He wrenched open the switch.
The machine-murmur died. The cavernous chamber stilled until Heric's heart beat loud in the tomblike silence. The Council knelt motionless, like even rows of cold statuary.
He turned from them and went through the hushed room and out into the streets of Nyark the first city. Silence lay before him. Vehicles stood unpowered, drivers frozen. In the shops the crowds hovered motionless like static, three-dimensional shadows.
He went swiftly through the dead city with his face turned toward the hills. The silence bore him down with an implacable weight, and the desire to escape it grew upon him until he found himself running, dodging wildly in and out among stalled vehicles and frozen pedestrians.
He reached the city's edge, but the sun and wind of open country did not dispel his oppression. The sun was as silent as the city, and the breeze was a drear lament in his ears. Loneliness crept at his heels like a black, timorous hound; he felt as if he were the only living thing in a dead and forgotten world. Panic claimed him.
It was noon when he reached his cottage. He crawled up the verandah steps, spent and panting, and found the silence with him here even in his last retreat.
"Marta!" he croaked. He pulled himself erect, clutching at the arched doorway for support.
"Marta!"
He had been so sure that there would be other men. He had been able to fend off madness back there on the plain, only because he had known that Marta was here waiting for him....
He found her standing in the silent living room, her still face turned toward the door through which he must come when he returned. She wore the clinging, colorful gown he had liked best, and her bright, fair hair was carefully arranged as if she were on the point of going out.