* * * * *
"Since artifacts had been found in a part of the City from which
they had previously been removed, I thought that Jim, here, had found
a ... well, a cover-up. It looked as though some of the alien machines
were being moved around in order to conceal the fact that someone was
keeping something hidden. Like, for instance, a new weapon, or a device
that would give a man more power than he should rightfully have."
"Such as?" Duckworth asked.
"Such as invisibility, or a cheap method of transmutation, or even a new
and faster space drive. I wasn't sure, but it certainly looked like it
might be something of that sort."
Rawlings nodded thoughtfully. "A very good intuition, considering the
fact that you had a bit of erroneous data."
"Exactly. I thought that Rawlings Scientific Corporation--or else you,
personally--were concealing something from the rest of us and from the
Advisory Board. I thought that Scholar Duckworth had found out about it
and that he'd been kidnaped to hush him up. It certainly looked that
way."
"I must admit it did, at that," Duckworth said. "But tell me--how does
it look now?"
Turnbull frowned. "The picture's all switched around now. You came here
for a purpose--to check up on your own data. Tell me, is everything here
on the level?"
Duckworth paused before he answered. "Everything _human_," he said
slowly.
"That's what I thought," said Turnbull. "If the human factor is
eliminated--at least partially--from the data, the intuition comes
through quite clearly. We're being fed information."
Duckworth nodded silently.
Rawlings said: "That's it. Someone or something is adding new material
to the City. It's like some sort of cosmic bird-feeding station that has
to be refilled every so often."
Turnbull looked down at his big hands. "It never was a trade route
focus," he said. "It isn't even a city, in our sense of the term, no
more than a birdhouse is a nest." He looked up. "That city was built for
only one purpose--to give human beings certain data. And it's evidently
data that we need in a hurry, for our own good."
"How so?" Rawlings asked, a look of faint surprise on his face.
"Same analogy. Why does anyone feed birds? Two reasons--either to study
and watch them, or to be kind to them. You feed birds in the winter
because they might die if they didn't get enough food."
"Maybe we're being studied and watched, then," said Duckworth,
probingly.
"Possibly. But we won't know for a long time--if ever."
Duckworth grinned. "Right. I've seen this City. I've looked it over
carefully in the past few months. Whatever entities built it are so far
ahead of us that we can't even imagine what it will take to find out
anything about them. We are as incapable of understanding them as a bird
is incapable of understanding us."
"Who knows about this?" Turnbull asked suddenly.
"The entire Advanced Study Board at least," said Rawlings. "We don't
know how many others. But so far as we know everyone who has been able
to recognize what is really going on at the City has also been able to
realize that it is something that the human race _en masse_ is not yet
ready to accept."
"What about the technicians who are actually working there?" asked
Turnbull.
Rawlings smiled. "The artifacts are very carefully replaced. The
technicians--again, as far as we know--have accepted the evidence of
their eyes."
* * * * *
Turnbull looked a little dissatisfied. "Look, there are plenty of people
in the galaxy who would literally hate the idea that there is anything
in the universe superior to Man. Can you imagine the storm of reaction
that would hit if this got out? Whole groups would refuse to have
anything to do with anything connected with the City. The Government
would collapse, since the whole theory of our present government comes
from City data. And the whole work of teaching intuitive reasoning would
be dropped like a hot potato by just those very people who need to learn
to use it.
"And it seems to me that some precautions--" He stopped, then grinned
rather sheepishly. "Oh," he said, "I see."
Rawlings grinned back. "There's never any need to distort the truth.
Anyone who is psychologically incapable of allowing the existence of
beings more powerful than Man is also psychologically incapable of
piecing together the clues which would indicate the existence of such
beings."
Scholar Duckworth said: "It takes a great deal of humility--a real
feeling of honest humility--to admit that one is actually inferior to
someone--or something--else. Most people don't have it--they rebel
because they can't admit their inferiority."
"Like the examples of the North American Amerindian tribes." Turnbull
said. "They hadn't reached the state of civilization that the Aztecs or
Incas had. They were incapable of allowing themselves to be beaten and
enslaved--they refused to allow themselves to learn. They fought the
white man to the last ditch--and look where they ended up."
"Precisely," said Duckworth. "While the Mexicans and Peruvians today are
a functioning part of civilization--because they _could_ and _did_
learn."
"I'd just as soon the human race didn't go the way of the Amerindians,"
Turnbull said.
"I have a hunch it won't," Scholar Rawlings said. "The builders of the
City, whoever they are, are edging us very carefully into the next level
of civilization--whatever it may be. At that level, perhaps we'll be
able to accept their teaching more directly."
Duckworth chuckled. "Before we can become gentlemen, we have to realize
that we are _not_ gentlemen."
Turnbull recognized the allusion. There is an old truism to the effect
that a barbarian can never learn what a gentleman is because a barbarian
cannot recognize that he isn't a gentleman. As soon as he recognizes
that fact, he ceases to be a barbarian. He is _not_ automatically a
gentleman, but at least he has become capable of learning how to be one.
"The City itself," said Rawlings, "acts as a pretty efficient screening
device for separating the humble from the merely servile. The servile
man resents his position so much that he will fight anything which tries
to force recognition of his position on him. The servile slave is
convinced that he is equal to or superior to his masters, and that he is
being held down by brute force. So he opposes them with brute force and
is eventually destroyed."
Turnbull blinked. "A screening device?" Then, like a burst of sunlight,
the full intuition came over him.
Duckworth's round face was positively beaming. "You're the first one
ever to do it," he said. "In order to become a member of the Advanced
Study Board, a scholar must solve that much of the City's secret by
himself. I'm a much older man than you, and I just solved it in the past
few months.
"You will be the first Ph.D. to be admitted to the Board while you're
working on your scholar's degree. Congratulations."
Turnbull looked down at his big hands, a pleased look on his face. Then
he looked up at Scholar Duckworth. "Got a cigarette, Jim? Thanks. You
know, we've still got plenty of work ahead of us, trying to find out
just what it is that the City builders want us to learn."
Duckworth smiled as he held a flame to the tip of Turnbull's cigarette.
"Who knows?" he said quietly. "Hell, maybe they want us to learn about
_them_!"