"They've been at General Maith," Travis said shortly. After a moment,
he added: "General Maith supports General Gonzales completely; that's
for publication. I'm authorized to say so. What else was there to do?
They'd burned their villages and all their food stores. They had to be
placed somewhere. And why in the name of reason should they sit around
in the shade eating Government native-type rations while Paul Sanders
has fifty to a hundred thousand sols' worth of crystals dying on him?"
"Yes; that's another thing they'll scream about. Paul's making a profit
out of it."
"Of course he's making a profit," Gonzales said. "Why else is he running
a plantation? If planters didn't make profits, who'd grow biocrystals?"
"The Colonial Government. The same way they built those storm-shelters.
But that would be in the public interest, and if the Kwanns weren't
public-spirited enough to do the work, they'd be made to--at about half
what planters like Sanders are paying them now. But don't you realize
that profit is sordid and dishonest and selfish? Not at all like drawing
a salary-cum-expense-account from the Government."
"You're right, it isn't," Gonzales agreed. "People like Paul Sanders
have ability. If they don't, they don't stay in business. You have
ability and people who don't never forgive you for it. Your very
existence is a constant reproach to them."
"That's right. And they can't admit your ability without admitting their
own inferiority, so it isn't ability at all. It's just dirty underhanded
trickery and selfish ruthlessness." He thought for a moment. "How did
Government House find out about these Kwanns here?"
"The Welfare Commission had people out while I was still setting up
headquarters," Gonzales said. "That was about oh-seven-hundred."
"This isn't for publication?" Travis asked. "Well, they know, but they
can't prove, that our given reason for moving in here in force is false.
Of course, we can't change our story now; that's why the
situation-progress map that was prepared for publication is incorrect as
to the earlier phases. They do not know that it was you who gave us our
first warning; they ascribe that to Sanders. And they are claiming that
there never was any swarming; according to them, Sanders' natives are
striking for better pay and conditions, and Sanders got General Maith to
use troops to break the strike. I wish we could give you credit for
putting us onto this, but it's too late now."
He nodded. The story was that a battalion of infantry had been sent in
to rescue a small detail under attack by natives, and that more troops
had been sent in to re-enforce them, until the whole of Gonzales'
brigade had been committed.
"That wasted an hour, at the start," Gonzales said. "We lost two native
villages burned, and about two dozen casualties, because we couldn't get
our full strength in soon enough."
"You'd have lost more than that if Maith had told the governor general
the truth and requested orders to act. There'd be a hundred villages and
a dozen plantations and trading posts burning, now, and Lord knows how
many dead, and the governor general would still be arguing about whether
he was justified in ordering troop-action." He mentioned several other
occasions when something like that had happened. "You can't tell that
kind of people the truth. They won't believe it. It doesn't agree with
their preconceptions."
Foxx Travis nodded. "I take it we are still talking for nonpublication?"
When Miles nodded, he continued: "This whole situation is baffling,
Miles. It seems that the government here knew all about the weather
conditions they could expect at periastron, and had made plans for them.
Some of them excellent plans, too, but all based on the presumption that
the natives would co-operate or at least not obstruct. You see what the
situation actually is. It should be obvious to everybody that the
behavior of these natives is nullifying everything the civil government
is trying to do to ensure the survival of the Terran colonists, the
production of Terran-type food without which we would all starve, the
biocrystal plantations without which the Colony would perish, and even
the natives themselves. Yet the Civil Government will not act to stop
these native frenzies and swarmings which endanger everything and
everybody here, and when the Army attempts to act, we must use every
sort of shabby subterfuge and deceit or the Civil Government will
prevent us. What ails these people?"
"You have the whole history of the Colony against you, Foxx," he said.
"You know, there never was any Chartered Kwannon Company set up to
exploit the resources of the planet. At first, nobody realized that there
were any resources worth exploiting. This planet was just a scientific
curiosity; it was and is still the only planet of a binary system with a
native population of sapient beings. The first people who came here were
scientists, mostly sociographers and para-anthropologists. And most of
them came from the University of Adelaide."
Travis nodded. Adelaide had a Federation-wide reputation for left-wing
neo-Marxist "liberalism."
"Well, that established the political and social orientation of the
Colonial Government, right at the start, when study of the natives was
the only business of the Colony. You know how these ideological cliques
form in a government--or any other organization. Subordinates are always
chosen for their agreement with the views of their superiors, and the
extremists always get to the top and shove the moderates under or out.
Well, the Native Affairs Administration became the tail that wagged the
Government dog, and the Native Welfare Commission is the big muscle in
the tail."
His parents hadn't been of the left-wing Adelaide clique. His mother
had been a biochemist; his father a roving news correspondent who had
drifted into trading with the natives and made a fortune in keffa-gum
before the chemists on Terra had found out how to synthesize hopkinsine.
"When the biocrystals were discovered and the plantations started, the
Government attitude was set. Biocrystal culture is just sordid money
grubbing. The real business of the Colony is to promote the betterment
of the natives, as defined in University of Adelaide terms. That's to
say, convert them into ersatz Terrans. You know why General Maith
ordered these shoonoon rounded up?"
Travis made a face. "Governor general Kovac insisted on it; General
Maith thought that a few minor concessions would help him on his main
objective, which was keeping a swarming from starting out here."
"Yes. The Commissioner of Native Welfare wanted that done, mainly at the
urging of the Director of Economic, Educational and Technical
Assistance. The EETA crowd don't like shoonoon. They have been trying,
ever since their agency was set up, to undermine and destroy their
influence with the natives. This looked like a good chance to get rid of
some of them."
Travis nodded. "Yes. And as soon as the disturbances in Bluelake
started, the Constabulary started rounding them up there, too, and at
the evacuee cantonments. They got about fifty of them, mostly from the
cantonments east of the city--the natives brought in from the flooded
tidewater area. They just dumped the lot of them onto us. We have them
penned up in a lorry-hangar on the military reservation now." He turned
to Gonzales. "How many do you think you'll gather up out here, general?"
he asked.
"I'd say about a hundred and fifty, when we have them all."
Travis groaned. "We can't keep all of them in that hangar, and we don't
have anywhere else--"
Sometimes a new idea sneaked up on Miles, rubbing against him and
purring like a cat. Sometimes one hit him like a sledgehammer. This one
just seemed to grow inside him.
"Foxx, you know I have the top three floors of the Suzikami Building;
about five hundred hours ago, I leased the fourth and fifth floors,
directly below. I haven't done anything with them, yet; they're just as
they were when Trans-Space Imports moved out. There are ample water,
light, power, air-conditioning and toilet facilities, and they can be
sealed off completely from the rest of the building. If General Maith's
agreeable, I'll take his shoonoon off his hands."
"What in blazes will you do with them?"
"Try a little experiment in psychological warfare. At minimum, we may
get a little better insight into why these natives think the Last Hot
Time is coming. At best, we may be able to stop the whole thing and get
them quieted down again."
"Even the minimum's worth trying for," Travis said. "What do you have in
mind, Miles? I mean, what procedure?"
"Well, I'm not quite sure, yet." That was a lie; he was very sure. He
didn't think it was quite time to be specific, though. "I'll have to
size up my material a little, before I decide on what to do with it.
Whatever happens, it won't hurt the shoonoon, and it won't make any more
trouble than arresting them has made already. I'm sure we can learn
something from them, at least."
Travis nodded. "General Maith is very much impressed with your grasp of
native psychology," he said. "What happened out here this morning was
exactly as you predicted. Whatever my recommendation's worth, you have
it. Can you trust your native driver to take your car back to Bluelake
alone?"
"Yes, of course."
"Then suppose you ride in with me in my car. We'll talk about it on the
way in, and go see General Maith at once."
Bluelake was peaceful as they flew in over it, but it was an uneasy
peace. They began running into military contragravity twenty miles
beyond the open farmlands--they were the chlorophyll green of Terran
vegetation--and the natives at work in the fields were being watched by
more military and police vehicles. The carniculture plants, where
Terran-type animal tissue was grown in nutrient-vats, were even more
heavily guarded, and the native city was being patroled from above and
the streets were empty, even of the hordes of native children who
usually played in them.
The Terran city had no streets. Its dwellers moved about on
contragravity, and tall buildings rose, singly or in clumps, among the
landing-staged residences and the green transplanted trees. There was a
triple wire fence around it, the inner one masked by vines and the
middle one electrified, with warning lights on. Even a government
dedicated to the betterment of the natives and unwilling to order
military action against them was, it appeared, unwilling to take too
many chances.
Major General Denis Maith, the Federation Army commander on Kwannon, was
considerably more than willing to find a temporary home for his witch
doctors, now numbering close to two hundred. He did insist that they be
kept under military guard, and on assigning his aide, Captain Travis, to
co-operate on the project. Beyond that, he gave Miles a free hand.
Miles and Travis got very little rest in the next ten hours. A
half-company of engineer troops was also kept busy, as were a number of
Kwannon Planetwide News technicians and some Terran and native mechanics
borrowed from different private business concerns in the city. Even the
most guarded hints of what he had in mind were enough to get this last
co-operation; he had been running a news-service in Bluelake long enough
to have the confidence of the business people.
He tried, as far as possible, to keep any intimation of what was going
on from Government House. That, unfortunately, hadn't been far enough.
He found that out when General Maith was on his screen, in the middle of
the work on the fourth and fifth floors of the Suzikami Building.
"The governor general just screened me," Maith said. "He's in a tizzy
about our shoonoon. Claims that keeping them in the Suzikami Building
will endanger the whole Terran city."
"Is that the best he can do? Well, that's rubbish, and he knows it.
There are less than two hundred of them, I have them on the fifth floor,
twenty stories above the ground, and the floor's completely sealed off
from the floor below. They can't get out, and I have tanks of sleep-gas
all over the place which can be opened either individually or all
together from a switch on the fourth floor, where your sepoys are
quartered."
"I know, Mr. Gilbert; I screen-viewed the whole installation. I've seen
regular maximum-security prisons that would be easier to get out of."
"Governor general Kovac is not objecting personally. He has been
pressured into it by this Native Welfare government-within-the-Government.
They don't know what I'm doing with those shoonoon, but whatever it is,
they're afraid of it."
"Well, for the present," Maith said, "I think I'm holding them off. The
Civil Government doesn't want the responsibility of keeping them in
custody, I refused to assume responsibility for them if they were kept
anywhere else, and Kovac simply won't consider releasing them, so that
leaves things as they are. I did have to make one compromise, though."
That didn't sound good. It sounded less so when Maith continued: "They
insisted on having one of their people at the Suzikami Building as an
observer. I had to grant that."
"That's going to mean trouble."
"Oh, I shouldn't think so. This observer will observe, and nothing else.
She will take no part in anything you're doing, will voice no
objections, and will not interrupt anything you are saying to the
shoonoon. I was quite firm on that, and the governor general agreed
completely."
"She?"
"Yes. A Miss Edith Shaw; do you know anything about her?"
"I've met her a few times; cocktail parties and so on." She was young
enough, and new enough to Kwannon, not to have a completely indurated
mind. On the other hand, she was EETA which was bad, and had a master's
in sociography from Adelaide, which was worse. "When can I look for
her?"
"Well, the governor general's going to screen me and find out when
you'll have the shoonoon on hand."
Doesn't want to talk to me at all, Miles thought. Afraid he might say
something and get quoted.
"For your information, they'll be here inside an hour. They will have to
eat, and they're all tired and sleepy. I should say 'bout
oh-eight-hundred. Oh, and will you tell the governor general to tell
Miss Shaw to bring an overnight kit with her. She's going to need it."
He was up at 0400, just a little after Beta-rise. He might be a
civilian big-wheel in an Army psychological warfare project, but he
still had four newscasts a day to produce. He spent a couple of hours
checking the 0600 'cast and briefing Harry Walsh for the indeterminate
period in which he would be acting chief editor and producer. At 0700,
Foxx Travis put in an appearance. They went down to the fourth floor, to
the little room they had fitted out as command-post, control room and
office for Operation Shoonoo.
There was a rectangular black traveling-case, initialed E. S., beside
the open office door. Travis nodded at it, and they grinned at one
another; she'd come early, possibly hoping to catch them hiding
something they didn't want her to see. Entering the office quietly, they
found her seated facing the big viewscreen, smoking and watching a
couple of enlisted men of the First Kwannon Native Infantry at work in
another room where the pickup was. There were close to a dozen
lipstick-tinted cigarette butts in the ashtray beside her. Her private
face wasn't particularly happy. Maybe she was being earnest and
concerned about the betterment of the underpriviledged, or the satanic
maneuvers of the selfish planters.
Then she realized that somebody had entered; with a slight start, she
turned, then rose. She was about the height of Foxx Travis, a few inches
shorter than Miles, and slender. Light blond; green suit costume. She
ditched her private face and got on her public one, a pleasant and
deferential smile, with a trace of uncertainty behind it. Miles
introduced Travis, and they sat down again facing the screen.
It gave a view, from one of the long sides and near the ceiling, of a
big room. In the center, a number of seats--the drum-shaped cushions the
natives had adopted in place of the seats carved from sections of tree
trunk that they had been using when the Terrans had come to
Kwannon--were arranged in a semicircle, one in the middle slightly in
advance of the others. Facing them were three armchairs, a
remote-control box beside one and another Kwann cushion behind and
between the other two. There was a large globe of Kwannon, and on the
wall behind the chairs an array of viewscreens.
"There'll be an interpreter, a native Army sergeant, between you and
Captain Travis," he said. "I don't know how good you are with native
languages, Miss Shaw; the captain is not very fluent."
"Cushions for them, I see, and chairs for the lordly Terrans," she
commented. "Never miss a chance to rub our superiority in, do you?"
"I never deliberately force them to adopt our ways," he replied. "Our
chairs are as uncomfortable for them as their low seats are for us.
Difference, you know, doesn't mean inferiority or superiority. It just
means difference."
"Well, what are you trying to do, here?"
"I'm trying to find out a little more about the psychology back of
these frenzies and swarmings."
"It hasn't occurred to you to look for them in the economic wrongs these
people are suffering at the hands of the planters and traders, I
suppose."
"So they're committing suicide, and that's all you can call these
swarmings, and the fire-frenzies in the south, from economic motives,"
Travis said. "How does one better oneself economically by dying?"
She ignored the question, which was easier than trying to answer it.
"And why are you bothering to talk to these witch doctors? They aren't
representative of the native people. They're a lot of cynical
charlatans, with a vested interest in ignorance and superstition--"
"Miss Shaw, for the past eight centuries, earnest souls have been
bewailing the fact that progress in the social sciences has always
lagged behind progress in the physical sciences. I would suggest that
the explanation might be in difference of approach. The physical
scientist works _with_ physical forces, even when he is trying, as in
the case of contragravity, to nullify them. The social scientist works
_against_ social forces."
"And the result's usually a miserable failure, even on the
physical-accomplishment level," Foxx Travis added. "This storm shelter
project that was set up ten years ago and got nowhere, for instance.
Ramón Gonzales set up a shelter project of his own seventy-five hours
ago, and he's half through with it now."
"Yes, by forced labor!"
"Field surgery's brutal, too, especially when the anaesthetics run out.
It's better than letting your wounded die, though."
"Well, we were talking about these shoonoon. They are a force among the
natives; that can't be denied. So, since we want to influence the
natives, why not use them?"
"Mr. Gilbert, these shoonoon are blocking everything we are trying to do
for the natives. If you use them for propaganda work in the villages,
you will only increase their prestige and make it that much harder for
us to better the natives' condition, both economically and
culturally--"
"That's it, Miles," Travis said. "She isn't interested in facts about
specific humanoid people on Kwannon. She has a lot of high-order
abstractions she got in a classroom at Adelaide on Terra."
"No. Her idea of bettering the natives' condition is to rope in a lot of
young Kwanns, put them in Government schools, overload them with
information they aren't prepared to digest, teach them to despise their
own people, and then send them out to the villages, where they behave
with such insufferable arrogance that the wonder is that so few of them
stop an arrow or a charge of buckshot, instead of so many. And when that
happens, as it does occasionally, Welfare says they're murdered at the
instigation of the shoonoon."
"You know, Miss Shaw, this isn't just the roughneck's scorn for the
egghead," Travis said. "Miles went to school on Terra, and majored in
extraterrestrial sociography, and got a master's, just like you did. At
Montevideo," he added. "And he spent two more years traveling on a Paula
von Schlicten Fellowship."
Edith Shaw didn't say anything. She even tried desperately not to look
impressed. It occurred to him that he'd never mentioned that fellowship
to Travis. Army Intelligence must have a pretty good _dossier_ on him.
Before anybody could say anything further, a Terran captain and a native
sergeant of the First K.N.I. came in. In the screen, the four sepoys who
had been fussing around straightening things picked up auto-carbines and
posted themselves two on either side of a door across from the pickup,
taking positions that would permit them to fire into whatever came
through without hitting each other.
What came through was one hundred and eighty-four shoonoon. Some wore
robes of loose gauze strips, and some wore fire-dance cloaks of red and
yellow and orange ribbons. Many were almost completely naked, but they
were all amulet-ed to the teeth. There must have been a couple of miles
of brass and bright-alloy wire among them, and half a ton of bright
scrap-metal, and the skulls, bones, claws, teeth, tails and other
components of most of the native fauna. They debouched into the big
room, stopped, and stood looking around them. A native sergeant and a
couple more sepoys followed. They got the shoonoon over to the
semicircle of cushions, having to chase a couple of them away from the
single seat at front and center, and induced them to sit down.
The native sergeant in the little room said something under his breath;
the captain laughed. Edith Shaw gaped for an instant and said,
"_Muggawsh_!" Travis simply remarked that he'd be damned.
"They do look kind of unusual, don't they?" Miles said. "I wouldn't
doubt that this is the biggest assemblage of shoonoon in history. They
aren't exactly a gregarious lot."
"Maybe this is the beginning of a new era. First meeting of the Kwannon
Thaumaturgical Society."
A couple more K.N.I. privates came in with serving-tables on
contragravity floats and began passing bowls of a frozen native-food
delicacy of which all Kwanns had become passionately fond since its
introduction by the Terrans. He let them finish, and then, after they
had been relieved of the empty bowls, he nodded to the K.N.I. sergeant,
who opened a door on the left. They all went through into the room they
had been seeing in the screen. There was a stir when the shoonoon saw
him, and he heard his name, in its usual native mispronunciation,
repeated back and forth.
"You all know me," he said, after they were seated. "Have I ever been an
enemy to you or to the People?"
"No," one of them said. "He speaks for us to the other Terrans. When we
are wronged, he tries to get the wrongs righted. In times of famine he
has spoken of our troubles, and gifts of food have come while the
Government argued about what to do."
[Illustration]
He wished he could see Edith Shaw's face.
"There was a sickness in our village, and my magic could not cure it,"
another said. "Mailsh Heelbare gave me oomphel to cure it, and told me
how to use it. He did this privately, so that I would not be made to
look small to the people of the village."
And that had infuriated EETA; it was a question whether unofficial help
to the natives or support of the prestige of a shoonoo had angered them
more.
"His father was a trader; he gave good oomphel, and did not cheat.
Mailsh Heelbare grew up among us; he took the Manhood Test with the boys
of the village," another oldster said. "He listened with respect to the
grandfather-stories. No, Mailsh Heelbare is not our enemy. He is our
friend."
"And so I will prove myself now," he told them. "The Government is angry
with the People, but I will try to take their anger away, and in the
meantime I am permitted to come here and talk with you. Here is a chief
of soldiers, and one of the Government people, and your words will be
heard by the oomphel machine that remembers and repeats, for the
Governor and the Great Soldier Chief."
They all brightened. To make a voice recording was a wonderful honor.
Then one of them said:
"But what good will that do now? The Last Hot Time is here. Let us be
permitted to return to our villages, where our people need us."
"It is of that that I wish to speak. But first of all, I must hear your
words, and know what is in your minds. Who is the eldest among you? Let
him come forth and sit in the front, where I may speak with him."
Then he relaxed while they argued in respectfully subdued voices.
Finally one decrepit oldster, wearing a cloak of yellow ribbons and
carrying a highly obscene and ineffably sacred wooden image, was brought
forward and installed on the front-and-center cushion. He'd come from
some village to the west that hadn't gotten the word of the swarming;
Gonzales' men had snagged him while he was making crop-fertility magic.
Miles showed him the respect due his advanced age and obviously great
magical powers, displaying, as he did, an understanding of the regalia.
"I have indeed lived long," the old shoonoo replied. "I saw the Hot Time
before; I was a child of so high." He measured about two and a half feet
off the floor; that would make him ninety-five or thereabouts. "I
remember it."
"Speak to us, then. Tell us of the Gone Ones, and of the Sky Fire, and
of the Last Hot Time. Speak as though you alone knew these things, and
as though you were teaching me."
Delighted, the oldster whooshed a couple of times to clear his outlets
and began:
"In the long-ago time, there was only the Great Spirit. The Great Spirit
made the World, and he made the People. In that time, there were no more
People in the World than would be in one village, now. The Gone Ones
dwelt among them, and spoke to them as I speak to you. Then, as more
People were born, and died and went to join the Gone Ones, the Gone Ones
became many, and they went away and build a place for themselves, and
built the Sky Fire around it, and in the Place of the Gone Ones, at the
middle of the Sky Fire, it is cool. From their place in the Sky Fire,
the Gone Ones send wisdom to the people in dreams.
"The Sky Fire passes across the sky, from east to west, as the
Always-Same does, but it is farther away than the Always-Same, because
sometimes the Always Same passes in front of it, but the Sky Fire never
passes in front of the Always-Same. None of the grandfather-stories, not
even the oldest, tell of a time when this happened.
"Sometimes the Sky Fire is big and bright; that is when the Gone Ones
feast and dance. Sometimes it is smaller and dimmer; then the Gone Ones
rest and sleep. Sometimes it is close, and there is a Hot Time;
sometimes it goes far away, and then there is a Cool Time.
"Now, the Last Hot Time has come. The Sky Fire will come closer and
closer, and it will pass the Always-Same, and then it will burn up the
World. Then will be a new World, and the Gone Ones will return, and the
People will be given new bodies. When this happens, the Sky Fire will go
out, and the Gone Ones will live in the World again with the People; the
Gone Ones will make great magic and teach wisdom as I teach to you, and
will no longer have to send dreams. In that time the crops will grow
without planting or tending or the work of women; in that time, the game
will come into the villages to be killed in the gathering-places. There
will be no more hunger and no more hard work, and no more of the People
will die or be slain. And that time is now here," he finished. "All the
People know this."
"Tell me, Grandfather; how is this known? There have been many Hot Times
before. Why should this one be the Last Hot Time?"
"The Terrans have come, and brought oomphel into the World," the old
shoonoo said. "It is a sign."
"It was not prophesied beforetime. None of the People had prophesies of
the coming of the Terrans. I ask you, who were the father of children
and the grandfather of children's children when the Terrans came; was
there any such prophesy?"
The old shoonoo was silent, turning his pornographic ikon in his hands
and looked at it.
"No," he admitted, at length. "Before the Terrans came, there were no
prophesies among the People of their coming. Afterward, of course, there
were many such prophesies, but there were none before."
"That is strange. When a happening is a sign of something to come, it is
prophesied beforetime." He left that seed of doubt alone to grow, and
continued: "Now, Grandfather, speak to us about what the People believe
concerning the Terrans."
"The Terrans came to the World when my eldest daughter bore her first
child," the old shoonoo said. "They came in great round ships, such as
come often now, but which had never before been seen. They said that
they came from another world like the World of People, but so far away
that even the Sky Fire could not be seen from it. They still say this,
and many of the People believe it, but it is not real.
"At first, it was thought that the Terrans were great shoonoon who made
powerful magic, but this is not real either. The Terrans have no magic
and no wisdom of their own. All they have is the oomphel, and the
oomphel works magic for them and teaches them their wisdom. Even in the
schools which the Terrans have made for the People, it is the oomphel
which teaches." He went on to describe, not too incorrectly, the
reading-screens and viewscreens and audio-visual equipment. "Nor do the
Terrans make the oomphel, as they say. The oomphel makes more oomphel
for them."
"Then where did the Terrans get the first oomphel?"
"They stole it from the Gone Ones," the old shoonoo replied. "The Gone
Ones make it in their place in the middle of the Sky Fire, for
themselves and to give to the People when they return. The Terrans stole
it from them. For this reason, there is much hatred of the Terrans among
the People. The Terrans live in the Dark Place, under the World, where
the Sky Fire and the Always-Same go when they are not in the sky. It is
there that the Terrans get the oomphel from the Gone Ones, and now they
have come to the World, and they are using oomphel to hold back the
Sky-Fire and keep it beyond the Always-Same so that the Last Hot Time
will not come and the Gone Ones will not return. For this reason, too,
there is much hatred of the Terrans among the People."
"Grandfather, if this were real there would be good reason for such
hatred, and I would be ashamed for what my people had done and were
doing. But it is not real." He had to rise and hold up his hands to
quell the indignant outcry "Have any of you known me to tell not-real
things and try to make the People act as though they were real? Then
trust me in this. I will show you real things, which you will all see,
and I will give you great secrets, which it is now time for you to have
and use for the good of the People. Even the greatest secret," he added.
There was a pause of a few seconds. Then they burst out, in a hundred
and eighty-four--no, three hundred and sixty eight--voices:
_"The Oomphel Secret, Mailsh Heelbare?"_