No business houses, no theaters, no nothing. All the buildings are empty.
Just empty buildings. A city of empty buildings." He puffed out his breath.
"Like a city that was built and waiting for someone. Waiting for someone who never came.”
Something akin to terror crossed Gary's mind. A queer, haunted feeling… a pity for those magnificent white buildings standing all untenanted.
"A city built for billions of people," said Herb. "And no one in it. Just a handful of Engineers. Probably not more than a hundred thousand altogether.”
Kingsley was clenching and opening his fists again, rumbling in his throat.
"It does seem queer," he said, "that they never found the answer. With all their knowledge, all their scientific apparatus.”
Gary looked at Caroline and smiled. A wisp of a girl. But one who could bend space and time until it formed a sphere… or, rather, a hypersphere.
A girl who could mold space as she wanted it, who could play tricks with it, make it do what she wanted it to do. She could set up a tiny replica of the universe, a little private universe that belonged to her and no one else. No one before, he was certain, ever had dared to think of doing that.
He looked at her again, a swift, sure look that saw the square-cut chin, the high forehead, the braided raven strands about her head. Was Caroline Martin greater than the Engineers? Could she master a problem that they couldn't even touch? Was she, all unheralded, the master mind of the entire universe? Did the hope of the universe lie within her mind?