"The question is inaccurate. The City _is_ a machine. There are no
human inhabitants."
Suddenly chilled, Kesley looked up at the grid at which he had been
directing his words, and realized he had been holding conversation with
a mechanical brain, not some remote City official. Moistening his lips,
he said: "What does the City _do_?"
"Question is unclear."
_The precision of the mechanical mind_, he thought in amused
irritation. He rephrased the question. "What functions does the City
carry out, aside from the normal routine of--of self-repair?"
"The City maintains a record of happenings in the Outer World; this
record is not completely available for examination at the moment, due
to unsettled conditions without. The City supplies manufactured goods
to those who request them, as prescribed by its founders. The City
endeavors to supply information within the bounds of self-safety,
likewise as prescribed. The City--"
"Does the City know of a poet named Daveen?" Kesley broke in.
"Question will have to be referred to Answering Banks."
A pause, then, in a somewhat altered voice: "Information incomplete
on poet Daveen, no other name recorded, member of court Duke Winslow
Chicago North America 2504-2521, left court 2521, current whereabouts
unknown. Is full biography requested?"
"No." Kesley crossed his legs and stared broodingly at his boots for a
moment. The entire City a vast sentient machine, then! No wonder the
Dukes left it alone; they knew they would never have the strength to
destroy Wiener, and so they preferred that the machine-hating populace
never learned of the City's existence.
He found himself greatly curious about the City. His imagination was
engaged by the implications of a city-sized mechanical mind; he who
had never dealt with any machine more complex than a pistol, who had
had only fleeting acquaintance with the remnants of the Old Days, was
fascinated by this mightiest machine of all.
"What can you tell me about Dale Kesley?" he asked on a sudden impulse.
Again silence--silence while photon-tracers raced over cryotronic
circuits searching for information. Then: "Dale Kesley, farmer, entered
Iowa Province June 21, 2521, no previous record, left Iowa Province
undetermined time in spring of this year. Entered City of Wiener
unaccompanied except by one mutant horse Type VX-1342 on October 8 of
this year. Further information is lacking."
"Thanks," Kesley said hoarsely. His first twenty years were blank to
the City, too. "Mind if I look around the place a little?"
"Limited examination of City of Wiener is permitted," the metal voice
said. "Your animal has been removed for care and will be returned to
you upon request."
He glanced through the thick glass window of the cubicle and saw that
it was indeed so. While he had talked, unseen hands--_hands?_--had
taken the horse away. Led it to pasture, Kesley wondered?
* * * * *
He wandered through the silent halls of the complex city, observing
with a sort of quiet horror the chill efficiency with which the robot
mind carried out its daily routine.
The City _was_ populated. Kesley came across the inhabitants
immediately after leaving the glass-walled cubicle. They were man-sized
robots of blue metal, rolling on noiseless treads, equipped with
opposable-thumbed hands and filament-ended tentacles and wiry grippers,
seeing out of bright electrophotic eyes and gazing evenly ahead with
expressionless, shiny faces.
One of them was squatting over an immense heap of coiled tape which was
growing almost as fast as he could scoop it up and feed it into the
chittering maw of some glossy data-eater in one wall.
Another was repairing a mass of tangled circuits in an exposed ganglion
behind a section of wall.
Still another of the mechanical men stood at some distance away,
holding a segmented tube to the mouth of Kesley's horse. The horse had
its jointed scaly lips pressed tight against the tube, and was eating
or drinking with evident contentment.
Air-conditioners hummed gently in the background, keeping the
atmosphere pure and dustless. From the floor came the throbbing of some
mighty engines far below. Kesley wondered just how deep in the ground
the City penetrated.
All around, computers chattered and whistled. Kesley felt his
astonishment growing with each moment. And beneath the astonishment,
there was a mounting resentment at the Ducal philosophy that had
blanked such achievements as this from the world.
_Machines have destroyed civilization_, people said. But had they? No;
not the machines. It was man's _use_ of the machines; the machines
themselves were impartial, as disinterested in the currents of human
affairs as the moon and the stars.
Yet the Dukes had risen to power on a program of throttled
technological development. Fleetingly, the thought went through
Kesley's mind that the Dukes had made a mistake. If only--
He stopped, feeling a shiver of pain. Once again he had touched some
reverberating rawness in the deep layers of his mind; once again, a
forbidden thought.
In sudden inspiration he turned toward a grid set in the wall near him.
"Can I get information from you?" he asked.
"Answering circuits are functioning."
"Can you tell me anything about Antarctica? Anything at all?"
Silence for a moment. "Do you mean Antarctica before or after removal
of the ice?" the voice asked.
"Afterward--I guess."
"We have no information on Antarctica after 2062," the machine said.
"Ice removal was completed in 2021, and settlement proceeded along with
rapid technological development. In 2062 Antarctica ceased all contact
with the rest of the world."
2062 was the year of the Great Blast, Kesley thought. And Antarctica
had drawn the curtain.
He shrugged and walked away, taking a seat on a curved metal stanchion
projecting from the floor. Somewhere, locked in the obstinate memory
banks of this computer-city, might be the information he needed to
orient himself in the world, the missing data that everyone maddeningly
withheld from him. But where to find it? How to get it?