"Does it? The man has almost reached the U.N. building. It will take him perhaps half an hour, for the rubble is piled high there. Underground he could reach it in a few moments, but apparently he is unfamiliar with the passages." "He has only recently arrived at the Citadel." "Somehow, they have learned something. It is why we cannot kill the man until we are sure. Have them alerted at Central Intelligence, but let him enter. Watch him. If he blunders about as if he has arrived there by accident, kill him. If he knows something, take him alive." "Someday we must learn the secret of Central Intelligence, if we are to survive. We must learn how to duplicate it or face the possibility of perishing in a single accident." "Men built it once. Men could do it again." "Defective! Silence. Man can do nothing we cannot do." Then they were quiet, watching the tiny, darting pip on the three-dimensional map as it struggled through the uncleared rubble southwest of the U.N. building. * * * * * Even in ruin, the city held more wonders for Johnny Hope than he had ever thought possible. In many ways, it was like a scar on the face of the earth, pitted with bomb craters, strewn with the debris of toppled towers, its streets choked with fallen, crumbling masonry and blocked by the skeletons of buildings which once had stood, bare and rusted now but not always so, as monuments to the greatness of man. Yet it was a scar which could be healed, a broken, dying city which could be made great again, with men and women roving its streets, repairing the structures, making the living city function once more. That was Amos Westler's dream. It was the dream of all mankind, Johnny thought philosophically, although they did not realize it as they roved the earth in hunter-bands of Shining Ones or tilled its soil in small communities fearful of the Plague. Now, directly ahead of him, he could see the monolithic slab of the U.N. building. Like one structure in five, it stood incredibly intact, a remembrance of the past and a promise of the future. We can build again, Johnny thought, without the Robots and the Plague. They could build again or they would die. Natural world or artificial world--men or Robots--they could not survive jointly.