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_!"
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Dead Giveaway, by Gordon Randall Garrett