"I did, but you can't predict those things. Apparently it has started again. See?"
They had reached a rise of ground and could see what was left of the village in a broad valley below them, a great pall of black smoke rising from it sluggishly. Starbuck saw something else a few miles off to the north, but said nothing. It was a long, thin column, gleaming metallically. At this distance he could not be sure, but it looked like a line of Robots.
"Keleher and the others are close by," Starbuck said mechanically. He was not thinking of Keleher. The trouble with this group of Shining Ones was, no one understood Starbuck. Not only were his talents for leadership unappreciated, he was actually made fun of. He'd been sullen ever since his mental rebuff at the hands of Keleher. He'd acted inconsistently. His anger had been a free-floating thing, and he'd very nearly got Diane in trouble for it.
That was ridiculous. The answer seemed obvious enough: if one is not appreciated in a particular place, one should go elsewhere. There was Thomas Burwood, a youngster whose father had been chief before Keleher and who had been killed by Keleher. Burwood almost certainly would join Starbuck. And Diane could be taken by force if necessary.
Starbuck put the stocky man named Gilbert in charge of the column and sought out Burwood. He found the younger man on a fringe of the column, plodding listlessly along.
"Listen, Tom," said Starbuck in a confidential voice. "We've often talked about life among the Robots, but we're letting our years fritter away. What would you do if the opportunity presented itself?"
Like Starbuck himself, Burwood was an over-sized young man given to fits of temperament. "What's the use?" he said. "You can't just walk into the Robot Citadel. They would kill you first and ask questions afterwards."
"No, but you could join Robots in the field. It's done that way most of the time, since the Robots venture forth either to spread the Plague or gain conscripts among the Shining Ones." Starbuck whispered in his best confidential voice, "And, Tom, there's a group of Robots two or three miles from here right now. What do you say to that?"
"Let me think." Burwood frowned. "I don't know. It's one thing to talk about it but another to—"
"Keleher didn't give your father a chance to think, did he? Not when your father was growing old and Keleher knew he could take him. He killed him, struck him down like an animal, don't forget that, Tom."