s.

Laboriously he cleaned out the well, dropping the bucket time after time
and dragging up loads of trash. Some roving band of gentry had fouled
the water for sport. Anything that hurt the ruck, made them more work or
injured them in any way, was sport for the squirarchy.

At last he got a bucket of cold and almost clean water, filled the big
gourd and carried it back to the one-room hut. The morning that had
begun badly was getting worse; his mother's limp was painful to see; she
must have had a hard night. Bent and gray and as juiceless as the grass
of their beds, she slept more lightly and fretfully with every passing
month. Many years before a squire had ridden her down in the lanes of
Dolfya Town, as she scurried out of the path of his great stallion, and
her broken leg had mended crookedly. A few hours on the mink-covered bed
crippled her up so that moving was an agony.

With the impious brain at the center of his skull--Revel had long before
decided that he had a number of brains, one obedient, one rebellious,
one dull, one keen and inquisitive, and so on--with the impious brain he
now cursed the gods and the gentry and the priests, and everyone above
the ruck who preyed on them and made their lives so stinking awful. If
he had thought then of killing a god, the idea would have seemed
pleasant indeed. But quite impossible, of course, for a man of the ruck
did not touch a god, much less slay one.

He did not think of such a thing, but cursed the gods briefly and then
turned off his impious brain and began to wolf down his food. He paid no
attention to what he ate--it was the same old bread of wild barley
seeds, the same old boiled rabbit.

When he finished, he glanced at his mother, feeling sorry for her,
wishing that she would go to the shebeens with him and have at least a
little happiness before she died. He wondered if she had ever known any
joy, any hope such as he had in drunken flashes now and then of belief
that life might some day be better for the ruck. He shook his head,
grabbed his miner's pick, booted his brother in the ribs to waken him,
and left the miserable hut to walk to the mine for his day's work.

The day was brightening, and above him in concentric circles to the
horizon and beyond hovered the eternal red and blue buttons. He looked
up grimly. Always there, in all the spoken history of man, stretched
above the world to keep watch on every action of the ruck. The buttons
were full of g