"The blast," Anstruther explained briskly, and immediately strong arms were lifting O'Hara's helpless body. "We have a remedy for that. Don't be afraid, O'Hara. You're safe now, you're free. We who have had to live with Stephen Bryce know what that means. All slaves are blind."
O'Hara asked, "But wasn't my blindness your doing?"
"Yes. But there are blindnesses that don't involve the eyes."
"Mine does."
Anstruther laughed softly. "The physical man. You were always that, O'Hara—always concerned most with the health of your body and doubtful of the health of other men's minds. Forget your eyes, that is nothing," he said, and as he continued speaking, the sound of his voice moved away, and O'Hara realized that it was not Anstruther who was lifting him. He was being lowered now, coming to rest upon a cushioned bunk. Anstruther was saying, "We were not expecting to find you beyond that last wall, O'Hara—it was the Father we expected there. Stephen Bryce," he continued harshly. "And if we had found him—if we had found him we would have no time for you. I am going to bathe your eyes. This will burn some, but if you clench your hands—"
O'Hara felt live coals inside his skull. His spine arched tautly upward from the bunk and whorls of flame shot through that portion of his brain that stored the memories of color—purple, yellow, green and the red of blood. Sweat drenched him. Then the tautness broke and his eyes felt cool again and wet, and he collapsed.
"Can you see now?"
O'Hara opened his eyes. Beside him, hulking nakedly, his apelike body crouched as if to lift O'Hara once again, one of the Sons now held the vial that Anstruther had just passed to him, and behind him were other Sons each bearing the shining tubelike weapon that O'Hara had first seen beyond Emporia—armed Sons, in this, the empty subterranean metropolis of Washington, the danger that the Father had first warned him against, and led by a man equally naked, though frail, rigidly erect, his bright blond beard fringing downward upon his narrow chest, his pale blue eyes made more myopic-seeming by the tiny capillaries that had burst in their irises, a face with an intensity of purpose that made normal strength seem weak, a face to which emotion supplied a look of superior courage, a zealot's face.
"Give me your hand," Anstruther said, and clasped it.
O'Hara sensed the torrent of emotion in that touch.