"Seelahs, m'fweh," warned Mapfarity. "If you alarm the other guards, you will embarrass them. They will be forced to do their duty and recapture you. And the Jail-breaker would be reprimanded because he had fallen down on his job. He might even get a demotion."
Rastignac was so upset that his Skin, reacting to the negative fields racing over the Skin and the hormone imbalance of his blood, writhed away from his back.
"What are we, a bunch children playing war?"
Mapfarity growled, "We are all God's children, and we mustn't hurt anyone if we can help it."
"Mapfarity, you eat meat!"
"Voo zavf w'zaw m'fweh," admitted the Giant. "But it is the flesh of unintelligent creatures. I have not yet shed the blood of any being that can talk with the tongue of Man."
Rastignac snorted and said, "If you stick with me you will some day do that, m'fweh Mapfarity. There is no other course. It is inevitable."
"Nature spare me the day! But if it comes it will find Mapfarity unafraid. They do not call me Giant for nothing."
Rastignac sighed and walked ahead. Sometimes he wondered if the members of his underground—or anybody else for that matter—ever realized the grim conclusions formed by the Philosophy of Violence.
The Amphibians, he was sure, did. And they were doing something positive about it. But it was the Amphibians who had driven Rastignac to adopt a Philosophy of Violence.