The three men slid along the street, clinging to the shadows. Twice they passed other hunters in flight, but no one spoke, for the enemy sound detectors on the Chapel of the Triangle were sensitive enough to pick up a whisper at a distance of half a mile. Lanny and Gill discarded their moccasins, in order to be more sure of their footing. The moccasins were useless except as symbols of status. Juan Pendillo qualified to give the extra skins to his sons, since before the invasion he had been a Doctor of Philosophy, and the teachers had become the governing force in every treaty area.
For two hours Pendillo and his foster sons walked north. Occasionally they saw enemy spheres overhead, but the ships never came closer. After they reached the coast, the pounding surf formed a protective sound barrier when they talked.
"How far is the San Francisco treaty area?" Gill asked.
"Three hundred miles, more or less," Pendillo replied.
"How many days?" Lanny inquired. His father, like all the older survivors in the settlement, always spoke of distance in terms of miles—a word that was meaningless to the new generation.
Pendillo laughed, with gentle bitterness. "Once, Lanny, we might have made it by car in eight hours. Now?—I don't know. The couriers sometimes do it in a week, when the weather is good. It will take us longer. I won't be able—" He cut himself short. "It's funny, isn't it? In the old days I used to gripe about the traffic; right now I'd give ten years of my life to see a Model-T again."
Gill ground his naked heel into the sand. "The Almost-men took everything from us. But we're not licked. One of these days we'll be strong enough—"
"As strong as their machines?" Lanny asked.
Gill swung toward his brother angrily. "That's Barlow's kind of talk, Lan."
"The weapons and the machines of the Almost-men," Pendillo said, "are more powerful than anything we ever had. Yet we must defeat them; we must make ourselves free again. And we shall; I have no doubt of it. Granted, we have no weapons like theirs, and no chance of building any. We still don't resign ourselves to defeat. The techniques we used in the past failed; then we must find new ones. How? I don't know. That's the problem our generation leaves to yours. Men live by their dreams; without them we are nothing."