He'll get the Call. He'll get the call to go and work on the Building.'
Jenkins nodded. 'Taking over,' he said. 'They can't do job like that themselves, so they take control of things that can.'
He lifted his hand again and scraped it across his chin.
'I wonder if Joe knew,' he mumbled. 'When he played god to the ants. I wonder if he knew.'
But that was ridiculous. Joe never could have known. Even a mutation like Joe could not have looked twelve thousand years ahead.
So long ago, thought Jenkins. So many things have happened. Bruce Webster was just starting to experiment with dogs, had no more than dreamed his dream of talking, thinking dogs that would go down the path of destiny paw in hand with Man… not knowing then that Man within a few short centuries would scatter to the four winds of eternity and leave the Earth to robot and to dog. Not knowing then that even the name of Man would be forgotten in the dust of years, that the race would come to be known by the name of a single family.
And yet, thought Jenkins, if it was to be any family, the Websters were the ones. I can remember them as it it were yesterday. Those were the days when I thought of myself as a Webster, too.
Lord knows, I tried to be. I did the best I could. I stood by the Webster dogs when the race of men had gone and finally I took the last bothersome survivors of that madcap race into another world to clear the way for Dogs… so that the Dogs could fashion the Earth in the way they planned.
And now even those last bothersome survivors have gone… some place, somewhere… I wish that I could know. Escaped into some fantasy of the human mind. And the men on Jupiter are not even men, but something else. And Geneva is shut off… blocked off from the world.
Although it can't be farther away or blocked more tightly than the world from which I came. If only I could learn how it was I travelled from the exile cobbly world back to Webster House… then, maybe, perhaps, somehow or other, I could reach Geneva.
A new power, he told himself. A new ability. A thing that grew upon me without my knowing that it grew. A thing that every man and every robot — and perhaps every dog… could have if he but knew the way.
Although it may be my body that made it possible… this body that the Dogs gave me on my seven thousandth birthday. A body that has more than any body of flesh and blood has ever quite attained. A body that can know what a bear is thinking or a fox is dreaming, that can feel the happy little mouse thoughts running in the grass.
Wish fulfilment. That might be it. The answer to the strange, illogical yearnings for things that seldom are and often cannot be. But all of which are possible if one knows the way, if one can grow or develop or graft onto oneself the new ability that directs the mind and body to the fulfilment of the wish.
I walked the hill each day, he remembered. Walked there because I could not stay away, because the longing was so strong, steeling myself against looking too closely, for there were differences I did not wish to see.
I walked there a million times and it took that many times before the power within me was strong enough to take me back.
For I was trapped. The word, the thought, the concept that took me into the cobbly world was a one way ticket and while it took me there it could not take me back. But there was another way, a way I did not know. That even now I do not know.
'You said there was a way,' urged Homer.
'A way?'
'Yes, a way to stop the ants?'
Jenkins nodded. 'I am going to find out. I'm going to Geneva.'
Jon Webster awoke.
And this is strange, he thought, for I said eternity.
I was to sleep forever and forever has no end.
All else was mist and the greyness of sleep forgetfulness, but this much stood out with mind — sharp clarity. Eternity, and this was not eternity.
A word ticked at his mind, like feeble tapping on a door that was far away.
He lay and listened to the tapping and the word became two words… words that spoke his name:
'Jon Webster. Jon Webster.' On and on, on and on. Two words tapping at his brain.
'Jon Webster.'
'Jon Webster.'
'Yes,' said Webster's brain and the words stopped and did not come again.
Silence and the thinning of the mists of forgetfulness. And the trickling back of memory. One thing at a time.
There was a city and the name of the city was Geneva.
Men lived in the city, but men without a purpose.
The Dogs lived outside the city… in the whole world outside the city. The Dogs had purpose and a dream.
Sara climbed the hill to take a century of dreams.
And I… I, thought Jon Webster, climbed the hill and asked for eternity. This is not eternity.
'This is Jenkins, Jon Webster.'
'Yes, Jenkins,' said Jon Webster, and yet he did not say it, not with lip and tongue and throat, for he felt the fluid that pressed around his body inside its cylinder, fluid that fed him and kept him from dehydrating, fluid that sealed his lips and eyes and ears.
'Yes, Jenkins,' said Webster, speaking with his mind. 'Iremember you. I remember you now. You were with the family from the very first. You helped us teach the Dogs. You stayed with them when the family was no more.'
'I am still with them,' said Jenkins.
'I sought eternity,' said Webster. 'I closed the city and sought eternity.'
'We often wondered,' Jenkins told him. 'Why did you close the city?'
'The Dogs,' said Webster's mind. 'The Dogs had to have their chance. Man would have spoiled their chance.'
'The dogs are doing well,' said Jenkins.
'But the city is open now?'
'No, the city still is closed.'
'But you are here.'
'Yes, but I'm the only one who knows the way. And there will be no others. Not for a long time, anyway.'
'Time,' said Webster. 'I had forgotten time. How long is it, Jenkins?'
'Since you closed the city? Ten thousand years or so.'
'And there are others?'
'Yes, but they are sleeping.'
'And the robots? The robots still keep watch?'
'The robots still keep watch.'
Webster lay quietly and a peace came upon his mind. The city still was closed and the last of men were sleeping. The Dogs were doing well and the robots stayed on watch.
'You should not have wakened me,' he said. 'You should have let me sleep.'
'There was a thing I had to know. I knew it once, but I have forgotten and it is very simple. Simple and yet terribly important.'
Webster chuckled in his brain. 'What is it, Jenkins?'
'It's about ants,' said Jenkins. 'Ants used to trouble men. What did you do about it?'
'Why, we poisoned them,' said Webster. Jenkins gasped. 'Poisoned them!'
'Yes,' said Webster. 'A very simple thing. We used a base of syrup, sweet, to attract the ants. And we put poison in it, a poison that was deadly to ants. But we did not put enough of it to kill them right away. A slow poison,
