"Proteus! Finnerty!" said Lasher irritably. "What's been keeping you?"
"Didn't know you were in a hurry to get anywhere," said Finnerty.
"Well, I am. Let's go."
"Where to?" Finnerty started the car.
"Griffin Boulevard. The roadblock."
"What's going on out there?" asked Paul.
"The authorities are waiting for the people of Ilium to turn over their false leaders," said Lasher. "Anybody want to get out? I'll drive myself, if you like."
Finnerty stopped the car.
"Well?" said Lasher.
"I suppose now is the time," said von Neumann matter-of-factly.
Paul said nothing, but made no move to get out.
Finnerty waited a moment longer, then pressed down on the accelerator.
No one spoke until they reached the concertina of barbed wire, the felled telephone poles, and the sandbags of the Griffin Boulevard roadblock. Two brown men, elegantly costumed -Khashdrahr Miasma and the Shah of Bratpuhr - huddled together, asleep in a slit trench to the left of the barricade. Beyond the barbed wire, their wheels toward heaven, were two riddled, abandoned state police cars.
Professor von Neumann looked out over the countryside through his field glasses. "Aha! The authorities." He handed the glasses to Paul. "There - to the left of that barn. See?"
Paul squinted at the three armored cars by the barn, and the police with their riot guns, lounging, smoking, chatting cheerfully.
Lasher patted Paul on his shoulder as Paul handed the glasses on to him. "Smile, Doctor Proteus - you're somebody now, like your old man was. Who's got a bottle?"
Finnerty produced one.
Lasher took it, and toasted the others. "To all good Indians," he said, "past, present, and future. Or, more to the point - to the record."
The bottle went around the group.
"The record," said Finnerty, and he seemed satisfied with the toast. He had got what he wanted from the revolution, Paul supposed - a chance to give a savage blow to a close little society that made no comfortable place for him.
"To the record," said von Neumann. He, too, seemed at peace. To him, the revolution had been a fascinating experiment, Paul realized. He had been less interested in achieving a premeditated end than in seeing what would happen with given beginnings.
Paul took the bottle and studied Lasher for a moment over its fragrant mouth. Lasher, the chief instigator of it all, was contented. A lifelong trafficker in symbols, he had created the revolution as a symbol, and was now welcoming the opportunity to die as one.
And that left Paul. "To a better world," he started to say, but he cut the toast short, thinking of the people of Ilium, already eager to recreate the same old nightmare. He shrugged. "To the record," he said, and smashed the empty bottle on a rock.
Von Neumann considered Paul and then the broken glass. "This isn't the end, you know," he said. "Nothing ever is, nothing ever will be - not even Judgment Day."
"Hands up," said Lasher almost gaily. "Forward March."