"That's the kind of thing I mean," he said aloud. Then he paused. "Are you there, anybody?"
He imagined he heard Luba's voice saying: Yes, Ken. Yes, I'm here. Listening to you.
Imagination was fine but, of course, there was no way for them to get through to him. They were telepathic, but Kenneth J. Malone, he told himself sadly, was not.
"Hello, out there," he went on. "I hope you've been listening so far, because there isn't too much more for me to say.
"Just this: you've wrecked my country, and you've wrecked almost all of the rest of civilization. You've brought my world down around my ears.
"I have every logical reason to hate your guts. By all the evidence I have, you are a group of the worst blackguards who ever existed; by all the evidence, I should be doing everything in my power to exterminate you.
"But I'm not.
"My prescience tells me that what you've been doing is right and necessary. I'm damned if I can see it, but there it is. I just hope you can explain it to me."
XV
Soon, he was in the midst of the countryside. It was, of course, filled with country. It spread around him in the shape of hills, birds, trees, flowers, grass, billboards and other distractions to the passing motorist.