Raise his arm and plunge ... lift it and bring it down, battering, the metal club part of him....
It was Diane who eased the twisted rod from his fingers, soothed him with her words. "It's finished. Easy, Johnny. You've done it."
The place was a shambles. Bank on bank of gutted machinery lay silent there, on a floor strewn with glass, with wire, with filaments, with nameless things which were the brains for a million Robots.
"There's another way out, Johnny. Starbuck took me here. Behind that wall, you—"
She took his hand and they went. The passage was dark and cool and smelled musty, as if air did not circulate very well within it. It was a place for thinking and dreaming of tomorrow. It was a place for realizing you could go back to the hills and find Keleher and his Shining Ones and convince them they should at least look at the City, the City which belonged to them now, to them and DeReggio and his villagers—and all the others. And there must be a coming together of Keleher and DeReggio, with Johnny as mediator, and a realization that the last Plague victim had been smitten and humanity had a long path to travel but could set foot upon it right now, at once.
Outside, it was growing dark, but Johnny could make out the still forms of the Robots, gleaming red with final sunlight, sprawled upon the broken streets. The Shining Ones within the City stalked about furtively in small groups, not yet knowing what it meant to live without their masters. Perhaps in time Keleher and all the others could teach them.
"Hungry?" said Johnny. "We could stop and eat."
"No. You?"
"In a different way."
They followed the last slanting rays of the sun to the western river and the mainland beyond it.