea which runs through the rest of the legend and which for long has puzzled all students and most readers. That is the idea that one may move physically off this world, out into space, crossing it to reach other worlds. While the idea in most part has been regarded as pure fantasy which, of course, has its proper place in any legend, a good deal of study has been devoted to it. Most studies have confirmed the belief that such a thing is impossible. Such a belief would argue that the stars which we see at night are mighty worlds at great distances from our worlds. Everyone knows, of course, that they are only lights hanging in the sky and that most of them are very near to us.