He had noted that much of it had regained a measure of fertility. There was life now—some of it his own meat lizards who had wandered across the river and out of his control. And he had even seen some of the escaped pseudomen slinking through the scrub growth and making their crudely primitive camps.
“Savages!” he told himself. “Mere animals. And one can’t do a thing about them, so long as they let that dead area persist.”
Eventually, the scholars had reported, the dead areas would diminish and fade from existence. He smiled bitterly. Here was a nice evasion—a neat excuse for avoiding study and possible, dangerous research.
So long as those nulls remained, they would be sources of constant loss of the responsible Master Protectors, and would thus threaten the very foundations of the Commonwealth.
Possibly, he should— He shook his head.
No, he thought, this was impractical. Parasight was worthless beyond the borders of the null. No surrogate could penetrate it and no weapon would operate within it. It would be most unsafe for any true man to enter. There, one would be subject to gross, physical attack and unable to make proper defense against it.
Certainly, the northern null was no place for him to go. Only the pseudomen could possibly tolerate the conditions to be found there, and thus, there they had found haven and were temporarily supreme.
Besides, this matter was the responsibility of the Council of Controllers and the scholars they paid so highly.
He concentrated on the crystal, shifting the view to scan toward the nearest village.
Suddenly, he sat forward in his chair. A herd of saurians was slowly [p 17] drifting toward one of the arms the null had thrust out. Shortly, they would have ambled into a stream and beyond, out of all possible control. Perhaps they might wander for years in the wastelands. Perhaps they and their increase might furnish meat for the pseudomen who lurked inside the swirling blankness.