The first one was a round-shouldered little man with silver spectacles. He kicked Danniels in the pit of the stomach with steel-shod toes. A clean-cut athletic boy grabbed the running teen-ager and ripped the red tunic halfway off. From the pavement Danniels at last isolated the doubt that had been nagging him. His companion wore a tight tee-shirt under the coat. She was a girl.
Danniels saw a heavy shoe aimed at his face but it went far afield. Running feet went past him completely.
He was left alone, unharmed, with only the breath knocked out of him momentarily.
They were closing in on the girl who had picked him up.
This Pack was all men, although there were female and co-ed groups just as vicious. Beating up a girl, Danniels knew, would give an added sexual kick to their usual masochosadism.
They were a Pack. A mob. They were like the soldiers who had hunted him down and had him permanently tagged a Jonah. His men had been looked upon favorably by his society, while the Wolf Pack was so ill-favored it was completely ignored in absolute contempt. But they were the same in the essentials: a mob.
And once again Danniels, who was incapable of harming the smallest living creature, wanted to kill men. But he couldn't.
All his life he had experienced this mad fury of desire and it shamed him. He wanted to destroy men of stupidity, greed and brutality on sight. Any other kind of conflict with them was weak compromise.
At times, he wondered if this atavistic if pro-survival trait had not shamed him so much that he over-compensated for it by violently refusing to take any kind of life. Like all men of his time, he asked himself: how much of my mind is the Broadcasters' and how much me?
If he couldn't destroy, he could defend.