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They toiled, but not oppressively; they had food and clothing
sufficient for their needs; they had days and seasons of rest; they
made much of music and singing, and there was love among them
and little children. It was marvellous with what confidence and
precision they went about their ordered world. Everything, you see,
had been made to fit their needs; each of the radiating paths of the
valley area had a constant angle to the others, and was distinguished
by a special notch upon its kerbing; all obstacles and irregularities of
path or meadow had long since been cleared away; all their methods
and procedure arose naturally from their special needs. Their senses
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had become marvellously acute; they could hear and judge the
slightest gesture of a man a dozen paces away could hear the very
beating of his heart. Intonation had long replaced expression with
them, and touches gesture, and their work with hoe and spade and
fork was as free and confident as garden work can be. Their sense of
smell was extraordinarily fine; they could distinguish individual
differences as readily as a dog can, and they went about the tending
of llamas, who lived among the rocks above and came to the wall for
food and shelter, with ease and confidence. It was only when at last
Nunez sought to assert himself that he found how easy and
confident their movements could be.
He rebelled only after he had tried persuasion.
He tried at first on several occasions to tell them of sight. Look you
here, you people, he said. There are things you do not understand
in me.
Once or twice one or two of them attended to him; they sat with
faces downcast and ears turned intelligently towards him, and he
did his best to tell them what it was to see. Among his hearers was a
girl, with eyelids less red and sunken than the others, so that one
could almost fancy she was hiding eyes, whom especially he hoped
to persuade. He spoke of the beauties of sight, of watching the
mountains, of the sky and the sunrise, and they heard him with
amused incredulity that presently became condemnatory. They told
him there were indeed no mountains at all, but that the end of the
rocks where the llamas grazed was indeed the end of the world;
thence sprang a cavernous roof of the universe, from which the dew
and the avalanches fell; and when he maintained stoutly the world
had neither end nor roof such as they supposed, they said his
thoughts were wicked. So far as he could describe sky and clouds
and stars to them it seemed to them a hideous void, a terrible
blankness in the place of the smooth roof to things in which they
believed it was an article of faith with them that the cavern roof
was exquisitely smooth to the touch. He saw that in some manner he
shocked them, and gave up that aspect of the matter altogether, and
tried to show them the practical value of sight. One morning he saw
Pedro in the path called Seventeen and coming towards the central
houses, but still too far off for hearing or scent, and he told them as
much. In a little while, he prophesied, Pedro will be here. An old
man remarked that Pedro had no business on path Seventeen, and
then, as if in confirmation, that individual as he drew near turned
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and went transversely into path Ten, and so back with nimble paces
towards the outer wall. They mocked Nunez when Pedro did not
arrive, and afterwards, when he asked Pedro questions to clear his
character, Pedro denied and outfaced him, and was afterwards
hostile to him.
Then he induced them to let him go a long way up the sloping
meadows towards the wall with one complaisant individual, and to
him he promised to describe all that happened among the houses.
He noted certain goings and comings, but the things that really
seemed to signify to these people happened inside of or behind the
windowless houses the only things they took note of to test him
by and of those he could see or tell nothing; and it was after the
failure of this attempt, and the ridicule they could not repress, that
he resorted to force. He thought of seizing a spade and suddenly
smiting one or two of them to earth, and so in fair combat showing
the advantage of eyes. He went so far with that resolution as to seize
his spade, and then he discovered a new thing about himself, and
that was that it was impossible for him to hit a blind man in cold
blood.
He hesitated, and found them all aware that he had snatched up the
spade. They stood all alert, with their heads on one side, and bent
ears towards him for what he would do next.
Put that spade down, said one, and he felt a sort of helpless horror.
He came near obedience.
Then he had thrust one backwards against a house wall, and fled
past him and out of the village.
He went athwart one of their meadows, leaving a track of trampled
grass behind his feet, and presently sat down by the side of one of
their ways. He felt something of the buoyancy that comes to all men
in the beginning of a fight, but more perplexity. He began to realise
that you cannot even fight happily with creatures who stand upon a
different mental basis to yourself. Far away he saw a number of men
carrying spades and sticks come out of the street of houses and
advance in a spreading line along the several paths towards him.
They advanced slowly, speaking frequently to one another, and ever
and again the whole cordon would halt and sniff the air and listen.
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The first time they did this Nunez laughed. But afterwards he did
not laugh.
One struck his trail in the meadow grass and came stooping and
feeling his way along it.
For five minutes he watched the slow extension of the cordon, and
then his vague disposition to do something forthwith became frantic.
He stood up, went a pace or so towards the circumferential wall,
turned, and went back a little way. There they all stood in a crescent,
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