At last he got a bucket of cold and almost clean water, filled the big gourd and carried it back to the one-room hut. The morning that had begun badly was getting worse; his mother's limp was painful to see; she must have had a hard night. Bent and gray and as juiceless as the grass of their beds, she slept more lightly and fretfully with every passing month. Many years before a squire had ridden her down in the lanes of Dolfya Town, as she scurried out of the path of his great stallion, and her broken leg had mended crookedly. A few hours on the mink-covered bed crippled her up so that moving was an agony.
With the impious brain at the center of his skull—Revel had long before decided that he had a number of brains, one obedient, one rebellious, one dull, one keen and inquisitive, and so on—with the impious brain he now cursed the gods and the gentry and the priests, and everyone above the ruck who preyed on them and made their lives so stinking awful. If he had thought then of killing a god, the idea would have seemed pleasant indeed. But quite impossible, of course, for a man of the ruck did not touch a god, much less slay one.
He did not think of such a thing, but cursed the gods briefly and then turned off his impious brain and began to wolf down his food. He paid no attention to what he ate—it was the same old bread of wild barley seeds, the same old boiled rabbit.
When he finished, he glanced at his mother, feeling sorry for her, wishing that she would go to the shebeens with him and have at least a little happiness before she died. He wondered if she had ever known any joy, any hope such as he had in drunken flashes now and then of belief that life might some day be better for the ruck. He shook his head, grabbed his miner's pick, booted his brother in the ribs to waken him, and left the miserable hut to walk to the mine for his day's work.
The day was brightening, and above him in concentric circles to the horizon and beyond hovered the eternal red and blue buttons. He looked up grimly. Always there, in all the spoken history of man, stretched above the world to keep watch on every action of the ruck. The buttons were full of gods, omnipotent, omnipresent.
The mine was a mile from his hut, which lay on the outskirts of Dolfya. It was halfway down a long valley, a gut between hills pitted with many other mines. There coal was dug for the gentry and the priests. He walked up to the entrance, gave his name telepathically to the god-guard at the top of the shaft, and went down the ladders until he'd reached his level. Another god passed him there, its aura of energy just touching his skin and tingling it into small bumps.
Shutting off the thoughts of his various brains from any probing mind that might be eavesdropping, he said to himself, Always, always they're near a man! You go out of your hut and there's a god, a big golden globe hanging in the air shoving its tentacles at you and reading your mind. You come down the mine shaft and every hundred feet or so you see the yellow luminosity. Why can't they leave us alone! Why can't they stick to their temples, and exact their worship on Orbsday, instead of all week long, all day long, every day in the year!
He came to his work place, a dead-end tunnel. Jerran was there before him, as usual. Revel grinned at him. Jerran was a runty wisp of a man, with a face the color of old straw, and he had been Revel's friend since the day he came to the mine from distant Hakes Town by the sea. A wonderful drinking companion, Jerran, but he wouldn't brawl ... strange! He was forever pulling Revel out of fights and trying to teach him serenity.
As Revel greeted him, he involuntarily glanced at the end of the tunnel. There, behind a carefully casual erection of boulders, lay their secret cave. They'd broken into it the morning before, and after no more than a hasty glimpse of unknown wonders, and a check to see that no globes were in sight, they'd walled up the opening and begun to dig along the shaft's sides. Revel wasn't quite sure why he had followed Jerran's lead in keeping it secret, but the brain which had decided to do it must be the rebellious one. All secrets were taboo to the ruck, who were required to report all finds to the gentry or the god-guards.