said. "Has anyone here ever seen the Robots?"

The faltering wave of sound from the crowd was in the negative.

"I have seen them," Johnny told his people, with whom he could no longer live. "My father wanted it that way. He sent me to the cities and to the mysterious places between the cities, the gleaming, white-surfaced roads which we use no longer, to see the Robots. And I tell you this: they will not cure the Plague. If anything they'll spread it."

A hushed silence fell, like a pall, on the assembly. None of them had ever seen the Robots, but that was because it is not proper for a mortal to see a deity. "This was the truth my father could not tell you in his lifetime," Johnny went on. "He knew you would have laughed and mocked—or worse. In his death I tell it to you for him. Along with his wish to be interred in the ground, it was his final thought."

DeReggio did not look Johnny squarely in the eye. "I think you had better go, lad. You have no right to talk like that."

Johnny shrugged, feeling the weight of a knowledge and wisdom beyond his years. "I am twenty-three," he said. "I was an infant when the War ended. Yet my father could teach me certain things and other things I could see for myself because he taught me to be curious and take nothing for granted. You could learn the same. Someday, perhaps...."

"By the Robots!" DeReggio swore softly, hissing the words almost in Johnny's ears. "Go before you antagonize them. If they start throwing things again, I won't be able to save you."

Johnny turned his back and squared his shoulders in a gesture compounded as much of defiance as contempt. He told DeReggio, "At least do one thing for me."

"If I can."

"When they are burned, say a prayer. One of the old prayers, if you remember." Johnny did not wait for an answer. He set forth in long strides, his sandal-shod feet powdering the sun-baked ridges on the dry creek bed. He did not once look back over his shoulder, but now, with the people gone and his pride no longer a barrier, he sobbed softly, thinking of his parents who had died because they had to venture forth from Hamilton Village to learn some of the truths which were hidden from their people, and so had come down with the Plague. Hours later, as the sun sank toward the western horizon and the heat of the day became less intense, Johnny heard the distant baying of dogs as the village 

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