far away they heard the dull thunder of an explosion. lanny's head jerked up. pendillo coughed up blood again, but there was a satisfied smile on his lips. "that will be gill and the boys from the treaty area," he sighed. "arriving right on schedule. we've forced them to attack the city without weapons; to survive, they'll have to make the same mental reintegration that you did, lanny."
"how could you have been so sure, father, that we would be able to—to handle the matter-energy units the way we do?"
"we weren't, my son. we were sure of nothing. we only knew that you were the first generation whose minds had been set completely free. nobody had done any of your thinking for you. if any man is equipped to solve problems, you are—you of the new breed."
"but why couldn't you learn the same techniques yourselves? why can't you save yourself now, father?"
"because we belong in the old world. because the technique is only an application of the data you know, lanny; that is something you have worked out for yourselves. we could give you the theory; we were incapable of following it through your minds."
pendillo gasped painfully for breath. he closed his hand over his son's. "the old survivors are still imprisoned by beliefs carried over from the world we lost. we teach, lanny, but we cannot believe as you do, even when we see our own children—our own sons—" his voice trailed away, and he slumped against lanny's chest.
a series of explosions rocked the metal walls; pendillo opened his eyes again. his dying whisper was so soft, so twisted by pain, the words were almost inaudible. "one more thing, son. we did more—more than we thought. don't retreat to our world; make your own. without the machines and the city walls and the uproar—"
juan pendillo grasped his son's hand. his fingers quivered for a moment of agony. and then he died.
lanny stumbled away from the cell, his eyes dim with tears. the repetitive explosions continued outside in the domed city. lanny discovered the origin of the sound when he made his way up the incline to the upper level. the parade of gigantic freight spheres was swinging in from the void of night, but the port machines, which handled the landings, were idle. the spheres were crashing, one upon the other, into the field just beyond the city. from disengaged, pliable tubes, jerking with the spasmodic torment of mechanical chaos, the raw materials plundered from the earth poured out upon the ruin. fire licked at the wreckage, probing hungrily toward the city of the almost-men.
lanny ran through the deserted guard rooms. beyond the walls he heard a babble of panic on the city streets. the first exit that he found led up to the second level, where no man had ever been.
he emerged on an ornate balcony, which overlooked the square where the trading booths stood. the force dome that had sheltered the city was gone. lanny could look up and see the stars—and the endless parade of glowing freight spheres descending toward the earth. the air was clean, cold and wet with the sea mist.
in a sense the depressing, stifling city he had seen that afternoon was already gone—except for the bleak walls and the clatter of machine sounds. and, in the agony of its death, the city noise had become the scream of mechanized madness. a seething mass of vehicles choked every tier, fighting for space, grinding each other into rubble. vehicles careened from the upper roads and plunged into the mass beneath.
at first it seemed a panic of machines. the people were trivial incidentals—bits of fluff which had been unfortunate enough to get in the way of the turning wheels. then lanny saw the walkaways, as crowded as the roads. a mass of humanity spewed through the doors of the luxury hotels, like run-off streams swelling the floodtide of a swollen river. where were the almost-men going? how could they escape? they had given their will and initiative to their machines; they could do nothing to help themselves.
lanny saw an occasional opalescent bubble rise in the air. but inevitably, before it could move beyond the city, a force of blazing energy shot up from the lowest tier and brought the capsule down. here and there in the darkness lanny saw the furious blast of an energy gun, probing futilely into the chaos.
as the fire rose higher in the port wreckage, lanny saw men fighting on the lower tier. they held the bridge and the trading square and they had taken the power center, which explained why the city was dark and why the force dome was gone. but they were still fighting to take the arsenal. a squad of guards held them off with energy guns; the men fought back from the darkness with weapons they had captured elsewhere.
even now they hadn't discovered the truth; they still feared the enemy weapons. they still thought they must have guns of their own—machines of their own—in order to be free. build your own world, pendillo had said; don't go back to ours.
lanny pushed through the throng on the walkway, trying to find an incline to the lower tier. once or twice people in the mob saw him, in the shuddering light reflected by the energy guns, and recognized him as a man—a half-naked, black-bearded savage. they screamed in terror.
this was the hour of man's revenge, yet lanny felt an inexpressible shame and sadness. was this the way man's cities had died a generation ago, in a discord of mechanical sound, without courage and without dignity?
at last he found the incline to the lower level. it was jammed with a mass of almost-men, fighting and clawing their way down so they might flee into the hunting preserve beyond the city. the tide swept lanny with it. at the foot of the incline he circled the arsenal to join the men, still confined in the trading square.
gill was directing the fire of his men as they inched forward. he clapped lanny on the back, grinning broadly.
"i knew you'd get out, lan. is juan all right?"
"he's dead, gill. he was wounded and he didn't know how to heal himself."
"he had to know, lanny; he taught us."
"they all taught us. they made us—" lanny's voice choked a little as he used his father's familiar phrase. "—a new breed. gill, we're acting like fools; we're fighting for something we don't want or need."
"we have to have weapons, lan."
"we need nothing but what we've been taught. the mind interprets and commands the chaos of the universe. matter and energy are identical."
lanny turned and walked, erect and unafraid, toward the arsenal. the energy fire from the guards' guns struck him and exploded. he reorganized the pattern into harmless components and stood waiting for the charge to die away.
in a moment gill was beside him, beaming with understanding as he met and transformed a second blast from the guns. "of course matter and energy are the same!" he cried. "it should have been obvious to us. we have been prisoners twenty years for nothing."
"we needed those twenty years to discover our new world. we have only finished our education tonight."
as a third blast of energy came from the arsenal, other men slid out of the darkness and faced the guns. lanny and gill walked away, ignoring the screaming machines and the stabbing knives of fire.
"yesterday," gill said slowly, "if i had known that i could direct a flow of energy just as easily as i integrate with my hunting club, i would have stood here cheerfully and slaughtered the almost-men, just to watch them die. now, i'm sorry for them."
"there's no reason why they must all die in panic, gill. isn't there some way—"
behind them they heard a burst of ragged cheering. the arsenal guards, having seen their weapons fail, had deserted their posts and fled. men stormed into the building, shattering the metal doors by re-organizing the energy structure. slowly they wheeled out the great machines—the symbols of enemy power.
"we fought for this," one of the men said. "and now we have no use for them."
gill called a meeting of the resistance council in the deserted trading square, while the city around them throbbed in the chaos of disintegration. the men were entirely aware of the problem created by their liberation. the new breed was free, on the threshold of a new and unexplored world. they could carry the message to other treaty areas; they could show other men the final lesson in reorientation. that much was simple. but what became of the enemy?
"it would be absurd to kill them all," gill said. he added with unconscious irony, "after all, they do know how to think on their own restricted level. they might be able, someday, to learn how to become civilized men."
"the worst of it," one of the others pointed out, "is that their home world is bound to know something's wrong. the delivery of resources has already been interrupted. they will try to reconquer us. it doesn't matter, particularly, but it might become a little tiresome after a while."
"ever since i understood how this would end," lanny said, "i've been wondering if we couldn't work out some way for them to keep the skyports just as they are. let the almost-men have our resources. they need them; we don't."
the council agreed to this with no debate. lanny was delegated to find someone in authority in the skyport and offer him such a treaty. lanny asked gill to go with him. the others split into two groups, one to put out the fires and clear away the port wreckage; the second to herd the enemy refugees together in the game preserve and protect them from the animals.
lanny and gill pushed through the mob toward the upper levels of the city. the crowd had thinned considerably as more and more of the enemy fled into the forest. the brothers, barefoot giants, had an entirely unconscious arrogance in their stride. they passed the rows of luxury hotels and entered the government building. here, apparently, there was an emergency source of power, for the corridor tubes glowed dimly with a sick, blue light. room after room the brothers entered; they found no one—nothing but the disorderly debris of haste and panic.
methodically they worked their way to the top floor of the building. in a wing beyond the courtroom were the private quarters of the planetary governor.
he sat waiting for them in his glass-paneled office overlooking the tiers of the city. he was a tall man, slightly stooped by age. he had put on the full, formal uniform of his office—a green plastic, ornamented with a scarlet filagree and a chest stripe of jeweled medals. he was behind his desk with the wall behind him open upon the sky.
"i expected a stampeding herd," he said.
"you knew we were coming?" lanny asked.
"it was obvious you'd try to force us to sign a new treaty."
"call it a working agreement," gill suggested. "we intend to let you keep the—"
"you have panicked the city by taking advantage of our kindness. but you won't pull this stunt again; i've already requested a stronger occupation force from parliament."
the governor stood up; he held an energy gun in his hand. "this frightens you, doesn't it? you should have expected one of us to keep a level head. i've handled savages before. you're very clever in creating believable illusions, particularly when there seems to be some religious significance. i should have known it was a trick when you sent that addle-witted missionary back to us."
"tak laleen?"
"of course none of my men tell me what's going on until it's too late. they took her to the triangle first. she talked to the priests, and they filled the city with all sorts of weird rumors about men who could control the energy pattern of matter." the governor's lip curled; he nodded toward a side door. "she's here now, under house arrest. she'll be expelled from the territory on the first ship out after the port is reopened."
"she's wasn't lying," lanny said. "she understood more than we did ourselves. maybe juan told her—"
the governor laughed and motioned with his gun. "will you join her, or do you want to force me to spoil your pretty illusion?"
gill walked unhurriedly toward the desk. "you must listen to us. fire the gun, if you insist on that much proof. we want to save your world, not destroy it."
the governor backed toward the open wall panel. "stand where you are, or i'll fire!"
"just give us a chance to explain—"
"the whole business is drivel. superstitious nonsense. no man can violate the established laws of science."
"why not, since men made the laws originally?"
the shell of dignity in the governor's manner began to crack away, revealing the naked hysteria that lay beneath. gill moved again. the governor punched the firing stud of his energy gun. the fire lashed harmlessly at gill's chest.
"it's a lie!" the governor screamed. he fired the gun again at lanny; then at gill. his mouth quivered with terror. he was an intelligent man; he looked upon the evidence of a fact that overturned everything he believed. in the clamor of a dying city, still throbbing far below his open wall panel, he heard the testimony of the same discord. he lost his rational world in the chaos, and he hadn't the ability to find another.
for a moment the governor stood looking at the half-naked giants he had been unable to kill. then he flung the weapon away and leaped through the open panel into the mechanical clatter of the dying city.
