Arnild's numbness was wearing off. He understood now.
"The adaptability of mankind.” he said.
"Of course. The ability — given enough time — to adapt to almost any extreme of environment. This is a perfect example. A cut-off population with no history, no written language — just the desire to survive. Every few years unspeakable creatures drop out of the sky and steal their children. They try running away, but there is no place to run. They build boats, but there is no place to sail to. Nothing works…"
"Until one bright boy digs a hole, covers it up and hides his family in it. And finds out it works."
"The beginning," Commander Stane nodded. "The idea spreads, the tunnels get deeper and more elaborate. The Slavers would try to dig them out — so they started building defenses. This went on — until the slaves finally won.
"This might very well have been the first planet to rebel successfully against the Greater Slavocracy. They couldn't be dug out. Poison gas would just kill them and they had no value dead. Machines sent after them were trapped like our Eyes. And men who were foolish enough to go down…" He couldn't finish the sentence, Dall's body was stronger evidence than words could ever be.
"But the hatred?" Arnild asked. "The way the girl killed herself rather than be taken."
"The tunnels became a religion," Stane told him. "They had to be, to be kept in operation and repair during the long gap of years between visits by the Slavers. The children had to be taught that the demons come from the skies and salvation lies below. The opposite of the old Earth religions. Hatred and fear were firmly implanted so everyone, no matter how young, would know what to do if a ship appeared. There must be entrances everywhere. Seconds after a ship is sighted the population can vanish underground. They knew we were Slavers since only demons come from the sky.
"Dall must have guessed part of this. Only he thought he could reason with them, explain that the Slavers were gone and that they didn't have to hide anymore. That good men come from the skies. But that's heresy, and by itself would be enough to get him killed. If they even bothered to listen."
They were gentle when they carried Dall the Younger back to his ship.
"It is going to be some job trying to convince these people of the truth," Arnild said when they paused for a moment to rest. "I still don't understand, though, why the Slavers wanted to blow the planet up."
"There too, we were looking for too complex a motive," Commander Stane said. "Why does a conquering army blow up buildings and destroy monuments when it is forced to retreat? Just frustration and anger, old human emotions. If I can't have it, you can't either. This planet must have annoyed the Slavers for years. A successful rebellion that they couldn't put down. They kept trying to capture the rebels since they were incapable of admitting defeat at the hands of slaves. When they knew their war was lost, destruction of this planet was a happy vent for their emotions. I noticed you feeling the same way yourself when you saw Dall's body. It's a human reaction."
They were both old soldiers, so they didn't show their emotions too much when they put Dall's corpse into the special chamber and readied the ship for takeoff.
But they were old men as well, much older since they had come to the planet, and they moved now with old men's stiffness.
"Tell me how the world ended, Grandfather, won't you please?" the boy pleaded, looking up at the seamed face of the old man sitting next to him on the trunk of the fallen tree.
"I've told you often enough," the old man said, dozing a bit in the warm sun. "I bet you'd rather hear about the old trains. They used to—"
"The world, Grandfather. Tell me how it ended, how everything went bust."
The old man sighed and scratched a bit on his thigh, defeated by the obstinacy of the very young. "You shouldn't say that it ended, Andy."
"That's what you always say."
"What I always say is that the world as we knew it ended. A drastic upheaval. Death, destruction, and chaos, murder, raping, and looting."
Andy squirmed with happiness on the other end of the log. This was always the best part.
"And blood and terror, Grandfather, don't forget that."
"It was all of that, too. And it was all because of Alexander Partagas Scobie, cursed be his evil name."
"Did you ever meet him, Grandfather?" Andy asked, knowing all the cues.
"Yes, I saw Scobie. He passed just as close to me as you're sitting now, even stopped to talk to me. I was polite to him. Polite! If I knew then what I know now. . There were factories then. I was an honest working man in the factory and ran a hydraulic press. Instead of 'Yes, Doctor Scobie, Thank you, Doctor Scobie,' I should have fed him into my hydraulic press, that's what I should have done."
"What's a hyndraulie press?"
