"He doesn't know, yet. His men are mopping up. Many of the free planters have barricaded themselves in their houses."
Joel clenched his fists. He stared at the circle of kindly troubled faces.
"The Unfit must be wiped out!" His voice trembled with suppressed fury. "Don't you know what it will mean to have homicidal maniacs, the mentally unbalanced, in power?"
The Ganelons gave him a pitying look. "My son," interposed the old man who'd freed him, "as you say, they should be exterminated. They are like the nigel trees—senseless brutes with an instinct to kill."
"Then why don't you stop them?"
"We can't."
"You can't!" said Joel. The words were like a blow to his solar plexus. "You can't...."
"We are not a numerous people," the old Ganelon explained softly. "Moreover we have a repugnance towards killing that amounts to a psychological block...."
"But you started the attack!"
"No. It was someone else who ordered the attack, someone else who planned the strategy. We went along to try to stop the bloodshed. But it was useless. We had less control over them than we have over the nigel trees."