"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 B, "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 B. "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 B, "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.
"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—"