A Heritage of Stars by Clifford D. Simak

of us might attract attention while a single robot had a better chance of escaping all detection.
    â€œSo I left as quietly as I could and hid in many places, for there was no one safe place to hide. Finally, I gained confirmation from other fugitive robots I met that the wreckers, having smashed the more important machines, were hunting down the robots. And not, mind you, because we posed any great threat to them, but because we were machines and the idea seemed to be to wipe out all machines, no matter how insignificant. What made it even worse was that they did not hunt us down in the same spirit, in the rage and fanaticism, that had driven them to destroy the other machines, but were hunting us as a sport, as they might hunt a fox or coon. If this had not been so, we could have stood the hunting better, for then we would at least have been accorded the dignity of posing a threat to them. But there was no dignity in being hunted as a dog might run down a rabbit. To add further indignity, I learned that when we were run down and disabled, our brain cases were seized as trophies of the hunt. This, I think, was the final thing that heaped up the bitterness and fear that came to infuse us all. The terrible thing about it was that all we could do was run or hide, for we were inhibited against any kind of violence. We could not protect ourselves; we could only run. In my own case, I broke that inhibition, much later and more through accident than otherwise. If that half-mad grizzly had not attacked me, I’d still be saddled by the inhibition. Which is not quite right, either, for if he’d not attacked me to break the inhibition, I never would have been able to obtain the grease I use to protect myself from rust and would be, by now, a rusted hulk with my brain case waiting for someone to find and take home as a souvenir.”
    â€œNot exactly as a souvenir,” said Cushing. “There is more to it than that. Attached to the brain cases of your fellows is a mystic symbolism that is not understood. A thousand years ago a man at the university wrote a history of the Time of Trouble and, in the course of his writing, speculated upon the ritual of the brain-case collections and their symbolism, but without reaching a conclusion. Until I read his history, I had not heard of the custom. I spent three years of woods-running, mainly in the South, and I had never heard of it. Perhaps it was because I made it my business to stay away from people. That’s a good rule for a lone woods runner to follow. I walked around the tribes. Except by accident, I stayed away from everyone.”
    Rollo reached for his bag and dug around in it. “I carry here,” he said, “the brain case of an unknown comrade. I have carried it for years. As a matter of sentiment, perhaps; perhaps as a loyalty; perhaps as a defender and caretaker of the dead; I do not know. I found it many years ago in an old deserted settlement, a former town. I saw it gleaming in the sun, not all of it, just a part of it that was exposed. It lay in a bed of rust that once had been a robotic head and skull. Digging further, I found the outline of the body, gone to rust, no more than a discoloration in the soil. That is what happened to the most of us, perhaps all of us, except myself, who escaped the human hunters. Once we no longer had any kind of oil to protect our bodies, the rust would set in and over the years would gradually spread, like a disease over which we had no control, biting ever more deeply into us until the day came when it disabled us and we could no longer move. We would lie where we had fallen, crippled by the rust, and as the years went by, the rust would burrow ever deeper. Finally, we would be a heap of rust, a pattern of rust that showed the outlines of the body. The leaves would drift over the outline, and forest mold or prairie mold, formed either by rotting leaves or rotting grasses, would cover us and hide us. The wind would