The screen above the dais now glowed. And when the brilliant light adjusted into patterns, O'Hara saw the glittering corridor outside the Guild, the hall of the Sons at Emporia. The shambling naked tens of thousands of the masses passed before his eyes, as aimless as he'd seen them when he had been there, the women with their babies in their arms, the nude and hairless apelike men, feeding by thousands at the photosynthetron troughs, sleeping by thousands in the wide-bunked slumber halls—a mass of life as purposeless as maggots, living and devouring.
"The Sons again have gone within the Guild," the Father said. "And now I touch this key—"
Above the corridors of Emporia, slots opened in the ceilings and from them poured a tidelike wave of palely amber liquid, cascading down upon the swarming masses, engulfing them, yet as O'Hara watched, those caught up in the tide were vanishing—not sinking down, but actually vanishing, while those who fled in screaming panic, milling as a scalded colony of ants might do, leaping above the fallen bodies of those trampled in the crush, when once touched by the amber tide jerked back from it, but where an arm had been, a leg, a head, was nothing.
"Dissolved," the Father said. "The Deluge is a caustic solution that will cleanse Emporia of all filth, all population except those in the Guild—all that should not endure. Observe—this key—the solution now is pouring down through slots beneath the corridor, draining into that pipe within the Tube which carries it—and them, for they are only liquid now—into the Pits of Yellowstone, the continental sewerage plant, where the caustic is decanted and restored to tanks for future use. You see approximately three hundred thousand of these—call them men!—disappearing now, all except the Sons. Observe the screen—it flashes now inside the Guild, and this is even more adroit."
The pattern changed, and when it reshaped, O'Hara recognized the vast hall of the Sons, and saw them staring as they knelt, obeisant as they watched the metal screen within their own hall. That screen, inside the Guild, was glowing now, the brilliance of the sun upon its surface and a booming voice exhorting them—the Father's voice as O'Hara had first heard it in Emporia.
"That voice," the Father said, "my own, also is automatic, the electronic impulse which released the Deluge also starting the voice. All these details were co-ordinated in the beginning and are now effected through batteries of integrocalculators here in Washington. The single touch of a key sets in motion the chain of events, another key modifies it or ends it—although at all times I can shift these operations to manual and direct them step by step. Suppose now we go to one of the slumber chambers, distant from the heart of Emporia, where the Deluge has only now begun. You will see them asleep or in their more intimate existence, and you will realize how really painless all this is."
"No, Father," said O'Hara. "No, Stephen Bryce. No more."
"Compassion, O'Hara?"
"Disgust. Loathing."
"For me. I can understand that. When I was younger there were times when I felt it too. But how else can the problem of overpopulation be solved, O'Hara?"