The only flat “no” conceivable was the enormous, terminal “no” of an amok. Short of that—
One offered. One split the difference. One was invariably filled with tepid pleasure when, invariably, the offer was accepted, the difference was split, both parties were satisfied.
“That will do for a start,” Tropile snarled. “Open, man, open! Don’t make me wait.”
The Keeper reeled and unlatched the door to the corridor.
“Now the street!”
“I can’t!” burst in an anguished cry from the Keeper. He buried his face in his hands and began to sob, hopelessly incapacitated.
“The street!” Tropile said remorselessly. He felt himself wrenchingly ill; he was going against custom that had ruled his own life as surely as the Keeper’s.
But he was Wolf. “I will be Wolf,” he growled, and advanced upon the Keeper. “My wife,” he said, “I didn’t finish telling you. Sometimes she used to put her arm around me and just snuggle up and—I remember one time—she kissed my ear. Broad daylight. It felt funny and warm, I can’t describe it.”
Whimpering, the Keeper flung the keys at Tropile and tottered brokenly away.
He was out of the action. Tropile himself was nearly as badly off; the difference was that he continued to function. The words coming from him seared like acid in his throat. “They call me Wolf,” he said aloud, reeling against the wall. “I will be one.”
He unlocked the outer door and his wife was waiting, the things he had asked her to bring in her arms.
Tropile said strangely to her: I am steel and fire. I am Wolf, full of the old moxie.’
She wailed: “Glenn, are you sure I’m doing the right thing?” He laughed unsteadily and led her by the arm through the deserted streets.
5
Citizen Germyn, as was his right by position and status as a connoisseur, helped prepare Citizen Boyne for his Donation. There was nothing much that needed to be done, actually. This made it an elaborate and lengthy task, according to the ethic of the Citizens; it had to be protracted, each step was surrounded by fullest dress of ritual.
It was done in the broad daylight of the new Sun, and as many of the three hundred citizens of Wheeling as could manage it were in the courtyard of the old Federal Building to watch.
The nature of the ceremony was this: A man who revealed himself Wolf, or who finally crumbled under the demands of life and ran amok, could not be allowed to live. He was haled before an audience of his equals and permitted—with the help of force, if that should be necessary, but preferably not—to make the Donation of Spinal Fluid. Execution was murder; and murder was not permitted under the gentle code of Citizens. So this was not execution. The draining of a man’s spinal fluid did not kill him. It only insured that, after a time and with much suffering, his internal chemistry would so arrange itself that he would die.
Once the Donation was made the problem was completely altered, of course; suffering was agreed to be a bad thing in itself. So, to save the Donor from the suffering that lay ahead, it was the custom to have the oldest and gentlest Citizen on hand stand by with a sharp-edged knife. When the Donation was complete, the Donor’s head was lopped off. It was done purely to avert suffering. Therefore that was not execution either, but only the hastening of an inevitable end. The dozen or so Citizens whose rank permitted them to assist then solemnly dissolved the spinal fluids in water and ceremoniously drank the potion down, at which time it was proper to offer a small poem in commentary. All in all, it was a perfectly splendid opportunity for the second purest form of meditation (other than those on connectivity) by everyone concerned.
Citizen Germyn, whose role was Catheter Bearer, took his place behind the Introducer Bearer, the Annunciators, and the Questioner of Purpose. As he passed Citizen Boyne, Germyn assisted him to assume the proper crouched-over position; Boyne: looked up gratefully and Germyn found the occasion proper for a Commendatory Half-Smile. The Questioner of Purpose said solemnly to Boyne:
“It is your privilege to make a Donation here today. Do you wish to do so?”
“I do,” said Boyne raptly. The anxiety had passed; clearly he was confident of making a good Donation; Germyn approved with all his eart.
The Annunciators, in alternate stanzas, announced the proper pause for meditation to the meager crowd, and all fell silent. Citizen Germyn began the process of blanking out his mind, to ready himself for the great opportunity to Appreciate that lay ahead. A sound distracted him; he glanced up irritably. It seemed to come from the House of the Five Regulations, a man’s voice, carrying. But no one else appeared to notice it. All of the watchers, all of those on the stone steps, were in somber meditation.
Germyn tried to return his thoughts to where they belonged. . . .
But something was troubling him. He had caught a glimpse of the Donor, and there had been something—something—
He angrily permitted himself to look up once more to see just what it had been about Citizen Boyne that had attracted his attention.
Yes, there was something. Over the form of Citizen Boyne, silent, barely visible, a flicker of life and motion. Nothing tangible. It was as if the air itself were in motion. ...
It was—Germyn thought with a bursting heart—it was an Eye!
The veritable miracle of Translation, it was about to take place here and now, upon the person of Citizen Boyne! And no one loiew it but himself!
In this last surmise Citizen Germyn was wrong.
True, no other human eyes saw the flawed-glass thing that twisted the air over Boyne’s prostrate body; but there was, in a sense, another witness some thousands of miles away.
The Pyramid on Mount Everest “stirred.”
It did not move; but something about it moved, or changed, or radiated. The Pyramid surveyed its—cabbage patch? Wrist-watch mine? It would make as much sense, it may be, to say wrist-watch patch or cabbage mine; at any rate; it surveyed what to it was a place where intricate mechanisms grew, ripened and were dug up at the moment of usefulness, whereupon they were quick-frozen and wired into circuits.
Through signals perceptible to it, the Pyramid had become “aware” that one of its mechanisms was now ready.
The Pyramid’s blood was dielectric fluid. Its limbs were electrostatic charges. Its philosophy was, Unscrew it and push. Its motive was survival.
Survival today was not what survival once had been, for a Pyramid. Once survival had merely been gliding along on a cushion of repellent charges, streaming electrons behind for the push, sending h-f pulses out often enough to get a picture of their bounced return integrated deep inside oneself.
If the picture showed something metabolizable, one metabolized it. One broke it down into molecules by lashing it with the surplus protons left over from the dispersed electrons; one absorbed the molecules. Sometimes the metabolizable object was an Immobile and sometimes a Mobile—a vague, theoretical, frivolous classification to a philosophy whose basis was that everything unscrewed. If it was a Mobile one sometimes had to move after it; that was the difference.
The essential was survival, not making idle distinctions.
However, the Pyramids had learned, quite a long time ago, that some distinctions were very useful to make. For example, there was the difference between things that were merely metabolizable and things which, very handily, were assimilable. Quite a lot of effort could be saved if things could simply be “wired” into the places where they were needed, intact.