"Get that sheep look out of your eyes, Tropile! What's the difference how you execute a criminal? And what's a criminal but someone who represents a danger to your world? We prefer a gun instead of the Donation of the Spinal Tap, because it's quicker, because it's less messy--and because we don't like to drink spinal fluid, no matter what imaginary therapeutic or symbolic value it has. You'll learn." But he didn't add "come on." They had arrived where they were going. It was a small room in the building that housed the armory and it held, among other things, a rack of guns. "Sit down," said Haendl, taking one of the guns out of the rack thoughtfully and handling it as the doomed Boyne had caressed his watch-case. It was the latest pre-Pyramid-model rifle, anti-personnel, short-range. It would not scatter a cluster of shots in a coffee can at more than two and a half miles. "All right," said Haendl, stroking the stock. "You've seen the works, Tropile. You've lived thirty years with sheep. You've seen what they have and what we have. I don't have to ask you to make a choice. I know what you choose. The only thing left is to tell you what _we_ want from _you_." A faint pulsing began inside Glenn Tropile. "I expected we'd be getting to that." "Why not? We're not sheep. We don't act that way. Quid pro quo. Remember that--it saves time. You've seen the quid. Now we come to the quo." He leaned forward. "Tropile, what do you know about the Pyramids?" "Nothing." Haendl nodded. "Right. They're all around us and our lives are beggared because of them. And we don't even know why. We don't have the least idea of what they are. Did you know that one of the sheep was Translated in Wheeling when you left?" "Translated?" Tropile listened with his mouth open while Haendl told him about what had happened to Citizen Boyne. "So he didn't make the Donation after all," Tropile said. "Might have been better if he had," said Haendl. "Still, it gave you a chance to get away. We had heard--never mind how just yet--that Wheeling'd caught itself a Wolf, so we came looking for you. But you were already gone." * * * * * Tropile said, faintly annoyed: "You were damn near too late." "Oh, no, Tropile," Haendl assured him. "We're never too late. If you don't have enough guts and ingenuity to get away from sheep, you're no wolf--simple as that. But there's this Translation. We know it happens, but we don't even know what it is. All we know, people disappear. There's a new sun in the sky every five years or so. Who makes it? The Pyramids. How? We don't know that. Sometimes something floats around in the air and we call it an Eye. It has something to do with Translation, something to do with the Pyramids. What? We don't know that." "We don't know much of anything," interrupted Tropile, trying to hurry him along. "Not about the Pyramids, no." Haendl shook his head. "Hardly anyone has ever seen one, for that matter."