'You act as if the weeds are alive,' she said.
'Alive? Of course they are alive.'
'But not as we are alive, surely.'
'All life is a oneness.'
She looked away, moved uneasily.
'That troubles you?'
'Master,' she said, 'I cannot think in such lofty terms. I see myself, and then I see a weed.'
'But this small, fixed brother,' he touched a life organ gently, 'feels, drinks the sun, and it can die.'
She shrugged. 'I am trying to understand.'
'Both you and I and this small brother are of the earth and for the earth.'
'At any rate,' she said, 'I am your pong.'
'Just what does a pong do?' he asked.
'We work for the Devourers.'
'Not for yourself, not for the group?'
'We are allowed to grow enough food to keep us alive, that is all we do for ourselves.'
'To the north I saw ones who looked Drinker beating others who also looked Drinker with a lash,' he said. 'What way is that?'
'The way of Devourer and pong.'
'Have you been beaten?'
'Not often,' she said. 'No more than three times. Once I was beaten unjustly, for something I didn't do.'
He frowned. 'Are you implying that it was just the other two times you were beaten?'
'I had erred,' she said calmly, without resentment.
'The Devourers drive pongs to do their work for them, beat them. Why don't these pongs simply rise up and slay the Devourers?' She laughed. 'Impossible.'
'Are there so many more Devourers than pongs?'
She looked puzzled. 'No. No. We are many, but— Well, you simply don't understand. They are—mighty. They are—' She took a deep breath. 'It is impossible.'
'Are the Devourers immortal, cannot they be killed?'
'Oh, they die. I once saw a Devourer crushed by a falling tree.'
'And was he not as dead as the animal I killed on the slope above?'
'Yes, but—'
'The pongs are many, the Devourers of lesser numbers and yet pongs do not fight.'
'We have no weapons. They have the seed from which we grow our food. They control the animal pens from which we get our meat. We work only under supervision. We are alone only in the pongpen, at night.'
'But you escaped.'
She nodded.
