Her voice, however, was clear and precise. There was no emotion in it, not a tremor, as she said, "As my grandfather told us, as the plants had told him, eternity is here. It lies within our grasp. It is just beyond our fingertips. It is a strange condition, unlike the eternity we have thought about—a place with neither time nor space, for there is not room in it for either time or space. It is an all-encompassing endlessness that never had a beginning and will not have an end. Embedded in it are all those things that have happened or are about to happen.
" Then she gasped and her grip on Cushing's arm tightened until he could feel her nails cutting deep into his flesh. She sobbed, "It's not like that at all. That was only superficial. It is a place-no, not a place She sagged and Cushing caught her as she slumped, holding her upright.
The figure at the head of the table stood unmoving. Cushing looked at it across the intervening space and it looked back at him out of gleaming eyes that sparkled in the dazzle of the light supplied by the spinning, twisting snakes.
Elayne sagged, her legs buckling under her. Cushing swept her up in his arms and turned about, heading for the door. He felt the eyes of the figure at the table's head burning into him, but he did not turn his head. He stumbled out the door and down the corridor until he had passed through the outer door and down the steps onto the esplanade. There he stopped and let Elayne down, and her knees did not buckle under her. She stood erect, clinging to him for support. In the pale starlight, her vacant face held a stricken look.
Off to one side came a clatter of hoofs, and switching his head about, Cushing saw that it was Andy, prancing and gamboling in a mad abandon, neck bowed, tail straight out behind him, dancing on the paving stones. For a moment it seemed that he was alone; then Cushing saw the others—faint shadows in the starlight, running madly with him like a pack of joyous wolves, circling him and leaping over him, running underneath his belly, leaping up playfully to confront him and fawn on him, as a pack of puppies might play with a delightedly shrieking four-year-old.
Elayne jerked away from him and began to run, back toward the camp, running silently, robe fluttering behind her. Cushing pounded after her, but she outdistanced him. Meg rose up from the camp and confronted her, grappling with her to halt the frenzied flight.
"What's the matter with her, laddie boy?" asked Meg as he came up. "What have you done to her?"
"Not a thing," said Cushing. "She just saw reality, is all. We were inside the City and she was delivering some of that insipid nonsense, mostly about eternity, she has been spouting all the time, and then—"
"You were in the City?"
"Yes, of course," said Cushing. "They left the door wide open.
Elayne had sunk to her ritual position, feet tucked under her, hands folded in her lap, head bowed. Ezra, fumbling out of his blanket, was fussing over her.
"What did you find in there?" asked Meg. "And what has got into Andy?"
"He's dancing with a gaggle of Followers," said Cushing. "Never mind about him. He's making out all right."
"And folio? Where is folio?"
"Damned if I know," said Cushing. "He is never here when we have need of him. Just ambling about."
A cylinder appeared in the air above them, hanging motionless, its receptors gleaming at them.
"Go away," said Cushing. "Right now, we don't need another story."
"No story have I to tell you," said the gossiper. "I carry information for you. I have a message from the A and B."
"The A and R?"
"The Ancient and Revered. He said for me to tell you that the City is closed to you. He said to say we have no time to waste on a group of gaping tourists."
"Well, that's all right," said Meg. "We aren't gaping tourists, but we'll be glad to leave."
"That you cannot do," said the gossiper. "That will not be allowed. You are not to leave; for if you do, you will carry foolish tales with you, and that we do not want."
"So," said Cushing, "we are not allowed to leave and the City is closed to us. What do you expect us to do?"
"That is up to you," said the gossiper. "It is no concern of ours.
Three days later they knew that what the gossiper had said was true. Meg and Cushing had toured the City, looking for a means of getting into it. They found none. There were doors, a lot of doors, but all were closed and locked. The windows, and there were few of them, were no lower than the second or third floors. The few they were able to reach were locked as well and constructed of something other than glass, impossible to break. What was more, they were opaque and there was no way of looking through them. Ventilating shafts, of which there were only a few, were baffled in such a manner that they offered no opportunity of crawling through them.
The City was much larger than it had appeared, and it was, they found, a single building with many wings; in fact, with wings added on to wings, so the scheme of construction, at times, became confusing. The heights of the divers wings varied, some only five or six stories tall, others rising to twenty
stories or more. The entire structure was flanked all the way around by the stone-paved esplanade.
Except for one occasion, on the second day, they saw no one. On that second day, late in the afternoon, they had come upon the Team, apparently waiting for them when they came around the corner of one of the many wings.
Meg and Cushing stopped in astonishment, yet somewhat glad at meeting something with which they could communicate. The two great globes rolled forward to meet them, their eyes floating randomly. When they reached one of the stone benches, they stopped to wait for the humans to come up.
#1 boomed at them in his drumlike voice. "Please to sit down and rest yourselves, as we note is the custom of your kind. Then it will be possible to have communication very much at leisure."
"We have been wondering," Meg said, "what had happened to you. That day we talked, you left in something of a hurry."
"We have been cogitating," said #2, "and very much disturbed by the thing you told us—the question that you asked."
"You mean," said Cushing, "What comes after man?"
"That is it," said #1, "and it was not the concept that was so disturbing to us, but that it could be asked of any race about itself. This is much at odds with the viewpoint of the A and B, who seems quite convinced that your race will recover from the late catastrophe and rise again to greater heights than you have ever known before. By any chance, have you met the A and B?"
"No," Cushing said, "we haven't."
"Ah, then," said #2, "to return to the question that you asked. Can you explain to us how you came to ask it? To say of something else that in time it will be superseded by some other form of life is only logical, but for a species to entertain the idea that it will be superseded argues a sophistication that we had not considered possible."
"To answer that one," said Cushing, "is really very simple. Such a speculation is only commonsense and is quite in line with evolutionary mechanics. Life forms rise to dominance because of certain survival factors. On this planet, through the ages, there have been many dominant races. Man rose to his dominance because of intelligence, but geological history argues that he will not remain dominant forever. And once that is recognized, the question naturally rises as to what will come after him. What, we might ask, has a greater survival value than intelligence? And though we cannot answer, we know there must be something. As a matter of fact, it might seem that intelligence has turned out to have poor survival value."
"And you do not protest?" asked #2. "You do not pound your chest in anger? You do not tear your hair? You do not grow weak and panicky at the thought the day will come when there will be none of you, that in the universe there will be nothing like you, that there will be none to remember or to mourn you?"