The Robot and the Man by Anthology

Author:Anthology [Anthology]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

At dusk, they hadn’t found the pilot. But they had learned his name. Homer. He was the leader of a group of twenty-one people who had founded a tiny colony, on the slope of Red Mountain, within two miles of the power plant, a colony that was actually a cult devoted to the simple life. Seeing this group, Ferguson wondered if the spirit of Rousseau was still alive. Rousseau had advocated the simple life back in the Eighteenth Century. Here in the Twenty-first Century men were still following his ideas. Here, on a spring-watered plot of ground, men and women raised vegetables and fruits and grain. Up near the top of the mountain they had a herd of sheep, carding and spinning and weaving their own wool, making their own clothes.

Here, on this mountain, within fifty miles of the tremendous technology of Southern California, within fifty miles of millions •of people who existed in a world of plastics and synthetics and unlimited energy, were people who had never seen a synthetic fabric, who had never tasted artificial vitamins or eaten food grown in hydroponic tanks. Homer’s Bunch, they called themselves. Homer was their leader. He had no second name, and needed none. They described him to Ferguson, Clanahan, Morton, and Blake listening. “Hair whiter’n silver, kind of skinny—” Yes, it was the same man.

Blake stirred uneasily at the identification, the lines of gaunt hunger showing on his youthful face. Up until now he had harbored the hope But no matter.

Homer’s Bunch wanted to know what had happened to Homer, Ferguson told them, as gently as he could, part of the story. They watched him as he spoke. “Does that mean he is going to die?” Bill asked. Bill was at least seventy but arrow-straight.

“Yes,” the engineer said. He expected the news to sadden them, he thought the women would start wailing. But they weren’t saddened. And no woman cried. “Part of Homer will die,” Bill said, “but part of him will live on.” They nodded in agreement and smiled as though they shared some tremendous secret with each other.

“When did you see him last?” Ferguson asked.

“Last night I saw him,” Bill answered. “Just at sundown. A goin’ up the mountain, he was, to pray.”

“He went up the mountain,” Blake said, to himself.

“That’s where we’re going too,” the engineer said. Bill showed them the path and offered to go with them but they could see he didn’t really want to go and they didn’t urge him. Blake’s portable counter brrped under the impact of a stray cosmic ray as they started up the path Homer’s Bunch had made.

“Do we really need that thing?” Morton said.

“Yes,” Ferguson answered.

“It fidgets me.”

“It would fidget me a lot more if I didn’t have it,” the engineer said.

Darkness came down. Chittering bats flew around them. A lumbering beetle, bound on some mysterious errand of its own, hit Ferguson in the face. Cold sweat popped out all over him. He went doggedly on.

They reached the top of the middle ridge, found there a cleared space.

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