«So that’s why he took us on,» I said. «We are trespassers.»
«I suppose that’s it,» said Ben.
That evening we talked it over and decided we’d have to post a watch on Elmer so we could learn his habits and timetable, if any. Because it was important that we try to find out what we could about the buried ruins of the place that Elmer guarded.
For the first time, Man had stumbled on a high civilization, but had come too late and, because of Lulu’s sulking, too poorly equipped to do much with what little there was left.
Getting somewhat sore the more I thought about it, I went over to Lulu and kicked her good and solid to attract her attention. But she paid me no mind. I yelled at her and there was no answer. I told her what was cooking and that we needed her—that there was a job she simply had to do, just exactly the kind she had been built to do. She just sat there frigidly.
I went back and slouched down with the others at the fire. «She acts as if she might be dead.»
Ben poked the fire together and it flamed a little higher. «I wonder if a robot could die. A highly sensitive job like Lulu.»
«Of a broken heart,» said Jimmy pityingly.
«You and your poetic notions!» I raged at him. «Always mooning around. Always spouting words. If it hadn’t been for that damned verse of yours—»
«Cut it out,» Ben said.
I looked at his face across the fire, with flame shadows running on it, and I cut it out. After all, I admitted to myself, I might be wrong. Jimmy couldn’t help being a lousy poet.
I sat there looking at the fire, wondering if Lulu might be dead. I knew she wasn’t, of course. She was just being nasty. She had fixed our clock for us and she had fixed it good. Now she was watching us sweat before she made her play, whatever it was.
In the morning, we set up our watch on Elmer and we kept it up day after day. One of us would go out to the ridge top three miles or so from camp and settle down with our only field glass. We’d stare for several hours.
Then someone else would come out and relieve the watcher and that way, for ten days or more, we had Elmer under observation during all the daylight hours.
We didn’t learn much. He operated on a schedule and it was the kind that seemed to leave no loopholes for anyone to sneak into the valley he guarded—although probably none of us would have known what to do if we had sneaked in.
Elmer had a regular beat. He used some of the mounds for observation posts and he came to each one about every fifteen minutes. The more we watched him, the more we became convinced that he had the situation well in hand. No one would monkey around with that buried city as long as he was there.
I think that after the second day or so, he found out we were watching. He got a little nervous, and when he mounted his observation mounds, he’d stand and look in our direction longer than in any other. Once, while I was on guard, he began what looked to be a charge and I was just getting ready to light out of there when he broke off and went back to his regular rounds.
Other than watching Elmer, we took things easy. We swam in the sea and fished, taking our lives in our hands when we cooked and ate each new kind, but luck was with us and we got no poisonous ones. We wouldn’t have eaten the fish at all except that we figured we should piece out our food supplies as best we could. They wouldn’t last forever and we had no guarantee that Lulu would give more handouts once the last was gone. If she didn’t we’d have to face the problem of making our own way.
Ben got to worrying about whether there were seasons on the planet. He convinced himself there were and went off into the woods to find a place where we might build a cabin.
«Can’t live out on the beach in a tent when it gets cold,» he said.
But he couldn’t get either Jimmy or me too stirred up about the possibility. I had it all doped out that, sooner or later, Lulu would end her sulking and we could get down to business. And Jimmy was deep into the crudest bunch of junk you ever heard that he called a saga. Maybe it was a saga. Damned if I know. I’m ignorant on sagas.
He called it «The Death of Lulu» and he filled page after page with the purest drivel about what a swell machine she was and how, despite its being metal, her heart beat with snow-white innocence. It wouldn’t have been so bad if he had allowed us to ignore it, but he insisted on reading that tripe to us each evening after supper.
I stood it as long as I could, but one evening I blew my top. Ben stood up for Jimmy, but when I threatened to take my third of the supplies and set up a camp of my own, out of earshot, Ben gave in and came over to my side of the argument. Between the two of us, we ruled out any more recitals. Jimmy took it hard, but he was outnumbered.
After that first ten days or so, we watched Elmer only off and on, but we must have had him nervous, for during the night we’d sometimes hear his wheels, and in the morning we’d find tracks. We figured that he was spying out the camp, trying to size us up the same way we’d done with him. He didn’t make any passes at us and we didn’t bother him—we were just a lot more wakeful and alert on our night watches. Even Jimmy managed to stay awake while he was standing guard.
There was a funny thing about it, though. One would have imagined that Elmer would have stayed away from Lulu after the clobbering she gave him. But there were mornings when we found his tracks running up close behind her, then angling sharply off.
We got it doped out that he sneaked up and hid behind her, so he could watch the camp close up, peeking around at us from his position behind that sulking hulk.
Ben kept arguing about building winter quarters until he had me almost convinced that it was something we should do. So one day I teamed up with him, leaving Jimmy at the camp. We set off, carrying an ax and a saw and our guns.
Ben had picked a fine site for our cabin, that much I’ll say. It wasn’t far from the spring, and it was tucked away in a sort of pocket where we’d be protected from the wind, and there were a lot of trees nearby so we wouldn’t have far to drag our timbers or haul our winter wood.
I still wasn’t convinced there would be any winter. I was fairly sure that even if there were, we wouldn’t have to stay that long. One of these days, we’d be able to arrive at some sort of compromise with Lulu. But Ben was worried and I knew it would make him happier if he could get a start at building. And there was nothing else for any of us to do. Building a cabin, I consoled myself, would be better than just sitting.
We leaned our guns against a tree and began to work. We had one tree down and sawed into lengths and were starting on the second tree when I heard the brush snap behind me.
I straightened up from the saw to look, and there was Elmer, tearing down the hill at us.
There wasn’t any time to grab our guns. There was no time to run. There was no time for anything at all.
I yelled and made a leap for the tree behind me and pulled myself up. I felt the wind as Elmer whizzed by beneath me.
Ben had jumped to one side and, as Elmer went pounding past, heaved the ax at him. It was a honey of a throw. The ax caught Elmer in his metal side and the handle splintered into pieces.
Elmer spun around. Ben tried to reach the guns, but he didn’t have the time. He took to a tree and shinnied up it like a cat. He got up to the first big branch and straddled it.
«You all right?» he yelled at me.
«Great,» I said.
Elmer was standing between the two trees, swinging his massive head back and forth, as if deciding which one of us to take.
We clung there, watching him.
He had waited, I reasoned, until he could get between us and Lulu—then he had tackled us. And if that was the case, then this business of his hiding behind Lulu so he could spy on us seemed very queer indeed.