"I'll come back," he called. "It's going to be all right!"
When the copter rose he waved at her, buoyed up unexpectedly by the ring of certainty he had managed to force into his voice. He had a last glimpse of Marta before distance and the morning mists hid her, a small, forlorn figure with raised face staring after him, her belted house-robe fluttering in the wind.
They sank through the ordered vastness of Nyark the first city, into a bustle and rush that was symbolic of the Council's will to restore Nyark—and finally Earth—to their former glory. Heric was led to a quiet chamber where the Council, in their deep crescent of seats behind the Leader's throne, awaited him.
He had seen them before only in newscasts, when it had awed him a little to think that in their hands lay the destiny of a world in rebirth. He was surprised now to feel that their wrinkled parchment faces and thin bodies, hidden under sleeveless blue robes, lent them a futile anonymity rather than the distinction he had expected. Why, he thought, they look like scrawny, earthbound birds.
"Why am I here?" Heric demanded. Rebellion grew in him, roughening his voice. "I have broken no law, nor have I been lax in my overseeing. I protest this adjustment to what you call normalcy."
"Yet you must endure it, Arnol Heric," the Leader said. A rustle of assent whispered through the robed Council. "You should not have defied our messenger. It may be too late now."
Anger swelled Heric's demand. "What do you mean?"
He felt the breath of madness touch him....