There had been imaginative drawings of robots, he recalled, in some of the magazines he’d found in the library—robots that had been drawn before there were any actual robots. The drawings had represented great, ungainly metal men who undoubtedly would have done a lot of clanking when they walked. Rollo was nothing like them. He was a slender creature, almost spindly. His shoulders were broad and heavy and his head atop the shoulders seemed a bit too large, somewhat out of proportion, but the rest of him tapered down to a narrow waist, with a slight broadening of the hips to accommodate the sockets of the legs. The legs were trim and neat; looking at them, Cushing thought of the trim legs of a deer. One of the legs, he saw, was pinned beneath a heavy branch that had split off the mighty maple when it had struck the ground. The branch was somewhat more than a foot in diameter.
Rollo saw Cushing looking at the branch. “I could have lifted it enough to pull my leg out,” he said, “but there was no way I could twist around to get a good grip on it.”
“Let’s see what I can do,” said Cushing.
He moved forward on hands and knees, got his hands beneath the branch. He hefted it gingerly, found he could barely move it.
“Maybe I can lift it enough,” he said. “I’ll let you know when I’m ready to lift. Then you try to pull the leg out.”
Cushing crept closer, settling his knees solidly under him, bent and got both arms around the branch.
“Now,” he said. Straining, he heaved up, felt the branch move slightly, heaved again.
“I’m out,” said Rollo. “You didn’t have to move it much.”
Carefully, Cushing slid his arms free, let the branch drop back into place.
Rollo was crawling around on the ground. He retrieved a leather bag from where it lay beneath a pile of leaves, scrabbled around some more and came up with an iron-tipped spear.
“I couldn’t reach them before,” he said. “When the branch fell on me, they flew out of my hands.”
“You all right?” asked Cushing.
“Sure, I’m all right,” the robot said. He sat up, hoisted the formerly trapped foot into his lap and examined it.
“Not even dented,” he said. “The metal’s tough.”
“Would you mind telling me how you got into this mess?”
“Not at all,” said Rollo. “I was walking along when a storm came up. I wasn’t worried much. A little rain won’t hurt me. Then the tornado hit. I heard it coming and I tried to run. I guess what I did was run right into it. There were trees crashing all around me. The wind started to lift me, then set me down again. When I came down, I fell, sort of sprawled out. That’s when I was pinned. The limb broke off and caught me. Then it was all over. The storm passed on, but I couldn’t move. I thought at first it was just a small inconvenience. I was confident I could work free. But, as you see, there was no way of working free.”
“How long ago did all this happen?”
“I can tell you that exactly. I kept count. Eighty-seven days. The thing I was worried about was rust. I had some bear oil in my bag.…”
“Bear oil?”
“Sure, bear oil. First you kill a bear, then build a fire and render out his fat. Any fat will do, but bear oil is the best. Where else would you get oil except from animals? Once we used a petro-product, but there’s not been any of that for centuries. Animal fat isn’t good, but it serves its purpose. You have to take care of a body such as mine. You can allow no rust to get a start. The metal’s fairly good, but even so, rust can get a start. The eighty-seven days were no great problem, but if you hadn’t come along, I’d have been in trouble. I had it figured out that in time the wood would rot and then I could work free. But that might have taken several years. I don’t know how many.
“It was a little boresome, too. The same things to look at all the time. Nothing to talk with. I had this Shivering Snake that hung around for years. Never doing anything, of course, of no use whatever, but always skittering around and sneaking up on you and then sort of backing off, as if it were playing games with you, or whatnot. But when I got pinned underneath that tree, Old Shivering disappeared and I haven’t seen it since. If it’d stuck around, it would have been some sort of company, something at least to watch, and I could talk to it. It never answered back, of course, but I talked to it a lot. It was something one could talk to. But once I got pinned underneath that tree, it lit out, and I haven’t seen it since.”
“Would you mind telling me,” said Cushing, “just what is a Shivering Snake?”
“I don’t know,” said Rollo. “It was the only one I ever saw. I never heard of anyone ever seeing one before. Never even heard any talk of one. It was really not much of anything at all. Just a shimmer. It didn’t walk or run, just shivered in the air, sparkling all the time. In the sunlight you couldn’t see it sparkle very well, but in the dark it was spectacular. Not any kind of shape. No shape at all, I guess, or anything at all. Just a blob of sparkling, dancing in the air.”
“You have no idea what it was or where it came from? Or why it hung out with you?”
“At times I thought it was a friend of mine,” said Rollo, “and I was glad of that, for I tell you, mister, as possibly the last robot, I’m not exactly up to my hips in friends. Most people, if they saw me, would think of me as no more than an opportunity to collect another brain case. You don’t happen to have any designs on my brain case, do you?”
“None at all,” said Cushing.
“That is good,” said Rollo, “because if you had, I’d have to warn you that if forced to, I would kill you to protect myself. Robots, in case you didn’t know, were inhibited against killing anything at all, against any kind of violence. It was implanted in us. That’s why there aren’t any robots left. They allowed themselves to be run down and killed without the lifting of a hand to protect themselves. Either that or they hid out and caught the rust. Even when they could get hold of some lubricant to keep away the rust, the supply didn’t last forever, and when it was gone, they could get no more. So they rusted and that was the end of them, except for the brain case, which could not rust. And after many years, someone came along and found the brain case and collected it.
“Well, after my small supply of lubricant ran out, I took counsel with myself and I told myself this silliness of a robot being so disgustingly nonviolent might have been all right under the old order, but under this new order that had come along, it made no sense at all. I figured there was oil to be got from animal fat if I could only bring myself to kill. Faced with extinction, I decided I would break the inhibition and would kill for fat, and I worked it out that a bear was the thing to kill, for ordinarily, bear are loaded with fat. But it was no easy thing to do, I tell you. I rigged me up a spear and practiced with it until I knew how to handle it, then set out to kill a bear. As you might guess, I failed. I just couldn’t do it. I’d get all set and then I’d go all soft inside. Maybe I never would have worked up my courage on my own. By this time I was considerably discouraged. There were a few rust spots beginning to show up and I knew that was the beginning of the end. I had about given up when one day, out somewhere in the mountains, a big grizzly caught sight of me. I don’t know what was the matter with him. He was short-tempered and there must have been something that had happened to shorten up his temper. I’ve often wondered what it was. Maybe he had a toothache, or a thorn in his foot. I will never know. Maybe the sight of me reminded him of something that he didn’t like. But anyhow, first thing that I know, here he is barreling down upon me, with his shoulders humping and his mouth wide open, roaring, and those big claws reaching out. I suppose that if I’d had the time, I would have turned and run. But I didn’t have the time and I didn’t have the space to run. But the way it was, when he was almost on top of me, the fright that I had felt suddenly turned to anger. Maybe desperation more than anger, really, and I thought, in that instant before he closed on me, you son of a bitch, maybe you can mangle and disable me, but in doing it, I’m going to mangle and disable you. An
d I remember this distinctly, the one thing I do remember well out of all of it—just before he reached me, with this new anger in me, I brought up my spear and jumped at him even as he lunged at me. After this, there is not much that I do remember. It was all a haze and a blur. When my mind came clear again, I was standing on my feet, covered with blood, with a bloody knife in hand, and the bear stretched out on the ground, with my spear buried in his throat.
“That did it. That snapped the inhibition. Killing once, I could kill again. I rendered the fat of this old grizzly and I found a sandy creek. For days I camped beside the creek, using sand to scrape off the few rust spots that had developed on me and keeping myself well greased. Ever since I’ve kept well greased. I never run out of grease. There are a lot of bear.
“But I have been running on so that I haven’t asked you who you are. That is, if you want to tell me. A lot of people would just as soon not tell you who they are. But you come along and rescue me and I don’t know who you are. I don’t know who to thank.”
“I’m Tom Cushing. And there need not be any thanks. Let’s get out of here. I have a camp just a step away. Have you got all your things?”
“Just the bag and spear. That was all I had. I had a knife and it’s still in the sheath.”
“Now that you are free,” said Cushing, “what plans do you have?”
“Why, no plans at all,” said Rollo. “I never have a plan. I simply wander. I have wandered with no purpose for more years than I can count. At one time it troubled me—this lack of purpose. But it does no longer. Although I suppose that if I were offered a purpose, I would gratefully accept it. Does it happen, friend, that you may have a purpose you would share with me? For I do owe you something.”
“You owe me nothing,” Cushing said, “but I do have a purpose. We can talk about it.”
10
The Trees ringed the great butte, having watched through the night as they had watched through centuries, through cold and heat, wet and dry, noon and midnight, cloud and sun. Now the sun came up over the eastern horizon and as its warmth and light fell on them, they greeted it with all the holy ecstacy and thankfulness they had felt when it first had fallen on them, as new-planted saplings put out to serve the purpose they had served through the years, their sensitivity and emotion undimmed by time.
They took the warmth and light and sucked it in and used it. They knew the movement of the dawn breeze and rejoiced in it, fluttering their leaves in response to it. They adjusted themselves to take and use the heat, monitored the limited amount of water that their roots could reach, conserving it, taking up in their roots only what they needed, for this was dryland and water must be used most wisely. And they watched; they continued watching. They noted all that happened. They knew the fox that skulked back to its den with the coming of dawn; the owl that flew back home, half blinded by the morning light (it had stayed out too long) to the small grove of cottonwoods that lined the tiny stream where water flowed begrudgingly along a rocky course; the mice that, having escaped the fox and owl, ran squealing in their grassy burrows; the lumbering grizzly that humped across the desiccated plain, the great lord of the land that brooked no interference from anything alive, including those strange, two-legged, upright creatures the Trees glimpsed occasionally; the distant herd of wild cattle that grazed on scanty pasturage, ready to gallop in a calculated frenzy should the lumbering bear head in their direction; the great bird of prey that sailed high in the air, viewing the vast territory that was its own, hungry now, but confident that before the day was out it would find the dead or dying that would give it meat.
The Trees knew the structure of the snowflake, the chemistry of the raindrop, the molecular pattern of the wind. They realized the fellowship of grasses, of other trees and bushes, the springtime brilliance of the prairie flowers that bloomed briefly in their season; had friendship for the birds that nested in their branches; were aware of ant and bee and butterfly.
They gloried in the sun and knew all that went on around them and talked with one another, not so much a matter of relaying information (although they could do that if need be) as a matter of acknowledging one another’s presence, of making themselves known, of saying all was well—a time of comradely contact to know that all was well.
Above them, on the butte, the ancient buildings stood high against the skyline, against the paleness of the blue that held no single cloud, a sky burnished by the rising sun and scrubbed clean by the summer.
11
The small fire burned with no smoke. Meg knelt beside it to cook the pan of bread. Off to one side, Rollo sat absorbed in the ritual of greasing himself, pouring ill-smelling bear oil out of a bottle fashioned from a gourd. Andy stamped and swished his tail to keep away the flies while paying serious attention to the spotty clumps of grass that were scattered here and there. A short distance away the unseen river gurgled and chuckled as it surged between its banks. The sun was halfway up the eastern sky and the day would get warmer later on, but here, in their hiding place beneath the fallen trees, the temperature was still pleasant.
“You say, laddie,” said Meg, “that the band you sighted numbered only twenty?”
“Thereabouts,” said Cushing. “I could not be sure. No more than that, I think.”
“A scout party, more than likely. Sent out, no doubt, to probe the city. To spot the locations of the tribes. Mayhaps we should stay here for a while. This is a snug retreat and not easily found.”
Cushing shook his head. “No, we’ll push on, come night. If the horde is moving east and we are going west, we should soon be free of them.”
She inclined her head toward the robot. “And what of him?” she asked.
“If he wishes, he can go with us. I’ve not talked with him about it.”
“I sense about this enterprise,” said Rollo, “a seeming urgency and purpose. Even not knowing what it is, I would be willing for the chance to associate myself with it. I pride myself that I might be of some small service. Not needing sleep myself, I could keep a watch while others slept. Being sharp of eye and swift of movement, I could do some scouting. I am well acquainted with the wilds, since I have been forced to live in them, well beyond the haunts of men. I would consume no supplies, since I live on solar energy alone. Give me a few days’ sunshine and I have energy stored against a month or more. And I am a good companion, for I never tire of talk.”
“That is right,” said Cushing. “He has not stopped talking since the minute I found him.”
“Reduced, at many times, I’ve been,” said Rollo, “to talking to myself. Which is not bad if there is no one else to talk with. Talking with oneself, it’s possible to find many areas of precise agreement, and one need never talk on subjects that are not agreeable.
“The best year I ever spent was long ago when, in the depths of the Rockies, I chanced upon an old mountain man who stood in need of help. He was an ancient personage who had fallen victim to a strange disease of stiffening muscles and aching joints, and had it not been for my coming accidentally upon him, he would not have lasted out the winter, since when the cold came he would not have been capable of hunting meat or bringing in the wood that was needed to keep his cabin warm. I stayed with him and brought in game and wood, and since he was as starved for talk as I was, we talked away the winter, he telling of great events in which he had participated or to which he had been a witness, and in many of them there may have been something less than truth, although I never questioned them, for so far as I was concerned, talk, not truth, was paramount. And I spinning tales for him, but little ornamented, of the days I’d spent since the Time of Trouble. Early the next summer, when the pain in him was less and he was able to make his way about, he set off for what he called a “rendezvous,” a summer place of meeting for others such as he. He asked me to go with him, but I declined, for truth to tell, I no longer have any love of man. Excepting the present company, which seems well intentioned, I have had nothing except trouble in those few times I have b
lundered into men.”
“You can remember the Time of Trouble, then?” said Cushing. “You have lived through it all, and your memory’s clear?”
“Oh, clear enough,” said Rollo. “I recall the things that happened, but it would be bootless for you to ask me the meaning of it, for I had no understanding of it then, and despite much thinking on it, have no understanding of it now. You see, I was a common yard robot, a runner of errands and a performer of chores. I had no training except in simple tasks, although I understand there were many of my kind who did have some special training, who were skilled technicians and many other things. My memories mostly are unpleasant, although in recent centuries I have learned to live with existing situations, taking each day as it comes and not ranting against conditions as they are. I was not designed to be a lonely mechanism, but that is what I have been forced to become. I have, through bitter circumstances, become able to live for and of myself, although I am never really happy of it. That is why I have so willingly suggested that I associate myself with your enterprise.”
“Not even knowing,” Meg asked, “what the enterprise might be?”
“Even so,” said Rollo, “if it so happens later on that I do not like the look or smell of it, I can simply walk away.”
“It’s no evil enterprise,” said Cushing. “It’s a simple search. We are looking for a Place of Going to the Stars.”
Rollo nodded sagely. “I have heard of it. Not extensively. Nothing that is greatly known, but of which one hears occasionally, many years apart. It is situated, as best I can determine, on a mesa or a butte somewhere in the West. The mesa or the butte is ringed in by an extensive growth of Trees that legend says keep watch upon the place and will allow no one to enter. And there are other devices, it is said, that guard it, although of those devices I have no true and certain knowledge.”