"Yes. But there are blindnesses that don't involve the eyes."
"Mine does."
Anstruther laughed softly. "The physical man. You were always that,
O'Hara--always concerned most with the health of your body and doubtful
of the health of other men's minds. Forget your eyes, that is nothing,"
he said, and as he continued speaking, the sound of his voice moved
away, and O'Hara realized that it was not Anstruther who was lifting
him. He was being lowered now, coming to rest upon a cushioned bunk.
Anstruther was saying, "We were not expecting to find you beyond that
last wall, O'Hara--it was the Father we expected there. Stephen Bryce,"
he continued harshly. "And if we had found him--if we had found him we
would have no time for you. I am going to bathe your eyes. This will
burn some, but if you clench your hands--"
O'Hara felt live coals inside his skull. His spine arched tautly upward
from the bunk and whorls of flame shot through that portion of his
brain that stored the memories of color--purple, yellow, green and the
red of blood. Sweat drenched him. Then the tautness broke and his eyes
felt cool again and wet, and he collapsed.
"Can you see now?"
O'Hara opened his eyes. Beside him, hulking nakedly, his apelike body
crouched as if to lift O'Hara once again, one of the Sons now held
the vial that Anstruther had just passed to him, and behind him were
other Sons each bearing the shining tubelike weapon that O'Hara had
first seen beyond Emporia--armed Sons, in this, the empty subterranean
metropolis of Washington, the danger that the Father had first warned
him against, and led by a man equally naked, though frail, rigidly
erect, his bright blond beard fringing downward upon his narrow chest,
his pale blue eyes made more myopic-seeming by the tiny capillaries
that had burst in their irises, a face with an intensity of purpose
that made normal strength seem weak, a face to which emotion supplied a
look of superior courage, a zealot's face.
"Give me your hand," Anstruther said, and clasped it.
O'Hara sensed the torrent of emotion in that touch.
"You are one of us now," Anstruther said. Then he turned to the Sons.
"This man is my comrade, my brother. This man will be your brother.
He too has come into your world by some power infinitely beyond our
understanding, and he too will join strength with yours in overthrowing
Stephen Bryce, who calls himself the Father."
Involuntarily, the Son beside O'Hara bent his knee and said, "The
Father," whispering it, reflexively devotional. Anstruther took no
notice of it.
"The Deluge," he was saying, "has just been loosed upon Emporia.
The tens of thousands who dwelt there have gone now to the Pits
of Yellowstone. Some among you were born there, in Emporia, and
your mothers are no more. Stephen Bryce has destroyed them. Do you
understand what I am telling you--Stephen Bryce has destroyed your
mothers, as he will destroy you when the need for you has passed. As
he would have destroyed me long ago had he dared. Do you understand?"
"We understand," the Son beside O'Hara said. "Stephen Bryce, the
Father--"
"Who calls himself the Father!"
"--who calls himself the Father, has loosed the Deluge on Emporia. And
will loose it on us."
"Unless we destroy him first."
"Unless we destroy him first," echoed the Son. And the others said, as
if it were a litany, "Unless we destroy him first."
"We are not free until Stephen Bryce is dead," said Anstruther.
The chorus answered gravely, "We are not free until Stephen Bryce is
dead."
"We are prepared to die--"
"We are prepared to die--"
"To free those who come after us."
"To free those who come after us," the Sons repeated.
Anstruther clapped his hands. Instantly, in unison, the Sons sank
down where they had stood and lay upon the floor, resting their faces
torpidly upon their heavy arms, and instantly they were asleep, some
forty of them lying in a grotesque ragged row with Anstruther still
standing in their midst, though silent now, his blue eyes peering down
at O'Hara upon the bunk.
"They are like newborn infants," he said finally, a strange tenderness
in his voice. "They drop to sleep at once, O'Hara, forgetting the
danger of their future, oblivious of the horror of their past, slipping
down into the sweet senselessness that their exhaustion craves. Do you
know how long we worked to reach this corridor?"