A Heritage of Stars (8 page)

Cushing kept on watching. There must be no sloppiness, he told himself; he needed to be sure there was nothing but the animals. He started in the west again and moved slowly eastward. The deer were still there, but the badger had disappeared. More than likely it had popped into its den. The fox was gone, as well.

To one side he caught a sense of motion. Swiveling the glasses smoothly, he caught the motion in the field. It was far off, but seemed to be moving fast. As it came nearer, he saw what it was: a body of horsemen. He tried to count them, but they were still too far away. They were not, he saw, coming directly toward him, but angling to the southeast. He watched in fascination. Finally he could count them. Either nineteen or twenty; he could not be absolutely sure. They were dressed in furs and leathers, and carried shields and spears. Their little, short-coupled horses moved at a steady lope.

So Meg had been right. The horde was on the move. The band out of the prairie were perhaps no more than outflankers for the main force, which probably was to the north.

He watched until they had moved out of sight, then searched the prairie again for other possible bands. None showed up, and satisfied, finally, he replaced the glasses in the case and moved off the hill and down the bluff. There might be other small bands, he knew, but there was no point in waiting for them. Meg was probably right: they'd stay out on the prairie, headed for the city and away from the river valley.

Halfway down the bluffside a voice spoke to him from the tangle of fallen trees.

“Friend,” it said. Not a loud voice, but clearly spoken, pitched to reach his ear.

At the sound, he froze his stride, glanced swiftly about.

“Friend,” the voice spoke again, “could you find it in your heart to succor a most unfortunate?”

A trick? Cushing wondered. He reached swiftly over his shoulder for an arrow from the quiver.

“There is no need to fear,” the voice spoke again. “Even had I the wish, I am in no position to bring you any harm. I am hard pinned beneath a tree and I would be grateful for any help that you could render me.”

Cushing hesitated. “Where are you?” he asked.

“To your right,” the voice said. “At the edge of the fallen trees. I can see you from where I lie. Should you hunker down, you undoubtedly could glimpse me.”

Cushing put the arrow aside and hunkered down, squinting into the maze of fallen branches. A face stared out at him and at the sight of it he sucked in his breath in astonishment. Such a face he had never seen before. A skull-like face, fashioned of hard planes that shone in the sunlight that filtered through the branches.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“I am Rollo, the robot.”

“Rollo? A robot? You can't be a robot. There are no longer any robots.”

“There is I,” said Rollo. “I would not be surprised if I were the last of them.”

“But if you're a robot, what are you doing here?”

“I told you, remember? I am pinned beneath a tree. A small tree, luckily, but still impossible to escape from it. My leg is caught, and free I've tried to pull it, but that's impossible. I have tried to dig the soil to release my leg by which I'm trapped, but that is impossible as well. Beneath the leg lies a ledge or rock; upon it lies the tree. I cannot squirm around to lift the tree. I've tried everything and there is nothing I can do.”

Cushing bent over and ducked beneath the overhanging branches. Squirming forward, he reached the fallen robot and squatted on his heels to look at the situation.

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. And 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.