That would be the human way. Can't understand a thing. Can't see it. Can't test it. Can't analyse it. O.K., it isn't there. It doesn't exist. It's a ghost, a goblin, a cobbly.
It's simpler that way, more comfortable. Scared? Sure, but you forget it in the light. And it doesn't plague you, haunt you. Think hard enough and you wish it away. Make it a ghost or goblin and you can laugh at it — in the daylight.
A hot, wet tongue rasped across Webster's chin and Ebenezer wriggled with delight.
'I like you,' said Ebenezer. 'Jenkins never held me this way. No one's ever held me this way.'
'Jenkins is busy,' said Webster.
'He sure is,' agreed Ebenezer. 'He writes things down in a book. Things that us dogs hear when we are listening and things that we should do.'
'You've heard about the Websters?' asked the man.
'Sure. We know all about them. You're a Webster. We didn't think there were any more of them.'
'Yes, there is,' said Webster. 'There's been one here all the time. Jenkins is a Webster.'
'He never told us that.'
'He wouldn't.'
The fire had died down and the room had darkened. The sputtering flames chased feeble flickers across the walls and floor.
And something else. Faint rustlings, faint whisperings, as if the very walls were talking. An old house with long memories and a lot of living tucked within its structure. Two thousand years of living. Built to last and it had lasted. Built to be a home and it still was a home — a solid place that put its arms around one and held one close and warm, claimed one for its own.
Footsteps walked across his brain-footsteps from the long ago, footsteps that had been silenced to the final echo centuries before The walking of the Websters. Of the ones that went before me, the ones that Jenkins waited on from their day of birth to the hour of death.
History. Here is history. History stirring in the drapes and creeping on the floor, sitting in the corners, watching from the wall. Living history that a man can feel in the bones of him and against his shoulder blades — the impact of the long dead eyes that come back from the night.
Jon Webster stirred. 'No, not the last of them,' he said.
'I have a son.'
Webster started from the chair, Ebenezer slipping from his lap.
'That's not true,' cried Webster. 'My son-'
And then sat down again.
His son out in the woods with bow and arrows, playing a game, having fun.
A hobby, Sara had said before she climbed the hill to take a hundred years of dreams.
A hobby. Not a business. Not a way of life. Not necessity.
A hobby…
An artificial thing. A thing that had no beginning and no end. A thing a man could drop at any minute and no one would ever notice.
Like cooking up recipes for different kinds of drinks.
Like painting pictures no one wanted.
Like going around with a crew of crazy robots begging people to let you redecorate their homes.
Like writing history no one cares about.
Like playing Indian or caveman or pioneer with bow and arrows.
Like thinking up centuries-long dreams for men and women who are tired of life and yearn for fantasy.
The man sat in the chair, staring at the nothingness that spread before his eyes, the dread and awful nothingness that became to-morrow and to-morrow.
Absent— mindedly his hands came together and the right thumb stroked the back of the left hand.
Ebenezer crept forward through the fire-flared darkness, put his front paws on the man's knee and looked into his face.
'Hurt your hand?' he asked.
'Hurt your hand? You're rubbing it.'
Webster laughed shortly. 'No, just warts.' He showed them to the dog.
'Gee, warts!' said Ebenezer. 'You don't want them, do you?'
'No,' Webster hesitated. 'No, I guess I don't. Never got around to having them taken off.'
Ebenezer dropped his nose and nuzzled the back of Webster's hand.
'There you are,' he announced triumphantly.
'There I'm what?'
'Look at the warts,' invited Ebenezer.
A log fell in the fire and Webster lifted his hand, looked at it in the flare of light.
The warts were gone. The skin was smooth and clean.
Jenkins stood in the darkness and listened to the silence, the soft sleeping silence that left the house to shadows, to the half-forgotten footsteps, the phrase spoken long ago, the tongues that murmured in the walls and rustled in the drapes.
By a single thought the night could have been as day, a simple adjustment in his lenses would have done the trick, but the ancient robot left his sight unchanged. For this was the way he liked it, this was the hour of meditation, the treasured time when the present sloughed away and the past came back and lived.
The others slept, but Jenkins did not sleep. For robots never sleep. Two thousand years of consciousness, twenty centuries of full time unbroken by a single moment of unawareness.
But Jenkins had stayed on because he was an old and faithful servant, because Webster House would not have been home without him.
'They loved me,' said Jenkins to himself. And the three words held deep comfort — comfort in a world where there was little comfort, a world where a servant had become a leader and longed to be a servant once again.
He stood at the window and stared out across the patio to the night-dark clumps of oaks that staggered down the hill.
Darkness. No light anywhere. There had been a time when there had been lights. Windows that shone like friendly beams in the vast land that lay across the river.
But man had gone and there were no lights. The robots needed no lights, for they could see in darkness, even as Jenkins could have seen, had he but chosen to do so. And the castles of the mutants were as dark by night as they were fearsome by day.
Now man had come again, one man. Had come, but he probably wouldn't stay. He'd sleep for a few nights in the great master bedroom on the second floor, then go back to Geneva. He'd walk the old forgotten acres and stare across the river and rummage through the books that lined the study wall, then he would up and leave.
Jenkins swung around.
