“Explain it to me,” I asked as I looked wonderingly at Blackana.
“Urge it not, urge it not! Be content to dwell in ignorance!”
“I am here to learn, and I would know what force or power can so well-nigh destroy this wretched center. Tell me the truth. I demand it.”
Then did Blackana move himself in his startling attitudes, as if loath to speak. He rolled his heavy eyes as his discordant voice yielded the unwilling explanation.
“These are the votes that just fell in favor of reform in a campaign on earth. Such votes, under the panoply of prayer, strike more terror to these kingdoms than all else combined, and the most disastrous feature is that they go bounding from the buildings of this level ever downward and work their ruin from kingdom to kingdom, until they have wrought their havoc even to the lowest level. If we only knew the way to break the power of these votes, our comrades would not then dwell in constant dread of what might happen.”
“May you never learn that power, and may the votes of good citizenship ever increase in number until these legislative halls shall be broken to rise no more, and their inmates driven from their secret machinations to the abode prepared for the Devil and his angels.”
Blackana sprang at me in great rage.
“Silence, you contemptible mortal! You have not such liberty of speech here! Why fling insults into the face of one more powerful than yourself?”
“_Ho, ye ten thousand!_” I shouted with all my power, and Blackana fell backward at my very words. Sullen, but cowed, he arose to his feet and took me to the elevators.
“Where next?” he gruffly asked.