“Where? And how shall we keep him?”
“To the place we’ve prepared. And keep him safe.”
Huvane asked, “Safe? Who knows what is safe? One bribed his guards. One seduced her guards. One dug his way out scratch by scratch. Disappeared, died, dead, gone, mingled off with the myriad of worlds—did one get home, perhaps, to start their legend of the gods in the sky; the legend that never dies through the rise and fall of culture from savagery to ... to ... to Element 109?”
Chelan looked at Jerry Markham, the Terran looked back defiantly as if he were guest instead of captive. “Co-operate,” breathed Chelan.
“I’ll tell you nothing. Force me. I can’t stop that.”
Chelan shook his head sorrowfully. “Extracting what you know would be less than the play of a child,” he said. “No, Terran. We can know what you know in the turn of a dial. What we need is that which you do not know. Laugh? Or is that a sneer? No matter. What you know is worthless. Your problems and your ambitions, both racial and personal, are minor. We know them already. The pattern is repetitive, only some of the names are changed.
“But why? Ah, that we must know. Why are you what you are? Seven times in History Terra has come up from the mud, seven times along the same route. Seven times a history of ten thousand years from savage to savant, from beast to brilliance and always with the same will to do—to do what? To die for what? To fight for what?”
Chelan waved Huvane to take the Terran away.
Huvane said, “He’s locked in air-tight with guards who can be trusted. Now what do we do with him?”