A few did--that banker, Germyn; 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 seemed 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 running amok.
Tropile looked at the man with amusement and contempt. Amok! The gentle
sheep _could_ be pushed too far. He had seen Citizens run amok, the
signs were obvious.
There was pretty sure to be an advantage in it for Glenn Tropile. There
was an advantage in almost anything, if you looked for it.
He watched and waited. He picked his spot with care, so that he could
see Citizen Boyne inside the baker's stall, making a dismal botch of
slashing his quarter-kilo of bread from the Morning Loaf.
He waited for Boyne to come racing out....
Boyne did.
A yell--loud, piercing. It was Citizen Germyn, shrilling: "Amok, amok!"
A scream. An enraged wordless cry from Boyne, and the baker's knife
glinting in the faint light as Boyne swung it. And then Citizens were
scattering in every direction--all of the Citizens but one.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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