“For the last time, will you go?” He dared not think now, while he was testing his way through the flawed, cracked cement, and yet he could not quiet his mind to her words that went on and on. “Go!”
“Not without you! Adam, my receiver isn’t defective; I knew you’d try to kill me when I rescued you! Do you think I’ll give up so easily now?”
He snapped the power to silence with a rude hand, flinging around to face her. “You knew—and still saved me? Why?”
“Because I needed you, and the world needs you. You had to live, even if you killed me!”
Then the generator roared again, knifing its way through the last few inches, and he swung out of the dome and began turning it about. As the savage bellow of full power poured out of the main orifice, he turned his head to her and nodded.
She might be the dumbest robot in creation, but she was also the sweetest. It was wonderful to be needed and wanted!
And behind him, Eve nodded to herself, blessing Simon Ames for listing psychology as a humanity. In six months, she could complete his reeducation and still have time to recite the whole of the Book he knew as a snatch of film. But not yet! Most certainly not Leviticus yet; Genesis would give her trouble enough.
It was wonderful to be needed and wanted!
Spring had come again, and Adam sat under one of the budding trees, idly feeding one of the new crop of piglets as Eve’s hands moved swiftly, finishing what were to be his clothes, carefully copied from those of Dan.
They were almost ready to go south and mingle with men in the task of leading the race back to its heritage. Already the yielding plastic he had synthesized and she had molded over them was a normal part of them, and the tiny magnetic muscles he had installed no longer needed thought to reveal their emotions in human expressions. He might have been only an uncommonly handsome man as he stood up and went over to her.
“Still hunting God?” she asked lightly, but there was no worry on her face. The metaphysical binge was long since cured.
A thoughtful smile grew on his face as he began donning the clothes. “He is still where I found Him—Something inside us that needs no hunting. No, Eve, I was wishing the other robot had survived. Even though we found no trace of his dome where your records indicated, I still feel he should be with us.”
“Perhaps he is, in spirit, since you insist robots have souls. Where’s your faith, Adam?”
But there was no mockery inside her. Souls or not, Adam’s God had been very good to them.
And far to the south, an aged figure limped over rubble to the face of a cliff. Under his hands, a cleverly concealed door swung open, and he pushed inward, closing and barring it behind him, and heading down the narrow tunnel to a rounded cavern at its end. It had been years since he had been there, but the place was still home to him as he creaked down onto a bench and began removing tattered, travel-stained clothes. Last of all, he pulled a mask and gray wig from his head, to* reveal the dented and worn body of the third robot.
He sighed wearily as he glanced at the few tattered books and papers he had salvaged from the ruinous growth of stalagmites and stalactites within the chamber, and at the corroded switch the unplanned dampness had shorted seven hundred years before. And finally, his gaze rested on his greatest treasure. It was faded, even under the plastic cover, but the bitter face of Simon Ames still gazed out in recognizable form.
The third robot nodded toward it with a strange mixture of old familiarity and ever-new awe. “Over two thousand miles in my condition, Simon Ames, to check on a story I heard in one of the colonies, and months of searching for them. But I had to know. Well, they’re good for the world. They’ll bring all the things I couldn’t, and their thoughts are young and strong, as the race is young and strong.”
For a moment, he stared about the chamber and to the tunnel his adapted bacteria had eaten toward the outside world, resting again on the picture. Then he cut off the main generator and settled down in the darkness.
“Seven hundred years since I came out to find man extinct on the earth,” he told the picture. “Four hundred since I learned enough to dare attempt his recreation, and over three hundred since the last of my superfrozen human ova grew to success. Now I’ve done my part. Man has an unbroken tradition back to your race, with no knowledge of the break. He’s strong and young and fruitful, and he has new leaders, better than I could ever be alone. I can do no more for him!”
For a moment there was only the sound of his hands sliding against metal, and then a faint sigh. “Into my hands, Simon Ames, you gave your race. Now, into Thy Hands, God of that race, if You exist as my brother believes, I commend him—and my spirit.”
Then there was a click as his hands found the switch to his generator, and final silence.
And It Comes Out Here
No, you’re wrong. I’m not your father’s ghost, even if I do look a bit like him. But it’s a longish story, and you might as well let me in. You will, you know, so why quibble about it? At least, you always have… or do… or will. I don’t know, words get all mixed up. We don’t have the right attitude toward tense for a situation like this.
Anyhow, you’ll let me in. I did.
Thanks. You think you’re crazy, of course, but you’ll find out you aren’t. It’s just that things are a bit confused. And don’t look at the machine out there too long—until you get used to it, you’ll find it’s hard on the eyes, trying to follow where the vanes go. You’ll get used to it, of course, but it will take about thirty years.
You’re wondering whether to give me a drink, as I remember it. Why not? And naturally, since we have the same tastes, you can make the same for me as you’re having. Of course we have the same tastes—we’re the same person. I’m you thirty years from now—or you’re me. I remember just how you feel—I felt the same way when he came back to tell me about it, thirty years ago.
Here, have one of these cigarettes. You’ll get to like them in a couple more years. And you can look at the revenue stamp date, if you still doubt my story. You’ll believe it eventually, though, so it doesn’t matter.
Right now, you’re shocked—it’s a bit rugged when a man meets himself for the first time. Some kind of telepathy seems to work between two of the same people—you sense things. So I’ll simply go ahead talking for half an hour or so, until you get over it. After that, you’ll come along with me. You know, I could try to change things around by telling what happened to me; but he told me what I was going to do, so I might as well do the same. I probably couldn’t help telling you the same thing in the same words, even if I tried—and I don’t intend to try. I’ve gotten past that stage in worrying about things.
So let’s begin when you get up in half an hour and come out with me. You’ll take a closer look at the machine, then. Yeah, it’ll be pretty obvious it must be a time machine—you’ll sense that, too. You’ve seen it—just a small little cage with two seats, a luggage compartment, and a few buttons on a dash. You’ll be puzzling over what I’ll fell you, and you’ll be getting used to the idea that you are the guy who makes atomic power practical. Jerome Boell, just plain engineer, the man who put atomic power in every home. You won’t exactly believe it, but you’ll want to go along.
I’ll be tired of talking by then, and in a hurry to get going. So I cut off your questions, and get you inside. I snap on a green button, and everything seems to cut off around us—you can see a sort of foggy nothing surrounding the cockpit; it is probably the field that prevents passage through time from affecting us. The luggage section isn’t protected, though.