The gentle curve of nostrils had been expanded into derision, and an almost savage fierceness. The glowing compassion of the eyes had become intense with a flame so hot it made the onlookers wonder how the lashes and brows resisted melting, and running into the cavernous eyesockets. Yet, though fiery, the lineaments combined into a chilling sight. And as there were thousands of the masks, they contributed to a geometrical progression of terror. Revanche, though he was safe, felt struck with fear and guilt that had been instilled into him when he was a child. At that moment an Elder who had been eyeing the nearest X, afraid to go into the ritualistic embrace with it because of its fearsome aspect, suddenly ran to it. He threw himself at its feet, clasped its legs, and howled: "Mercy!" A deep powerful voice that sounded more like the roar of a motor than anything else answered, "Justice!" Justice was what the Elder had prayed for all of his life. Now he got it. The automaton lifted the sword, and brought it down with great violence on the Elder's chicken-skinny neck. "Chuck!" rasped the blade. "Bump!" replied the head. The white-bearded ball rolled on the pavement until it stopped against the curb. Upside down, it looked at everything from a new and possibly revelatory viewpoint, for its expression was not only bewildered and hurt but, for the first time, educated. Dafess City became bedlam, pandemonium, terror on a cataclysmic scale. The white body of the Truncated broke into fifty thousand fragments that fled here and there, circled, whirled, zig-zagged, leaped, crawled, bounded, darted, and lunged. The legion of X stalked after them. They moved jerkily but swiftly. Above all, they moved relentlessly. When a cornered person could not get by the awesome figure, he or she would go down on his or her knees and clasp his hands and howl, "Mercy! Mercy!" "Justice!" roared the immobile lips of the mask. "Slush!" smacked the lips of the blade. "Thud!" echoed the head. Though many skulls rolled, a more or less objective observer, such as Revanche, would have noticed that many more were spared. They were unharmed for a reason, however, for always the flailing swords forced the mob in a general direction. They were being herded towards the Temple of the Righteous, a truncated pyramid not far off the square and one which also housed the First Dafess Sacred-Secular Bank and Finance Corporation. Peculiarly enough, the latter institution had grown to such proportions that it had crowded out the former and now occupied the center of the building. The Dafesses had accepted what seemed to them to be the will of X and had moved the holy section to one corner. Through the huge marble doors the multitude was forced. They had no place else to go, for, wherever they turned, the blazing eye and the flashing sword headed them off.