“No one can be certain what we’ll find,” said the A and R. “But we would be trying. We’d not just be standing here.”
“You must have some idea,” Cushing insisted. “You must have talked to at least some of the returning probes, perhaps all of them, before transferring the data that they carried into the storage banks.”
“Most of them,” said the A and R, “but my knowledge is only superficial. Only the barest indication of what might be in the storage. Some of it, of course, is of but small significance. The probes, you must understand, were programmed only to visit those planets where there was a possibility life might have risen. If their sensors did not show indication of life, they wasted no time on a planet. But even so, on many of the planets where life had risen, there was not always intelligence or an analogue of intelligence. Which is not to say that even from such planets we would not discover things of worth.”
“But on certain planets there was intelligence?”
“That is so,” said the A and R. “On more planets than we had any reason to suspect. In many instances it was a bizarre intelligence. In some cases, a frightening intelligence. Some five hundred light years from us, for instance, we know of something that you might describe as a galactic headquarters, although that is a human and therefore an imprecise interpretation of what it really is. And even more frightening, a planet, perhaps a little shorter distance out in space, where dwells a race advanced so far beyond the human race in its culture that we would view its representatives as gods. In that race, it seems to me, is a real danger to the human race, for you always have been susceptible to gods.”
“But you think there are some factors, perhaps many factors, from which we could choose, that would help to put we humans back on track again?”
“I’m positive,” said the A and R, “that we’ll find something if we have the sense to use it. As I tell you, I got just a faint impression of what the travelers carried. Just a glimpse of it, and perhaps not a glimpse of the important part of it. Let me tell you some of the things I glimpsed: a good-luck mechanism, a method whereby good luck could be induced or engineered; a dying place of a great confederation of aliens, who went there to end their days and, before they died, checked all their mental and emotional baggage in a place where it could be retrieved if there were ever need of it; an equation that made no sense to me, but that I am convinced is the key to faster-than-light travel; an intelligence that had learned to live parasitically elsewhere than in brain tissue; a mathematics that had much in common with mysticism and which, in fact, makes use of mysticism; a race that had soul perception rather than mere intellectual perception. Perhaps we could find use for none of these, but perhaps we could. It is a sample only. There is much more, and though much would be useless, I can’t help but believe we’d find many principles or notions that we could adapt and usefully employ.”
Elayne spoke for the first time. “We pluck only at the edge of it,” she said. “We see all imperfectly. We clutch at small particulars and fail to comprehend the whole. There are greater things than we can ever dream. We see only those small segments that we can understand, ignoring and glossing over what we are not equipped to understand.”
She was not talking to them but to herself. Her hands were folded on the tabletop in front of her and she was staring out beyond the walls that hemmed them in, staring out into that other world which only she could see.
She was looking at the universe.
24
“You’re mad,” Meg told Cushing. “If you go out to face them, they will gobble you. They’re sore about our being here. Angry about our being here…”
“They are men,” said Cushing. “Barbarians. Nomads. But still they are men. I can talk with them. They are basically reasonable. We need brain cases; we need sensitives; we need men who have a technological sense. A native technologic sense. In the old days there were people who could look at something and know how it worked, instinctively know how it worked—able, almost at a glance, to trace out the relationship of its working parts.”
“People in the old days,” said Rollo, “but not now. Those people you talk about lived at a time when machines were commonplace. They lived with machines and by machines and they thought machines. And another thing: what we are talking about here is not crude machines, with interlocking gears and sprockets. The retrieval system is electronic and the electronic art was lost long ago. A special knowledge, years of training were required…”
“Perhaps so,” Cushing agreed, “but here the A and R has a tech library; at the university we have men and women who can read and write and who have not lost entirely the capacity and discipline for study. It might take a long time. It might take several lifetimes. But since the Collapse we have wasted a number of lifetimes. We can afford to spend a few more of them. What we must do is establish an elite corps of sensitives, of brain cases, of potential technologists, of academics…”
“The brain cases are the key,” said Meg. “They are our only hope. If there are any who have kept alive the old tradition of logic, they are the ones. With the help and direction of sensitives, they can reach the data and probably are the only ones who can interpret it and understand it once it’s interpreted.”
“Once they reach and explain it,” said Cushing, “there must be those who can write it down. We must collect and record a body of data. Without that, without the meticulous recording of it, nothing can be done.”
“I agree,” said Rollo, “that the robotic brains are our only hope. Since the Collapse there has not been one iota of technological development from the human race. With all the fighting and raiding and general hell-raising that is going on, you would think that someone would have reinvented gunpowder. Any petty chieftain would give a good right arm for it. But no one has reinvented it. So far as I know, no one has even thought to do so. You hear no talk of it. I tell you, technology is dead. Nothing can be done to revive it. Deep down in the fiber of the race, it has been rejected. It was tried once and failed, and that is the end of it. Sensitives and brain cases—those are what we need.”
“The A and R indicated there are brain cases here,” said Ezra. “The robots died, he’s the only one that’s left.”
“A half dozen cases or so,” said Meg. “We may need hundreds. Brain cases would not be the same. They’d be, I would guess, highly individualistic. Out of a hundred, you might find only one or two who could untangle what is to be found in the data banks.”
“All right, then,” said Cushing. “Agreed. We need a corps of sensitives; we need brain cases by the bagful. To get them, we have to go to the tribes. Each tribe may have some sensitives; many of them have a hoard of cases. Some of the tribes are out there on the plain, just beyond the Trees. We don’t have to travel far to reach them. I’ll go out in the morning.”
“Not you,” said Rollo. “We.”
“You’ll stay here,” said Cushing. “Once they caught sight of you, they’d run you down like a rabbit and have your brain case out…”
“I can’t let you go alone,” protested Rollo. “We traveled all those miles together. You stood with me against the bear. We are friends, whether you know it or not. I can’t let you go alone.”
“Not just the one of you or the two of you,” said Meg. “If one goes, so do all the rest of us. We’re in this together.”
“No, dammit!” yelled Cushing. “I’m the one to go. The rest of you stay here. I’ve told Rollo it’s too dangerous for him. There is some danger for me, as well, I would imagine, but I think I can handle it. The rest of you we can’t risk. You are sensitives and we need sensitives. They may be hard to find. We need all that we can find.”
“You forget,” said Ezra, “that neither Elayne nor I are the kind of sensitives you need. I can only talk with plants, and Elayne—”
“How do you know you can only talk with plants? You wanted it that way and that is all you’ve done. Even if it’s all you can do, you can talk with the Trees and it may be importan
t that we have someone who can talk with them. As for Elayne, she has an overall—a universal—ability that may stand us in good stead when we begin digging out the data. She might be able to see relationships that we couldn’t see.”
“But our own tribe may be out there,” insisted Ezra. “If they are, it would help to have us along.”
“We can’t take the chance,” said Cushing. “You can talk with your tribe for us later on.”
“Laddie buck,” said Meg, “mad I think you are.”
“This is the kind of business,” said Cushing, “that may call for a little madness.”
“How can you be sure the Trees will let you out?”
“I’ll talk with the A and R. He can fix it up for me.”
25
Seen from close range, more of the nomads were camped on the prairie than Cushing had thought. The tepees, conical tents adapted from those used by the aboriginal North American plains tribes, covered a large area, gleaming whitely in the morning sun. Here and there across the level land were grazing horse bands, each of them under the watchful eyes of half a dozen riders. Trickles of smoke rose from fires within the encampment. Other than the horse herders and their charges, there was little sign of life.
The sun, halfway up the eastern sky, beat down mercilessly upon the prairie. The air was calm and muggy, bearing down so heavily that it required an effort to breathe.
Cushing stood just outside the Trees, looking the situation over, trying to calm the flutter of apprehension that threatened to tie his stomach into knots. Now that he was actually here, ready to begin his trudge across the naked land to the camp, he realized for the first time that there could be danger. He had said so when he had talked about it the previous afternoon, but it was one thing to think about it intellectually and another to be brought face to face with its possibility.
But the men out there, he told himself, would be reasonable. Once he had explained the situation, they would listen to him. Savages they might be, having turned to barbarism after the Collapse, but they still had behind them centuries of civilized logic that even a long string of generations could not have completely extinguished.
He set out, hurrying at first, then settling down to a more reasonable and less exhausting pace. The camp was some distance off and it would take awhile to get there. He did not look back, but kept tramping steadily forward. Halfway there, he paused to rest and then turned to look back at the butte. As he turned, he saw the flash of the sun off a glittering surface well clear of the Trees.
Rollo, the damned fool, tagging along behind him!
Cushing waved his arms and shouted. “Go back, you fool! Go back!”
Rollo hesitated, then began to come on again.
“Go back!” yelled Cushing. “Get out of here. Vamoose. I told you not to come.”
Rollo came to a stop, half lifted an arm in greeting.
Cushing made shoving motions at him.
Slowly Rollo turned, heading back toward the Trees. After a few steps, he stopped and turned. Cushing was still standing there, waving at him to go back.
He turned again and went plodding back the way he’d come. He did not turn again.
Cushing stood and watched him go. The sun still burned down, and far in the west a blackness loomed above the horizon. A storm, he wondered? Could be, he told himself; the very air smelled of heavy weather.
Convinced that Rollo would not follow him, he proceeded toward the camp. Now there was evidence of life. Dogs were sallying out from the fringes of the tepees, barking. A small band of horsemen were moving toward him at a walk. A gang of boys came out to the edge of the camp and hooted at him, the hoots small and tinny in the distance.
He did not break his stride. The horsemen came on at their steady gait.
They came up and halted, facing him. He said, gravely, “Good morning, gentlemen.”
They did not respond, regarding him with stony faces. The line parted in the middle to let him through and, when he resumed his march, fell back to flank him on either side.
It was not good, he knew, but he must act as if it were. There could be no sign of fright. Rather, he must pretend that this was a signal honor, the sending out of an escort to conduct him into camp.
He strode along, not hurrying, eyes straight ahead, paying no attention to those who paced on either side of him. He felt sweat popping out of his armpits and trickling down his ribs. He wanted to wipe his face, but with an iron will refrained from doing so.
The camp was directly ahead and he saw that it was laid out with wide spaces serving as streets between the lines of tepees. Women and children stood before many of the tepees, their faces as stony as those of the men who moved beside him. Bands of small boys went whooping up and down the street.
Most of the women were hags. They wore misshapen woolen dresses. Their hair hung raggedly and was matted and dirty, their faces seamed and leathered from the sun and wind. Most of them were barefoot and their hands were gnarled with work. Some of them opened toothless mouths to cackle at him. The others were stolid, but wore a sense of disapproval.
At the far end of the street stood a group of men, all facing in his direction. As he came up the street, one of them moved forward with a shuffle and a limp. He was old and stooped. He wore leather breeches and a cougar hide was tossed across one shoulder, fastened with thongs in front. His snow-white hair hung down to his shoulders. It looked as if it had been cut off square with a dull knife.
A few feet from him Cushing stopped. The old man looked at him out of ice-blue eyes.
“This way,” he said. “Follow me.”
He turned and shuffled up the street. Cushing slowed his pace to follow.
To him came the smell of cooking, laced by the stink of garbage that had been too long in the summer heat. At the doorways of some of the lodges stood picketed horses, perhaps the prize hunters or war horses of their owners. Dogs, slinking about, emitted yelps of terror when someone hurled a stick at them. The heat of the sun was oppressive, making warm the very dust that overlay the street. Over all of this rode the sense of approaching storm—the smell, the feel, the pressure, of brewing weather.
When the old man came up to the group of men, they parted to let him through, Cushing following. The mounted escort dropped away. Cushing did not look to either side to glimpse the faces of the men, but he knew that if he had looked, he would have seen the same hardness that had been on the faces of the horsemen.
They broke through the ranks of men and came into a circle, rimmed by the waiting men. Across the circle a man sat in a heavy chair over which a buffalo robe was thrown. The old man who had served as Cushing’s guide moved off to one side and Cushing walked forward until he faced the man in the chair.
“I am Mad Wolf,” said the man, and having said that, said no more. Apparently he felt that anyone should know who he was once he had said his name.
He was a huge man, but not a brute. There was in his face a disquieting intelligence. He wore a thick black beard and his head was shaven. A vest of wolf skin, decorated by the tails of wolves, was open at the front, displaying a bronzed and heavily muscled torso. Hamlike hands grasped the chair arms on either side.
“My name is Thomas Cushing,” Cushing told him.
With a shock, Cushing saw that the scarecrow man who had been spokesman for the wardens stood beside the chair.
“You came from Thunder Butte,” rumbled Mad Wolf. “You are one of the party that used your magic tricks to get through the Trees. You have disturbed the Sleepers.”
“There are no Sleepers to disturb,” said Cushing. “Thunder Butte is the Place of Going to the Stars. There lies hope for the human race. I have come to ask for help.”
“How for help?”
“We need your sensitives.”
“Sensitives? Talk plainly, man. Tell me what you mean.”
“Your witches and warlocks. Your medicine men, if you have such. People who can talk with trees, who bring the buffalo, who can divine th
e weather. Those who throw carven bones to see into the future.”
Mad Wolf grunted. “And what would you do with those? We have very few of them. Why should we give the ones we have to you, who have disturbed the Sleepers?”
“I tell you there are no Sleepers. There were never any Sleepers.”
The warden spoke. “There was one other among them who told us this same thing. A tall woman with emptiness in her eyes and a terrible face. ‘You are wrong,’ she told us, ‘there aren’t any Sleepers.’”
“Where is this woman now,” Mad Wolf asked of Cushing, “with her empty eyes and her terrible face?”
“She stayed behind,” said Cushing. “She is on the butte.”
“Waking the Sleepers…”
“Goddammit, don’t you understand? I’ve told you, there are no Sleepers.”
“There was with you, as well, a man of metal, one once called a robot, a very ancient term that is seldom spoken now.”
“It was the metal man,” the warden said, “who killed the bear. This one who stands before us shot arrows, but it was the metal man who killed the bear, driving a lance into the chest.”
“That is true,” said Cushing. “My arrows did but little.”
“So you admit,” said Mad Wolf, “that there is a metal man.”
“That is true. He may be the last one left and he is a friend of mine.”
“A friend?”
Cushing nodded.
“Are you not aware,” asked Mad Wolf, “that a robot, if such it be, is an evil thing—a survival from that day when the world was held in thrall by monstrous machines? That it’s against the law to harbor such a machine, let alone be a friend of one?”
“It wasn’t that way,” said Cushing. “Back there, before the Collapse, I mean. The machines didn’t use us; we used the machines. We tied our lives to them. The fault was ours, not theirs.”
“You place yourself against the legends of the past?”