One Citizen was under the knife--his own knife, as it happened; it was
the baker himself. Boyne chopped and chopped again. And then Boyne came
out, roaring, the broad knife whistling about his head. The gentle
Citizens fled panicked before him. He struck at their retreating forms
and screamed and struck again. Amok.
It was the one particular circumstance when they forgot to be
gracious--one of the two, Tropile corrected himself as he strolled
across to the baker's stall. His brow furrowed, because there was
another circumstance when they lacked grace, and one which affected him
nearly.
* * * * *
He watched the maddened creature, Boyne, already far down the road,
chasing a knot of Citizens around a corner. Tropile sighed and stepped
into the baker's stall to see what he might gain from this.
Boyne would wear himself out--the surging rage would leave him as
quickly as it came; he would be a sheep again and the other sheep would
close in and capture him. That was what happened when a Citizen ran
amok. It was a measure of what pressures were on the Citizens that,
at any moment, there might be one gram of pressure too much and one
of them would crack. It had happened here in Wheeling twice within
the past two months. Glenn Tropile had seen it happen in Pittsburgh,
Altoona and Bronxville.
There is a limit to the pressure that can be endured.
Tropile walked into the baker's stall and looked down without emotion
at the slaughtered baker. The corpse was a gory mess, but Tropile had
seen corpses before.
He looked around the stall, calculating. As a starter, he bent to pick
up the quarter-kilo of bread Boyne had dropped, dusted it off and
slipped it into his pocket. Food was always useful. Given enough food,
perhaps Boyne would not have run amok.
Was it simple hunger they cracked under? Or the knowledge of the thing
on Mount Everest, or the hovering Eyes, or the sought-after-dreaded
prospect of Translation, or merely the strain of keeping up their
laboriously figured lives?
Did it matter? _They_ cracked and ran amok, and Tropile never would,
and that was what mattered.
He leaned across the counter, reaching for what was left of the Morning
Loaf--
And found himself staring into the terrified large eyes of Citizeness
Germyn.
She screamed: "Wolf! Citizens, help me! Wolf!"
Tropile faltered. He hadn't even _seen_ the damned woman, but there she
was, rising up from behind the counter, screaming her head off: "Wolf!
Wolf!"
He said sharply: "Citizeness, I beg you--" But that was no good. The
evidence was on him and her screams would fetch others.
Tropile panicked. He started toward her to silence her, but that was no
good, either. He whirled. She was screaming, screaming, and there were
people to hear. Tropile darted into the street, but they were popping
out of every doorway now, appearing from each rat's hole in which they
had hid to escape Boyne.
"Please!" he cried, sobbing. "Wait a minute!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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