Germyn was caught off balance. He took his eyes off the sky, half-turned, glanced at the face of the person who had spoken to him, raised his hand in the assurance-of-identity sign. It was all very quick and fluid—almost too quick, for he had had his fingers bent nearly into the sign for female friends; and this was a man. Citizen Boyne; Germyn knew him well; they had shared the Ice Viewing at Niagara a year before.
Germyn recovered quickly enough, but it had been disconcerting.
He improvised quickly: “There are stars^ but are stars still there if there is no Sun?” It was a hurried effort, he grieved, but no doubt Boyne would pick it up and carry it along; Boyne had always been very good, very graceful.
Boyne did no such thing. “Good morning,” he said again, faintly. He glanced at the stars overhead as though trying to unravel what Germyn was talking about. He said accusingly, his voice cracking sharply: “There isn’t any Sun, Germyn. What do you think of that?”
Germyn swallowed. “Citizen, perhaps you—”
“No Sun, you hear me!” The man sobbed, “It’s cold, Germyn. The Pyramids aren’t going to give us another Sun, do you know that? They’re going to starve us, freeze us; they’re through with us. We’re done, all of us!” He was nearly screaming. All up and down Pine Street people were trying not to look at him, some of them failing.
Boyne clutched at Germyn helplessly. Revolted, Germyn drew back—bodily contact!
It seemed to bring the man to his senses^ Reason returned to his eyes. He said, “I—” He stopped, stared about him. “I think I’ll have bread for breakfast,” he said foolishly, and plunged into the stall.
Strained voice, shouting, clutching, no manners at all!
Boyne left behind him a shaken Citizen, caught half-way into the wrist-flip of parting, staring after him with jaw slack and eyes wide, as though Germyn had no manners either.
All this on Sun Re-creation Day!
What could it mean? Germyn wondered fretfully. Was Boyne on the point of—Could Boyne be about to—
He drew back from the thought. There was one thing that might explain Boyne’s behavior. But it was not a proper speculation for one Citizen to make about another.
All the same—Germyn dared the thought—all the same, it did seem almost as though Citizen Boyne were on the point of, well, running amok.
At the oatmeal stall, Glenn Tropile thumped on the counter.
The laggard oatmeal vendor finally brought the bowl of salt and the pitcher of thin milk. Tropile took his paper twist of salt from the top of the neatly arranged pile in the bowl. He glanced at the vendor; his fingers hesitated; then quickly he ripped the twist of paper into his oatmeal and covered it to the permitted level with the milk.
He ate quickly and efficiently, watching the street outside.
They were wandering and mooning about, as always—maybe today more than most days, since they hoped it would be the day the Sun blossomed flame once more.
Tropile always thought of the wandering, mooning Citizens as they. There was a “we” somewhere for Tropile, no doubt, but Tropile had not as yet located it, not even in the bonds of the marriage contract. He was in no hurry. At the age of fourteen Glenn Tropile had reluctantly come to realize certain things about himself; that he disliked being bested; that he had to have a certain advantage in all his dealings, or an intolerable itch of the mind drove him to discomfort. The things added up to a terrifying fear, gradually becoming knowledge, that the only “we” that could properly include him was one that it was not very wise to join.
He had realized, in fact, that he was a Wolf.
For some years Tropile had struggled against it—for Wolf was a bad word, the children he played with were punished severely for saying it, and for almost nothing else. It was not proper for one Citizen to advantage himself at the expense of another; Wolves did that. It was proper for a Citizen to accept what he had, not to strive for more; to find beauty in small things; to accommodate himself, with the minimum of strain and awkwardness, to whatever his life happened to be. Wolves were not like that; Wolves never Meditated, Wolves never Appreciated, Wolves never were Translated. That supreme fulfillment, granted only to those who succeeded in a perfect meditation on connectivity—that surrender of the world and the flesh by taking leave of both—that could never be achieved by a Wolf.
Accordingly, Glenn Tropile had tried very hard to do all the things that Wolves could not do.
He had nearly succeeded; his specialty, Water Watching, had been most rewarding; he had achieved many partly successful meditations on connectivity.
And yet he was still a Wolf; for he still felt that burning, itching urge to triumph and to hold an advantage. For that reason, it was almost impossible for him to make friends among the Citizens and gradually he had almost stopped trying.
Tropile had arrived in Wheeling nearly a year before, making him one of the early settlers in point of time. And yet there was not a Citizen in the street who was prepared to exchange recognition gestures with him.
He knew them, nearly every one. He knew their names and their wives’ names; he knew what northern states they had moved down from with the spreading of the ice, as the sun grew dim; he knew very nearly to the quarter of a gram what stores of sugar and salt and coffee each one of them had put away—for their guests, of course, not for themselves; the well-bred Citizen hoarded only for the entertainment of others. He knew these things because there was an advantage to Tropile in knowing them. But there was no advantage in having anyone know him.
A few did—that banker, Germyn; for Tropile had approached him only a few months before about a prospective loan. But it had been a chancy, nervous encounter; the idea was so luminously simple to Tropile—organize an expedition to the coal mines that once had flourished nearby; find the coal, bring it to Wheeling, heat the houses. And yet it had sounded blasphemous to Germyn. Tropile had counted himself lucky merely to have been refused the loan, instead of being cried out upon as Wolf.
The oatmeal vendor was fussing worriedly around his neat stack of paper twists in the salt bowl.
Tropile avoided the man’s eyes. Tropile was not interested in the little wry smile of self-deprecation which the vendor would make to him, given half a chance; Tropile knew well enough what was disturbing the vendor. Let it disturb him. It was Tropile’s custom to take extra twists of salt; they were in his pockets now; they would stay there. Let the vendor wonder why he was short.
Tropile licked the bowl of his spoon and stepped into the street. He was comfortably aware under a double-thick parka that the wind was blowing very cold.
A Citizen passed him, walking alone: odd, thought Tropile. He was walking rapidly, and there was a look of taut despair on his face. Still more odd. Odd enough to be worth another look, because that sort of haste, that sort of abstraction, suggested something to Tropile. They were in no way normal to the gentle sheep of the class They, except in one particular circumstance.
Glenn Tropile crossed the street to follow the abstracted Citizen, whose name, he knew, was Boyne. The man blundered into Citizen Germyn outside the baker’s stall, and Tropile stood back out of easy sight, watching and listening.
Boyne was on the ragged edge of breakdown. What Tropile heard and saw confirmed his diagnosis. The one particular circumstance was close to happening; Citizen Boyne was on the verge of a total lack of control. The circumstances had a name, borrowed from the language of a now uninhabited Pacific island where simple farmers, pushed too far, would turn rogue, slashing and killing with their cane-cutting knives.
It was called “running amok.”
Tropile looked at the man with amusement and contempt. Amok! The gentle sheep could be pushed too far, after all! He had seen it before; the signs were obvious.