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 a.s.sociation 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 b.u.ms, 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.