Ciaran shook his head. His eyes were hard and curiously remote. "I
don't know."
"I don't like the smell of it, little man. It's bad."
"Yeah." Ciaran's voice was very steady. "What happened to Mouse?"
"She was taken with the others. Believe me, little man--I had to do
what I did or they'd have taken you, too. There was nothing you could
do to help her."
"She--followed the light."
"I think so. But I had to run fast."
There was a mist over Ciaran's sight. His heart was slugging him.
Not because he particularly cared, he asked, "How did we get away? I
thought I saw the big lights come on ...".
"They did. And then they went off again, all of a sudden. They weren't
expecting it. I had a head start. The grey beasts hunt by scent, but
in that stewpot there are too many scents. They lost us, and when
the lights came on again I saw this niche and managed to climb to it
without being seen."
He looked out over the floor, scratching his red beard. "I think
they're too busy to bother about two people. No, three." He chuckled.
"The hermit got away, too. He ran past me in the dark, screaming like
an ape about revelations and The Light. Maybe they've got him again by
now."
* * * * *
Ciaran wasn't worrying about the hermit. "Subjugation," he said slowly.
"With this world in their hands, nothing can stop them." He looked out
across the floor of the pit. No guards. You didn't need any guards when
you had a weapon like that light. Frail human cattle driven till they
died, and not knowing about it nor caring.
The world in their hands. An empty shell for them to play with, to use
as they wanted. No more market places, no more taverns, no more songs.
No more little people living their little lives the way they wanted to.
Just slaves with blank faces, herded by grey beasts with shining wands
and held by the android's light.
He didn't know why the androids wanted the world or what they were
going to do with it. He only knew that the whole thing made him
sick--sick all through, in a way he'd never felt before.
The fact that what he was going to do was hopeless and crazy never
occurred to him. Nothing occurred to him, except that somewhere in that
seething slave-pen Mouse was laboring, with eyes that didn't see and a
brain that was only an open channel for orders. Pretty soon, like the
woman up on the girder, she was going to hit her limit and die.