“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 insistent 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 th
at 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.
Cushing 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.”
“Maybe they found a different way of going to the stars. This might be the place, after all.”
Cushing shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“But this place is important. It has to be important. Why else would it be guarded by the Trees? Why were the wardens out there?”
“We’ll find out,” said Cushing. “We’ll try to find out.”
Meg shivered. “I have a funny feeling in my bones,” she said. “As if we shouldn’t be here. As if we’re out of place. I can feel those big buildings looking down at us, wondering who we are and why we’re here. When I look at them, I go all over goose pimples.”
A voice said, “Here, let me do that.”
Meg looked up. Elayne was bending over her, reaching for the pan.
“That’s all right,” said Meg. “I can manage it.”
“You’ve been doing it all the time,” said Elayne. “Doing all the cooking. I haven’t done a thing. Let me do my part.”
“All right,” said Meg. “Thank you, lass. I’m tired.”
She rose from her crouch, moved over to a stone bench and sat down. Cushing sat beside her.
“What was that?” he asked. “What is going on? Can she be getting human?”
“I don’t know,” said Meg. “But whatever the reason, I’m glad. I’m bone tired. It’s been a long, hard trip. Although I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. I’m glad we’re here, uneasy as I may be about it.”
“Don’t let the uneasiness get you down,” he said. “It will seem different in the morning.”
When they came in at Elayne’s call to supper, Ezra roused himself from his communion with the roses and joined them. He wagged his head in perplexity. “I do not understand at all,” he said, “the things the roses tell me. There is about them a sense of ancientness, of far places, of time for which there is no counting. As if they were trying to push me to the edge of the universe, from which I could look out upon eternity and infinity, and then they ask me what I see and I cannot tell them, because there is too much to see. There are powerful forces here and mysteries that no man can fathom…”
He went on and on, mumbling in a rambling way as he ate the meal. No one interrupted him; no one asked him questions. Cushing found himself not even listening.
Hours later, Cushing woke. The others were asleep. The fire had burned to a few glowing embers. Andy stood a little way off, head hanging, either fast asleep upon his feet or dozing.
Cushing threw aside his blanket and rose to his feet. The night had turned chilly, and overhead the wind made a hollow booming among the brilliant stars. The moon had set, but the buildings were a ghostly white in the feeble starlight.
Moving off, he walked in the direction of the City, stopped to face it, his eyes traveling up the clifflike face of it. I could do without you, he told the City, the words dribbling in his mind. I have no liking for you. I did not set out to find you.
Too big, he thought, too big, wondering if he, in that moment, might be thinking as other men had thought when they struck the blow that had toppled that great, impersonal technology that had engulfed and overwhelmed them.
Striking, they had toppled a way of life that had become abhorrent to them, but instead of replacing it with another way of life, they had left an emptiness, a vacuum in which it was impossible to exist, retreating back to an older existence, back almost to where they’d started, as a man might go back to old roots to seek a new beginning. But they had made no beginning; they had simply stood in place, perhaps content for a while to lick their wounds and rest, to catch their breath again. They had caught their breath and rested and the wounds had healed and they still had stood in place—for centuries they had not moved. Perhaps fearful of moving, fearful that if they moved, they would create another monster that in time to come they’d also have to destroy, asking themselves how many false starts a race might be allowed.
Although, he knew, he was romanticizing, philosophizing on insufficient grounds. The trouble had been that the people after the Collapse had not thought at all. Bruised and battered after all the years of progress, they had simply huddled, and were huddling still.
And this great building—or perhaps many buildings, each masking the other, so that there seemed but one building—what could it be, standing here in a place that was a wilderness and had always been a wilderness? A special structure, built for a specific reason, perhaps a mysterious and secretive reason, guarded as it was by the Trees and the living stones? So far, there was no clue as to what might be the reason. Nor a clue to the Trees and stones. And none, for that matter, to the Followers and to Shivering Snake.
He walked slowly across the esplanade toward the City. Directly ahead of him rose two great towers, square-built and solid, endowed with no architectural foolishness, guarding a darkness that could be either a shadow or a door.
As he drew closer, he could see that it was a door and that it was open. A short and shallow flight of stone stairs led up to the door, and as he began to climb them, he saw a flash of light in the darkness that lay beyond the door. He halted and stood breathless, watching, but the flash was not repeated.
The door was larger than he’d thought, twenty feet wide or more, and rising to a height of forty feet or so. It opened into a place of darkness. Reaching it, he stood undecided for a moment, then moved through it, s
huffling his feet to guard against any drop or irregularity in the floor.
A few feet inside, he stopped again and waited for his eyes to adapt, but the darkness was so deep that little adaptation was possible. The best that he could do was make out certain graduations in the darkness, the darker loom of objects that stood along the walls of the corridor through which he moved.
Then, ahead of him, a light flashed, and then another, and after that many flashes of light, strange, quivering, looping lights that sparkled rather than shone, and, after a moment of near panic, he knew what they were: hundreds of shivering snakes, dancing in the darkness of a room that opened off the corridor.
Heart halfway up his throat, he headed for the door and reached it. Standing in it, neither in nor out, he could see the room, or half see it, a place of large dimensions with a massive table set in the middle of it, the room lighted in a flickering manner by the zany loopings of the zany snakes; and standing at the head of the table, a form that did not seem to be a man, but a form that was suggestive of a man.
Cushing tried to speak, but the words dried up before he could get them out and shattered into a dust that seemed to coat his mouth and throat, and when he tried to speak again, he found that he could not remember what he had meant to say, and even if he had been able to, he could not have spoken.
A soft hand touched his arm and Elayne’s voice sounded. “Here we stand on the edge of eternity,” she said. “One step and we’ll be into eternity and it would reveal itself to us. Cannot you feel it?”
He shook his head abjectly. He was feeling nothing except a terrible numbness that so paralyzed him he doubted he would ever be able to move from the spot where he was rooted.
He was able, with an effort, to turn his head slightly to one side, and he saw her standing there beside him, slim and straight in the tattered, smudged robe that once had been white, but was no longer. In the flicker of the snakes her face and its emptiness were more terrible than he had ever seen it, a frightening, soul-withering face, but his basic numbness precluded further fright and he looked upon the face without a quiver of emotion, simply noting to himself the utter horror of it.