The truth can’t be unsaid.”
The Spokesman looked down at the rest of them. “As for
you three, consider your answers carefully. To share the
heresy means sharing the sentence. The penalty will not be
lightened only because you did not invent the heresy.”
There was a long silence.
Honath swallowed hard. The courage and ‘the faith in that
silence made him feel smaller and more helpless than ever.
He realized suddenly that the other three would have kept
that silence, even without Seth’s defection to stiffen their
spines. He wondered if he could have done so.
“Then we pronounce the sentence,” the Spokesman said.
“You are one and all condemned to one thousand days in
Hell.'”
There was a concerted gasp from around the edges of the
arena, where, without Honath’s having noticed it before, a
silent crowd had gathered. He did not wonder at the sound.
The sentence was the longest in the history of the tribe.
Not that it really meant anything. No one had ever come
64
back from as little as one hundred days in Hell. No one had
ever come back from Hell at all.
“Unlash the Elevator. All shall go togetherand theil
heresy with them.”
5
The basket swayed. The last of the attic world that Honath
saw was a circle of faces, not too close to the gap in the vine
web, peering down after them. Then the basket fell another
few yards to the next turn of the windlass and the faces van-
ished.
Seth was weeping in the bottom of the Elevator, curled up
into a tight ball, the end of his tail wrapped around his nose
and eyes. No one else could make a sound, least of all Hon-