"Hell, no," said Cushing. "No, of course we don't."
"You can so disregard your own personal reactions," said #2, as to actually speculate upon what will follow you?"
"I think," said Meg, "it might be fun to know."
"We fail to comprehend," said #1. "This fun you speak about. What do you mean by ‘fun'?"
"You mean, poor things," cried Meg, "that you never have any fun? That you don't know what we mean by ‘fun'?"
"We catch the concept barely," said #2, "although perhaps imperfectly. It is something we have not heretofore encountered. We find it hard to understand that any being could derive even the slightest satisfaction in regarding its own extinction."
"Well," said Cushing, "we aren't extinct as yet. We may have a few more years.
"But you don't do anything about it."
"Not actively," said Cushing. "Not now. Perhaps not at any time. We just try to get- along. But, now, suppose you tell us—do you have even an inkling of an answer to the question that we asked? What does come after us?"
"It's a question we can't answer," said #1, "although since you spoke of it to us, we have given thought to it. The A and B contends that the race will continue. But we think the A and B is wrong. We have seen other planets where the dominant races have fallen and that was the end of it. There was nothing that gave promise of coming after them."
"Perhaps," said Cushing, "you weren't able to hang around long enough. It might take some time for another form of life to move in, to fill the vacuum.
"We don't know about that," said #2. "It was something that did not greatly concern us; it was a factor, actually, that we never once considered. It fell outside the area of our study. You understand, the two of us have spent a lifetime on the study of certain crisis points resulting in the terminations of technological societies. On many other planets we have found a classic pattern. The technology builds up to a certain point and then destroys itself and the race that built it. We were about to return to our home planet and inscribe our report when we happened on this planet and the doubt crept in….
"The doubt crept in," said #1, "because of the evasiveness and the stubbornness of the A and B. He refuses to admit the obvious. He pretends, sometimes convincingly, to hold fast to the faith that your human race will rise again, that it is unconquerable, that it has a built-in spirit that will not accept defeat. He talks obliquely about what he calls a phoenix rising from its ashes, an allusion that escapes us in its entirety."
"There is no need to beat among the bushes," said #2. "It seems to us you may be able to abstract an answer more readily than we, and it is our hope that once you have it, you would, in all friendliness, be pleased to share it with us. It seems to us the answer, if there is one, which we doubt exceedingly, is locked within this City. As natives of this planet, you might have a better chance of finding it than we, who are travel-worn aliens, battered by our doubts and inadequacies."
"Fat chance," said Cushing. "We are locked out of the City and, supposedly, marooned here. We are forbidden by the A and B to leave."
"We thought you had said you had not seen the A and B."
"We haven't. He sent a message to us by one of his gossipers."
"The nasty little thing was malicious about it," Meg told them.
"That sounds like the A and B," said #1. "A sophisticated old gentleman, but at times a testy one.
"A gentleman, you say? Could the A and B be human?"
"No, of course he's not," said #2. "We told you. He's a robot. You must know of robots. There is one who is a member of your party."
"Now, wait a minute," said Cushing. "There was something standing at the table's head. It looked like a man and yet not like a man. It could have been a robot. It could have been the A and B."
"Did you speak to it?"
"No, I did not speak to it. There were too many other things.
"You should have spoken to it."
"Dammit, I know I should have spoken to it, but I didn't. Now it is too late. The A and B is inside the City and we can't get to him."
"It's not only the A and B," said #1. "There is something else shut up behind those walls. We know not directly of it. We but suspicion it. We have only recepted it."
"You mean that you have sensed it."
"That is right," said #1. "Our feeling of it is most unreliable, but it is all that we can tell you."
Cushing and Meg went back at the end of the day to the deserted camp. A little later, Andy came ambling in to greet them. There was no sign of the other three. Ezra and Elayne had gone down the butte to talk with the Trees, and Rollo had simply wandered off.
"We know now, laddie buck," said Meg. "The A and B meant exactly what he said. The City's closed to us.
"It was that damn Elayne," said Cushing. "She was Cushing this eternity stuff that she has a hang-up on.
"You're too harsh with her," said Meg. "Her brain may be a little addled, but she has a certain power. I am sure she has. She lives in another world, on another level. She sees and hears things we do not see and hear. And anyhow, it does no good to talk about it now. What are we going to do if we can't get off this butte?"
"I'm not ready to give up yet," said Cushing. "If we want to get out of here, we'll find a way.
"Whatever happened to the Place of Stars," she asked, "that we started out to find? How did we go wrong?"
"We went wrong," said Cushing, "because we were going blind. We grabbed at every rumor that we heard, at all the campfire stories that Rollo had picked up. It wasn't Rollo's fault. It was mine. I was too anxious. I was too ready to accept anything I heard."
Rollo came in shortly after dark. He squatted down beside the other two and sat staring at the fire.
"I didn't find much," he said. "I found a quarry over to the west, where the rock was quarried for the City. I found an old road that led off to the southwest, built and used before the Trees were planted. Now the Trees close off the road. I tried to get through them and there was no getting through. I tried in several places. They simply build a wall against you. Maybe a hundred men with axes could get through, but we haven't got a hundred men with axes."
"Even with axes," said Meg, "I doubt we would get through."
"The tribes are gathering," said Rollo. "The plains off to the east and south are simply black with them, and more coming all the time. The word must have traveled fast."
"What I can't understand," said Cushing, "is why they should be gathering. There were the wardens, of course, but I thought they were just a few small bands of deluded fanatics."
"Perhaps not so deluded," said Meg. "You don't keep a watch for centuries out of pure delusion."
"You think this place is important? That important?"
"It has to be," said Meg. "It is so big. It took so much work and time to build it. And it's so well protected. Men, even men in the old machine days, would not have spent so much time and effort
"Yes, I know," said Cushing. "I wonder what it is. Why it's here. If there were only some way for us to dig out the meaning of it."
"The gathering of the tribes," said Rollo, "argues that it may be more important than we know. It was not just the wardens alone. They were backed by the tribes. Maybe sent here and kept here by the tribes. There may be a legend