go out of your hut and there's a god, a big golden globe hanging in the air shoving its tentacles at you and reading your mind. You come down the mine shaft and every hundred feet or so you see the yellow luminosity. Why can't they leave us alone! Why can't they stick to their temples, and exact their worship on Orbsday, instead of all week long, all day long, every day in the year!

He came to his work place, a dead-end tunnel. Jerran was there before him, as usual. Revel grinned at him. Jerran was a runty wisp of a man, with a face the color of old straw, and he had been Revel's friend since the day he came to the mine from distant Hakes Town by the sea. A wonderful drinking companion, Jerran, but he wouldn't brawl ... strange! He was forever pulling Revel out of fights and trying to teach him serenity.

As Revel greeted him, he involuntarily glanced at the end of the tunnel. There, behind a carefully casual erection of boulders, lay their secret cave. They'd broken into it the morning before, and after no more than a hasty glimpse of unknown wonders, and a check to see that no globes were in sight, they'd walled up the opening and begun to dig along the shaft's sides. Revel wasn't quite sure why he had followed Jerran's lead in keeping it secret, but the brain which had decided to do it must be the rebellious one. All secrets were taboo to the ruck, who were required to report all finds to the gentry or the god-guards.

Now a globe came drifting down the corridor, and Revel got quickly to work, prying coal from a vein with his pick. The thing passed him, flicking his mind lightly with its own, and went on to the end of the tunnel. He watched it from the tail of his eye. Its glow brightened with interest; it shifted back and forth before the rampart of rocks.

They hadn't kept a tight enough check on their excitement yesterday! The globes could sense emotions long after the man who'd had them left a spot, and if the emotion were anger or grief or strong excitement, the globes could detect their residue as much as forty-eight hours later.

The thing floated back to them, briskly now, and ordered Revel telepathically to pull down some of the rocks at the end.

He eyed it coolly, his various brains walled with the protective screen that he had learned to erect between his thoughts and the outside world. This screen was made of shallow ideas, humdrum speculations on prosaic things—the last woman he'd had, the good feeling he got from working this rich vein of coal after some days of poor luck, even (to make the god think it was hearing secret desires) a wish that he might taste the wine that the gentry drank. He could throw up the screen and forget it, using his core of brains for serious plans.

A dozen rocks displaced, he thought, and we're doomed. For not telling the gods about the cave, he and Jerran would be given to the squires for the next big hunt.

So, without much hope of living through the next minute, but believing it was the only thing he could do now, he shoved Jerran to one side, raised his pick and slammed it with all his might into the center of the small, gold, eight-tentacled sphere.

And Revel had killed a god!

The feel of the pick slashing through it told him that: it was like hitting an overripe melon. The globe recoiled, dragged itself off the pick, and sank toward the floor, wobbling and dripping yellow ooze, with its aura of energy fading quickly into air. Jerran said quietly, "No others in sight. We're lucky!" and began to make a hole in a pile of discarded rocks. "Help me hide it, Revel."

"You can't hide it," he said dully. "They're telepathic, after all. It must have signaled its consorts."

"They can't hear or send messages through rock," said Jerran, working away. Revel automatically started to help him.

"How do you know?"

"We've proved it."

Revel heard the phrase, wondered who "we" might be; but so much had happened in the last seconds that he did not question Jerran. He couldn't absorb all the shattering facts. A man could not only touch a god, he could murder it! The gods were not all-powerful, for they could not perform telepathy if rock were in the way. Truly it was a morning of wonders. The world was falling around him.

He stared at the limp corpse of the globe. The tentacles were already shriveling up, the emanation of energy that surrounded the living orbs was gone. He bent, sniffed; no odor. He peered at it keenly, in the soft blue light of the mine's lanterns, then straightened.

A hand fell on his shoulder.

He spun on one heel, the pick arcing round to gut whoever was behind him. He had a glimpse of a short red beard and a popping walleye, and stopped his whirl by an instantaneous checking of his whole muscular system. The pick's point, still splattered with god's gore, was nudging his brother's belly.

"Nobody could have halted such a swing but you, Revel," said Rack absently. His good eye, ice blue and sharp as a bone needle, was fixed on the dead globe. "What happened?"

"An accident," said Jerran. "The god interposed itself between your brother's pick and the coal."

"That's right," said Revel. He had been lying to his brother for years, but he never grew reconciled to it; still, Rack was a man with but one brain, and that one servile and obedient to every whim of the gentry, the priests, the gods. So he had to be lied to.

Rack brought his gaze to Revel's tense face. "I got in the way of your pick," he said heavily. "You have the keenest nerves, the strongest body in the mines. This was no accident."

Revel began to grow cold in the head and the bowels. If Rack was convinced that he'd slain the god on purpose, then he'd report him. The religion that held the world so tightly was greater than any family bonds. He looked up at Rack. The man was a giant towering four inches over Revel's six feet one, and sixty pounds heavier. Rack's eyes were blue and white, Revel's lustrous brown; the elder's hair and beard were flame-colored, the younger had a sleek chocolate-brown thatch with a hint of rich black in its sheen, and was clean-shaven.

I'd hate to kill you, big man, thought Revel, but if I must, to save my neck, I will.

Jerran thrust his pick under the flaccid corpse and tossed it with one quick motion into the hole. He piled rocks on it, as Revel stamped the yellow ichor out thin and stringy, spread rock dust and jetty coal fragments over it till no sign of the murder remained.

"I'll report it," said Rack, apparently making up his mind.

"Then I'll say you did it," snapped Jerran, turning on him like a mouse baiting a bear. "What chance would you stand in the temple against me, whose cousin serves in the mansion of Ewyo of Dolfya?"

It was true, Jerran was slightly higher in the ruck than the brothers, being related to a servant of the gentry. Revel hoped Rack would be scared off by the threat. He had become perfectly cold now and could in the blinking of an eyelash bury his pick in Rack's head, but he didn't want to do it.

When Rack said nothing, Revel spoke. "Brother, agree to hold your tongue, or by Orb, I'll cut you down where you stand!"

Rack glanced at his own pick. "You could do it," he acknowledged. "You're fast enough. All right. I promise." He turned to his work stolidly; only Revel could see that he was blazing with anger.

The three began to dig coal from the wall. Revel kept glancing at the small Jerran. What was there to the man that he had never suspected? How did he know that globes were stymied by rock? Why had he taken the death of the god so lightly?

What was Jerran, anyhow?

CHAPTER II