The bronze-sheathed doors of the Directorate gave with a crash that no one heard. People pressed and trampled toward them to get to shelter, out from under the metal rain. They pushed by hundreds into the high halls of marble, some cowering down to hide in the first refuge they saw, others pushing on to find a way through the building and out the back, others staying to wreck what they could until the soldiers came. When they came, marching in their neat black coats up the steps among dead and dying men and women, they found on the high, grey, polished wall of the great foyer a word written at the height of a man’s eyes, in broad smears of blood: DOWN.

They shot the dead man who lay nearest the word, and later on when the Directorate was restored to order the word was washed off the wall with water, soap, and rags, but it remained; it had been spoken; it had meaning.

• • •

He realized it was impossible to go any farther with his companion, who was getting weak, beginning to stumble. There was nowhere to go, except away from Capitol Square. There was nowhere to stop, either. The crowd had twice rallied in Mesee Boulevard, trying to present a front to the police, but the army’s armored cars came behind the police and drove the people forward, towards Old Town. The blackcoats had not fired either time, though the noise of guns could be heard on other streets. The clacking helicopters cruised up and down above the streets; one could not get out from under them.

His companion was breathing in sobs, gulping for air as he struggled along. Shevek had been half-carrying him for several blocks, and they were now far behind the main mass of the crowd. There was no use trying to catch up. “Here, sit down here,” he told the man, and helped him to sit down on the top step of a basement entry to some kind of warehouse, across the shuttered windows of which the word STRIKE was chalked in huge letters. He went down to the basement door and tried it; it was locked. All doors were locked. Property was private. He took a piece of paving stone that had come loose from a corner of the steps and smashed the hasp and padlock off the door, working neither furtively nor vindictively, but with the assurance of one unlocking his own front door. He looked in. The basement was full of crates and empty of people. He helped his companion down the steps, shut the doors behind them, and said, “Sit here, lie down if you want. I’ll see if there’s water.”

The place, evidently a chemical warehouse, had a row of washtubs as well as a hose system for fires. Shevek’s companion had fainted by the time he got back to him. He took the opportunity to wash the man’s hand with a trickle from the hose and to get a look at his wound. It was worse than he had thought. More than one bullet must have struck it, tearing two fingers off and mangling the palm and wrist. Shards of splintered bone stuck out like toothpicks. The man had been standing near Shevek and Maedda when the helicopters began firing and, hit, had lurched against Shevek, grabbing at him for support. Shevek had kept an arm around him all through the escape through the Directorate; two could keep afoot better than one on the first wild press.