The cities are dead; Molly had told him, and it was true. Ironically, the technology that made life in the valley possible might be able to sustain that life only long enough to doom any chance of recovery after the pyramid started to tilt. The top would slide down one of the sides and sink into the debris at the bottom, along with all the other technologies that had seemed perfect and infinite.

No one understood the computer, Mark thought, just as no one but the Lawrence brothers understood the paddle-wheel boat and the steam engine that drove it. The younger brothers could repair it, restore it to its original condition, as long as the materials were at hand, but they didn't know how either one worked, the computer or the boat, and if a screw was missing, none of them would be able to fashion a substitute. In that fact lay the inevitable destruction of the valley and everyone in it.

But they were happy, he reminded himself, as lights began to come on in the valley. Even the breeders were content; they were well cared for, pampered compared to the women who foraged each summer and those who worked long hours in the fields and gardens. And if they became too lonely, there was the comfort of drugs.

They were happy because they didn't have enough imagination to look ahead, he thought, and anyone who tried to tell them there were dangers was by definition an enemy of the community. In disrupting their perfect existence, he had become an enemy.

His restless gaze moved over the valley, and finally stopped on the mill, and like his ancestor before him he understood that was the weak spot, the place where the valley was vulnerable.

Wait until you're a man, Molly had said. But she hadn't realized that each day he was in more danger, that each time Andrew and his brothers discussed his future they were less inclined to grant him a future. He studied the mill broodingly. It was weathered almost silver, surrounded by russets and browns and golds, and the permanent green of the pines and spruces. He would like to paint it; the thought came suddenly, and he laughed and stood up. No time for that. Time had become the goal; he had to have more time, and they might decide any day that allowing him time was endangering them all. Abruptly he sat down once more, and now when he studied the mill and the surrounding area his eyes were narrowed in thought, and there was no smile on his face.