Kandid then felt himself being turned about onto the path. His elbows had gone numb, it seemed to him that they were charred through. He strove to break free and the vice gripped tighter. He hadn't grasped what was to become of him and where he was to be taken, who the Teachers were and what this night work was, but he recalled the most terrible things he had seen: Karl's specter in the midst of the weeping crowd and the armchewer screwing up into a multi-colored knot. He continued to kick the deadling, striking backward in blind desperation, knowing this could never work twice. His foot sank into soft heat, the deadling snorted, and relaxed its grip. Kandid fell flat in the grass, leapt up, turned and cried out - the deadling was advancing on him once more, opening its incredibly long arms. There was nothing to hand, no grass-killer, no ferment, no stick or stone. The squelchy warm earth was giving beneath his feet. Then he remembered and thrust his hand in his blouse; when the deadling loomed above, he struck it with the scalpel somewhere between the eyes, then leaned his whole weight forward, drawing the blade downward to the ground and fell once again.
He lay, cheek pressed to the grass, and gazed at the deadling, as it stood, swaying, its orange carcass slowly swinging open like a suitcase; it stumbled and collapsed flat on its back, flooding the surrounding earth with a thick white fluid, gave a few twitches and lay still. Kandid then got up and wandered off. Along the path. As far as possible from here. He vaguely recalled that he had wanted to wait for somebody, wanted to find something out, there was something he was intending to do. Now all that was unimportant. What was important was to get as far away as possible, though he realized that he would never get away. He wouldn't, and neither would many, many, many another.
Discomfort awakened Pepper, sadness, and an unbearable, as it seemed to him, weight on his mind and all his sense organs. Discomfort reached the pain threshold and he groaned involuntarily as he slowly came to.
The burden on his mind turned out to be despair and exasperation, since the truck was not going to the Mainland; once again it was not going to the Mainland - in fact it wasn't going anywhere. It was standing with its engine switched off, icy and dead, doors open wide. The windshield was covered in trembling droplets, which now and again coalesced and flowed in cold streams. The night beyond the glass was lit up by the dazzling flashes of searchlights and headlamps, nothing else could be seen but these continual flashes that made the eyes ache. Nothing could be heard either and Pepper initially even thought he'd gone deaf only realizing after a while that his ears were oppressed by a steady deep chorus of roaring sirens. He began flailing around the cab striking painfully against levers and projections and his blasted suitcase, tried to scrub the windshield, stuck his head out of one door, then the other. He simply couldn't make out where he was, what sort of a place it was and what was going on. War, he thought, my god, it's war! The searchlights beat into his eyes with malicious pleasure, he could see nothing apart from some large unfamiliar building in which all the windows on all the floors were flashing on and off in unison. He could also see an enormous number of patches of lilac mist.
A monstrous voice calmly pronounced, as if in complete silence: "Attention, attention. All personnel to stand by their posts according to regulation number six hundred and seventy-five point Pegasus omicron three hundred and two directive eight hundred and thirteen, for triumphal reception of padishah without special suite, size of shoe fifty-five. I repeat. Attention, attention. All personnel ..." The searchlights stopped racing about and Pepper was able to make out at last the familiar arch and the legend "Welcome," the main street of the Directorate, the dark cottages lining it and various individuals in underwear standing by them with paraffin lamps in their hands. Then he noticed quite close at hand a line of running men in billowing black capes. These were strung out across the whole width of the street as they ran, towing something strangely bright. Looking more closely, Pepper realized they were dragging something like a cross between a fishing net and one used in volleyball, and at once a cracked voice began screaming by his ear: "Why the truck? Why are you standing here?"
