City Page 8

  Webster shook his head. “It is too soon to say. Another twenty years, maybe I can tell you.”

  He lifted the brandy bottle from the table, held it out.

  “Thanks,” said Grant.

  “I am a poor host,” Webster told him. “You should have helped yourself.”

  He raised the glass against the fire. “I had good material to work with. A dog is smart. Smarter than you think. The ordinary, run of the mill dog recognizes fifty words or more. A hundred is not unusual. Add another hundred and he has a working vocabulary. You noticed, perhaps the simple words that Nathaniel used. Almost basic English.”

  Grant nodded. “One and two syllables. He told me there were a lot of words he couldn’t say.”

  “There is much more to do,” said Webster. “So much more to do. Reading, for example. A dog doesn’t see as you and I do. I have been experimenting with lenses—correcting their eyesight so they can see as we do. And if that fails, there’s still another way. Man must visualize the way a dog sees—learn to print books that dogs can read.”

  “The dogs,” asked Grant, “what do they think of it?”

  “The dogs?” said Webster. “Believe it or not, Grant, they’re having the time of their merry lives.”

  He stared into the fire.

  “God bless their hearts,” he said.

  Following Jenkins, Grant climbed the stairs to bed, but as they passed a partially opened door a voice hailed them.

  “That you, stranger?”

  Grant stopped, jerked around.

  Jenkins said, in a whisper, “That’s the old gentleman, sir. Often he cannot sleep.”

  “Yes,” called Grant.

  “Sleepy?” asked the voice.

  “Not very,” Grant told him.

  “Come in for a while,” the old man said.

  Thomas Webster sat propped up in bed, striped nightcap on his head. He saw Grant staring at it.

  “Getting bald,” he rasped. “Don’t feel comfortable unless I got something on. Can’t wear my hat to bed.”

  He shouted at Jenkins. “What you standing there for? Don’t you see he needs a drink?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Jenkins, and disappeared.

  “Sit down,” said Thomas Webster. “Sit down and listen for a while. Talking will help me go to sleep. And, besides, we don’t see new faces every day.”

  Grant sat down.

  “What do you think of that son of mine?” the old man asked.

  Grant started at the unusual question. “Why, I think he’s splendid. The work he’s doing with the dogs—”

  The old man chuckled. “Him and his dogs! Ever tell you about the time Nathaniel tangled with a skunk? Of course, I haven’t. Haven’t said more than a word or two to you.”

  He ran his hands along the bed covering, long fingers picking at the fabric nervously.

  “Got another son, you know. Allen. Call him Al. Tonight he’s the farthest from Earth that Man has ever been. Heading for the stars.”

  Grant nodded. “I know. I read about it. The Alpha Centauri expedition.”

  “My father was a surgeon,” said Thomas Webster. “Wanted me to be one, too. Almost broke his heart, I guess, when I didn’t take to it. But if he could know, he’d be proud of us tonight.”

  “You mustn’t worry about your son,” said Grant. “He—”

  The old man’s glare silenced him. “I built that ship myself. Designed it, watched it grow. If it’s just a matter of navigating space, it’ll get where it is going. And the kid is good. He can ride that crate through hell itself.”

  He hunched himself straighter in the bed, knocking his nightcap askew against the piled up pillows.

  “And I got another reason to think he’ll get there and back. Didn’t think much about it at the time, but lately I’ve been recalling it, thinking it over, wondering if it mightn’t mean…well, if it might not be—”

  He gasped a bit for breath. “Mind you, I’m not superstitious.”

  “Of course you’re not,” said Grant.

  “You bet I’m not,” said Webster.

  “A sign of some sort, perhaps,” suggested Grant. “A feeling. A hunch.”

  “None of those,” declared the old man. “An almost certain knowledge that destiny must be with me. That I was meant to build a ship that would make the trip. That someone or something decided it was about time Man got out to the stars and took a hand to help him along a bit.”

  “You sound as if you’re talking about an actual incident,” said Grant. “As if there were some positive happening that makes you think the expedition will succeed.”

  “You bet your boots,” said Webster. “That’s just exactly what I mean. It happened twenty years ago, out on the lawn in front of this very house.”

  He pulled himself even straighter, gasped for breath, wheezing.

  “I was stumped, you understand. The dream was broken. Years spent for nothing. The basic principle I had evolved to get the speed necessary for interstellar flight simply wouldn’t work. And the worst of it was, I knew it was almost right. I knew there was just one little thing, one theoretical change that must be made. But I couldn’t find it.

  “So I was sitting out there on the lawn, feeling sorry for myself, with a sketch of the plan in front of me. I lived with it, you see. I carried it everywhere I went, figuring maybe that by just looking at it, the thing that was wrong would pop into my mind. You know how it does, sometimes.”

  Grant nodded.

  “While I was sitting there a man came along. One of the ridge runners. You know what a ridge runner is?”

  “Sure,” said Grant.

  “Well, this fellow came along. Kind of limber-jointed chap, ambling along as if he didn’t have a trouble in the world. He stopped and looked over my shoulder and asked me what I had.

  “‘Spaceship drive,’ I told him.

  “He reached down and took it and I let him have it. After all, what was the use? He couldn’t understand a thing about it and it was no good, anyhow.

  “And then he handed it back to me and jabbed his finger at one place. ‘That’s your trouble,’ he said. And then he turned and galloped off and I sat staring after him, too done in to say a single word, to even call him back.”

  The old man sat bolt upright in the bed, staring at the wall, nightcap canted crazily. Outside the wind sucked along the eaves with hollow hooting. And in that well-lighted room, there seemed to be shadows, although Grant knew there weren’t any.

  “Did you ever find him?” asked Grant.

  The old man shook his head. “Hide nor hair,” he said.

  Jenkins came through the door with a glass, set it on the bedside table.

  “I’ll be back, sir,” he said to Grant, “to show you to your room.”

  “No need of it,” said Grant. “Just tell me where it is.”

  “If you wish, sir,” said Jenkins. “It’s the third one down. I’ll turn on the light and leave the door ajar.”

  They sat, listening to the robot’s feet go down the hall.

  The old man glanced at the glass of whiskey and cleared his throat.

  “I wish now,” he said, “I’d had Jenkins bring me one.”

  “Why, that’s all right,” said Grant. “Take this one. I don’t really need it.”

  “Sure you don’t?”

  “Not at all.”

  The old man stretched out his hand, took a sip, sighed gustily.

  “Now that’s what I call a proper mix,” he said. “Doctor makes Jenkins water mine.”

  There was something in the house that got under one’s skin. Something that made one feel like an outsider—uncomfortable and naked in the quiet whisper of its walls.

  Sitting on the edge of his bed, Grant slowly unlaced his shoes and dropped them on the carpet.

  A robot who had served the family for four generations, who talked of men long dead as if he had brought them a glass of whiskey only yesterday. An old man who worried about a ship that slid through the
space-darkness beyond the solar system. Another man who dreamed of another race, a race that might go hand in paw with man down the trail of destiny.

  And over it all, almost unspoken and yet unmistakable, the shadow of Jerome A. Webster—the man who had failed a friend, a surgeon who had failed his trust.

  Juwain, the Martian philosopher, had died, on the eve of a great discovery, because Jerome A. Webster couldn’t leave this house, because agoraphobia chained him to a plot a few miles square.

  On stockinged feet, Grant crossed to the table where Jenkins had placed his pack. Loosening the straps, he opened it, brought out a thick portfolio. Back at the bed again, he sat down and hauled out sheafs of papers, thumbed through them.

  Records, hundreds of sheets of records. The story of hundreds of human lives set down on paper. Not only the things they told him or the questions that they answered, but dozens of other little things—things he had noted down from observation, from sitting and watching, from living with them for an hour or day.

  For the people that he ferreted out in these tangled hills accepted him. It was his business that they should accept him. They accepted him because he came on foot, briar-scratched and weary, with a pack upon his shoulder. To him clung none of the modernity that would have set him apart from them, made them suspicious of him. It was a tiresome way to make a census, but it was the only way to make the kind of World Committee wanted—and needed.

  For somewhere, sometime, studying sheets like these that lay upon the bed, some man like him would find a thing he sought, would find a clue to some life that veered from the human pattern. Some betraying quirk of behaviorism that would set out one life against all the others.

  Human mutations were not uncommon, of course. Many of them were known, men who held high position in the world. Most of the World Committee members were mutants, but, like the others, their mutational qualities and abilities had been modified and qualified by the pattern of the world, by unconscious conditioning that had shaped their thoughts and reaction into some conformity with other fellow men.

  There had always been mutants, else the race would not have advanced. But until the last hundred years or so they had not been recognized as such. Before that they had merely been great businessmen or great scientists or great crooks. Or perhaps eccentrics who had gained no more than scorn or pity at the hands of a race that would not tolerate divergence from the norm.

  Those who had been successful had adapted themselves to the world around them, had bent their greater mental powers into the pattern of acceptable action. And this dulled their usefulness, limited their capacity, hedged their ability with restrictions set up to fit less extraordinary people.

  Even as today the known mutant’s ability was hedged, unconsciously, by a pattern that had been set—a groove of logic that was a terrible thing.

  But somewhere in the world there were dozens, probably hundreds, of other humans who were just a little more than human—persons whose lives had been untouched by the rigidity of complex human life. Their ability would not be hedged, they would know no groove of logic.

  From the portfolio Grant brought out a pitifully thin sheaf of papers, clipped together, read the title of the script almost reverently: “Unfinished Philosophical Proposition and Related Notes of Juwain.”

  It would take a mind that knew no groove of logic, a mind unhampered by the pattern of four thousand years of human thought to carry on the torch the dead hand of the Martian philosopher had momentarily lifted. A torch that lit the way to a new concept of life and purpose, that showed a path that was easier and straighter. A philosophy that would have put mankind ahead a hundred thousand years in two short generations.

  Juwain had died and in this very house a man had lived out his haunted years, listening to the voice of his dead friend, shrinking from the censure of a cheated race.

  A stealthy scratch came at the door. Startled, Grant stiffened, listened. It came again. Then, a little, silky whine.

  Swiftly Grant stuffed the papers back in the portfolio, strode to the door. As he opened it, Nathaniel oozed in, like a sliding black shadow.

  “Oscar,” he said, “doesn’t know I’m here. Oscar would give it to me if he knew I was.”

  “Who’s Oscar?”

  “Oscar’s the robot that takes care of us.”

  Grant grinned at the dog. “What do you want, Nathaniel?”

  “I want to talk to you,” said Nathaniel. “You’ve talked to everyone else. To Bruce and Grandpa. But you haven’t talked to me and I’m the one that found you.”

  “O.K.,” invited Grant. “Go ahead and talk.”

  “You’re worried,” said Nathaniel.

  Grant wrinkled his brow. “That’s right. Perhaps I am. The human race is always worried. You should know that by now, Nathaniel.”

  “You’re worrying about Juwain. Just like Grandpa is.”

  “Not worrying,” protested Grant. “Just wondering. And hoping.”

  “What’s the matter with Juwain?” demanded Nathaniel. “And who is he and—”

  “He’s no one, really,” declared Grant. “That is, he was someone once, but he died years ago. He’s just an idea now. A problem. A challenge. Something to think about.”

  “I can think,” said Nathaniel, triumphantly. “I think a lot, sometimes. But I mustn’t think like human beings. Bruce tells me I mustn’t. He says I have to think dog thoughts and let human thoughts alone. He says dog thoughts are just as good as human thoughts, maybe a whole lot better.”

  Grant nodded soberly. “There is something to that. Nathaniel. After all, you must think differently than man. You must—”

  “There’s lots of things that dogs know that men don’t know,” bragged Nathaniel. “We can see things and hear things that men can’t see nor hear. Sometimes we howl at night, and people cuss us out. But if they could see and hear what we do they’d be scared too stiff to move. Bruce says we’re…we’re—”

  “Psychic?” asked Grant.

  “That’s it,” declared Nathaniel. “I can’t remember all them words.”

  Grant picked his pajamas off the table.

  “How about spending the night with me, Nathaniel? You can have the foot of the bed.”

  Nathaniel stared at him round eyed. “Gee, you mean you want me to?”

  “Sure I do. If we’re going to be partners, dogs and men, we better start out on an even footing now.”

  “I won’t get the bed dirty,” said Nathaniel. “Honest I won’t. Oscar gave me a bath tonight.”

  He flipped an ear.

  “Except,” he said, “I think he missed a flea or two.”

  Grant stared in perplexity at the atomic gun. A handy thing, it performed a host of services, ranging from cigarette lighter to deadly weapon. Built to last a thousand years, it was foolproof, or so the advertisements said. It never got out of kilter—except now it wouldn’t work.

  He pointed it at the ground and shook it vigorously and still it didn’t work. He tapped it gently on a stone and got no results.

  Darkness was dropping on the tumbled hills. Somewhere in the distant river valley an owl laughed irrationally. The first stars, small and quiet, came out in the east and in the west the green-tinged glow that marked the passing of the sun was fading into night.

  The pile of twigs was laid before the boulder and other wood lay near at hand to keep the campfire going through the night. But if the gun wouldn’t work, there would be no fire.

  Grant cursed under his breath, thinking of chilly sleeping and cold rations.

  He tapped the gun on the rock again, harder this time. Still no soap.

  A twig crunched in the dark and Grant shot bolt upright. Beside the shadowy trunk of one of the forest giants that towered into the gathering dusk, stood a figure, tall and gangling.

  “Hello,” said Grant.

  “Something wrong, stranger?”

  “My gun—” replied Grant, then cut short the words. No use in letting this shadowy figure know
he was unarmed.

  The man stepped forward, hand outstretched.

  “Won’t work, eh?”

  Grant felt the gun lifted from his grasp.

  The visitor squatted on the ground, making chuckling noises. Grant strained his eyes to see what he was doing, but the creeping darkness made the other’s hands an inky blur weaving about the bright metal of the gun.

  Metal clicked and scraped. The man sucked in his breath and laughed. Metal scraped again and the man arose, holding out the gun.

  “All fixed,” he said. “Maybe better than it was before.”

  A twig crunched again.

  “Hey, wait!” yelled Grant, but the man was gone, a black ghost moving among the ghostly trunks.

  A chill that was not of the night came seeping from the ground and traveled slowly up Grant’s body. A chill that set his teeth on edge, that stirred the short hairs at the base of his skull, that made goose flesh spring out upon his arms.

  There was no sound except the talk of water whispering in the dark, the tiny stream that ran just below the campsite.

  Shivering, he knelt beside the pile of twigs, pressed the trigger. A thin blue flame lapped out and the twigs burst into flame.

  Grant found old Dave Baxter perched on the top rail of the fence, smoke pouring from the short-stemmed pipe almost hidden in his whiskers.

  “Howdy, stranger,” said Dave. “Climb up and squat a while.”

  Grant climbed up, stared out over the corn-shocked field, gay with the gold of pumpkins.

  “Just walkin’?” asked old Dave. “Or snoopin’?”

  “Snooping,” admitted Grant.

  Dave took the pipe out of his mouth, spat, put it back in again. The whiskers draped themselves affectionately, and dangerously, about it.

  “Diggin’?” asked old Dave.

  “Nope,” said Grant.

  “Had a feller through here four, five years ago,” said Dave, “that was worse’n a rabbit dog for diggin’. Found a place where there had been an old town and just purely tore up the place. Pestered the life out of me to tell him about the town, but I didn’t rightly remember much. Heard my grandpappy once mention the name of the town, but danged if I ain’t forgot it. This here feller had a slew of old maps that he was all the time wavin’ around and studying, tryin’ to figure out what was what, but I guess he never did know.”