“Goodwill be damned!” the captain roared. “How do I know I’ll ever see
this place again?”
Richard Daniel continued unloading cargo.
“You,” the captain shouted, “go down to that village and tell them I’ll
wait no longer than an hour…”
“But this cargo, sir?”
“I’ll get the crew at it. Now, jump!”
So Richard Daniel left the cargo and went down into the village.
He went across the meadow that lay between the spaceport and the
village, following the rutted wagon tracks, and it was a pleasant walk. He
realized with surprise that this was the first time he’d been on solid
ground since he’d left the robot planet. He wondered briefly what the name
of that planet might have been, for he had never known. Nor what its
importance was, why the robots might be there or what they might be doing.
And he wondered, too, with a twinge of guilt, if they’d found Hubert yet.
And where might Earth be now? he asked himself. In what direction did
it lie and how far away? Although it didn’t really matter, for he was done
with Earth.
He had fled from Earth and gained something in his fleeing. He had
escaped all the traps of Earth and all the snares of Man. What he held was
his, to do with as he pleased, for he was no man’s robot, despite what the
captain thought.
He walked across the meadow and saw that this planet was very much like
Earth. It had the same soft feel about it, the same simplicity. It had far
distances and there was a sense of freedom.
He came into the village and heard the muted gurgle of the river
running and the distant shouts of children at their play and in one of the
cabins a sick child was crying with lost helplessness.
He passed the cabin where the dog was sleeping and it came awake and
stalked growling to the gate. When he passed it followed him, still
growling, at a distance that was safe and sensible.
An autumnal calm lay upon the village, a sense of gold and lavender,
and tranquillity hung in the silences between the crying of the baby and the
shouting of the children.
There were women at the windows looking out at him and others at the
doors and the dog still followed, but his growls had stilled and now he
trotted with prick-eared curiosity.
Richard Daniel stopped in the street and looked around him and the dog
sat down and watched him and it was almost as if time itself had stilled and
the little village lay divorced from all the universe, an arrested
microsecond, an encapsulated acreage that stood sharp in all its truth and
purpose.
Standing there, he sensed the village and the people in it, almost as
if he had summoned up a diagram of it, although if there were a diagram, he
was not aware of it.
It seemed almost as if the village were the Earth, a transplanted Earth
with the old primeval problems and hopes of Earth – a family of peoples that
faced existence with a readiness and confidence and inner strength.
From down the street he heard the creak of wagons and saw them coming
around the bend, three wagons piled high and heading for the ship.
He stood and waited for them and as he waited the dog edged a little
closer and sat regarding him with a not-quite-friendliness.
The wagons came up to him and stopped.
“Pharmaceutical materials, mostly,” said the man who sat atop the first
load, “It is the only thing we have that is worth the shipping.”
“You seem to have a lot of it,” Richard Daniel told him. The man shook
his head. “It’s not so much. It’s almost three years since a ship’s been
here. We’ll have to wait another three, or more perhaps, before we see
another.”
He spat down on the ground.
“Sometimes it seems,” he said, “that we’re at the tail-end of nowhere.
There are times we wonder if there is a soul that remembers we are here.”
From the direction of the ship, Richard Daniel heard the faint,
strained violence of the captain’s roaring.
“You’d better get on up there and unload,” he told the man. “The
captain is just sore enough he might not wait for you.”
The man chuckled thinly. “I guess that’s up to him,” he said.
He flapped the reins and clucked good-naturedly at the horses.
“Hop up here with me,” he said to Richard Daniel. “Or would you rather
walk?”
“I’m not going with you,” Richard Daniel said. “I am staying here. You
can tell the captain.”
For there was a baby sick and crying. There was a radio to fix. There
was a culture to be planned and guided. There was a lot of work to do. This
place, of all the places he had seen, had actual need of him.
The man chuckled once again. “The captain will not like it.”
“Then tell him,” said Richard Daniel, “to come down and talk to me. I
am my own robot. I owe the captain nothing. I have more than paid any debt I
owe him.”
The wagon wheels began to turn and the man flapped the reins again.
“Make yourself at home,” he said. “We’re glad to have you stay.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Richard Daniel. “I’m pleased you want me.”
He stood aside and watched the wagons lumber past, their wheels lifting
and dropping thin films of powdered earth that floated in the air as an
acrid dust.
Make yourself at home, the man had said before he’d driven off. And the
words had a full round ring to them and a feel of warmth. It had been a long
time, Richard Daniel thought, since he’d had a home.
A chance for resting and for knowing – that was what he needed. And a
chance to serve, for now he knew that was the purpose in him. That was,
perhaps, the real reason he was staying – because these people needed him…
and he needed, queer as it might seem, this very need of theirs. Here on
this Earth-like planet, through the generations, a new Earth would arise.
And perhaps, given only time, he could transfer to the people of the planet
all the powers and understanding he would find inside himself.
And stood astounded at the thought, for he’d not believed that he had
it in him, this willing, almost eager, sacrifice. No messiah now, no robotic
liberator, but a simple teacher of the human race.
Perhaps that had been the reason for it all from the first beginning.
Perhaps all that had happened had been no more than the working out of human
destiny. If the human race could not attain directly the paranormal power he
held, this instinct of the mind, then they would gain it indirectly through
the agency of one of their creations. Perhaps this, after all, unknown to
Man himself, had been the prime purpose of the robots.
He turned and walked slowly down the length of village street, his back
turned to the ship and the roaring of the captain, walked contentedly into
this new world he’d found, into this world that he would make – not for
himself, nor for robotic glory, but for a better Mankind and a happier.
Less than an hour before he’d congratulated himself on escaping all the
traps of Earth, all the snares of Man. Not knowing that the greatest trap of
all, the final and the fatal trap, lay on this present planet.
But that was wrong, he told himself. The trap had not been on this
world at all, nor any other world. It had been inside himself.
He walked serenely down the wagon-rutted track in the soft, golden
afternoon of a matchless autumn day, with the dog trotting at his heels.
Somewhere, just down the street, the sick baby lay crying in its crib.