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"So," said Cushing, "we are not allowed to leave and the City is closed to us. What do you expect us to do?"
"That is up to you," said the gossiper. "It is no concern of ours.
Three days later they knew that what the gossiper had said was true. Meg and Cushing had toured the City, looking for a means of getting into it. They found none. There were doors, a lot of doors, but all were closed and locked. The windows, and there were few of them, were no lower than the second or third floors. The few they were able to reach were locked as well and constructed of something other than glass, impossible to break. What was more, they were opaque and there was no way of looking through them. Ventilating shafts, of which there were only a few, were baffled in such a ma
The City was much larger than it had appeared, and it was, they found, a single building with many wings; in fact, with wings added on to wings, so the scheme of construction, at times, became confusing. The heights of the divers wings varied, some only five or six stories tall, others rising to twenty
stories or more. The entire structure was flanked all the way around by the stone-paved esplanade.
Except for one occasion, on the second day, they saw no one. On that second day, late in the afternoon, they had come upon the Team, apparently waiting for them when they came around the corner of one of the many wings.
Meg and Cushing stopped in astonishment, yet somewhat glad at meeting something with which they could communicate. The two great globes rolled forward to meet them, their eyes floating randomly. When they reached one of the stone benches, they stopped to wait for the humans to come up.
#1 boomed at them in his drumlike voice. "Please to sit down and rest yourselves, as we note is the custom of your kind. Then it will be possible to have communication very much at leisure."
"We have been wondering," Meg said, "what had happened to you. That day we talked, you left in something of a hurry."
"We have been cogitating," said #2, "and very much disturbed by the thing you told us—the question that you asked."
"You mean," said Cushing, "What comes after man?"
"That is it," said #1, "and it was not the concept that was so disturbing to us, but that it could be asked of any race about itself. This is much at odds with the viewpoint of the A and B, who seems quite convinced that your race will recover from the late catastrophe and rise again to greater heights than you have ever known before. By any chance, have you met the A and B?"
"No," Cushing said, "we haven't."
"Ah, then," said #2, "to return to the question that you asked. Can you explain to us how you came to ask it? To say of something else that in time it will be superseded by some other form of life is only logical, but for a species to entertain the idea that it will be superseded argues a sophistication that we had not considered possible."
"To answer that one," said Cushing, "is really very simple. Such a speculation is only commonsense and is quite in line with evolutionary mechanics. Life forms rise to dominance because of certain survival factors. On this planet, through the ages, there have been many dominant races. Man rose to his dominance because of intelligence, but geological history argues that he will not remain dominant forever. And once that is recognized, the question naturally rises as to what will come after him. What, we might ask, has a greater survival value than intelligence? And though we ca
"And you do not protest?" asked #2. "You do not pound your chest in anger? You do not tear your hair? You do not grow weak and panicky at the thought the day will come when there will be none of you, that in the universe there will be nothing like you, that there will be none to remember or to mourn you?"
"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 stubbor
"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."