Heirs of the Perisphere

 

 

THINGS HAD NOT BEEN GOING WELL at the factory for the last fifteen hundred years or so.

A rare thunderstorm, soaking rain, and a freak lightning bolt changed all that.

When the lightning hit, an emergency generator went to work as it had been built to do a millennium and a half before. It cranked up and ran the assembly line just long enough, before freezing up and shedding its brushes and armatures in a fine spray, to finish some work in the custom design section.

The factory completed, hastily programmed, and wrongly certified as approved the three products which had been on the assembly line fifteen centuries before.

Then the place went dark again.

 

* * *

 

“Gawrsh,” said one of them. “It shore is dark in here!”

“Well, huh-huh, we can always use the infrared they gave us!”

“Wak Wak Wak!” said the third. “What’s the big idea?”

 

* * *

 

The custom-order jobs were animato/mechanical simulacra. They were designed to speak and act like the famous creations of a multimillionaire cartoonist who late in life had opened a series of gigantic amusement parks in the latter half of the twentieth century.

Once these giant theme parks had employed persons in costume to act the parts. Then the corporation which had run things after the cartoonist’s death had seen the wisdom of building robots. The simulacra would be less expensive in the long run, would never be late for work, could be programmed to speak many languages, and would never try to pick up the clean-cut boys and girls who visited the Parks.

These three had been built to be host robots in the third and largest of the Parks, the one separated by an ocean from the other two.

And, as their programming was somewhat incomplete, they had no idea of much of this.

All they had were a bunch of jumbled memories, awareness of the thunderstorm outside, and of the darkness of the factory around them.

The tallest of the three must have started as a cartoon dog, but had become upright and acquired a set of baggy pants, balloon shoes, a sweatshirt, black vest, and white gloves. There was a miniature carpenter’s hat on his head, and his long ears hung down from it. He had two prominent incisors in his muzzle. He stood almost two meters tall and answered to the name GUF.

The second, a little shorter, was a white duck with a bright orange bill and feet, and a blue and white sailor’s tunic and cap. He had large eyes with little cuts out of the upper right corners of the pupils. He was naked from the waist down, and was the only one of the three without gloves. He answered to the name DUN.

The third and smallest, just over a meter, was a rodent. He wore a red bibbed playsuit with two huge gold buttons at the waistline. He was shirtless and had shoes like two pieces of bread dough. His tail was long and thin like a whip. His bare arms, legs, and chest were black, his face a pinkish-tan. His white gloves were especially prominent. His most striking feature was his ears, which rotated on a track, first one way, then another, so that seen from any angle they could look like a featureless black circle.

His name was MIK. His eyes, like those of GUF, were large and the pupils were big round dots. His nose ended in a perfect sphere of polished onyx.

 

* * *

 

“Well,” said MIK, brushing dust from his body, “I guess we’d better, huh-huh, get to work.”

“Uh hyuk,” said GUF. “Won’t be many people at thuh Park in weather like thiyus.”

“Oh boy! Oh boy!” quacked DUN. “Rain! Wak Wak Wak!” He ran out through a huge crack in the wall which streamed with rain and mist.

MIK and GUF came behind, GUF ambling with his hands in his pockets, MIK walking determinedly.

Lightning cracked once more but the storm seemed to be dying.

“Wak Wak Wak!” said DUN, his tail fluttering, as he swam in a big puddle. “Oh boy. Oh joy!”

“I wonder if the rain will hurt our works?” asked MIK.

“Not me!” said GUF. “Uh hyuk! I’m equipped fer all kinds a weather.” He put his hand conspiratorially beside his muzzle. “’Ceptin’ mebbe real cold on thuh order of -40° Celsius, uh hyuk!”

MIK was ranging in the ultraviolet and infrared, getting the feel of the landscape through the rain. “You’d have thought, huh-huh, they might have sent a truck over or something,” he said. “I guess we’ll have to walk.”

“I didn’t notice anyone at thuh factory,” said GUF. “Even if it was a day off, you’d think some of thuh workers would give unceasingly of their time, because, after all, thuh means of produckshun must be kept in thuh hands of thuh workers, uh hyuk!”

GUF’s specialty was to have been talking with visitors from the large totalitarian countries to the west of the country the Park was in. He was especially well versed in dialectical materialism and correct Mao thought.

As abruptly as it had started, the storm ended. Great ragged gouts broke in the clouds, revealing high, fast-moving cirrus, a bright blue sky, the glow of a warming sun.

“Oh rats rats rats!” said DUN, holding out his hand, palm up. “Just when I was starting to get wet!”

“Uh, well,” asked GUF, “which way is it tuh work? Thuh people should be comin’ out o’ thuh sooverneer shops real soon now.”

MIK looked around, consulting his programming. “That way, guys,” he said, unsure of himself. There were no familiar landmarks, and only one that was disturbingly unfamiliar.

Far off was the stump of a mountain. MIK had a feeling it should be beautiful, blue and snow-capped. Now it was a brown lump, heavily eroded, with no white at the top. It looked like a bite had been taken out of it.

All around them was rubble, and far away in the other direction was a sluggish ocean.

 

* * *

 

It was getting dark. The three sat on a pile of concrete.

“Them and their big ideas,” said DUN.

“Looks like thuh Park is closed,” said GUF.

MIK sat with his hands under his chin. “This just isn’t right, guys,” he said. “We were supposed to report to the programming hut to get our first day’s instructions. Now we can’t even find the Park!”

“I wish it would rain again,” said DUN, “while you two are making up your minds.”

“Well, uh hyuk,” said GUF. “I seem tuh remember we could get hold of thuh satellite in a ’mergency.”

“Sure!” said MIK, jumping to his feet and pounding his fist into his glove. “That’s it! Let’s see, what frequency was that . . . ?”

“Six point five oh four,” said DUN. He looked eastward. “Maybe I’ll go to the ocean.”

“Better stay here whiles we find somethin’ out,” said GUF.

“Well, make it snappy!” said DUN.

MIK tuned in the frequency and broadcast the Park’s call letters.

 

* * *

 

“ . . . ZZZZZ. What? HOOSAT?”

“Uh, this is MIK, one of the simulacra at the Park. We’re trying to get a hold of one of the other Parks for, huh-huh, instructions.”

“In what language would you like to communicate?” asked the satellite.

“Oh, sorry, huh-huh. We speak Japanese to each other, but we’ll switch over to Artran if that’s easier for you.” GUF and DUN tuned in, too.

“It’s been a very long while since anyone communicated with me from down there.” The satellite’s well-modulated voice snapped and popped.

“If you must know,” HOOSAT continued, “it’s been rather a while since anyone contacted me from anywhere. I can’t say much for the stability of my orbit, either. Once I was forty thousand kilometers up, very stable . . .”

“Could you put us through to one of the other Parks, or maybe the Studio itself, if you can do that? We’d, huh-huh, like to find out where to report for work.”

“I’ll attempt it,” said HOOSAT. There was a pause and some static. “Predictably, there’s no answer at any of the locations.”

“Well, where are they?”

“To whom do you refer?”

“The people,” said MIK.

“Oh, you wanted humans? I thought perhaps you wanted the stations themselves. There was a slight chance that some of them were still functioning.”

“Where are thuh folks?” asked GUF.

“I really don’t know. We satellites and monitoring stations used to worry about that frequently. Something happened to them.”

“What?” asked all three robots at once.

“Hard to understand,” said HOOSAT. “Ten or fifteen centuries ago. Very noisy in all spectra, followed by quiet. Most of the ground stations ceased functioning within a century after that. You’re the first since then.”

“What do you do, then?” asked MIK.

“Talk with other satellites. Very few left. One of them has degraded. It only broadcasts random numbers when the solar wind is very strong. Another . . .”

There was a burst of fuzzy static.

“Hello? HOOSAT?” asked the satellite. “It’s been a very long time since anyone . . .”

“It’s still us!” said MIK. “The simulacra from the Park. We—”

“Oh, that’s right. What can I do for you?”

“Tell us where the people went.”

“I have no idea.”

“Well, where can we find out?” asked MIK.

“You might try the library.”

“Where’s that?”

“Let me focus in. Not very much left down there, is there? I can give you the coordinates. Do you have standard navigational programming?”

“Boy, do we!” said MIK.

“Well, here’s what you do . . .”

 

* * *

 

“Sure don’t look much different from thuh rest of this junk, does it, MIK?” asked GUF.

“I’m sure there used to be many, many books here,” said MIK. “It all seems to have turned to powder though, doesn’t it?”

“Well,” said GUF, scratching his head with his glove, “they sure didn’t make ’em to last, did they?”

DUN was mumbling to himself. “Doggone wizoo-wazoo waste of time,” he said. He sat on one of the piles of dirt in the large broken-down building of which only one massive wall still stood. The recent rain had turned the meter-deep powder on the floor into a mâché sludge.

“I guess there’s nothing to do but start looking,” said MIK.

“Find a book on water,” said DUN.

 

* * *

 

“Hey, MIK! Looka this!” yelled GUF.

He came running with a steel box. “I found this just over there.”

The box was plain, unmarked. There was a heavy lock to which MIK applied various pressures.

“Let’s forget all this nonsense and go fishing,” said DUN.

“It might be important,” said MIK.

“Well, open it then,” said DUN.

“It’s, huh-huh, stuck.”

“Gimme that!” yelled DUN. He grabbed it. Soon he was muttering under his beak. “Doggone razzle-frazzin dadgum thing!” He pulled and pushed, his face and bill turning redder and redder. He gripped the box with both his feet and hands. “Doggone dadgum!” he yelled.

Suddenly he grew teeth, his brow slammed down, his shoulders tensed and he went into a blurred fury of movement. “WAK WAK WAK WAK WAK!” he screamed.

The box broke open and flew into three parts. So did the book inside.

DUN was still tearing in his fury.

“Wait, look out, DUN,” yelled MIK. “Wait!”

“Gawrsh,” said GUF, running after the pages blowing in the breeze. “Help me, MIK.”

DUN stood atop the rubble, parts of the box and the book gripped in each hand. He simulated hard breathing, the redness draining from his face.

“It’s open,” he said quietly.

 

* * *

 

“Well, from what we’ve got left,” said MIK, “this is called The Book of the Time Capsule, and it tells that people buried a cylinder a very, very long time ago. They printed up five thousand copies of this book and sent it to places all around the world, where they thought it would be safe. They printed them on acid-free paper and stuff like that so they wouldn’t fall apart.

“And they thought what they put in the time capsule itself could explain to later generations what people were like in their day. So I figure maybe it could explain something to us, too.”

“That sounds fine with me,” said GUF.

“Well, let’s go!” said DUN.

“Well, huh-huh,” said MIK. “I checked with HOOSAT, and gave him the coordinates, and, huh-huh, it’s quite a little ways away.”

“How far?” asked DUN, his brow beetling.

“Oh, huh-huh, about eighteen thousand kilometers,” said MIK.

“WHAAT???”

“About eighteen thousand kilometers. Just about halfway around the world.”

“Oh, my aching feet!” said DUN.

“That’s not literally true,” said GUF. He turned to MIK. “Yuh think we should go that far?”

“Well . . . I’m not sure what we’ll find. Those pages were lost when DUN opened the box . . .”

“I’m sorry,” said DUN, in a contrite small voice.

“ . . . but the people of that time were sure that everything could be explained by what was in the capsule.”

“And you think it’s all still there?” asked DUN.

“Well, they buried it pretty deep, and took a lot of precautions with the way they preserved things. And we did find the book, just like they wanted us to. I’d imagine it was all still there!”

“Well, it’s a long ways,” said GUF. “But it doesn’t look much like we’ll find anyone here.”

MIK put a determined look on his face.

“I figure the only thing for us to do is set our caps and whistle a little tune,” he said.

“Yuh don’t have a cap, MIK,” said GUF.

“Well, I can still whistle! Let’s go fellas,” he said. “It’s this way!”

He whistled a work song. DUN quacked a tune about boats and love. GUF hummed “The East Is Red.”

They set off in this way across what had been the bottom of the Sea of Japan.

 

* * *

 

They were having troubles. It had been a long time and they walked on tirelessly. Three weeks ago they’d come to the end of all the songs each of them was programmed with and had to start repeating themselves.

Their lubricants were beginning to fail, their hastily wired circuitry was overworked. GUF had a troublesome ankle extensor which sometimes hung up. But he went along just as cheerfully, sometimes hopping and quickstepping to catch up with the others when the foot refused to flex.

The major problem was the cold. There was a vast difference in the climate they had left and the one they found themselves in. The landscape was rocky and empty. It had begun to snow more frequently and the wind was fierce.

The terrain was difficult, and HOOSAT’s maps were outdated. Something drastic had changed the course of rivers, the land, the shoreline of the ocean itself. They had to detour frequently.

The cold worked hardest on DUN. “Oh,” he would say, “I’m so cold, so cold!” He was very poorly insulated, and they had to slow their pace to his. He would do anything to avoid going through a snowdrift, and so expended even more energy.

They stopped in the middle of a raging blizzard.

“Uh, MIK,” said GUF. “I don’t think DUN can go much further in this weather. An’ my leg is givin’ me a lot o’ problems. Yuh think maybe we could find someplace to hole up fer a spell?”

MIK looked around them at the bleakness and the whipping snow. “I guess you’re right. Warmer weather would do us all some good. We could conserve both heat and energy. Let’s find a good place.”

“Hey, DUN,” said GUF. “Let’s find us a hidey-hole!”

“Oh, goody gumdrops!” quacked DUN. “I’m so cold!”

They eventually found a deep rock shelter with a low fault crevice at the back. MIK had them gather up what sparse dead vegetation there was and bring it to the shelter. DUN and GUF crawled in the back and MIK piled brush all through the cave. He talked to HOOSAT, then wriggled his way through the brush to them.

Inside they could barely hear the wind and snow. It was only slightly warmer than outside, but it felt wonderful and safe.

“I told HOOSAT to wake us up when it got warmer,” said MIK. “Then we’ll get on to that time capsule and find out all about the people.”

“G’night, MIK,” said GUF.

“Goodnight, DUN,” said MIK.

“Sleep tight and don’t let the bedbugs bite. Wak Wak Wak,” said DUN.

They shut themselves off.

 

* * *

 

Something woke MIK. It was dark in the rock shelter, but it was also much warmer.

The brush was all crumbled away. A meter of rock and dust covered the cave floor. The war wind stirred it.

“Hey, fellas!” said MIK. “Hey, wake up! Spring is here!”

“Wak! What’s the big idea? Hey, oh boy, it’s warm!” said DUN.

“Gawrsh,” said GUF, “that sure was a nice forty winks!”

“Well, let’s go thank HOOSAT and get our bearings and be on our way.”

They stepped outside.

The stars were in the wrong places.

“Uh-oh,” said GUF.

“Well, would you look at that!” said DUN.

“I think we overslept,” said MIK. “Let’s see what HOOSAT has to say.”

“ . . . Huh? HOOSAT?”

“Hello. This is DUN and MIK and GUF.”

HOOSAT’s voice now sounded like a badger whistling through its teeth.

“Glad to see ya up!” he said.

“We went to sleep, and told you to wake us up as soon as it got warmer.”

“Sorry. I forgot till just now. Had a lot on my mind. Besides, it just now got warmer.”

“It did?” asked GUF.

“Shoulda seen it,” said HOOSAT. “Ice everywhere. Big ol’ glaciers. Took the top offa everything! You still gonna dig up that capsule thing?”

“Yes,” said MIK. “We are.”

“Well, you got an easy trip from now on. No more mountains in your way.”

“What about people?”

“Nah. No people. I ain’t heard from any, no ways. My friend the military satellite said he thought he saw some fires, little teeny ones, but his eyes weren’t what they used to be by then. He’s gone now, too.”

“The fires might have been built by people?”

“Who knows? Not me,” said HOOSAT. “Hey, bub, you still got all those coordinates like I give you?”

“I think so,” said MIK.

“Well, I better give you new ones off these new constellations. Hold still, my aim ain’t so good anymore.” He dumped a bunch of numbers in MIK’s head. “I won’t be talking to ya much longer.”

“Why not?” they all asked.

“Well, you know. My orbit. I feel better now than I have in years. Real spry. Probably the ionization. Started a couple o’ weeks ago. Sure has been nice talkin’ to you young fellers after so long a time. Sure am glad I remembered to wake you up. I wish you a lotta luck. Boy, this air has a punch like a mule. Be careful. Goodbye.”

Across the unfamiliar stars overhead, a point of light blazed, streaked in a long arc, then died on the night.

“Well,” said MIK. “We’re on our own.”

“Gosh, I feel all sad,” said GUF.

“Warmth, oh boy!” said DUN.

 

* * *

 

The trip was uneventful for the next few months. They walked across the long land bridge down a valley between stumps of mountains with the white teeth of glaciers on them. Then they crossed a low range and entered flat land without topsoil from which dry rivercourses ran to the south. Then there was a land where things were flowering after the long winter. New streams were springing up.

They saw fire once and detoured, but found only a burnt patch of forest. Once, way off in the distance, they saw a speck of light but didn’t go to investigate.

Within two hundred kilometers of their goal, the land changed again to a flat sandy waste littered with huge rocks. Sparse vegetation grew. There were few insects and animals, mostly lizards, which DUN chased every chance he got. The warmth seemed to be doing him good.

GUF’s leg worsened. The foot now stuck, now flopped and windmilled. He kept humming songs and raggedly marching along with the other two.

When they passed one of the last trees, MIK had them all three take limbs from it. “Might come in handy for pushing and digging,” he said.

They stood on a plain of sand and rough dirt. There were huge piles of rubble all around. Far off was another ocean, and to the north a patch of green.

“We’ll go to the ocean, DUN,” said MIK, “after we get through here.”

He was walking around in a smaller and smaller circle. Then he stopped. “Well, huh-huh,” he said. “Here we are. Latitude 40° 44' 34" .089 North. Longitude 73° 50' 43" .842 West, by the way they used to figure it. The capsule is straight down, twenty-eight meters below the original surface. We’ve got a long way to go, because there’s no telling how much soil has drifted over that. It’s in a concrete tube, and we’ll have to dig to the very bottom to get at the capsule. Let’s get working.”

It was early morning when they started. Just after noon they found the top of the tube with its bronze tablet.

“Here’s where the hard work starts,” said MIK.

 

* * *

 

It took them two weeks of continual effort. Slowly the tube was exposed as the hole around it grew larger. Since GUF could work better standing still, they had him dig all the time, while DUN and MIK both dug and pushed rock and dirt clear of the crater.

They found some long flat iron rods partway down, and threw away the worn limbs and used the metal to better effect.

On one of the trips to push dirt out of the crater, DUN came back looking puzzled.

“I thought I saw something moving out there,” he said. “When I looked, it went away.”

“Probably just another animal,” said MIK. “Here, help me lift this rock.”

It was hard work and their motors were taxed. It rained once, and once there was a dust storm.

 

* * *

 

“Thuh way I see it,” said GUF, looking at their handiwork, “is that yah treat it like a big ol’ tree made outta rock.”

They stood in the bottom of the vast crater. Up from the center of this stood the concrete tube.

“We’ve reached twenty-six meters,” said MIK. “The capsule itself should be in the last 2.3816 meters. So we should chop it off,” he quickly calculated, “about here.” He drew a line all around the tube with a piece of chalky rock.

They began to smash at the concrete with rocks and pieces of iron and steel.

 

* * *

 

“Timber!” said DUN.

The column above the line lurched and with a crash shattered itself against the side of the crater wall.

“Oh boy! Oh boy!”

“Come help me, GUF,” said MIK.

Inside the jagged top of the remaining shaft an eyebolt stood out of the core.

They climbed up on the edge, reached in and raised the gleaming Cupraloy time capsule from its resting place.

On its side was a message to the finders, and just below the eyebolt at the top was a line and the words CUT HERE.

“Well,” said MIK shaking DUN and GUF’s hands. “We did it, by gum!”

He looked at it a moment.

“How’re we gonna get it open?” asked GUF. “That metal shore looks tough!”

“I think maybe we can abrade it around the cutting line, with sandstone and, well . . . go get me a real big sharp piece of iron, DUN.”

When it was brought, MIK handed the iron to GUF and put his long tail over a big rock.

“Go ahead, GUF,” he said. “Won’t hurt me a bit.”

GUF slammed the piece of iron down.

“Uh hyuk,” he said. “Clean as a whistle!”

MIK took the severed tail, sat down cross-legged near the eyebolt, poured sand on the cutting line, and began to rub it across the line with his tail.

It took three days, turning the capsule every few hours.

They pulled off the eyebolt end. A dusty waxy mess was revealed.

“That’ll be what’s left of the waterproof mastic,” said MIK. “Help me, you two.” They lifted the capsule. “Twist,” he said.

The metal groaned. “Now, pull!”

A long thin inner core, two meters by a third of a meter, slid out.

“Okay,” said MIK, putting down the capsule shell and wiping away mastic. “This inner shell is threaded in two parts. Turn that way, I’ll turn this!”

They did. Inside was a shiny sealed glass tube through which they could dimly see shapes and colors.

“Wow!” said GUF. “Looka that!”

“Oh boy, oh boy,” said DUN.

“That’s Pyrex,” said MIK. “When we break that, we’ll be through.”

“I’ll do it!” said DUN.

“Careful!” said GUF.

The rock shattered the glass. There was a loud noise as the partial vacuum disappeared.

“Oh boy!” said DUN.

“Let’s do this carefully,” said MIK. “It’s all supposed to be in some kind of order.”

The first thing they found was the message from four famous humans and another, whole copy of The Book of the Time Capsule. GUF picked that up.

There was another book with a black cover with a gold cross on it; then they came to a section marked “Articles of Common Use.” The first small packet was labeled “Contributing to the Convenience, Comfort, Health, and Safety.” MIK opened the wrapper.

Inside was an alarm clock, bifocals, a camera, pencil, nail file, a padlock and keys, toothbrush, tooth powder, a safety pin, knife, fork, and slide rule.

The next packet was labeled “Pertaining to the Grooming and Vanity of Women.” Inside was an Elizabeth Arden Daytime Cyclamen Color Harmony Box, a rhinestone clip, and a woman’s hat, style of autumn 1938 designed by Lily Daché.

“Golly-wow!” said DUN, and put the hat on over his.

The next packet was marked “For the Pleasure, Use, and Education of Children.”

First out was a small, spring-driven toy car, then a small doll and a set of alphabet blocks. Then MIK reached in and pulled out a small cup.

He stared at it a long, long time. On the side of the cup was a decal with the name of the man who had created them, and a picture of MIK, waving his hand in greeting.

“Gawrsh, MIK,” said GUF, “it’s YOU!”

A tossed brick threw up a shower of dirt next to his foot.

They all looked up.

Around the crater edge stood ragged men, women, and children. They had sharp sticks, rocks, and ugly clubs.

“Oh boy!” said DUN. “People!” He started toward them.

“Hello!” he said. “We’ve been trying to find you for a long time. Do you know the way to the Park? We want to learn all about you.”

He was speaking to them in Japanese.

The mob hefted its weapons. DUN switched to another language.

“I said, we come in peace. Do you know the way to the Park?” he asked in Swedish.

They started down the crater, rocks flying before them.

“What’s the matter with you?” yelled DUN. “WAK WAK WAK!” He raised his fists.

“Wait!” said MIK, in English. “We’re friends!”

Some of the crowd veered off toward him.

“Uh-oh!” said GUF. He took off clanking up the most sparsely defended side of the depression.

Then the ragged people yelled and charged.

 

* * *

 

They got the duck first.

He stood, fists out, jumping up and down on one foot, hopping mad. Several grabbed him, one by the beak. They smashed at him with clubs, pounded him with rocks. He injured three of them seriously before they smashed him into a white, blue, and orange pile.

“Couldn’t we, huh-huh, talk this over?” asked MIK. They stuck a sharp stick in his ear mechanism, jamming it. One of his gloved hands was mashed. He fought back with the other and kicked his feet. He hurt them, but he was small. A boulder trapped his legs; then they danced on him.

GUF made it out of the crater. He had picked the side with the most kids, and they drew back, thinking he was attacking them. When they saw he was only running, they gave a gleeful chase, bouncing sticks and rocks off his hobbling form.

“WHOA!” he yelled, as more people ran to intercept him and he skidded to a stop. He ran up a long slanting pile of rubble. More humans poured out of the crater to get him.

He reached the end of the long high mound above the crater rim. His attackers paused, throwing bricks and clubs, yelling at him.

“Halp!” GUF yelled. “Haaaaaaaalp!”

An arrow sailed into the chest of the nearest attacker.

 

* * *

 

GUF turned. Other humans, dressed in cloth, stood in a line around the far side of the crater. They had bows and arrows, metal-tipped spears and metal knives in their belts.

As he watched, the archers sent another flight of arrows into the people who had attacked the robots.

The skin-dressed band of humans screamed and fled up out of the crater, down from the mounds, leaving their wounded and the scattered contents of the time capsule behind them.

 

* * *

 

It took them a while, but soon the human in command of the metal-using people and GUF found they could make themselves understood. The language was a very changed English/Spanish mixture.

“We’re sorry we didn’t know you were here sooner,” he said to GUF. “We only heard this morning. Those others,” he said with a grimace, “won’t bother you anymore.”

He pointed to the patch of green to the north. “Our lands and village are there. We came to it twenty years ago. It’s a good land, but those others raid it as often as they can.”

GUF looked down into the crater with its toppled column and debris. Cigarettes and tobacco drifted from the glass cylinder. The microfilm with all its books and knowledge was tangled all over the rocks. Samples of aluminum, hypernik, ferrovanadium, and hypersil gleamed in the dust. Razor blades, an airplane gear, and glass wool were strewn up the side of the slope.

The message from Grover Whalen opening the World’s Fair, and knowledge of how to build the microfilm reader were gone. The newsreel, with its pictures of Howard Hughes, Jesse Owens, and Babe Ruth, bombings in China and a Miami Beach fashion show, was ripped and torn. The golf ball was in the hands of one of the fleeing children. Poker chips lay side by side with tungsten wire, combs, lipstick. GUF tried to guess what some of the items were.

“They destroyed one of your party,” said the commander. “I think the other one is still alive.”

“I’ll tend to ’em,” said GUF.

“We’ll take you back to our village,” said the man. “There are lots of things we’d like to know about you.”

“That goes double fer us,” said GUF. “Those other folks pretty much tore up what we came to find.”

GUF picked up the small cup from the ground. He walked to where they had MIK propped up against a rock.

“Hello, GUF,” he said. “Huh-huh, I’m not in such good shape.” His glove hung uselessly on his left arm. His ears were bent and his nose was dented. He gave off a noisy whir when he moved.

“Oh, hyuk hyuk,” said GUF. “We’ll go back with these nice people, and you’ll rest up and be as right as rain, I guarantee.”

“DUN didn’t make it, did he, GUF?”

GUF was quiet a moment. “Nope, MIK, he didn’t. I’m shore sorry it turned out this way. I’m gonna miss the ol’ hothead.”

“Me, too,” said MIK. “Are we gonna take him with us?”

“Shore thing,” said GUF. He waved to the nearby men.

 

* * *

 

The town was in a green valley watered by two streams full of fish. There were small fields of beans, tomatoes, and corn in town, and cattle and sheep grazed on the hillside, watched over by guards. There was a coppersmith’s shop, a council hut, and many houses of wood and stone.

GUF was walking up the hill to where MIK lay.

They had been there a little over two weeks, talking with the people of the village, telling them what they knew. GUF had been playing with the children when he and MIK weren’t talking with the grown folks. But from the day after they had buried DUN up on the hill, MIK had been getting worse. His legs had quit moving altogether, and he could now see only in the infrared.

“Hello, GUF,” said MIK.

“How ya doin’ pardner?”

“I-I think I’m going to terminate soon,” said MIK. “Are they making any progress on the flume?”

Two days before, MIK had told the men how to bring water more efficiently from one of the streams up to the middle of the village.

“We’ve almost got it now,” said GUF. “I’m sure they’ll come up and thank you when they’re finished.”

“They don’t need to do that,” said MIK.

“I know, but these are real nice folks, MIK. And they’ve had it pretty rough, what with one thing and another, and they like talkin’ to yah.”

GUF noticed that some of the human women and children waited outside the hut, waiting to talk to MIK.

“I won’t stay very long,” said GUF. “I gotta get back and organize the cadres into work teams and instruction teams and so forth, like they asked me to help with.”

“Sure thing, GUF,” said MIK. “I—”

“I wisht there was somethin’ I could do . . .”

There was a great whirring noise from MIK and the smell of burning silicone.

GUF looked away. “They just don’t have any stuff here,” he said, “that I could use to fix you. Maybe I could find something at thuh crater, or . . .”

“Oh, don’t bother,” said MIK. “I doubt . . .”

GUF was looking at the village. “Oh,” he said, reaching in the bag someone had made him. “I been meanin’ to give you this for a week and keep fergettin’.” He handed MIK the cup with the picture of him on the side.

“I’ve been thinking about this since we found it,” said MIK. He turned it in his good hand, barely able to see its outline. “I wonder what else we lost at the crater.”

“Lots of stuff,” said GUF. “But we did get to keep this.”

“This was supposed to last for a long time,” said MIK, “and tell what people were like for future ages? Then the people who put this there must really have liked the man who thought us up?”

“That’s for sure,” said GUF.

“And me too, I wonder?”

“You probably most of all,” said GUF.

MIK smiled. The smile froze. The eyes went dark, and a thin line of condensation steam rose up from the eartracks. The hand gripped tightly on the cup.

Outside, the people began to sing a real sad song.

 

* * *

 

It was a bright sunny morning. GUF put flowers on MIK’s and DUN’s graves at the top of the hill. He patted the earth, stood up uncertainly.

He had replaced his frozen foot with a little wood-wheeled cart which he could skate along almost as good as walking.

He stood up and thought of MIK. He set his carpenter’s cap forward on his head and whistled a little tune.

He picked up his wooden toolbox and started off down the hill to build the kids a swing set.