He was alone in the city, but the solitude was no longer palatable. He wanted to pursue her, to demand her own analysis of her mood, but perhaps she was as incapable of expressing herself as was he. Did Bromley supply a means of interpreting emotion as readily as it supplied standards of social conduct?
He began to suspect that neither Amelia's society nor his, for all their differences, concerned themselves with anything but the surface of things. Now that he was in the city it might be that he could find some still functioning memory bank capable of recalling the wisdom of one of those eras, like the Fifth Confucian or the Zen Commonwealth, which had placed rather exaggerated emphasis on self-knowledge and its expression. Even the strange, neurotic refinements of that other period with which he had a slight familiarity, the Saint-Claude Dictatorship (under which every citizen had been enjoined to supply three distinctly different explanations as to their psychological motives for taking even the most minor decisions), might afford him a clue to Amelia's behaviour and his own reactions. It occurred to him that she might be acting so strangely because, in some simple way, he was failing to console her. He began to walk through the ruins, in the opposite direction to the one she had taken, trying to recall something of Dawn Age society. Could it be that he was supposed to kill Mr. Underwood? It would be easy enough to do. And would she permit her husband's resurrection? Should he, Jherek, change his appearance, to resemble Harold Underwood as much as possible? Had she rejected his suggestion that he change his name to hers because it was not enough? He paused to lean against a carved jade post whose tip was lost in chemical mist high above his head. He seemed to remember reading of some ritual formalizing the giving of oneself into another's power. Did she pine because he did not perform it? Or did the reverse apply? Did kneeling have something to do with it, and if so who knelt to whom?
"Om," said the jade post.
"Eh?" said Jherek, startled.
"Om," intoned the post. "Om."
"Did you detect my thoughts, post?"
"I am merely an aid to meditation, brother. I do not interpret."
"It is interpretation I need. If you could direct me…"
"Everything is as everything else," the post told him. Everything is nothing and nothing is everything. The mind of man is the universe and the universe is the mind of man. We are all characters in God's dreams. We are all God."
"Easily said, post."
"Because a thing is easy does not mean that it is difficult. Because a thing is difficult does not mean that it is easy."
"Is that not a tautology?"
"The universe is one vast tautology, brother, yet no one thing is the same as another."
"You are not very helpful. I sought information."
"There is no such thing as information. There is only knowledge."
"Doubtless," said Jherek doubtfully. He bade good day to the post and retreated. The post, like so many of the city's artefacts, seemed to lack a sense of humour, though probably, if taxed, it would — as others here did — claim a "cosmic sense of humour" (this involved making obvious ironies about things commonly observed by the simplest intelligence).
In the respect of ordinary, light conversation, machines, including the most sophisticated, were notoriously bad company; more literal-minded even than someone like Li Pao. This thought led him, as he walked on, to ponder the difference between men and machines. There had once been very great differences, but these days there were few, in superficial terms. What were the things which distinguished a self-perpetuating machine, capable of almost any sort of invention, from a self-created human being, equally capable? There were differences — perhaps emotional. Could it not be true that the less emotion the entity possessed the poorer its sense of humour — or the more emotion it repressed the weaker its capacity for original irony?
These ideas were scarcely leading him in the direction he wished to go, but he was beginning to give up hope of finding any solution to his dilemma in the city, and at least he now felt he understood the jade post better.
A chromium tree giggled at him as he entered a paved plaza. He had been here several times as a boy. He had a great deal of affection for the giggling tree.
"Good afternoon," he said.
The tree giggled as it had giggled without fail for at least a million years, whenever addressed or approached. Its function seemed merely to amuse. Jherek smiled, in spite of the heaviness of his thoughts.
"A lovely day."
The tree giggled, its chromium branches gently clashing.
"Too shy to speak, as usual?"
"Tee hee hee."
The tree's charm was very hard to explain, but it was unquestionable.
"I believe myself, old friend, to be 'unhappy' — or worse!"
"Hee hee hee." The tree seemed helpless with mirth. Jherek began to laugh, too. Laughing, he left the plaza, feeling considerably more relaxed.
He had wandered close to the tangle of metal where, from above, Amelia had thought she had seen Brannart Morphail. Curiosity led him on, for there were, indeed, lights moving behind the mass of tangled girders, struts, hawsers, cables and wires, though they were probably not of human origin. He approached closer, but cautiously. He peered, thinking he saw figures. And then, as a light flared, he recognized the unmistakable shape of Brannart Morphail's quaint body, an outline only, for the light half?blinded him. He recognized the scientist's voice, but it was not speaking its usual tongue. As he listened, it dawned on Jherek that Brannart Morphail was, however, using a language familiar to him.
"Gerfish lortooda, mibix?" said the scientist to someone beyond the pool of light. "Derbi kroofrot!"
Another voice answered and it was equally unmistakable as belonging to Captain Mubbers. "Hrunt, arragak fluzi, grodsink Morphail."
Jherek regretted that he no longer habitually carried his translation pills with him, for he was curious to know why Brannart should be conspiring with the Lat, for conspiring he must be — there was a considerable air of secrecy to the whole business. He resolved to mention his discovery to Lord Jagged as soon as possible. He considered attempting to see more of what was going on but decided not to risk revealing his presence; instead he turned and made for the cover of a nearby dome, its roof cracked and gaping like the shell of an egg.
Within the dome he was delighted to find brilliantly coloured pictures, all as fresh as the day they were made, and telling some kind of story, though the voices accompanying them were distorted. He watched the ancient programme through until it began again. It described a method of manufacturing machines of the same sort as the one on which Jherek watched the pictures, and there were fragments, presumably demonstrating other programmes, of scenes showing a variety of events — in one a young woman in a kind of luminous net made love underwater to a great fish of some description, in another two men set fire to themselves and ran through what was probably the airlock of a spaceship, making the spaceship explode, and in another a large number of people wearing rococo metal and plastic struggled in free fall for the possession of a small tube which, when one of them managed to take hold of it, was hurled towards one of several circular objects on the wall of the building in which they floated. If the tube struck a particular point on the circular object there would be great exultation from about half the people and much despondency displayed by the other half, but Jherek was particularly interested in the fragment which seemed to be demonstrating how a man and a woman might copulate, also in free fall. He found the ingenuity involved extremely touching and left the dome in a rather more positive and hopeful spirit than when he had entered it.
It was in this mood that he determined to seek out Amelia and try to explain his discomfort with her own behaviour and his. He sought for the way he had come, but was already lost, though he knew the city well; but he had an idea of the general direction and he began to cross a crunching expanse of sweet-smelling green and red crystals, almost immediately catching sight of a landmark ahead of him — a curving, half-melted piece of statuary suspended, without visible support, above a mechanical figure which stretched imploring arms to it, then scooped little golden discs in its hands and flung them into the air, repeating these motions over and over again, as they had been repeated ever since Jherek could remember. He passed the figure and entered an alley poorly illuminated with garish amber and cerise; from apertures on both sides of the alley little metal snouts emerged, little machine-eyes peered inquisitively at him, little silver whiskers twitched. He had never known the function of these platinum rodents, though he guessed that they were information-gatherers of some kind for the machines housed in the great smooth radiation-splashed walls of the alley. Two or three illusions, only half tangible, appeared and vanished ahead of him — a thin man, eight feet tall, blind and warlike; a dog in a great bottle on wheels, a yellow-haired porcine alien in buff-coloured clothing — as he hurried on.