Joseph H2O2ward

                        THE CITY THAT LOST ITS WAY




                                    1

     The city had been humming for ten thousand years. Yet its tune had
changed over the millennia. The quiet methodical drone of an efficient
piece of machinery had stumbled so long ago, then become a cry.
     The city was crazy with boredom and loneliness. It had been betrayed;
and its streets remained empty of traffic. It did not know who it was,
though that knowledge lay within it.
     Somewhere there was a key that would unlock the secret. But the key
was hidden; and the city couldn't find it. And the city cried for
companionship.
     The city could not remember nor see where it was; but it found a peep
hole out of its limbo and searched the planets of nearby stars for
intelligent life. It found none. It searched farther out and located some;
but did not like the shape and thoughts of the flesh things it saw.
     It searched even farther out; and discovered a world whose
inhabitants were squat and fatty compared to the people it thought it
remembered. It studied them and their culture while looking for a way to
capture some.
     As it whiled away the last few years of its isolation, it became
addicted to televised detective stories, and thought it found in them a
sure plan to get help. The city was crazy, not mean crazy; but dangerous
none-the-less.
     The city was not stupid. Though it couldn't find an exit from its
wilderness, it did work out a link to the planet of squat and fatty
people.
     It could not reach out and grab somebody; its manipulative ability at
that distance was nil. It could invite one or more to come.
     It found a wall, a great big long one for this culture, though not
the gigantic thing that ran through a continent which broadcast few
mystery stories. This was something to which it could anchor with relative
ease, even so far out. It made a door at the bottom of that wall, not
quite straight upright, a bit above the level of the walk, but a
creditable door anyway.
     The door was oak and massive, like those in many detective stories.


     Little dust devils, kicked up by the gusting post-dawn wind, swirled
and scattered the litter as Herbert Wilson Mayer walked along the dirty
gray street. The concrete wall to his right, defaced with constantly
changing graffiti, supported a once-proud railway that now transported
dilapidated commuter cars and squeaking, poorly maintained freight stock.
Across the potholed macadam, seedy warehouses and vacant lots filled with
trash sat behind an uneven brick walk.
     In the wall were nooks, phony arches in the pseudo-gothic facade,
that harbored an occasional wino or bag lady, where once street vendors
had hawked their goods to prosperous tradesmen. There weren't many
cutthroats about, because few men in gray business suits like Mayer's
walked the crumbling cement this close to the waterfront.
     But Mayer was different. He made a good living catering to the
temporary financial needs of transient sailors. He was known as an
honorable man in a seamy business; and anyone molesting him would have had
to answer to an authority more fearsome by far than the cops--the Seaman's
Benevolent Committee and Waterway Neighborhood Association, for whom he
brokered.
     What he did was mostly legal; and his employer helped a lot of
sailors down on their luck--for a high interest rate. Only those who could
pay off and did not suffered from the long arm of Seaman's Benevolent.
Also, as the police had retreated from the docks and the slums, the
organization more and more enforced the peace of the area, a task outside
the law that the lack of law had made necessary. Mayer had nothing to do
with collections or enforcement.
     On his way to work this chill fall morning, he heard a viscous,
rumbling cough that he'd run across too many times on drunkard's row.
Pneumonia.
     He searched out the noise to find a shabby brown-haired woman sitting
doubled over at the back of a deep alcove. He couldn't help noticing a
huge door in the rear wall.
     "Woman, woman," he sighed, "what a mess you are."
     She looked up and swigged at a bottle she produced from the folds of
her soiled blue dress. Coughing again, she began to choke on the alkie.
     "Ach, old fool," Mayer said sadly, grabbing the container of hooch
and flinging it into the street, where it shattered. "I'll get you some
help before you cough your lungs out."
     The female continued to rumble and shudder; and Mayer walked into the
street. "Hey!" he yelled to a passing car. "Call an ambulance! We've got a
sick lady here."
     The vehicle went on, its driver not even turning his head. "You're an
old fool too, Mayer, if you think someone will stop and listen in this
neighborhood."
     He looked to the warehouses across the street. Probably not open this
early. Then he remembered the door. He was sure it had never been there
before, but any port in a gale. Maybe it was more temperate in there.
     To his surprise he found it unlocked and the darkness beyond almost
tropical. "Come on, lady. Get in here where it's warm."
     Mayer tried to pull her up, but sensed her weakness. "Ach, you're far
gone." Grunting, he dragged the limp woman to the opening, lifted her over
the crooked step, and deposited her inside. He rolled her flat on her
tummy, hoping she wouldn't drown in her own fluids. A cold wind blew in
through the door.
     Straining his eyes into the dark, he sensed a smooth, narrow tunnel
lit by a violet light from somewhere beyond. He shut the big door to close
out the chill and shouted, "Hey! Anyone here? There's a sick woman who
needs help."
     No answer. He walked the tunnel, half a mile or more, he estimated.
"Whew. Really is warm in here."
     "Hey! Anyone home?"
     The purple light grew brighter as he progressed, though the
temperature didn't increase. The corridor curved sharply to the left. He
followed the turn to the tunnel's sudden opening.
     He stepped out.
     Before him lay the city, but not his city. Behind him was his exit in
a shiny black wall that went up and on forever. Before him lay the street,
a wide, immaculate boulevard straddling fountains and plazas, flanked by
gigantic dark monoliths whose tops reached dizzyingly into the featureless
violet sky. The street seemed to stretch to infinity, a symphony of
iridescent blues and sparkling greens in this strange light. The fountains
played; but not a living thing moved.
     A sigh of wonder broke from his lips. "Where am I?"
     A soft, sexless, but well-inflected voice came from everywhere. "I am
the city. Welcome to you and your companion. You have twenty-four hours to
find the key or you will be destroyed. Good hunting."


     The Qals had built the city. Throughout the universe they had created
widely and sparsely scattered urbs, both for themselves and others. This
city they had built for themselves.
     The archetractor was Nemqal of Kem, the Younger. Intelligent and
creative was Nemqal, but flawed with overweening ambition.
     When his workers had finished the project, he did not deliver it to
the qalmasters, as his fathers had done for uncounted rotations of Galaxy
Home. Instead he hid it in a place that only his mathematical skills had
found, a limbo existing outside the coordinates available to the
skipstones that had sprinkled Qal outposts among the stars.
     Nemqal bargained for wealth and power with the qalmasters, who spat
upon him and removed his builder's inheritance. He soon disappeared.
     Unable to find the city, the qalmasters commissioned another to be
made; and the lost urb passed into the chronicle of Galaxy Home and out of
mind.
     Yet the city lived and cried for its people, and grew strange.


     A startled Mr. Mayer said, "What?"
     "Welcome to you and your companion. You have 23 hours, 59 minutes, 46
seconds to find my key or you will be destroyed. Good hunting."
     "Who are you?"
     "I am the city. I do not know my name."
     "Where am I?"
     "In the city, of course."
     "But where is this city?"
     "I don't know. When you find the key, we will both know."
     "Uh, I must go and fetch my companion, if I am to help." Mayer
started back into the tunnel.
     "Your friend is not functioning well. Shall I help her.?"
     "Yes. Sure. Anything you want."
     The honorable loan shark had no intention of staying in this bizarre
place for one second longer than necessary. Obviously someone was playing
an improbably elaborate hoax; and he didn't like the smell of it. My, the
depth of that illusion looked real. Breathtaking.
     A projection of some kind was it? He hoped he'd be able to drag the
drunk out of the door before his hosts caught on.
     Moments later, when he got back to the point he'd come in, there was
the woman, sitting up and coughing juicily. No door. The door had
disappeared.
     "What's going on?" His rising fear provoked him to anger. "I've got
to go to work; and the Seaman's Benevolent isn't going to like anyone who
makes me late!"
     "Can it, will ya," said the woman. "My head aches."
     "I see you sobered up fast. So you're in on this, too."
     "In on what?" Something lifted me up and put a hose in my mouth and
squirted something into my lungs. Now I don't hurt any more; and I'm
sober."
     "You were too drunk to know."
     "I was sick more than drunk, just getting drunk so I could die
feeling no pain. I was aware when you picked me up and carried me in here.
I just couldn't make my muscles work."
     The strangeness of the woman's plight suddenly struck her. "What's
going on?" she asked.
     The look of startled realization on her face and his remembrance of
how ill had been the bundle he'd dragged into this place, made Mayer
believe the lady's claim.
     The drunk coughed up some fluid and spat. "That hurt," she said. "But
down inside, I feel better. How did you do it? How did you get that thing
to make me better?"
     "I didn't do anything. Where's the door?"
     "It rolled up."
     "It couldn't have rolled up."
     "It did."
     Mayer's stomach knotted. He felt weak. "C'mon. Can you walk?"
     As he helped the woman up, he smelled the stink he'd been too busy to
notice before. He also saw that his charge was fairly young, 35 at most--a
few years younger than he--and not unattractive. The disheveled brown hair
and the filth and the rumpled clothes had deceived him.
     "What's your name?" he asked.
     "Dierdra Hoffman."
     "A nice German last name. Let's get out of here."
     After determining they were genuinely in a cull-de-sac, Mayer
retraced the corridor quickly, pulling the woman along, eagle eyeing the
walls for any sign of branching, often feeling for what he might not see.
When they came out of the tunnel, he asked, "Are you sure you weren't
moved?"
     "Positive." She looked around.
     He walked back and forth several yards along the endless black wall
in case he had entered, somehow, the wrong opening in his earlier retreat.
When he got back to Dierdra, the one hole the wall had had was gone.
     He turned to Dierdra, who was staring at the vista that had awed him.
"There's no more hole in the wall."
     "Doesn't surprise me," she almost whispered.
     "Don't you find this place a little strange?"
     "Most strange."
     "And frightening?"
     "I was dying and prepared to die. What can make me afraid?"
     "Yeah, I suppose so. Let's get to the bottom of this." He walked down
the great boulevard, Dierdra in tow.
     As the monoliths drew nearer, he seemed to grow smaller, to sink down
into the street between their ranks, though two miles had not yet brought
him even with the first. This was no slide show. This space was immense!
     "Where are we?" he asked again.
     "In the city," came the ubiquitous voice.
     "Who are you?"
     "The city."
     "I'm starting to believe you. But you're no human city."
     "You're beginning to understand. That is good. You have 22 hours, 56
minutes, 17 seconds left. Find the key, please."
     "The key to what?"
     "The key to the city, of course. I've lost my way; and you must help
me find it again. The key will show us the way."
     "Why are you doing this? Why don't you let us go?" continued Mayer.
     "I need the key. You must find it."
     "But why threaten us? We'll help you; but 24 hours is not enough
time."
     "You have less than that now."
     "Why? Why!"
     "Because your televised news programs say that the hero finds what he
needs within a time limit, if he faces death. That seems to work in your
culture."
     "News shows? You mean adventure programs or detective shows. They
aren't real life; they're fantasies. They are understood not to be true."
     "Not by me."
     "I don't think you're thinking straight."
     "I'm not. It's been a long time since I've dealt with people; but
since I don't know what is sensible and what is not, I must do what seems
best and learn from my mistakes. I'm self-healing, you know. I shall learn
from your deaths if you fail. Did I tell you how good it is to have
someone to talk to?"
     "And what shall you learn?"
     "That you are not hero and heroine, just supporting characters; and
that the hero will come by later and help me find my way."
     "Ach, Dierdra, we're in a mess."
     "I hope not," answered the city before the woman could reply. "I like
you two. I want you to live."
     A quick and adaptable man, Mayer whispered to Dierdra; and the city
didn't seem to hear or mind. "We've got to use logic within this thing's
twisted frame of reference. Bolster me when you can."
     "OK," she replied.
     "City, why don't you lengthen the time, so that we might have a
better chance?"
     "There's no correlation between the time the hero is allotted and his
success. I have given the minimum amount customary for you to develop your
strategy and solve the problem."
     "Thanks kindly," said Mayer.
     Dierdra jumped in. "Didn't they have entertainment where you came
from?"
     "Very little, if any. I'm not sure after all this time. Your society
seems to have much more; but it is hard to judge what is real and what is
that which you call fantasy. You are the first I have met in the flesh.
     "I was once very good at adapting to other cultures, I think. I am,
as you say, rusty. Help me."
     "Will you take the word of genuine flesh beings over the incomplete
picture given by the broadcast media?"
     "The electronic precedent is overwhelming. It says individuals are
deceitful. Only newsmen never lie. I will try to trust you in many things;
but I will not change the plot on your promises."
     "But we are newsmen," cut in Mayer. "We will certainly spread the
news of this city to others of our kind and get real help."
     "I'm sorry. I have not seen or heard of you."
     "Didn't your builders tell you that broadcasts are an unreliable
guide to a culture?"
     "Many teachings of my builders are hidden within my confusion. I seem
to remember something like that; but it is too unclear to act upon.
     "Your time is wasting. You have 22 hours, 48 minutes, 53 seconds."
     "Tell us about your key," requested Dierdra. "Is it tangible or
intangible? What might it look like?"
     "I don't know. I can't remember."
     "Where should we start to look?"
     "I don't know."
     "You are immense. How shall we get around?"
     "Oh, that's easy."
     From the featureless sky, now more indigo than violet and perceptibly
lighter, dropped an open two-place module into which Mayer and Dierdra
were able to squeeze.
     "Take us on a quick aerial tour, City," said Mayer with some bravado.
Dierdra seemed positively happy.
     The car swept up with an acceleration that caught Dierdra's cry in
her throat. Pressing acceleration gradually lessened as the craft rose and
leveled many miles above the towering monoliths. The air seemed no
thinner; and not even a breath of breeze stirred Dierdra's stringy hair,
as though some shield encompassed the open cockpit.
     The endless black wall to their rear seemed to grow less distinct in
the distance, as the monoliths below crawled slowly past.
     "City. How long will it take for us to cross you at maximum speed?"
     "Ten hours, 12 minutes."
     "That's way too long. Do all your sections look like this?"
     "Yes."
     "Do you have a control center?"
     "Yes."
     "Take us there, please."
     The car shifted slightly. "ETA one hour, five minutes," said its
omnipresent driver.
     For that period, the human duo discussed with the city and themselves
what the key might be and got to know each other a little better.
     Near the end of the flight Mayer said, "It must be something
intangible. I think City keeps hinting at that. His loneliness, his
confusion, his lack of remembrance of the builders. He's looking for some
critical fact that will open a floodgate of recollection."
     "Interesting theory," replied Dierdra, "but more intuitive than
rational."
     "Yeah, but we've only got time to pick one thing. You have any
objections?"
     "Not at all. I think you're doing a marvelous job."
     "You know, you're awfully casual about this. Why? Surely some of your
will to live must have come back."
     "I'm enjoying myself. Because I know what's going on," said Dierdra.
"I'm still on the sidewalk, dying; and this is the dream of a brain
starving for oxygen. In my most fanciful musings, I never knew the onset
of death could be so pleasant. Hope the afterlife isn't a bummer.
     "Funny isn't it? All my life I couldn't cope; and now that I'm dying,
life is really getting interesting."
     Mayer almost slapped her to try to change her mind. Instead he
settled in, again, to thinking about the key, stuck in a life and death
adventure with a burned-out philosopher convinced she wasn't really there.
She'd been in a think tank before hitting the bottle. Under his breath he
said, "Ach, what a mess."



                                    2

     City knew it had been transported to a place outside of the skip
coordinates. Ninety-nine point nine, nine, nine, nine, nine plus percent
of the universe was unavailable to the Qals, though that left them ample
elbow room.
     Was city still within the universe? No way to tell, but probably.
Nemqal was a genius, not a miracle worker.
     But where? The stars no longer shined; all about was as a mist of
non-materiality, yet a sun rose and set beyond, changing the sky from dark
violet to blue-green brightness. But City could not see the sun, only the
mist changing color.
     When the firmament above was dim, City felt the warmth of starheat on
his underside and knew the sun to be there. But did he rotate in orbit
about a large star; or did a tiny, artificial sun circle him? He could not
tell, having no inertial sensors. His peephole, by which he'd found Earth,
could not be brought to bear upon himself or his system. It simply locked
onto distant massive objects irrespective of relative motions.
     Even by flying cars on long sweeps and watching for Coriolis
movement, he couldn't be sure if he rotated, because he didn't control
many automatic compensation functions within his flyers. His fixbots took
many of them apart to learn their workings; but eventually his interest
died into lethargy.
     He knew when he'd been betrayed, however, when the long wicked plan
had been finally executed. Nemqal had walked into his control center; and
a shadow had passed over his mind. When it was gone, he was lost, in
limbo; and Nemqal had left.
     Ten millennia later City told his story to two squat and fatty beings
riding through his atmosphere. It surely was good to talk to people again.
What sorrow to have to kill them.


     The car flopped about and decelerated sharply, scooting to a landing
through a hole opened momentarily in one of the black monoliths. Before
the building consumed him, Mayer noticed the iridescent boulevards had
begun to show colors other than greens and blues, as the sky shifted
toward the center of the human eyes' spectrum.
     "Is it reasonable," he queried Dierdra, "that your supposedly dying
brain could produce a dream this elaborate? I suggest that every faculty
of a fully awake person is well exercised by this scenario, including the
use of rationality in my argument. What dream is rational?"
     A little sobered, she replied, "You're right. That's something to
think about. You're no dummy, are you?"
     "Why, thanks for the backhanded compliment! Just because I'm a
shylock doesn't mean I don't think about any number of things."
     They had debarked and were walking down a tall, narrow corridor of
bronze. Suddenly walls slid across front and back; and their stomaches
felt the gravity lessen. Their hallway had become an elevator plunging
into the arcane bowels of the gigantic machine that held them captive.
     "It's been rather hot," remarked Dierdra as they accelerated, to get
her mind off her growing nausea.
     "Do you wish it cooler?" responded City.
     "Why, yes."
     "How much?"
     "About 10 degrees Fahrenheit, and maybe 10% less humidity."
     "Why, of course."
     It was already more temperate moments later when the humans got much
heavier for a time; then the walls slid back to reveal a hallway that
resembled burnished aluminum, stretching far in both directions.
     "Which way?" asked Mayer.
     "Ahead." City told him. The humans walked in the direction they were
facing.
     "City is a truly intelligent being," Dierdra suddenly remarked. "Do
you see? If he were just a computer, he never would have become addled. He
might have gone into a loop, or failed in some functions due to hardware
or software breakdown; but to have become confused? No way.
     "Confusion and insanity are the prerogatives of the truly sapient.
Only an imaginative--a creative--being can get really screwy. Neither a
computer nor a cat can violate its instructions. Each does what it must
according to the dictates of its designer--whether man or God--though each
may fail to run properly, due to breakdown.
     "A human can not only override his instinctual template, but also
violate the predisposition of his hardware. What animal ever overcame the
will for life, except to fulfill the even greater mandate to reproduce?
Yet people commit suicide all the time.
     "The sexual urge is obviously hardwired right into our glands and
brains. Yet for various reasons, some have become and remained celibate,
totally and happily suppressing all desire. Unnatural. The sign of true
and open self-reprogrammability that is the essence of intelligence."
     "Were you trying to kill yourself, Dierdra?"
     "Maybe so. I'm not sure. I thought I'd seen it and done it all; and
none of it produced happiness. I never guessed that something like this
might come into my life."
     "What a difference a day makes, huh? Shows why suicide isn't such a
good idea. You never know what relief and enjoyment might be coming your
way.
     "But do you still think this isn't real?"
     "No. I know it is; and now you've got me miserable again, because I
might die."
     She started to sob; and he hugged her; and she buried her face in his
shoulder; and he wasn't feeling entirely altruistic at the moment, but
rather masculinely protective--a nice feeling, but distracting in this
life and death situation. Beneath that muck was a pretty intelligent
woman. No, an intelligent, pretty woman.
     And she was right about one thing in that philosophic outburst she'd
made. He had most successfully reprogrammed himself to forget about love.
That set of self-imposed instructions, born of ambition and painful
shyness, had stood like a wall for 20 years. Now it was melting. Yes.
Melting was the proper word. Funny thing for a wall to do.
     Reluctantly he pushed her away just a little and said, "We've got to
get on with our quest. Time's awasting."
     Dierdra sniffed and said, "You're right."
     They again walked down the burnished corridor, but this time hand in
hand.
     "Twenty-one hours, 32 minutes, 49 seconds," said the city, an
interruption that was totally uncalled for.
     Mayer whispered, "City could be playing a game with us, you know.
Some sort of experiment or just a prank. How do we know he's telling the
truth?"
     "Of course he's truthful, poor thing. He really needs our help."
     "Now who's being intuitive?"
     "As you said, we haven't time for anything else. I wish I looked and
smelled better on our first date."
     "That's what I get for making a pickup."
     They laughed just a little and walked on, into the brain of City.


     City heard and saw and felt through many fixed receptors. It also
deployed crystal eyespheres, the size of grapes, which rode around on
gravitic repulsers. To talk it vibrated whatever surfaces were handy; so
the timbre of its speech varied, though it always made itself clear.
     To see and hear and know no others for so long produced within City a
kind of sensory deprivation. It was not biologically alive, therefore not
so acutely aware of its boredom and isolation. It could snooze long
periods of time or twiddle its thumbs by giving itself hypothetical
problems to solve.
     For many centuries it sent its fixbots on make-work tasks or played
acrobatic games with its flyers; but gradually it sank into a torpor of
daydreams and forgetfulness. It always stayed clean and dusted, however,
because maintenance was an autonomic function.
     It would awake at times, to pursue its obsession of finding a way
home. Of finding someone, somewhere. But much of what it should have
remembered, it did not. Memories hurt. They submerged, to await awakening
at another's touch, if that other should live to touch them.


     The metallic passage ended abruptly at a wall identical to the
ceiling, floor, and sides. A musical voice spoke an unknown tongue in a
pitch somewhat higher than human. Dancing hieroglyphs appeared for a
moment upon the barrier; and a cloying smell made the humans light-headed
and made them forget the voice and the heiroglyphs.
     "Uh, City, we've got a wall in front of us," said Mayer when he had
recovered. "We can't go any farther until you open it."
     "I was waiting for you to tell me," answered City as the impediment
lifted.
     "Why didn't you do it automatically, as you've done everything else
for us?"
     "I'm not supposed to."
     "Uh, City? Is there something we should know? A security procedure,
perhaps? I assume not everybody is allowed into your control center."
     "Nothing that I know of. After all, I don't have to let anyone in
that I don't want to."
     Shortly down the corridor was another wall, this one opalescent. The
humans reached it; and Mayer again asked that it be raised. Yet again
strange letters played upon the barrier; and tuneful language spoke a
message to a race unknown. And all this was lost in a miasma as the two
from Earth closed their eyes and swayed and forgot that they did so. They
awoke, feeling, as it were, instantly a little stiff and sore.
     "What's going on here?" Mayer had to support Dierdra as she sagged
into him. "City. How come my body suddenly aches all over?"
     "I certainly don't know. Later I can give you both thorough medical
checkups; but you really mustn't dawdle right now. Only 19 hours, 44
minutes. 6 seconds left."
     "What? We entered this passage from the elevator only 10 or 15
minutes ago; and it wasn't long before then that we had over 21 hours."
     "You've been a lot longer than that. You stood before the last door 7
minutes, taking a nap, I suppose; though I am not familiar with 'sleeping
on your feet' as I've heard humans refer to it. In front of this one you
rested over an hour.
     "As I understand it, you can go without sleep for more than a day,
when you need to. When I set up my time limit, I didn't plan for this."
     "City, I don't know what you're talking about. I just asked you to
open this wall; and then my body hurt. We haven't been standing here two
minutes."
     "Look at your watch. You entered me at 6:49 Eastern Standard Time. I
first spoke to you at 6:53. What time is it now?"
     "Why, its... It can't be after eleven."
     "It is."
     "But..." Dierdra tugged at Mayer's sleeve, interrupting him. "I do
sort of remember a dream... a dream as of the tinkling of elves. A strange
kind of music, and of something dancing before my eyes. Lights, perhaps."
     "You're sure? I don't remember anything." Mayer shifted his weight. A
crack about elves' need to tinkle flitted across his mind; but he batted
it away with seriousness. Pins and needles had begun to torment one foot.
     "But of course," interjected City. "You received the warnings against
unauthorized entry. But why you decided to sleep as they repeated, I don't
know. This last one goes on indefinitely. I decided to stop it and wake
you up, if I could; but after I flushed the atmosphere, you started
complaining that you ached."
     "Flushed the atmosphere? You mean there was gas of some kind in
here?" Dierdra took her weight off her companion as she sensed the
discomfort of his awakening leg.
     "There are always several gasses in here for you to breathe, though I
do lack an argon generator to perfectly match your planet's air. I'm
building one now."
     "No, no, no," Mayer broke in. "She means strange gasses. You said you
flushed the atmosphere."
     "Of the warning smell, that's all. You don't have to worry. You're
authorized."
     "City. I think that gas was an anesthetic to us."
     "Let me check. I've stored many medical data, though I haven't yet
studied them." Moments later... "Not an anesthetic, I think. A hypnotic,
from my review of your states, moments ago. But not anything used on your
planet.
     "I will turn off future smell-messages."
     "Yes, please do," said Dierdra.
     City said, "I have to give the password to open this door. A
mellifluous phrase sounded; the wall recessed into the floor. The two
people continued.
     "You couldn't open the door without a password?" asked Mayer.
     "Not all functions are under my conscious control. There are certain
security functions built into me."
     "But if you have access to the word, what difference does it make."
     "The code would have been regularly changed if I had been inhabited."
Was a touch of sorrow present in City's inflection?
     "I see. Are you sure you know all the tricks you, yourself, might
pull on us?"
     "It's been a long time. I'll do a thorough search for other things."
     "Good. If we get the ax, your key remains lost."
     The aluminous corridor took a severe turn to the right, almost
doubling back on itself, into a dead end. Suddenly a hole formed in the
roof. "What's this?" Dierdra had just time to cry, as the floor lifted her
and the man into a chamber above, forming a seal to close off all exit.
     "Just a trick to halt any attempt to enter my control center by force
of juggernaut."
     "You could have told us ahead of time."
     "If I had known."
     "Just remembered, huh?"
     "Yes."
     Mayer and Dierdra could feel each other's rising apprehension, yet
neither wanted to touch upon it for fear of letting City know. Whatever
they were into, they were in too far to possibly get out; and the spaces
were getting smaller. They were probably in no more trouble than when they
had just entered City, yet here the danger seemed almost palpable. City
was strange and full of surprises; and they hadn't even gotten to the spot
from which their hunt for the key would start. If there were a key.
     Mayer thought that last thought and put it far away. Then the lights
went out.
     The breath of ventilation, rarely noticed, became noticeably absent.
     It took the duo about three seconds to exchange remarks of surprise,
then to start yelling.
     Objectively moments, subjectively hours, later light and respiration
returned to their cell.
     "Damn it!" screamed Mayer, "what are you doing.?" Dierdra was almost
crying.
     "I'm sorry," City answered. "I became preoccupied. Life support down
here is under my conscious control, as much for security as is my lack of
mastery over doors and such.
     "When I was thinking back to my founding, in search of traps and
locks, I remembered the day of my dedication and all the people I
entertained, took for rides, let explore my passages. I was not yet ready
for habitation, not yet stocked and supplied; my nutrition and atmosphere
farms not yet planted.
     "Then all went away to await my opening; and I was tricked here.
     "It made me sad, so sad that melancholy pervaded my several streams
of consciousness, including the chief one which deals with you. I forgot
you for a while."
     Dierdra complained, "Well please don't do so again!"
     "I won't. It's just that I hadn't thought of it for thousands of
years.
     "Get us on our way, huh?" Mayer said.
     "Of course." City opened a wall; and the couple stepped into a tunnel
that appeared flat black, lit brightly, however, by orange panels in the
ceiling.
     They had not walked long when they came upon a brown skeleton
crumpled upon itself. Clearly humanoid, it was also clearly not human.
Mayer could see that its long bones were flattened, with a depression
running down each broad side, making their cross sections resemble figure
eights. The rib cage was narrow and crosshatched; the elongated skull had
fallen from the neck rings and sat upside down. It must have been attached
by softer tissue, perhaps some sort of anti-shock mounting. Must have been
a real flathead, like Frankenstein.
     "Who is that?" demanded Mayer.
     "Someone who long ago failed to help me find my way."
     Mayer's face grew red. He kicked the skull, which seemed to bounce
off an invisible wall just in front of him. "Then you've done this thing
before; and..."
     He was interrupted when black partitions slammed down fore and aft;
and the sound and lights and smell began, to be shut off by City a split
second later.
     "Oh, crap. Did we loose any time, this time?"
     "No, I terminated the warning just after it started; but I'm afraid
you've triggered another security device. You'll have to give me the
password in about 1-1/2 minutes or you'll be dead."
     "Dammit! Didn't you remember this? Search your memory fast."
     "It's not in there."
     "How do you know?"
     "I pulled all passwords into cache memory so I wouldn't have to go
looking again. There is none for any trap in this section of corridor.
     "Then override. Stop everything until we figure this out."
     "I can't."
     "Why not?"
     "I've no control over this, any more than you do over your liver."
     "Then say all the passwords you've got".
     The melodic intonations began, as time was running out.



                                    3

     Nemqal disappeared after the Qals threatened to punish him. Because
the city was sapient, they charged him with kidnapping.
     They placed a tracer--a neurotropic, non-pathogenic, radioactive
marker--within his brain, so that there was no place he couldn't be found,
dead or alive, within the skip coordinates. The Qal hoped he would,
thereby, lead them to the city.
     The tracer's signal abruptly disappeared. Whatever place Nemqal had
gone was outside the paths of the skipstones, and beyond the range, or
perhaps the physics, of the monitors.
     He'd gone back to his city, for he thought of it as his, the last
refuge of a criminal seeking to escape his due. But if he had thought the
place to be his redoubt, he was much mistaken and as crazy, in his own
way, as the city would become. His welcome was not to his liking.


     With a whoosh, a rust-colored vapor began flooding the chamber from
ducts that had opened in the ceiling. The gas was lighter than air, so
only a few choking whiffs assailed Mayer and Dierdra before they fell,
gasping, to the floor. There they had precious seconds left to gather
oxygen into their systems and watch death descending.
     Perhaps the method of execution was designed to give its victim that
extra incentive to remember the correct sequence of tones and syllables
that would open the walls. Maybe the gas was so poisonous to Qals that the
first touch killed. On the other hand, no consideration might have been
given to the fact that death boiled down from above, displacing
life-giving air into unseen vents. Poisoning certainly made fewer cleanup
problems than, say, shooting.
     Whatever the motive behind the method, it gave City long enough to
exhaust all passwords and to begin telling the two how nice had been their
visit and how he was looking forward to entertaining more humans very
soon.
     Suddenly the English stopped, a final sing-song intonation came
forth; and the barriers shot up, the gas stopped pouring out, and a wind
blew the ruddy billows away.
     "My apologies, I just found the password. Nemqal, my creator, used
it. I remember hearing it from him long, long ago. It came out of personal
memory, not program memory; therefore it was not so easily obtainable."
     Mayer's voice rasped sour displeasure as he looked at the skull.
After he'd kicked it, it had landed again on its top. "I guess we know
what happened to this other guy."
     "No, not at all." answered City. "He wasn't poisoned. I just pushed
him out when his body started to fail."
     "Out of where?"
     "The control center." City opened a door much farther down the
corridor, from which a golden light flowed.
     "C'mon, let's go." Mayer was already on his feet, but Dierdra was
sitting dazedly and coughing quietly but deeply.
     "I'm too tired to go on. That gas..." Her voice faded into a coughing
spasm more severe than the previous.
     The man forgot his ire in concern for his companion. "What's wrong
with her, City?"
     "She needs another pneumonia treatment; and she was exhausted when
you brought her in. I couldn't do anything about that, other than to give
her a stimulant. Since then, she's been running on adrenalin."
     "You seem to know an awful lot about cures, when you aren't busy
poisoning us."
     "That's not fair. I honestly didn't remember those traps, therefore I
couldn't pre-analyze their effect on you.
     "But as for her, while she was outside my door, I studied her
symptoms and compared them to my undigested database of human conditions.
I synthesized improved drugs based on a guess that her malady was
bacterial. If it had been viral, Earth's medical knowledge would have been
much less help. None-the-less her lungs still have fluid in them, she
needs more antibiotic, and she's dead tired and poorly fed. The gas was
traumatic."
     "You're a regular Albert Schweitzer, aren't you?" Mayer retorted; but
he was impressed.
     "Albert Schweitzer?"
     "He was a famous healer and philanthropist."
     "Healer?" City paused. "Bring Dierdra to the control room. Off there
is a rest chamber. I can finish curing her there.
     Mayer carried the smelly disheveled woman into the golden room, which
was small and plushed out with an alien weave of fabric on every
furnishing and surface not bared for function. The large chamber was
six-sided, containing a flat screen about two feet square on each wall
above a vertical board of hundreds of octagonal keys. For each screen,
there was a tall, narrow chair. The room was accented in strong metallic
blues and gray green pastels--not something Mayer was used to, but not
unpleasant.
     A side door dropped; and out came a mechanical spider. Mayer let out
a cry; but City said, "Don't be alarmed. It's just a fixbot, the kind that
first helped her when you pulled her in. Please hand her to it."
     In spite of misgivings, Mayer put Dierdra onto the machine's
outstretched arms. He saw that the robot held her gently and followed its
quiet scrabbling into the rest chamber. In there was a narrow brown bed,
into which she was put. A tube came out of the wall toward her mouth; and
he suddenly turned away and left.
     "You'll take good care of her," he said to City.
     "Yes."
     One of city's fixbots was already putting standard typewriter letters
and symbols onto one of the six vertical panels in the control room. Over
the next several hours Mayer familiarized himself with a genuinely
intelligent, self-accessing database that made the little three-terminal
supermicro at his office seem like nothing at all.
     Surprisingly, he caught on pretty well, though after several hours he
still couldn't determine the key. He was, however, getting an idea.
     He asked about the previous visitor, the skeleton in the hallway.
City did not reply.
     "You have twelve hours left," came a message. How time flies when
life is ticking away.
     "If you do not wish to tell me about the skeleton, what of Nemqal?
Tell me more about him."
     City answered, "The skeleton is Nemqal."
     "So. Now we're getting somewhere. You know things you don't want to
tell, don't you."
     "I'm afraid this is all very painful."
     "If you want out of this hole you're in, you'd better fess up. You're
under the same time limit as I."
     "You see, Nemqal came back to hide from the qalmasters. They would
not negotiate."
     "How did he get back and forth? Some sort of vehicle?"
     "No."
     Could Mayer really sense agitation in his host? "You know more about
the key than you're telling, don't you?"
     "I'll cut off your air and light!" Pay dirt.
     "Let's just talk about Nemqal for a while."
     "Yes."
     "If he didn't use some sort of machine to travel, how did he get
around?"
     "He used his head."
     "He used his head. You mean he found this place with his mind; and
used only his mental ability to travel here?"
     "Not exactly. There are skipstones all throughout me. He left qaldom
from a skipstone that was within the skip coordinates and came here."
     "How does a skipstone work?"
     "I'll show you one."
     On the screen above Mayer's keyboard--the one he hadn't used much
because he found it easier to talk than to punch those awkward vertical
buttons--an image appeared of a plain black square on an empty, sparkling,
green and blue street. Mayer wondered if the sun had gone down, for it was
obviously night, again, or if the picture were recorded. It didn't matter.
On the side of the black square facing Mayer, a thin turquoise post ended
in a black globe.
     "A traveler stands on the square, stares into the ball on top of the
pole; and when a local node of the computer has identified him, he states
his destination. An arch appears behind him; and he walks through it."
     Indeed, part of the scene beyond was replaced by the image of a
second black square, ID post facing away, in a golden meadow beneath a
rainbow-striped sky. Gray, almost two-dimensional tripeds dipped their
rectangular heads and came up with cotton-candy chaws of gold in their
tandem mouths. Behind was a solitary barn, red and wooden, that might have
come from any small farm in America. That anomalously familiar object made
the image the more pointedly alien.
     Mayer shivered.
     Then the view shifted to the skipstone in the meadow, looking through
an arch into City. The screen went blank.
     "Thank you," said Mayer. "The destinations, then, are communicated to
a computer, which controls the travel."
     "Yes."
     "But Nemqal found a place outside what was known to the computer."
     "Yes."
     "How?"
     "I told you. He used his head."
     "I don't understand."
     "He found a way to make the computer send him where it couldn't."
     "That's a self-contradictory statement."
     "Don't push me."
     "All right. May I paraphrase what you said for my own understanding?"
     Silence.
     "OK. Nemqal discovered a way to instruct the computer to do something
no one else had thought of before. It was not impossible, not beyond the
machine's capabilities. Perhaps he used a new kind of math to visualize
new coordinates within the skipstone's possibilities. Or maybe it wasn't
math. Maybe it was intuition. What do you think?"
     City was still silent.
     "I am trying to help, you know. Memories are often painful; but we
sometimes have to face them to help ourselves."
     "I know. I don't have to like it."
     "No, you don't. But how did he move you with him?"
     "The skipstones, themselves, don't have any power. They are merely
contact points, like your telephone booths. You get in touch with the
travel net through them. The computer then sets up the travel fields and
makes the transfer."
     "And Nemqal told the computer something it didn't know and had it
send you and him here."
     "Yes."
     "And you lost touch with everything."
     Silence. Then reluctantly, "Yes."
     "Then how did he get back from you to qaldom?"
     "The travel computer is distributed throughout qaldom. It is a single
huge computer formed of a network of smaller computers. Whatever equipment
is online becomes part of the whole. It is one, and it is many."
     "Like God, perhaps?"
     "Some think that computer nets help them to understand what God may
be. Not that he is a computer; but that he is in many places and has many
streams of consciousness."
     Good, thought Mayer. I've got him talking. "Then part of the
skipstone computer net is within you."
     "Yes, and it is fully capable, as any separated segment would be,
except much slower to construct a travel path. But it is out of contact
with the rest of the computer and doesn't know what its coordinates are."
     "Can't you develop a new set of coordinates or use the old ones and
experiment?"
     "It doesn't work that way. It's very complex to explain. The
skipstones are called such because they can't access every point in the
universe, just bits of territory widely scattered over millions of
galaxies. The Qals occupy portions of less than ten thousand galaxies.
     "The mathematical framework behind skipstones was set up after
billions of observations over one hundred twenty generations. I can make
no observations of the sky because of the cloud which surrounds me. If I
could, it would take me millions of years. To make a blind jump? I
couldn't stand the cold of interstellar space long enough to make
another."
     "I'll accept that. Then when Nemqal moved you, he issued instructions
to the travel net that the travel computer doesn't remember, neither the
part here nor there. Did he create the cloud surrounding you, do you
think?"
     "I'd say so."
     "Is the travel computer a part of your mind?"
     "No. But I communicate with it. It has no mind as I do. There is
nothing unusual stored within it. I'm sure it was instructed to forget
what he said.
     "So everything's been wiped clean."
     "That seems reasonable."
     "I remember from our talk in the car flying here that Nemqal put you
under some kind of hypnosis, maybe, when he transferred you and him out of
qaldom. Therefore, you have difficulty recalling what he did."
     "Yes. Exactly. Then he transferred out again before I came to my
senses."
     "You seem to be under the illusion that you observed what was done
and can't recall it." Mayer didn't say that. He thought it. If Nemqal was
good enough to violate the skip parameters and to hide what he did from
the qalmasters, then he was probably smart enough to keep City from
knowing what went on. There is no key. There is no way to get back, unless
you recreate it, my crazy friend. And you know it, down deep inside.
That's why Nemqal lies dead on the floor. You kept him here and tried to
get the information until the day he died; and he never gave it. And
that's why Dierdra and I may join him.
     Mayer did say this: "How did you prevent Nemqal from leaving after he
came back to you for refuge?"
     "I made all controls in this room inoperable, because I suspected
he'd betrayed me. He couldn't hypnotize me with just a password. My
security wouldn't allow that. I also shut down the skipstones.
     I soon got the truth out of him. He was frightened of me, and
boastful when he knew what I suspected. But he never told me how we got
here, no matter what I did."
     Mayer shuddered at the thought of being trapped within a vindictive
city. He shuddered for himself and Dierdra.
     "I'm sure," City continued, "that the qalmasters continue to search
for me. Alas, Nemqal was such a great genius."
     No, thought Mayer. Not that great. The Qals have a tiny piece of
space here and there; but it's probably enough for them to expand for the
next billion years. They tried, but not too hard, to find you and the new
coordinates Memqal may have found. They had other priorities.
     Mayer said. "I have to think for a while."
     Some time later he asked, "How much time is left, City?"
     "Ten hours, 14 minutes, 46 seconds."
     "Hello."
     Mayer turned around to see a lovely shoeless brunette in a green silk
dress that broke at the knees. Her hair was neat, her nails manicured and
polished.
     "Their facilities here are marvelous," Dierdra spoke. City was making
clothes as I healed. Right in fashion. He's observed our world very well,
in some ways."
     She lifted one knee, pulling her dress back to expose half her thigh.
"See my stockings?" she offered, as though any man could have failed to
look, at least for an instant. "They have wonderful soft, filmy cloth here
that they sew without any visible seams. They don't fit perfectly; and
they're a little too yellow to be perfectly tan..."
     "Dierdra." Mayer interrupted. She put down her leg. He continued
brusquely, "You look very nice; and you've got good balance; but why don't
you go back in and get on some slacks and sneakers or something, so that I
can think about how to keep us alive?"
     "Oh," she said, as though realizing something for the first time.
"I'm sorry. It's just that I thought I could think better if I spent a
little time to look good. I'll change right away."
     She started to leave; and he turned quickly, so that he wouldn't see
her dress whirl. As he concentrated on the screen, he caught a whiff of
perfume. "Ach, what a mess."
     She came back a half hour later, devoid of scent and wearing as
shapeless and sexless an outfit as she could find--bulky, Chinese style
slacks and a long, large shirt that draped her hips. Even her feet were
covered with what looked to be canvas mocs. Wrong choice; but nothing else
would have been much better.
     "Thank you," said Mayer.
     She wanted to tell him she liked him, too, but kept silent.
     Mayer and City filled her in. Dierdra soon caught on. For the next
few hours she played Mayer's game, determining that, indeed, there was no
key to City's freedom, while keeping that from City.
     But time ran out.



                                    4

     "You have 0 hours, 0 minutes, 0 seconds left. You must now give me
the key. I like you two and do not want to kill you. Please give it to
me."
     Mayer stood and wearily faced the showdown. He realized how tired he
was. "All right. I'll show you the key. Take us back the way we came."
     "All the way out my door into your street?" City asked, mockingly.
     Well there went plan one. It had been worth the try, especially since
he wouldn't loose face. "No, of course not," Mayer said. "Take us a bit
back along the corridor."
     "Fine."
     The control room door opened; and the humans walked to the skeleton.
     Mayer spoke gently. "There's the key." He pointed to the head,
nearby. "There's the only key that ever was.
     "You never knew how Nemqal traveled outside the coordinates. You
weren't under a command of forgetfulness, you were put to sleep. There is
no memory buried deep somewhere. There's no password that can free you.
You must find a way yourself, or not find a way."
     There was no sound; but Mayer and Dierdra felt their host sob. Did
City radiate emotion when strongly upset? Mayer had gotten through; but
would it save them?
     The cry, that no one heard, then changed. If city had laughed aloud
it would have been a high-pitched, maniacal laugh; and the couple felt it
slice through them. "You have not found the key. You loose, you loose."
     Mayer desperately shouted, "But I have, I have. Here!" He pointed
again to the skull, lying upside down. "Here!"
     "No!" said City, his voice almost mechanical, lacking the aliveness
it formerly had.
     He's going to break, thought Dierdra.
     "Pick up the head, Mayer," the captor commanded.
     Mayer walked over to the thing. He picked it up. Its top had been cut
off.
     The silent laughter cut through them again. "The key's not there.
It's in here."
     A wall came down between the two and the control room, and began
moving, forcing them along the corridor. Mayer's arm went around Dierdra's
waist, as they kept ahead of it.
     Soon a tunnel opened to the left of the corridor; and a wall closed
up before them, forcing them to turn.
     "We've been assisting you, City," shouted Dierdra, as though he could
not hear her normal voice. "Don't treat us like this."
     But walls and turns kept forcing them on, until Mayer's arm was
around her shoulder and she was helping him walk. He'd had none of her
rest; nor had he thought to ask for food, though he remembered drinking
sometimes, and eliminating, as though he'd wandered to a bathroom without
thinking.
     At last they came to a clean room. Passing through a pulsating
electrical field at its entry, they felt their hair stand and saw
cloudlets of dirt rise from themselves and their clothes, to be sucked
into a vent. Even the sweat of fatigue and tension that had been trickling
down Mayer's face was gone. Their nostrils and teeth felt cleaner.
     In the room pink light surrealistically bathed chrome-like surfaces
and gray(?)--it was hard to tell--walls, floor, and ceiling. Fixbots
attended a large hollow spherical grid of transparent wire. And within the
grid, floating, as it were, in space, a brain, or the shriveled, misshapen
remains of one.
     "There's the key," said City. Whatever City had gotten from it, he
hadn't gotten his freedom.
     Mayer stared blankly, drunk with the toxins of fatigue.
     "So you've made your point," answered Dierdra. She shuddered.
     "We can still help you; but Mayer has to have some rest." Now she was
feeling protective, though the feminine mood is not as distracting as the
man's.
     "Still help me? But the time limit's up. Way up."
     "Don't you understand that that time limit wasn't realistic? You have
misread human behavior. We will continue to help you; but you must take
better care of us."
     "I admit my formula seems wrong. You're acting like the hero, and
Mayer, the heroine, right now."
     "That's because this is real life; and you have been studying
fiction."
     "But I don't see how I could have gotten mixed up. Someone with my
capabilities..."
     "But everyone gets mixed up sometimes. That's a part of life. And
you've had such a hard and lonely time."
     Silence. Then... "OK. There's a rest chamber near."
     A stick-figure fixbot detached itself from the contingent working
around the globe and lifted Mayer from Dierdra's sagging body, carrying
him down the corridor to a room with several beds. Dierdra sat on one; and
the bot sat Mayer on another. A second servant, this one a butlerbot in
the gaunt, ghastly image of a Qal, handed Mayer a drink, which he quaffed.
     Mayer lay down, instantly asleep; and Dierdra sat there thinking.
     What should she say? She felt she had to keep City talking.
     But City spoke first. "I'm sorry for what I just did. I was so hurt
at remembering things I had shut off thousands of years ago."
     "I can understand. At least a little."
     "I know you can. So can Mayer, although he's not as sympathetic."
     "Maybe not. But he does want to help, not just to save his life. Not
any more. We've both become caught up with your problem. We care about
you."
     "I'm sorry for kidnapping you. I was so desperate. I want to help
people, not harm them. Whenever I've been cruel, or even distant, I've
really felt bad."
     "That's interesting. It makes me want to think about something; but I
can't think what it is. I'm very tired."
     "There's nothing like natural sleep."
     "Yeah. But first I want to ask you something." Why did she want to
know? Did it bother her that much? Why did she risk destabilizing City?
     "Don't get upset, but is that brain still working? Nemqal's brain?"
     "No. It registered waves for hours after I disembodied it. It was
already so very old when I took it out. Nemqal was more than two thousand
years of age when he began to die. He was worn down."
     Dierdra felt much relieved. "Why did you do it? Did you think to
capture his thoughts?"
     "Yes. Yes I did."
     "And did you?" Dierdra felt a sorrowful laugh break around her.
     "No. Brain waves are not thoughts. Who can read thoughts? You cannot
see a fish from the ripples he makes."
     "You express yourself so well. If you have not telepathy, perhaps you
have empathy."
     "I have tried to understand humans and talk so they could understand
me. I guess I don't always do so well."
     "I think you do fine; and you're getting better."
     They talked on for a while, Dierdra trying to draw forth a bit of
inspiration that hung on the edge of her consciousness; but she was too
tired.
     At last she went to sleep.
     She awoke to find Mayer still unconscious. He got up thereafter; and
they ate solid food--strange, but satisfying.
     "Why don't you get rid of that awful, shriveled brain?" said Dierdra.
     "I already did", replied City.
     Dierdra filled Mayer in, not in whispers or veiled messages this
time, but openly.


     Nemqal was in his prime, less than 500 years old, when he returned to
his city, never to leave. He was bitter. After City repeatedly confronted
him with his suspicions, Nemqal tried to enlist City as a co-conspirator.
He had an idea to modify some of City's mechanisms for use as war
machines, to strike from nowhere, again and again, those rational
governors whom he had come to hate.
     City was horrified; and cut him off from all control with security
methods designed to thwart even a master builder. Nemqal had been the
best; and before he'd become so evil, he had made an edifice which could
not be breached by any individual or small army--only by treachery. And
City was wise to that, now.
     City first tried to reason with Nemqal, then attempted therapy, to no
avail. City committed him to a ward for the mentally ill; but there were
no spiritual healers and no way to fetch them from qaldom. Later City
attempted more drastic things, but felt so terrible doing them, he
eventually let Nemqal wander the rest of his life along a billion empty
corridors and streets. Finally City reactivated the skipstones; but Nemqal
never left, nor divulged how he had found his bit of limbo outside the
coordinates.
     For their part, the Qals, busy with other things, convinced
themselves that both the city and its archetractor were destroyed. After
all, certain forms of death could disrupt a tracer signal. They never gave
more than a cursory look for the place described by a madman during an
extortion effort. There were, after all, a few skip coordinates that lay
within stars or gravity wells. It was dangerous and futile to search
there. Among scholars, still, there is controversy.
     It is not impossible to know where City lies. Just over ten thousand
lightyears away is a tiny, artificial star, more brilliant for its size
than anything else in the heavens, the only one in the Milky Way, a star
bought on the black market by Nemqal and placed there to give City light
and heat. It orbits an artifact as massive as Earth, which is surrounded
by a white particle cloud many times the girth of Jupiter.
     Its spectrum will be reaching the most sensitive optical and radio
telescopes any time now. It will throw into panic a generation of
cosmologists who are wedded to the idea that every light in the heavens is
of natural origin.


     "I've decided to let you go," said City. "It was wrong of me to bring
you here."
     Mayer was downcast.
     Dierdra was crying. "You're not only lost in the universe. You don't
even know your name. We'll be back soon. We won't leave you lonely again.
And when we're too old, we'll make sure others come."
     "That would be very kind."
     "I've been trying to think," she said, "of something for such a long
time. It's flitted in and out of my mind; and now it's here again.
     "Why don't you give yourself a name? In spite of your mental
difficulties, you seem to be an expert at health. You brought me from the
brink of death to normalcy in less than a day. You created foods which
restored us after exhaustion. Why not call yourself the City of Healing?
At least then you'll have a name."
     City went silent. Life support continued in the rest chamber where
they'd been since they left the clean room. For 95 minutes of growing
apprehension, the two wondered where City had gone.
     "Would you marry me?" asked Mayer, when the tension got unbearable.
"I mean if we ever get out of this?"
     "Of course!" answered Dierdra. And they kissed.
     Suddenly City answered. "That was my name. City of Healing. As near
an English equivalent as any. It is the last of the memories I had closed
off. Think how it has been to be such a place and have no one to make well
for 10,000 years!
     "Thank you. You have completed my own healing. I shall be much sadder
for the next few millennia until I forget again."
     "But you have companions, now." An idea had struck Mayer. "It's
different."
     "Not so much. I have many streams of consciousness and many auxiliary
minds. You haven't really kept me busy."
     "But there are plenty of sick people on Earth. We could bring them in
for you. We'll keep the authorities out of it. They'd only muck things up.
     "You've shown you can adapt to humans. Can you make more entrances in
places we might show you?"
     "Why, yes. I'm sure I could work something out."


     The city that lost its way has found it, in a galaxy far distant from
its creators, among people who are strange, yet similar. And its leading
citizens are a former lonely loan shark for the Seaman's Benevolent
Committee and Waterway Neighborhood Association and an ex-think-tank
philosopher who tried to drown her life in booze. They've come to the
right place, as have others. Nearly anyone who will be healed, can be.
     Throughout the world, the bums, nuts, drunks, potheads, fops, and
fools are disappearing from cities by the dozens, by the hundreds. The
hospitals' terminal wards are emptying out. The street people cannot be
found. The poor slobs who never had a chance and the poorer slobs who had
one and blew it are all going away, along with some of the best physical
and spiritual healers.
     The authorities are alarmed.
     They needn't be, if only they knew. If only someone would tell them.
But it's better this way, for the fit do not need the City of Healing; and
they would be no happier there.
     The has-beens, the sick, and the crippled not been harmed. They've
found a warm and kinder place.