“Amok!” some of those nearby began to shout.
Haendl yelled back at them: “He is not! Shut up!” And to Germyn: “You aren’t, are
“v” your
“No,” Germyn snapped. “I’m just angry. Your disgusting friend here took it on himself to deny me the decent equivalent of a Donation which I deserve!”
Innison, rubbing his cheek, said thoughtfully: “You really want a Donation, boy? Where they stick the needle in and twist it around to find the canal? Then you go paralyzed, right then, and the fluid runs out. Then some simpering idiot takes the knife and saws it across your windpipe until it goes through—”
Germyn said: “Whether I want it or not is beside the point. There are certain decencies to be observed—”
“Then you don’t want it?”
Germyn thought for a long while. “No,” he finally said. “But that has nothing to do with ...” He thought some more.
Haendl said gently: “Look at yourself, Germyn. Pinch yourself. Feel your arms and legs. You’ve changed. You grabbed Innison and you hit him, not in a nervous crisis but because you were angry. You wouldn’t have done that not so long ago. Look at yourself.”
Germyn looked. His stomach was flat; there was no trace at all of bloat. His thighs were now thicker than his knees—it had all happened so insidiously! He felt his face; under the beard it was fleshed, most Uncitizen-like, telling hardly at all of the skull beneath! His ribs—he couldn’t see his ribs!
He faced them, burning with shame for his grotesqueness and saw they were the same, they were all the same.
‘ And don’t you feel different?” Haendl insisted quietly. “Inside, all through you? Didn’t you used to have an all-through-you feeling that would have kept you from hitting Innison? Don’t you now have an all-through-you feeling that tells you hitting Innison, within reason, would be a joy?”
“I do,” said Germyn in terror. “I do! What do you call it? What shall I do about it?”
“It’s orthodox Wolf opinion,” Innison said, “that you shouldn’t do anything about that feeling. And the accepted name for it is, not being hungry. Have you been meditating on connectivity lately?”
“No,” said Germyn. “The—the distractions—”
“The absence of hunger, Germyn. Starvation and meditation go together, though not inseparably. When your vitality’s low, your self-awareness flickers; it’s always ready to be blown out.”
Germyn wandered off through a forest of machine-tool legs, trying to get acquainted with his new self.
Haendl said to Innison: “Maybe that’s why we’re here, to get nice and plump.”
“You think they eat people?”
“No; not any more than a fusion pile does. It’s got to be something electrical ...”
“If Germyn’s ready and able to fight, all of ‘em ought to be. Suppose we get a little close-order drilling organized.”
“We’d better get something organized. There haven’t been any more amoks, but there’s been a lot of pushing-around. Next you get counter-pushing, and then people start swinging.”
The two Wolves grinned at each other. “It lasted just fine, didn’t it?” Haendl said. “Cul-chah and aesthetics petered out the first week on unlimited calories, and then went manners—usually with a crash, like ex-Citizen Germyn. Yes, we’ve got to give them something to do before they get fat and begin killing one another.”
New people stopped arriving in the foundry about then; when twelve feeding-times passed with no recruits turning up the Princeton Wolves took a census: six hundred and eighty-four, roughly half male and half female. This was a great convenience, for one could not talk forever.
The military organization got under way with some difficulty. The ex-Citizens were glorying in new-found truculence. “Who’s gonna make me?” rang joyously through the corridors; a research-minded Princetonian recalled that some Biblical person had “waxed fat and wicked.” A combination of force and reason carried the day, however, and at last the most obstreperous ex-Citizen, his black eye fading slowly, marched in ranks with the rest. Haendl yearned for the weapons that had been Translated; where were they?
And then several women were in early pregnancy. The pregnancies all occurred following an incident as inexplicable as it was horrifying. A Pyramid came again, and again they hid. This time luck had it that one of the Africans was caught in the open, some distance from a wall and a hopeless long dash to the tangle of I-beams which supported the giant tools. He did the prudent thing and flattened himself against the floor, probably feeling reasonably safe in his last seconds of life. The giant figure sailed slowly down the corridor with plenty of clearance on either side, crackling faintly, smelling of ozone. Approaching the huddled man, it swerved calmly so that its nearest corner brushed over him, and then moved on and out of the corridor through one of the un-doorlike doors of Pyramid engineering.
They had no difficulty at all putting the African down an eight-inch drain, and the sleeping-time that followed was marked by an orgy. The men did not practice the Loving Withdrawal, nor would the women have let them. Doom was on them, and instinct in command.
Wolves and Sheep, or ex-Sheep, endlessly debated the crushing of the African.
“We’re here because they brought us here. They must want us for something. Why did they destroy something they carefully imported and kept alive and more or less comfortable?”
“Maybe the sight of us annoys them. Maybe we’re stockpiled but they just don’t want us pestering them until they’re ready for us.”
“Maybe it did it for fun.”
“I don’t believe it. Your white man didn’t do it to those Indians of yours.”
“Some of them did. Some of them shot Indians for fun. Maybe there are some Pyramids that are different from other Pyramids. Maybe that one was a cruel child!”
They threw up their hands and left it at that.
What else was there to do? None among them knew any more than any other what the Pyramids wanted, thought or were likely to do.
What else there was to do was to stand ever ready to dash for shelter; to post guards with relay-runners at both of the “doors” and the entrance to the foundry. They did this, for what it might be worth.
But no Pyramids came after that.
And one day in the second month of the pregnancies the woman Gala Tropile was talking to suddenly screamed. She pointed to the wall in terror. Gala turned, and then she screamed, too.
Something was gnawing a hole in the wall.
The crowd that gathered jittered to each other in fear, but whatever was chewing a hole in the wall did not seem to be a Pyramid. It didn’t seem to be anything that made sense at all.
The crowd watched as a circular area of metal, something over a meter across, was outlined by a flying dot that bulged the ductile stuff up into a ridge. The flying dot holed through. It was a toolbit. The cut-out disk clanged on the floor.
The nearest in the crowd screamed and jumped back.
Then the toolbit and its spinning holder withdrew. There was a long pause. One of the sweaty, scared men—it was a Russian from Kiev—dared to try to peer into the hole, but there was nothing to see, only blackness and the distant, retreating drill.
Minutes later a black cone stuck its point out of the hole and spoke to them:
“Pay close attention. To speak to you in this way is very difficult. You have been brought here for a purpose. Henceforth you will receive orders from this communications system. Follow the orders at once, completely. Are the food and water sufficient?”
The voice made Gala Tropile shiver, for it was nothing like human. (But what was that curiously familiar hint of tone?) However, since it asked questions, presumably it wanted answers. She ventured one: “There is enough, but it’s terribly monotonous. Couldn’t we have different flavors now and then?”