Her mind snapped back, retracting from the overpowering mass of answers, and her eyes came open. The crystal ball fell from her hands and rolled off her lap, to bounce upon the stony pavement. She saw that it was no crystal ball, but the robotic brain case that Rollo had carried in his sack. She reached out and stroked it with her fingers, murmuring at it, soothing it, aghast at what she'd done. To awaken it, to let it know it was not alone, to raise a hope that could not be carried out—that, she told herself, was a cruelty that could never be erased, for which there could be no recompense. To wake it for a moment, then plunge it back again into the loneliness and the dark, to touch it for a moment and then to let it go. She picked it up and cuddled it against her breasts, as a mother might a child.
"You are not alone," she told it. "I'll stay with you." Not knowing, as she spoke the words, if she could or not. In that time of doubt she felt its mind again—no longer cold, no longer alone or dark, a warmth of sudden comradeship, an overflowing of abject gratitude.
Above her the great metal doors were opening. In them stood a robot, a larger and more massive machine than folio, but very much akin to him.
"I'm called the Ancient and Revered," the robot told them. "Won't you please come in? I should like to talk with you."
They sat at the table in the room where Cushing and Elayne had first met the A and B, but this time there was light from a candle that stood at one end of the table. There were Shivering Snakes as well, but not as many as there had been that first time, and those that were there stayed close against the ceiling, looping and spinning and making damn fools of themselves.
The A and R sat down ponderously in the chair at the table's head and the others of them took chairs and ranged themselves on either side. Meg laid the robot's brain case on the table in front of her and kept both hands upon it, not really holding it but just letting it know that she was there. Every now and then she felt the presence probing gently at her mind, perhaps simply to assure itself that she had not deserted it. Andy stood in the doorway, half in the room, half out, his head drooping but watching everything. Behind him in the corridor fluttered the gray shapes of his pals the Followers.
The A and B settled himself comfortably in the chair and
looked at them for a long time before he spoke, as if he might be evaluating them, perhaps debating with himself the question of whether he might have made a mistake in inviting them to this conference.
Finally, he spoke. "I am pleased," he said, "to welcome you to the Place of Going to the Stars."
Cushing hit the table with his open hand. "Cut out the fairy tales," he yelled. "This can't be the Place of Going to the Stars. There are no launching pads. In a place like this the logistics would be impossible."
"Mr. Cushing," the A and R said gently, "if you'll allow me to explain. No launching pads, you say. Of course there are no launching pads. Have you ever tried to calculate the problems of going to the stars? How far they are, the time that it would take to reach them, the shortness of a human life?"
"I've read the literature," said Cushing. "The library at the university—"
"You read the speculations," said the A and B. "You read what was written about going to the stars centuries before there was any possibility of going to the stars. Written when men had reached no farther into space than the moon and Mars."
"That is right, but—"
"You read about cryogenics: freezing the passengers and then reviving them. You read the controversies about faster-than-light. You read the hopefulness of human colonies planted on the earthlike planets of other solar systems."
"Some of it might have worked," said Cushing stubbornly. "Men, in time, would have found better ways to do it."
"They did," said the A and R. "Some men did go to some of the nearby stars. They found many things that were interesting. They brought back the seeds from which sprouted the belt of Trees that rings in this butte. They brought back the living rocks, the Shivering Snakes and the Followers, all of which you've seen. But it was impractical. It was too costly and the time factor was too great. You speak of logistics, and the logistics of sending human beings to the stars were wrong. Once you get into a technological system, once it's actually in operation, you find what's wrong with it. Your perspectives change and your goals tend to shift about. You ask yourself what you really want, what you're trying to accomplish, what values can be found in the effort you are making. We asked this of ourselves once we started going to the stars and the conclusion was that the actual landing on another planet of another solar system was, in itself, of not too great a value. There was glory, of course, and satisfaction, and we learned some things of value, but the process was too slow; it took too long. If we could have sent out a thousand ships, each pointed toward a different point in space, the returns would have been speeded up. It would have taken as long, but with that many ships there would have been a steady feedback of results, after a wait of a few hundred years, as the ships began coming back, one by one. But we could not send out a thousand ships. The economy would not withstand that sort of strain. And once you had sent out a thousand ships, you'd have to keep on building them and sending them out to keep the pipeline full. We knew we did not have the resources to do anything like that and we knew we didn't have the time, for some of our social scientists were warning us of the Collapse that finally overtook us. So we asked ourselves—we were forced to ask ourselves—what we were really looking for. And the answer seemed to be that we were seeking information.
"Without having lived through the era of which I talk, it is difficult to comprehend the pressures under which we found ourselves. It became, in time, not a simple matter of going to the stars; it was a matter of pulling together a body of knowledge that might give us a clue to actions that might head off the Collapse foreseen by our social scientists. The common populace was not fully aware of the dangers seen by the scientists and they were generally not aware at all of what we were doing. For years they had been bombarded by warnings from all sorts of experts, most of whom were wrong, and they were so fed up with informed opinions that they paid no attention to anything that was being said. For they had no way of knowing which of them were sound.
"But there was this small group of scientists and engineers— and by a small group I mean some thousands of them—who saw the danger clearly. There might have been a number of ways in which the Collapse could have been averted, but the one that seemed to have the best chance was to gamble that from the knowledge that might be collected from those other civilizations among the stars, an answer might be found. It might, we told ourselves, be a basic answer we simply had not thought of, an answer entirely human in its concept, or it might be a completely alien answer which we could adapt."
He stopped and looked around the table. "Do you follow me?" he asked.
"I think we do," said Ezra. "You speak of ancient times that are unknown to us."
"But not to Mr. Cushing," said the A and B. "Mr. Cushing has read about those days."
"I cannot read," said Ezra. "There are very few who can. In all my tribe there is not a one who can.
"Which leads me to wonder," said the A and B, "how it comes about that Mr. Cushing can. You spoke of a university. Are there still universities?"
"Only one I know of," said Cushing. "There may be others, but I do not know. At our university a man named Wilson, centuries ago, wrote a history of the Collapse. It is not a good history; it is largely based on legend."