The Pool of Fire (Tripods) by Christopher John

Author:Christopher, John
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Published: 2013-09-10T04:00:00+00:00

Six

The Pool of Fire

I do not know what they thought was happening to them, but they plainly failed to work it out. Perhaps they thought it was the Sickness, the Curse of the Skloodzi, operating in a new and more virulent fashion. I suppose the notion of poisoning was something they were incapable of grasping. They had, as we had found with Ruki, an apparently infallible means of sensing anything in their food or drink which could be injurious. Apparently infallible, but not quite. It is hard to be defensive toward a danger which you have never imagined existed.

So they drank, and staggered, and fell; a few at first and then more and more until the streets were littered with their grotesque and monstrous bodies. The slaves moved among them, pitifully at a loss, occasionally trying to rouse them, timid and imploring at the same time. In a plaza where more than a score of Masters were lying, a slave rose from beside one of the fallen, his face streaming tears. He called out, “The Masters are no more. Therefore our lives no longer have a purpose. Brothers, let us go to the Place of Happy Release together.”

Others moved toward him gladly. Fritz said, “I think they would do it, too. We must stop them.”

Mario said, “How? Does it matter, anyway?”

Not answering, Fritz jumped onto a small platform of stone, which was sometimes used by one of the Masters for a kind of meditation they did. He cried, “No, brothers! They are not dead. They sleep. Soon they will wake, and need our care.”

They were irresolute. The one who had urged them before said, “How do you know this?”

“Because my Master told me, before it happened.”

It was a clincher. Slaves might lie to each other, but never about anything relating to the Masters. The idea was unthinkable. Bewildered, but a little less sorrowful, they dispersed.

As soon as it was apparent that the scheme had succeeded, we turned to the second and equally important part of our task. The paralysis, as we knew, was temporary. It might have been possible, I suppose, to kill each Master individually as he lay helpless, but we probably would not find them all in the time . . . quite apart from the fact that it was most unlikely that the slaves would stand idly by while we did it. As long as the Masters were not dead, but only unconscious, the power of the Caps remained.

The answer was to strike at the heart of the City, and wreck it. We knew—it was one of the first things Fritz had discovered—where the machines were that controlled the City’s power: its heat and light and the force that produced this dragging leaden weight under which we labored. We headed in that direction. It was some way off, and Carlos suggested we should use the horseless carriages which carried the Masters about. Fritz vetoed that. Slaves drove the carriages for their Masters, but did not use them otherwise.

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