Parker staggered to his feet, stood waiting them.
“We beat them, son!” yelled Matt. “We beat the britches off them!”
He stopped in front of Parker, looked soberly at the shoulder.
“Hurt bad, son?” he asked.
Parker shook his head. “Left arm won’t work for a while,” he said. “But the right’s O.K.”
To prove it, he held it out for Ann.
Old Matt was chuckling. “You and Luke thought you had the old man fooled,” he said. “Never figured I knew where you sneaked off every Sunday afternoon.”
Parker choked. “You knew about the cave all the time, then?”
“Hell, yes,” Matt told him, “but I kept my big mouth shut. Spoiled all your fun if you knew I knew.”
Parker tightened his arm about Ann, saw Luke coming through the woods.
“Everything’s all right,” he said to Ann. “Everything’s all right.”
Univac: 2200
Originally published in an original anthology entitled Frontiers 1: Tomorrow’s Alternatives, which was created by Roger Elwood and published by Macmillan in 1973 (there was a time when there was a vogue for original anthologies, and a breed of professional anthologists arose, who sometimes used a numbering system to help consumers avoid getting lost in the deluge of such), this story faded into the background of its era. But it nonetheless touched on a number of the themes Clifford Simak pursued over the years, hinting at newly sensed interconnections among them—and that, most of all, because it was so important to Cliff to explore the idea of whether humans have souls, and whether technology can help us to figure that out.
And completely overlooked is the dropped—and not pursued—suggestion that something we now call “virtual reality” could make a difference in the creation of a newer, greener, way of human life.
He came home along a country lane, with grass growing between the dust-powdered cart tracks, with low stone walls to either side, erected long ago and now crumbling with the years, but with their crumbling hidden by the growth of creeping vines and screened by the bushes that grew along their bases. A verdant countryside stretched on every hand, with sleek cattle in the pastures and the smoke of cottage chimneys trailing up the sky. Larks sang in the grasses and a rabbit popped out of its hiding place along one of the stone fences and went bobbing up the road.
The corridor cyber, Andrew Harrison told himself, had knocked itself out on this one. He hoped it would be allowed to stay for a while, for it was most restful. But he knew it wouldn’t stay. They never did. It was as if the cyber had so many patterns that it was in a hurry to get them all used up. Tomorrow, or maybe just a few hours from now, it would be the main street of a sleepy old historic village or a woodland trail or an old Paris boulevard, or perhaps some far-space fantasy. Although he doubted the patterns would ever all be used. He’d lived here—how long?—more than fifty years, and before that more than thirty years on one of the lower levels, and in all that time there had not been a repetition, close approximation perhaps, but never a repetition in the corridors.
He did not hurry. He strolled along sedately. He must be getting close to home and when he got there and had to leave it, he’d miss this country lane. He considered stopping for a while to sit upon one of the crumbling walls and listen to the meadow larks and watch the cloud patterns in the deep blue sky, but today he had no time to sit—today was a busy day.
Up ahead of him he saw the signpost that would have his name upon it and that was as far as he would go, for it marked the door of home. Someone else traveling this lane homeward would see another signpost, but no one else would see it, as no one else would see the one meant for his eyes alone.
He slackened his pace, loitering, reluctant to leave the road he traveled. But slow as he might go, he finally reached the signpost and turned off into the little footpath.
A door opened before him and beyond the door was home.
“Good afternoon, sir,” said the cyber, Harley. “I hope you had a pleasant walk. Did you get the tobacco?”
“Very pleasant, Harley, thank you.”
“And now …” said Harley.
“No,” said Harrison. “Absolutely not. No drink, no conversation. Forget your role of the gracious servant. I have work to do.”
“But, sir …”
“And no ski slope, no fishing stream, no beach, no nothing. Just leave me alone.”
“If you wish it, sir,” said Harley, considerably offended, “I’ll leave you quite alone.”
“Some other time,” said Harrison, “I’ll be quite grateful for your services.”
“I am always at your service, sir.”
“Where are the others?”
“You have forgotten, sir. They went out to the country.”
“Yes,” he said. “I had forgotten.”
He walked from the entry into the living room and, for the first time in many months, realized, with something of a shock, how small the living quarters were.
“There is no need of size,” said Harley. “No need of space.”
“That’s right,” said Harrison, “and even if we needed it, or wanted it, we haven’t got the space. And I wish, if it is all the same to you, you’d cut out monitoring me.”
“I must monitor you,” said Harley, primly. “That is my job and as a functioning, conscientious cybernetic system, I must do my job. For if I did not monitor you, then how might I best serve you?”
“All right, monitor,” said Harrison, “but keep it to yourself. Can’t you, for the next few hours, manage to be somewhat unobtrusive.”
“I would suspect,” said Harley, “that there must be something wrong with you, but my medical components come up with nothing more than normal and from that I must conclude that you have no illness. But I must confess to being puzzled. You have never been quite this way before. You reject me and my service and I am disturbed.”
“I am sorry, Harley. I have something to decide.”
He walked to the window and looked out. The country stretched away, far below—a bit more, he remembered now, than a mile below. A great belt of parkland lay around the tower and beyond the parkland wilderness—recreational space for all who wished to use it. For the land was no longer used, or very little used. A few mines, a few tracts of carefully harvested timber and that was all. After all of this was over, he decided, he and Mary would go west to the mountains, for a holiday.
“Why go?” asked Harley. “I can send you there, or to a place that is equivalent to mountains. It would be the same. You would not know the difference.”
“I thought I told you to shut up.”
“I am sorry, sir. It is just that my only thought is of your welfare.”
“That,” said Harrison, “is most commendable of you.”
“I am glad you think so, sir.”
Harrison turned from the window and went into his workroom. The room was small and crammed with equipment and a desk. The windowless walls closed in on him, but he felt comfortable. Here was his work and life.
Here, for years, he had worked. And was his work now coming to an end? Was that the reason, he asked himself, that he had delayed so long, to hold onto work and purpose until the very end? But he was not, he knew, being honest with himself; it was because he must be certain and on that trip down to the retail levels to buy himself a tin of tobacco, it had come to him that he was as certain now as he would ever be.