Adiamante by L. E. Modesitt Jr. Page A

reduced illness and made the wilderness bloom. We have reclaimed the sea. You have followed our advice and profited, yet you are not satisfied.”
    â€œWe, too, have worked hard,” said Greencross. “We have fired the fibrelines of the world, and our brains have burned to help you, but you are rich, and we are not.”
    â€œThe draffs work hard, also,” said Wayneclint. “Why have you not shared with them?”
    â€œBecause they do not fire the fibrelines of the world, and they do not burn their brains into the evening.”
    The draffs do not fire the fibrelines of the world, nor do they burn their brains into the night.
    The more the two talked, the angrier and angrier that Greencross became, until sparks flew from his fingers, and the blue glow of power from the nets shrouded him, and he said, “If you do not share willingly, then you will share unwillingly, but share you will.”
    â€œYet you refuse to share with the draffs, and you chastise us for failing to share with you.” Wayneclint laughed, and his voice was gentle.
    â€œIt is not the same!” insisted Greencross.

    Wayneclint smiled, but he said nothing, and Greencross became angrier yet.
    The next day, Greencross decided to punish the demis for their arrogance, and he changed the moneynets so that no demi could obtain credits or coins through the bank-machines, nor would any of the doors to the cybs’ buildings open to a demi, nor could the demis use the skimmers and flitters or even the undersurface ways to get about the great cities. Nor would the food stores sell them provisions.
    For days there was confusion as the demis became hungrier and hungrier, and as their children grew weaker, and the smile across Greencross’s face grew broader. And he waited for Wayneclint to share … and he waited, and his thoughts of victory crossed the fibrelines to all the cybs.
    And his thoughts of victory crossed the fibrelines to all the cybs.
    The draffs waited, their eyes turning to the sealed buildings of the cybs and back to the hills beyond the cities where the demis waited behind their walls.
    Then, in a space of hours, the mindblazes began, lines of firepain that seared every cyb linked to the fibrelines. The cybs shriveled in pain, and they groveled, and they died.
    They shriveled, and groveled, and died.
    But before they died, they sent orders along the fibrelines, to the ancient war machines, to the powerblades hanging in the skies, and the mushroom-shaped sledges of death. And the small stars fell across the land and broke it. And the fields were carpeted with ashes, and death-smoke rose from the ash heaps that had been great cities.
    The very next morning, the doors to the few buildings of the cybs that yet stood flew open, where there were buildings still left, but none remained within but corpses. Even Greencross was a corpse, with his broad smile
burned into his face, and over all the world there remained but scattered handfuls of cybs.
    For every hundred souls that had been draffs, cybs, or demis, but a handful remained, and few indeed were cybs.
    Then, before the ashes settled or the small stars ceased falling, Wayneclint gathered the remaining cybs and chastened them and stuffed them into the longships and cast them into the darkness of space. And he told those who remained on Old Earth, “Trust not your thoughts to the fibrelines or to the machines, for all who seek to chain humans with cybnets shall perish as these.”
    All who use cybnets shall perish.
    And of the draffs of that time? Most died, and those who lived were those who kept their thoughts safe within themselves, and waited, as we still wait, our thoughts safe within us.
    Our thoughts are safe within us.

IX
    I ’d flown up to Parwon early that morning, keeping the flitter low over the valley under the high and featureless gray clouds. A few sambur had scattered at the sound of the rotors, but some had not, and that bothered me.