Mikah looked in a careful circle and saw only the two of them and the wakening Ijale. "He seems to have gone. He has proven his untrustworthiness and in the future we will not allow him to stand guard."
Jason raged, drew his foot back for a kick in the local reflex then realized he had no time for such indulgences and dived for the steamobile. The firelighter worked at the first shot, for a rare change, and he lit the boiler. It roared merrily but when he tapped the indicator he saw the fuel was almost gone. There would be enough left in the last jug to take them to safety before whatever trouble Snarbi was planning arrived. But the jug was gone.
"That tears it," Jason said resignedly after a hectic search of the caroj and the surrounding plain. The water-of-power had vanished with Snarbi who, afraid as he was of the steam engine, apparently knew enough from observing Jason fueling the thing that it could not move without the vital liquid. An empty feeling of resignation had replaced Jason's first rage: he should have known better than to trust Mikah with anything, particularly when it involved an ethical point. He stared at the man, now calmly eating a bit of cold roast and marveled at the unruffled calm. "This doesn't bother you, the fact that you have condemned us all to slavery again?"
"I did what was right, I had no other choice. We must live as moral creatures or sink to the level of the animals."
"But when you live with people who behave like animals—how do you survive?
"You live as they do—as you do, Jason," he said with majestic judgment, "twisting and turning with fear and unable to avoid your fate no matter how you squirm. Or you live as I have done, as a man of conviction, knowing what is right and not letting your head be turned by the petty needs of the day. And if one lives this way one can die happy."
"Then die happy!" Jason snarled and reached for his sword, but settled back again glumly before he picked it up. "To think that I ever thought I could teach you anything about the reality of existence here when you have never experienced reality before nor ever will until the day you die. You carry your own attitudes, which are your reality, around with you all the time, and they are more solid to you than this ground we are sitting upon."
"For once we are in agreement, Jason. I have tried to open your eyes to the true light, but you turn away and will not see. You ignore the Eternal Law for the exigencies of the moment and are, therefore, damned."
The pressure indicator on the boiler hissed and popped out, but the fuel level was at the absolute bottom.
"Grab some food for breakfast, Ijale," Jason said, "and get away from this machine. The fuel is gone and it's finished."