So it was an evil thing that he must pass on, an evil art, and yet there was the charge and pledge—the charge his long-dead father had put upon him, the pledge that he had made. And something else as well: The nagging feeling that the law was wrong.
However, the laws were never wrong. There was a reason for them all. A reason for the way they lived and for the Ship and how the Ship had come to be and for those who peopled it.
Although, come to think of it, he might not pass the Letter on. He might be the one who would open it, for it said on the outside of the envelope that it was to be opened in emergency. And this, Jon Hoff told himself, might be emergency—when the silence had been broken by the Mutter and the floor became a wall and the wall a floor.
Now there were voices from the other cubicles, frightened voices that cried out and other voices that shrieked with terror, and the thin, high crying of the children.
"Jon," said Mary Hoff, "that was the Mutter. The End will be coming now."
"We do not know," said Jon. "We shall have to wait and see. We do not know the End."
"They say ..." said Mary, and Jon thought that was the way it always was.
They say. They say. They say.
It was spoken; it was not read nor written.