'Show us this violence,' Schruille said.

'No,' Calapine said. 'I will take Max's word for it.'

'Do you doubt Max?' Nourse asked.

'No doubts,' Schruille said. 'But I will see this violence.'

'How can you?' Calapine asked.

'Leave if you wish,' Schruille said. He measured out his words: 'I... will... see... this... violence.' He looked at Allgood. 'Max?'

Allgood swallowed. This was a development he had not anticipated.

'It happened,' Nourse said. 'We know that, Schruille.' 'Of course it happened,' Schruille said. 'I saw the mark where it was edited out of our channels. Violence. Now, I wish to bypass the safety valve which protects our sensitivities.' He snorted. 'Sensitivities!'

Nourse stared at him, noting that all traces of a whine had gone from Schruille's voice.

Sehruille looked up at the scanners, saw that many were winking off. He was disgusting even the Cynics, no doubt. A few remained, though.

Will they stay through to the end? he wondered.

'Show the violence. Max,' Schruille ordered.

Allgood shrugged.

Nourse swiveled his throne around, putting his back to the screen, Calapine put her hands over her eyes.

'As you command,' Allgood said. His face vanished from the screen, was replaced by a high view looking down into a tiny square between windowless buildings. Two tiny figures walked around a fountain in the square. They stopped and a close-up showed the faces - Potter and an unknown, a strange-looking man with frighteningly cold eyes.

Again, the long view - two other men emerging from an alley carrying paper-wrapped packages. Behind them trooped a file of children with adult monitor in teacher's uniform.

Abruptly, Potter was lurching, pushing through the children.

His companion was running the other way around the fountain.

Schruille risked a glance at Calapine, caught her peeking between her fingers.

A shrill, piercing cry from the screen, brought his attention jerking back.

Potters' companion had become a thing of horror, clothing fallen away, a milky bulb arising from his chest to flare with brilliant light.

The screen went blank, came alive again to a view from a slightly different angle.

A quick glance showed that Calapine had dropped all pretense of hiding her eyes, was staring at the screen. Nourse, too, watched through his shoulder prism.

Another blaze of light leaped from the figure in the screen.

Again the scene went blank.

'It's a Cyborg,' Schruille said. 'Know that as you watch.'

Again, the scene came alive from a different angle and this time from very high. The action in the plasmeld canyon was reduced to a movement of midges, but there was no difficulty in finding the center of violence. Lancets of blazing light leaped upward from a lurching figure in the square. Aircars exploded and fell from the sky in pieces.

One Security vehicle plummeted in behind the Cyborg. A pulsing beam of coherent light emerged from it to cut a smoking furrow down the side of a building. The Cyborg whirled, lifted a hand from which a blinding blue finger seemed to extend into infinity. The finger met the diving car, split it in half., One half hit a building, ricocheted and smashed into the Cyborg.

A ball of yellow brilliance took shape in the square. In a second, a reverberating explosion shook the scene.

Schruille looked up to find the circle of watching scanners complete, every lensed eye blazing red.

Calapine cleared her throat. 'Potter went into that building on the right.'

'Is that all you can say?' Schruille asked.

Nourse swiveled his throne, glared at Schruille.

'Was it not interesting?' Schruille asked. 'Interesting?' Nourse demanded.

'It is called warfare,' Schruille said.

Allgood's face reappeared on the screen, looking up at them with a veiled intensity.

He's naturally curious at our reaction, Schruille thought.

'Do you know of our weapons. Max?' Schruille asked.

'This talk of weapons and violence disgusts me,' Nourse said. 'What is the good of this?'

'Why do we have weapons if they were not intended for use?' Schruille asked. 'Do you know the answer. Max?'

'I know of your weapons,' Allgood said. They are the ultimate safeguard for your persons.'

'Of course we have weapons!' Nourse shouted. 'But why must we-'

'Nourse, you demean yourself,' Calapine said.

Nourse pushed himself back in his throne, hands gripping the arms. 'Demean myself!'

'Let us review this new development,' Schruille said. 'Cyborgs we knew existed. They have eluded us consistently. Thus, they control computer editing channels and have sympathy among the Folk. Thus, we see, they have an Action Arm which can sacrifice... I say sacrifice a member for the good of the whole.'

Nourse stared at him, wide-eyed, drinking the words.

'And we,' Schruille said, 'we had forgotten how to be thoroughly brutal.'

'Aaaah!' Nourse barked.

'If you injure a man with a weapon,' Schruille said, 'which is the responsible party - the weapon or the one who wields it?'

'Explain yourself,' Calapine whispered.

Schruille pointed to Allgood in the screen. 'There is our weapon. We've wielded it times without number until it learned to wield itself. We've not forgotten how to be brutal, we've merely forgotten that we are brutal.'

'What rot!' Nourse said.

'Look,' Schruille said. He pointed up to the watching scanners, every one of them alive. 'There's my evidence,' Schruille said.'When have so many watched in the globe?'

A few of the lights began to wink out, but came back as the channels were taken over by other watchers.

Allgood watching from the screen felt the thrill of complete fascination. A tight sensation in his chest prevented deep breaths, but he ignored it. The Optimen facing violence! After a lifetime playing with euphemisms, Allgood found the thought of this almost unacceptable. It had been so swift. But then these were the liveforevers, the people who could not fail. He wondered then at the thoughts which raced through their minds.

Schruille, the usually silent and watchful, looked down at Allgood and said, 'Who else has eluded us. Max?'

Allgood found himself unable to speak.

The Durants are missing,' Schruille said. 'Svengaard has not been found. Who else?'

'No one, Schruille. No one.'

'We want them captured,' Schruille said.

'Of course, Schruille.'

'Alive,' Calapine said.

'Alive, Calapine?' Allgood asked.

'If it's possible,' Schruille said. Allgood nodded. 'I obey, Schruille.'

'You may get back to your work now,' Schruille said.

The screen went blank.

Schruille busied himself with the controls in the arm of his throne.

'What're you doing?' Nourse demanded and he heard the petulance in his own voice, despising.

'I remove the censors which excluded violence from our eyes except as a remote datum,' Schruille said. 'It is time we observed the reality of our land.'

Nourse sighed. 'If you feel it's necessary.'

'I know it's necessary.'

'Most interesting,' Calapine said.

Nourse looked at her. 'What do you find interesting in this obscenity?'

This exhilaration I feel,' she said. 'It's most interesting.'

Nourse whirled away from her, glared at Schruille. He could see now that there definitely was a skin blemish on Schruille's face - beside his nose. Twelve

TO SVENGAARD, raised in the ordered world of the Optimen, the idea that they were fallible came as heresy. He tried to put it out of his mind and his ears. To be fallible was to be subject to death. Only the lower orders suffered thus. Not the Optimen. How could they be fallible?

He knew the surgeon sitting across from him in the pale dawn light that filtered through narrow slots in a domed ceiling. The man was Toure Igan, one of Central's surgical elite, a person to whom only the most delicate genetico-medical problems were posed.

The room they occupied was a tight little space stolen between the walls of an air-system cap servicing the subterranean warrens of the Cascade Complex. Svengaard sat in a comfortable chair, but his arms and legs were bound. Other people were using the space, crowding past the little table where Igan sat. The people carried oddly shaped packages. For the most part they ignored Igan and his companion.

Svengaard studied the dark, intense features of the Central surgeon. Crease lines in the man's face betrayed the beginning of enzymic failure. He was starting to age. But the eyes were the blue of a summer sky and still young.

'You must choose sides,' Igan had said.

Svengaard allowed his attention to wander. A man passed carrying a golden metallic ball. From one of his pockets protruded a short silver chain on which dangled a breeder fetish in the shape of a lingam.

'You must answer,' Igan said.

Svengaard looked at the wall beside him - plasmeld, the inevitable plasmeld. The space stank of disinfectants and the ersatz-garden effect of air purifier perfumes.

People continued to pass through the narrow room. The sameness of their garments began to weigh on Svengaard. Who were these people? That they were members of the Underground, that was obvious. But who were they?

A woman touched him, crowding past. Svengaard looked up into a white smile in a black face, recognized a Zeek female, a face like Potter's but the skin darker... a surgical mistake. She wore a bracelet of human hair on her right wrist. It was blonde hair. Svengaard stared at the bracelet until the woman rounded the curve of the room out of his sight.

'It's open battle now,' Igan said. 'You must believe me. Your own life depends on it.'

My own life? Svengaard wondered. He tried to think about his own life, identify it. He had a tertiary wife, little more than a playmate, a woman like himself whose every request for a breeder permit had been denied. For a moment, he couldn't picture her face, lost the shape of it in memories of previous wives and playmates.

She isn't my life, he thought. Who is my life?

He was conscious of a fatigue that went to the bone, and a hangover from the narcotics his captors had administered during the night. He remembered the hands seizing him, that gasping look into a wall that could not be a door but was, the lighted space beyond. And he remembered awakening here with Igan across from him.

'I've held nothing back,' Igan said. 'I've told you everything. Potter barely escaped with his life. The order's already out to get you. Your computer nurse is dead. Many people have died. More will die. They have to be sure, don't you understand? They can leave nothing to chance.'

What is my life? Svengaard asked himself. And he thought now about his comfortable apartment, the artifacts and entertainment reels, the reference works, his friends, the safely ordinary routine of his position.

'But where would I go?' Svengaard asked.

'A place has been prepared.'

'No place is safe from them, Svengaard said. In saying this, he sensed for the first time the depth of his own resentment against the Optimen.

'Many places are safe,' Igan said. 'They merely pretend to supersensual perception. Their real powers lie in machines and instruments, the secret surveillance. But machines and instruments can be twisted to other purposes. And the Optimen depend on Folk to do their violence.'

Svengaard shook his head. This is all nonsense.'

'Except for one thing,' Igan said, 'they are as we - variously human. We know this from experience.'

'But why would they do these things you accuse them of?' Svengaard protested. 'It's not sensible. They're good to us.'

Their sole interest is in maintaining themselves,' Igan said. They walk a tightrope. As long as there's no significant change in their environment, they'll continue living... indefinitely. Let significant change creep into their lives and they are like us - subject to the whims of nature. For them, you see, there can be no nature - no nature they don't control.'

'I don't believe it,' Svengaard said. They're the ones who love us and care for us. Look at all they've done for us.'

'I have looked,' Igan shook his head. Svengaard was being more pig-headed than they'd expected. He screened out contrary evidence and stuck to the old formulas.

'You want them to succumb,' Svengaard accused. 'Why do you want this?'

'Because they've deprived us of evolution,' Igan said.

Svengaard stared at him. 'What?'