She walked purposefully into the main hall, impressed but not overawed by the hush that fell as soon as she passed through the entrance. The information machines were range side by side against the far wall, and she chose one at random.
As soon as the recognition signal lighted up she said, «I am looking for Alvin; he is somewhere in this building. Where can I find him?» Even after a lifetime, one never grew wholly accustomed to the complete absence of time lag when an information ma i chine replied to an ordinary question. There were people w hp knew-or claimed to know-how it was done, and talked, learnedly of «access time» and «storage space,» but that made the final result none the less marvelous. Any question of a 1 purely factual nature, within the city’s truly enormous range of available information, could be answered immediately. Only if complex calculations were involved before a reply could be given would there be any appreciable delay.
«He is with the monitors,» came the reply. It was not very helpful, since the name conveyed nothing to Alystra. No machine ever volunteered more information than it was asked for, and learning to frame questions properly was an art which often took a long time to acquire.
«How do I reach him?» asked Alystra. She would find what the monitors were when she got to them.
«I cannot tell you unless you have the permission of the Council.»This was a most unexpected, even a disconcerting, development. There were very few places in Diaspar that could not be visited by anyone who pleased. Alystra was quite certain that Alvin had not obtained Council permission, and this could only mean that a higher authority was helping him.
The Council ruled Diaspar, but the Council itself could be overridden by a superior power-the all-but-infinite intellect. of the Central Computer. It was difficult not to think of the Central Computer as a living entity, localized in a single spot, though actually it was the sum total of all the machines in Diaspar. Even if it was not alive in the biological sense, it certainly possessed at least as much awareness and self-consciousness as a human being. It must know what Alvin was doing, and, therefore, it must approve, otherwise it would have stopped him or referred him to the Council, as the in-formation machine had done to Alystra.
There was no point in staying here. Alystra knew that any attempt to find Alvin-even if she knew exactly where he was in this enormous building-would be doomed to failure. Doors would fail to open; slideways would reverse when she stood on them, carrying her backward instead of forward; elevator fields would be mysteriously inert, refusing to lift her from one floor to another. If she persisted, she would be gently i conveyed out into the street by a polite but firm robot, or else shuttled round and round Council Hall until she grew fed up and left under her own volition.
She was in a bad temper as she walked out into the street. She was also more than a little puzzled, and for the first time felt that there was some mystery here which made her per-sonal desires and interests seem very trivial indeed. That did not mean that they would be any the less important to her. She had no idea what she was going to do next, but she was sure of one thing. Alvin was not the only person in Diaspar who could be stubborn and persistent.
Eight
The image on the monitor screen faded as Alvin raised his hands from the control panel and cleared the circuits. For a moment he sat quite motionless, looking into the blank rec-tangle that had occupied all his conscious mind for so many weeks. He had circumnavigated his world; across that screen had passed every square foot of the outer wall of Diaspar. He knew the city better than any living man save perhaps IChe-dron; and he knew now that there was no way through the walls.
The feeling that possessed him was not mere despondency; be had never really expected that it would be as easy as this, that he would find what he sought at the first attempt. What was important was that he had eliminated one possibility. Now he must deal with the others.
He rose to his feet and walked over to the image of the city which almost filled the chamber. It was hard not to think of it as an actual model, though he knew that in reality it was no more than an optical projection of the pattern in the memory cells he had been exploring. When he altered the monitor controls and set his viewpoint moving through Dias-par, a spot of light would travel over the surface of this rep-lica, so that he could see exactly where he was going. It had been a useful guide in the early days, but he soon had grown so skillful at setting the co-ordinates that he had not needed this aid.
The city lay spread out beneath him; he looked down upon it like a god. Yet he scarcely saw it as he considered, one by one, the steps he should now take.
If all else failed, there was one solution to the problem. Diaspar might be held in a perpetual stasis by its eternity circuits frozen forever according to the pattern in the memory cells, but that pattern could itself be altered, and the city would then change with it. It would be possible to redesign a section of the outer wall so that it contained a doorw feed this pattern into the monitors, and let the city resh itself to the new conception.
Alvin suspected that the large areas of the monitor control board whose purpose Khedron had not explained to him concerned with such alterations. It would be useless to periment with them; controls that could alter the very structure of the city were firmly locked and could be operated only with the authority of the Council and the approval the Central Computer. There was very little chance that Council would grant him what he asked, even if he was prepared for decades or even centuries of patient pleading. This was not a prospect that appealed to him in the least.
He turned his thoughts toward the sky. Sometimes he imagined, in fantasies which he was half-ashamed to recall that he had regained the freedom of the air which man h renounced so long ago. Once, he knew, the skies of Earth ha been filled with strange shapes. Out of space the great ships had come, bearing unknown treasures, to berth at the legendary Port of Diaspar. But the Port had been beyond the limits of the city; aeons ago it had been buried by the drifting sand He could dream that somewhere in the mazes of Diaspar flying machine might still be hidden, but he did not really lieve it. Even in the days when small, personal flyers had bee in common use, it was most unlikely that they had ever be 1 allowed to operate inside the limits of the city.
For a moment he lost himself in the old, familiar dream. He imagined that he was master of the sky, that the world lay spread out beneath him, inviting him to travel where hewilled. It was not the world of his own time that he saw, but the lost world of the dawn-a rich and living panorama of hills and lakes and forests. He felt a bitter envy of his unknown ancestors, who had flown with such freedom over the earth and who had let its beauty die.
This mind-drugging reverie was useless; he tore himself back to the present and to the problem at hand. If the sky was unattainable and the way by land was barred, what remained?
Once again he had come to the point when he needed help, when he could make no further progress by his own efforts He disliked admitting the fact, but was honest enough not deny it. Inevitably, his thoughts turned to Khedron.
Alvin had never been able to decide whether he liked the Jester. He was very glad that they had met, and was grateful to Khedron for the assistance and implicit sympathy he had given him on his quest. There was no one else in Diaspar with whom he had so much in common, yet there was some element in the other’s personality that jarred upon him. Perhap it was Khedron’s air of ironic detachment, which sometime gave Alvin the impression that he was laughing secretly at all his efforts, even while he seemed to be doing his best to help. Because of this, as well as his own natural stubbornness and independence, Alvin hesitated to approach the Jester except as a last resort.