I smiled a small and twisted smile. That was the way of officialdom, it seemed—in this world or any other.
And what did it really matter?
Only then, without warning, someone said, "—and these people, Controller: the ones who received thrill-mills from the Kel and kept it secret. What do you plan to do about them?"
Kruze's heavy features grew dark. "What would you have me do—to traitors?" He wheeled like an angry mastiff; shook his fist. "They die, of course! All of them! The very fact of past or present possession of a thrill-mill be punished by summary execution, without trial, as collaboration with the Kel!"
I almost cried out, then, by instinct.
Only that could do no good. The thinking part of my brain knew it. So I stood silent, instead; immobile. This quick wave of approval from Kruze's adulators roused only numb shock in me.
Then the controller's aides moved him on out. The rescue parties followed.
I let them go. For my own part, I couldn't leave. Not quite yet.
The last stragglers disappeared. The echoes died. Aching with weariness, I began my own bleakly purposeful tour of inspection.
A dozen times, I lost my way in the maze of rooms and shafts and intersecting passages. A hundred—a thousand—I came upon strange sights, alien things my human mind could never hope to fathom.