* * * * *
Glenn Tropile's head spun dizzily and all the spectacles merged and
danced in his mind. They were incredible. All of them.
Fusion pile, machine shop, vehicular garage, aircraft hangar. There was
a storeroom under the seats of a football stadium, and Tropile's head
spun on his shoulders again as he tried to count the cases of coffee
and canned soups and whiskey and beans. There was another storeroom,
only this one was called an armory. It was filled with ... guns. Guns
that could be loaded with cartridges, of which they had very many; guns
which, when you loaded them and pulled the trigger, would fire.
Tropile said, remembering: "I saw a gun once that still had its firing
pin. But it was rusted solid."
"These work, Tropile," said Haendl. "You can kill a man with them. Some
of us have."
"_Kill_--"
"Get that sheep look out of your eyes, Tropile! What's the difference
how you execute a criminal? And what's a criminal but someone who
represents a danger to your world? We prefer a gun instead of the
Donation of the Spinal Tap, because it's quicker, because it's less
messy--and because we don't like to drink spinal fluid, no matter what
imaginary therapeutic or symbolic value it has. You'll learn."
But he didn't add "come on." They had arrived where they were going.
It was a small room in the building that housed the armory and it held,
among other things, a rack of guns.
"Sit down," said Haendl, taking one of the guns out of the rack
thoughtfully and handling it as the doomed Boyne had caressed his
watch-case. It was the latest pre-Pyramid-model rifle, anti-personnel,
short-range. It would not scatter a cluster of shots in a coffee can at
more than two and a half miles.
"All right," said Haendl, stroking the stock. "You've seen the works,
Tropile. You've lived thirty years with sheep. You've seen what they
have and what we have. I don't have to ask you to make a choice. I know
what you choose. The only thing left is to tell you what _we_ want from
_you_."
A faint pulsing began inside Glenn Tropile. "I expected we'd be getting
to that."
"Why not? We're not sheep. We don't act that way. Quid pro quo.
Remember that--it saves time. You've seen the quid. Now we come to the
quo." He leaned forward. "Tropile, what do you know about the Pyramids?"
"Nothing."
Haendl nodded. "Right. They're all around us and our lives are beggared
because of them. And we don't even know why. We don't have the
least idea of what they are. Did you know that one of the sheep was
Translated in Wheeling when you left?"
"Translated?"
Tropile listened with his mouth open while Haendl told him about what
had happened to Citizen Boyne.
"So he didn't make the Donation after all," Tropile said.
"Might have been better if he had," said Haendl. "Still, it gave you
a chance to get away. We had heard--never mind how just yet--that
Wheeling'd caught itself a Wolf, so we came looking for you. But you
were already gone."
* * * * *