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said. That s your affair your own lives. But the korium isn t yours. It
belongs to the Keep people. They made it and they own it or should.
You ve no right to decide whether they should live and die.
We are the people, Zachariah said.
You lie, Sam said. What do you know about us? You re gods. You
don t know a thing about the common people, who have to work blindly
for reward we ll never lay our hands on. But you ll get those rewards.
You ll get them by waiting and doing nothing, while the short-termers
work and have children and die and their children do the same. You can
wait to colonize landside, because you ll live long enough to walk under
the stars and the sun and know what it was like on Earth in the old days.
You ll go out in ships to the planets. You ll get the rewards. But what
about us? We ll die, and our children will die, and our children s children
sweating to build a pyramid we ll never see complete. You re not the
people! His voice raised in a shout. You re not even human! You re
Immortals!
We rule by will of the people. Because we re best qualified.
Qualified? Sam asked, and then, Where is Blaze Harker?
Not in Delaware Keep at the moment
Tight beam, Sam said.
There was a pause. Then Zachariah made a gesture. All over the
Keeps the screens dimmed and went blank. Only two visors carried the
conversation now Sam s, and the Harkers .
Sam, too, had adjusted to the private tight beam. He said: I know
where Blaze Harker is. I ve got telepictures of him. I can broadcast them,
and you know what that will do to Harker prestige if the people learn that
an Immortal can go insane.
Sam heard signals begin to click behind him. Automatically he trans-
lated. Kedre Walton entering Harker grounds Almost time.
The signals suddenly began again. Mystified, Sam heard them say,
Listen to the Keeps! Tune back! Listen!
He didn t want to. This distraction was something he hadn t counted
on. There was so much depending on his own split-second timing just
now, and on chance and luck if anything went wrong he was ruined. He
didn t want to deflect his attention for a single instant from this flood of
pressure he was pouring on the Harkers. But he switched his private
screen on briefly and then for a moment stood tense, listening.
Down there in the Keeps the screens were blank. The people had been
cut off from this fascinating and vital debate just at the moment when it
was reaching a climax.
And the people didn t like it.
A low roll of anger was rising from the packed thousands. The crowd
was shifting uneasily, restlessly, surging in little eddies around the screens
as if pressing closer could make the image come back. And the murmur of
their anger deepened as the seconds ticked by. Voices rose in thin shouts
now and then the imperative commands of the mob. They would have
to be answered. Quickly very quickly.
Sam whirled to the tight beam where the Harkers waited. From their
Council Room came a distant echo of that same rising murmur of anger.
They, too, were watching the temper of the crowds. They, too, knew time
was going too fast. Sam grinned. It was perfect. It couldn t be better. He
had them on the run now, whether they had realized it yet or not. For
until this moment no Immortal had ever known such pressure. They
weren t used to coping with it. And Sam had lived under pressure all his
life. He was adjusted to fast thinking. Now if he could only talk fast
enough
Immortal prestige! he said rapidly into their private beam. You ve
lost all touch with human beings. What do you know about human
emotions, you Immortals? Faith loyalty do they look so different after
a few hundred years? I m glad I m a short-termer!
* * *
Zachariah gave him a bewildered look as Sam paused for breath. This
didn t ring quite true, and Zachariah was quick to hear the false note. It
was all very well to orate when the mob was listening, but these high,
abstract things were irrelevant on the private beam. False heroics were for
the small minds of the crowd, you could all but hear him thinking. Or for
a small mind here, clouded and confused
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