A Heritage of Stars by Clifford D. Simak Page A

sprinkle other dust over us and plants would grow in us or on top of us, more luxuriantly than elsewhere, feeding on the iron that once had been our bodies. But the brain case, built of some indestructible metal which today we cannot put a name to, would remain. So I took this brain case and put it in my sack, to cheat the human who might come along and find it. Better for me to have it and to guard it, than for some human—”
    â€œYou hate humans?” Meg asked.
    â€œNo, I never hated them. Feared them, yes; I feared them. I kept out of their way. But there have been some I have not feared. The old hunter that I spent almost a year with. And the two of you. You saved me from the tree.”
    He handed over the brain case. “Here,” he said, “have a look at it. Have you ever seen one?”
    â€œNo, I never have,” said Meg.
    She sat, turning it over and over, with the firelight glinting redly on it. Finally she handed it back and Rollo put it in the sack.
    The next morning, when Rollo had gone out to scout, she spoke to Cushing.
    â€œThat brain case, laddie. The one the robot let me look at. It’s alive. I could sense it. I could feel the aliveness of it through my fingertips. It was cold, but alive and sharp and dark—so dark, so alone, and yet, in some ways, not alone. No expectations and yet not without hope. As if the coldness and the darkness were a way of life. And alive. I know it was alive.”
    Cushing drew in his breath sharply. “That means—”
    â€œYou are right. If this one is alive, so are all the others of them. All those that have been collected. All those that lie in unsuspected places.”
    â€œWithout any external sensory perceptions,” said Cushing. “Cut off from all sight, all sound, contact with any other life. A man would go crazy.…”
    â€œA man, yes. These things are not men, my bucko. They are a cry from another time. Robots—we speak the word, of course, but we do not know what they were, or are. Robot brain cases, we say, but no one, no one except the two of us, suspects they are still alive. Robots, we thought, were extinct. They had an old-time legendary ring, like dragons. Then one day you came walking into camp with a robot tagging you. Tell me, did you ask him to stay with us? Or did he ask to stay?”
    â€œNeither one. He just stayed. Like he stayed a year or so with the old hunter. But I’m glad to have him. He is a lot of help. I don’t think you should tell him what you just now told me.”
    â€œNever,” said Meg. “No, he’d take it hard. It would haunt him. It’s better if he thinks of them as dead.”
    â€œMaybe he knows.”
    â€œI don’t think so,” she said.
    She made a cupping motion with her hand, as if she still held the brain case.
    â€œLaddie,” she said, “I could weep for them. For all the poor lost things shut up inside the darkness. But the thought occurs to me they may not need my tears. They may have something else.”
    â€œStability,” said Cushing. “Enduring a condition that would drive a man insane. Perhaps a strange philosophy that discovers within themselves some factor that makes it unnecessary to have external contact. You made no effort to communicate, to reach out to them?”
    â€œI could not have been so cruel,” said Meg. “I wanted to; the urge was there. To let it know it was not alone, to give it some sort of comfort. And then I realized how cruel that would have been. To give it hope when there is no hope. To disturb it after it had spent no one knows how long in learning to accept the aloneness and the darkness.”
    â€œI think you were right,” said Cushing. “We could do nothing for it.”
    â€œTwice, in a small span of time,” said Meg, “I have touched two intelligences: the brain case and the living rock, the boulder that we found. I told you that my