Had it been himself alone who had been questioned and examined, the surrogate for all the rest of them, the leader answering for all the rest of them? And in the questioning, in the quest of the dirty fingernails that had pulled the essential being of him apart, what had they found? Something, perhaps, that had persuaded the Trees finally to let them through. He wondered vaguely what that something might have been, and could not know, since he could not know himself.
The babbling stopped of a single instant and the tubby cylinders were gone. Somewhere off in the night a chirping cricket could be heard.
Cushing shook himself, his mind still benumbed by the babble. He felt a physical ache, his entire body aching.
“Someone called them off,” said Meg. “Something called them home, reproving them, angry at them.”
Elayne said, in her textbook voice, “We came into a homeless frontier, a place where we were not welcome, where nothing that lived was welcome, where thought and logic were abhorrent and we were frightened, but we went into this place because the universe lay before us, and if we were to know ourselves, we must know the universe.…”
19
They stopped for their noon rest at the edge of a small grove of trees. Cushing had bagged a deer, which Andy had carried up the slope. Now Cushing and Rollo butchered it and they had their fill of meat.
The going had been hard, uphill all the way, the climb broken by jutting ledges of rocks they had to work their way around, gashed by gullies that time after time forced them to change their course. The dried grass was slippery, making the footing uncertain, and there had been many falls.
Below them the Trees were a dark band of foliage that followed the course of the lower reaches of the butte. Beyond the Trees the high plain was a blur of brown and deeper shadows, thinning out to a lighter, almost silvery hue as it stretched to the horizon. Using the glasses, Cushing saw that now there were more than wardens out on the plains. He could see at least three separate bands, encamped or going about the process of encampment. And these, he knew, must be tribes, or delegations from tribes, perhaps alerted by the wardens as to what had happened. Why, he wondered, should the tribes be moving in? It might mean that the wardens were not a small society of fanatics, as it had seemed, but had the backing of at least some of the western tribes, or were acting for the tribes. The thought worried him, and he decided, as he put the glasses back in their case, to say nothing of it to the others.
There was as yet no sign of the buildings that had been glimpsed through the glasses several days before and that the wardens had said were there. Ahead of them lay only the everlasting slope that they must climb.
“Maybe before the day is over,” Rollo said, “we may be in sight of the buildings.”
“I hope so,” Meg told him. “My feet are getting sore with all this climbing.”
The only signs of life they saw were the herd of deer from which Cushing had made his kill, a few long-eared rabbits, a lone marmot that had whistled at them from its ledge of rock, and an eagle that sailed in circles high against the blueness of the sky. The tubby cylinders had not reappeared.
In the middle of the afternoon, as they were toiling up an unusually steep and treacherously grass-slicked slope, they saw the spheres. There were two of them, looking like iridescent soap bubbles, rolling cautiously down the slope toward them. They were a considerable distance off, and as the little band stopped to watch them, the two spheres came to a halt on a fairly level bench at the top of the slope.
From where he stood, Cushing tried to make out what they were. Judging the distance he was from them, he gained the impression they might stand six feet tall. They seemed smooth and polished, perfectly rounded and with no sense of mass; insubstantial beings—and beings because there seemed in his mind no question that they were alive.
Meg had been looking at them through the glasses and now she took them from her face.
“They have eyes,” she said. “Floating eyes. Or, at least, they look like eyes and they float all about the surface.”
She held out the glasses to him, but he shook his head. “Let’s go up,” he said, “and find out what they are.”
The spheres waited for them as they climbed. When they reached the bench on which the spheres rested, they found themselves no more than twenty feet from their visitors.
As Meg had said, the spheres were possessed of eyes that were scattered all about their surfaces, moving from time to time to new positions.
Cushing walked toward them, with Meg close beside him, the others staying in the rear. The spheres, Cushing saw, were about the size that he had estimated. Except for the eyes, they seemed to have no other organs that were visible.
Six feet from them, Cushing and Meg halted, and for a moment nothing happened. Then one of the spheres made a sound that was a cross between a rumble and a hum. Curiously, it sounded as if the sphere had cleared its throat.
The sphere rumbled once again and this time the rumble defined itself into booming speech. The words were the kind that a drum would make had a drum been able to put together words.
“You are humans, are you not?” it asked. “By humans, we mean—”
“I know what you mean,” said Cushing. “Yes, we are human beings.”
“You are the intelligent species that is native to this planet?”
“That is right,” said Cushing.
“You are the dominant life form?”
“That’s correct,” said Cushing.
“Then allow me,” said the sphere, “to introduce ourselves. We are a team of investigators who come from many light years distant. I am Number One and this one that stands beside me is termed Number Two. Not that one of us is first or the other second, but simply to give us both identity.”
“Well, that is fine,” said Cushing, “and we are pleased to meet you. But would you mind telling me what you are investigating?”
“Not at all,” said #1. “In fact, we’d be most happy to, for we have some hope that you may be able to shed light upon some questions that puzzle us exceedingly. Our field of study is the technological civilizations, none of which seem to be viable for any length of time. They carry within themselves the seeds of their destruction. On other planets we have visited where technology has failed, that seems to have been the end of it. The technology fails and the race that had devised and lived by it then fails as well. It goes down to barbarism and it does not rise again, and on the face of it that has happened here. For more than a thousand years the humans of this planet have lived in barbarism and give all signs that they will so continue, but the A and R assures us that it is not so, that the race has failed time and time again and after a certain period of rest and recuperation has risen to even greater heights. As so, says the A and R, will be the pattern of this failure.…”
“You are talking riddles,” said Cushing. “Who is this A and R?”
“Why, he is the Ancient and Revered, the A and R for short. He is a robot and a gentleman and—”
“We have with us a robot,” Cushing said. “Rollo, please step forward and meet these new friends of ours. Our company also includes a horse.”
“We know of horses,” said #2 in a deprecatory tone. “They are animals. But we did not know—”
“Andy is no animal,” Meg said acidly. “He may be a horse, but he is a fey horse. He is a searcher-out of water and a battler of bears and many other things besides.”
“What I meant to say,” said #2, “is that we did not know there were any robots other than the ones that live upon this geographic eminence. We understood that all other robots had been destroyed in your so-called Time of Trouble.”
“I am, so far as I am aware,” said Rollo, “the only robot left alive. And yet, you say the Ancient and Revered—”
“The Ancient and Revered,” said #1, “and a host of others. Surely you have met them. Nasty little creatures that descend upon one and regale one with endless, senseless chatter, all talking at the same time, all insiste
nt that one listen.” He sighed. “They are most annoying. For years we have tried to listen to them, in the hope they would provide a clue. But they provide us nothing but a great confusion. I have the theory, not shared by the other member of the Team, they are naught but ancient storytellers who are so programmed that they recite their fictional adventures to anyone they may chance upon, without regard as to whether what they have to tell—”
“Now, wait a minute,” said Rollo. “You’re sure these things are robots? We had thought so, but I had a hope—”
“You have met them, then?”
“Indeed we have,” said Meg. “So you think the things they tell us are no more than tales designed for entertainment?”
“That’s what I think,” said #1. “The other member of the Team believes, mistakenly, that they may talk significances which we, in our alien stupidness, are not able to understand. Let me ask you, in all honesty, how did they sound to you? As humans you may have been able to see in them something we have missed.”
“We listened to them for too short a time,” said Cushing, “to arrive at any judgment.”
“They were with us for only a short while,” said Meg, “then someone called them off.”
“The A and R, most likely,” said #1. “He keeps a sharp eye on them.”
“The A and R—” asked Cushing, “how do we go about meeting him?”
“He is somewhat hard to meet,” said #2. “He keeps strictly to himself. On occasion he has granted us audiences.”
“Audiences,” said #1. “For all the good it did.”
“Then he tells you little?”
“He tells us much,” said #1, “but of such things as his faith in the human race. He pretends to take an extremely long-range view, and, to be fair about it, he does not seem perturbed.”
“You say he is a robot?”
“A robot, undoubtedly,” said #2, “but something more than that. As if the robotic part of him is no more than a surface indication of another factor that is much greater.”
“That is what you think,” said #1. “He is clever, that is all. A very clever robot.”
“We should have told you sooner,” said #2, “but we tell you now. We are very glad to meet you. No other humans come. We understand the Trees will not let them through. How did you manage to get through the Trees?”
“It was no sweat,” said Cushing. “We just asked them and they let us through.”
“Then you must be very special persons.”
“Not at all,” said Meg. “We simply seek the Place of Going to the Stars.”
“The going to the what? Did we hear you rightly?”
“The stars,” said Meg. “The Place of Going to the Stars.”
“But this is not,” said #1, “a Place of Going to the Stars. In all the time we’ve been here, there has been no mention of going to the stars. We know, of course, that one time men went into space, but whether to the stars—”
“You are sure,” asked Cushing, “that this is not the Place of Going to the Stars?”
“We have heard no mention of it,” said #2. “There is no evidence it was ever used as such. We have the impression that this is the last place of refuge for those elite intellectuals who may have foreseen the Time of Trouble and sought to save themselves. But if this is so, there is no record of it. We do not know; we simply have surmised. The last stronghold of reason on this planet. Although, if that is true, the refuge failed, for there is no indication there have been any humans here for many centuries.”
Cushing said, “Not the Place of Going to the Stars?”
“I fear not,” said #1.
Rollo said to Cushing, “I never guaranteed it. I simply told you what I heard.”
“You said a while ago,” said Meg, “that we are the first people ever to come here, implying that you are glad we have. But if you had wanted to meet and talk with people, it would have been quite simple. All you had to do was go and find them. Unless, of course, the Trees would not let you out.”
“We did go and seek out people many years ago,” said #2. “The Trees are no barrier to us. We can elevate ourselves and sail over them quite easily. But the people would have none of us—they were frightened of us. They ran howling from us or, in desperation, launched attacks upon us.”
“And now that we are here,” said Cushing, “now that humans have come to you rather than you going to the humans, what can we do for you?”
“You can tell us,” said #1, “if there is any basis for the hope and faith expressed so blindly by the A and R that your race will rise to greatness once again.”
“Greatness,” said Cushing. “I don’t know. How do you measure greatness? What is the greatness? Perhaps you can tell me. You say you have studied other planets where technology has failed.”
“They all have been the same as this,” said #2. “This planet is a classic example of a classic situation. The technological civilization fails and those intelligences that have brought it about go down to nothingness and never rise again.”
“Then why does the rule not apply here? What are you worrying about?”
“It’s the A and R,” said #1. “He insists upon his faith.…”
“Has it occurred to you that A and R may be pulling your leg?”
“Pulling our—?”
“Misleading you. Covering up. Perhaps laughing at you.”
“It hasn’t occurred to us,” said #2. “The A and R is very much a gentleman. He’d not do such a thing. You must realize that we have spent millennia collecting our data. This is the first time that data has ever been in question, the only time there has been any doubt at all. All the other studies checked out in every detail. Here you can see our great concern.”
“I suppose I can,” said Cushing. “Let me ask you this—have you ever gone further than your data, your immediate data? You say you are convinced that when technology fails, the race is done, that there is no coming back. But what happens next? What happens after that? If, on this planet, man sinks into insignificance, what takes his place? What comes after man? What supersedes man?”
“This,” said #1, in a stricken tone, “we have never thought about. No one has ever raised the question. We have not raised the question. It had not occurred to us.”
The two of them rested for a time, no longer talking, but jiggling back and forth, as if in agitation. Finally #2 said, “We’ll have to think about it. We must study your suggestion.”
With that, they started rolling up the slope, their eyes skittering all about their surfaces as they rolled, gathering speed as they went up the slope, so that it did not take long before they were out of sight.
20
Before nightfall, Cushing and the others reached the approach to the City, a huge stone-paved esplanade that fronted on the massive group of gray-stone buildings. They halted to make the evening camp, with an unspoken reluctance to advance into the City itself, preferring to remain on its edge for a time, perhaps to study it from a distance or to become more accustomed to its actuality.
A dozen stone steps went up to the broad expanse of the esplanade, which stretched for a mile or more before the buildings rose into the air. The broad expanse of stone paving was broken by masonry-enclosed flowerbeds that now contained more weeds than flowers, by fountains that now were nonfunctional, by formal pools that now held drifted dust instead of water, by stone benches where one might sit to rest. In one of the nearby flowerbeds a few straggly rosebushes still survived, bearing faded blossoms, with bedraggled rose petals blown by the wind across the stones.
The City, to all appearances, was deserted. There had been, since the evening before, no sign of the tubby gossipers. The Team was not in evidence. There was nothing but a half dozen twittering, discontented birds that flew about from one patch of desiccated shrubs to another desiccated patch.
Above the City stretched the lonely sky, and from where they stood they could see far out into the misty blueness of the plains.
Cu
shing gathered wood from some of the dead or dying shrubs and built a fire on one of the paving stones. Meg got out the frying pan and sliced steaks off a haunch of venison. Andy, free of his load, clopped up and down the esplanade, like a soldier doing sentry beat, his hoofs making a dull, plopping sound. Ezra sat down beside the stone flowerbed that contained the few straggly roses, assuming a listening attitude. Elayne, this time, did not squat down beside him, but walked out several hundred yards across the esplanade and stood there rigidly, facing the City.
“Where is Rollo?” asked Meg. “I haven’t seen him all the afternoon.”
“Probably out scouting,” said Cushing.
“What would he be scouting for? There’s nothing to scout.”
“He’s got a roving foot,” said Cushing. “He’s scouted every mile since he joined up with us. It’s probably just a habit. Don’t worry about him. He’ll show up.”
She put the steaks into the pan. “Laddie boy, this isn’t the place we were looking for, is it? It is something else. You have any idea what it is?”
“No idea,” said Cushing, shortly.
“And all this time you have had the heart of you so set on finding the Place of Going to the Stars. It’s a crying shame, it is. Where did we go wrong?”
“Maybe,” said Cushing, “there is no such place as Going to the Stars. It may be just a story. There are so many stories.”
“I can’t think that,” said Meg. “Somehow, laddie buck, I just can’t think it. There has to be such a place.”
“There should be,” Cushing told her. “Fifteen hundred years ago or more, men went to the moon and Mars. They wouldn’t have stopped with that. They’d have gone farther out. But this is not the right kind of place. They’d have had to have launching pads, and it’s ridiculous to build launching pads up here. Up here, it would be difficult to transport the sort of support such a base would need.”