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.
"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 longtime. 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 B 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 maybe important 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 maybe 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 B. He can fix it up for me.
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.