learned quickly what the watchbirds didn't like and refrained
from doing it. It just wasn't safe. With their high speed and superfast
senses, the watchbirds got around quickly.

And now they meant business. In their original directives there had been
a provision made for killing a murderer, if all other means failed.

Why spare a murderer?

It backfired. The watchbirds extracted the fact that murder and crimes
of violence had increased geometrically since they had begun operation.
This was true, because their new definitions increased the possibilities
of murder. But to the watchbirds, the rise showed that the first methods
had failed.

Simple logic. If A doesn't work, try B. The watchbirds shocked to kill.

Slaughterhouses in Chicago stopped and cattle starved to death in their
pens, because farmers in the Midwest couldn't cut hay or harvest grain.

No one had told the watchbirds that all life depends on carefully
balanced murders.

Starvation didn't concern the watchbirds, since it was an act of
omission.

Their interest lay only in acts of commission.

Hunters sat home, glaring at the silver dots in the sky, longing to
shoot them down. But for the most part, they didn't try. The watchbirds
were quick to sense the murder intent and to punish it.

Fishing boats swung idle at their moorings in San Pedro and Gloucester.
Fish were living organisms.

Farmers cursed and spat and died, trying to harvest the crop. Grain was
alive and thus worthy of protection. Potatoes were as important to the
watchbird as any other living organism. The death of a blade of grass
was equal to the assassination of a President--

To the watchbirds.

And, of course, certain machines were living. This followed, since the
watchbirds were machines and living.

God help you if you maltreated your radio. Turning it off meant killing
it. Obviously--its voice was silenced, the red glow of its tubes faded,
it grew cold.

The watchbirds tried to guard their other charges. Wolves were
slaughtered, trying to kill rabbits. Rabbits were electrocuted, trying
to eat vegetables. Creepers were burned out in the act of strangling
trees.

A butterfly was executed, caught in the act of outraging a rose.

This control was spasmodic, because of the fewness of the watchbirds. A
billion watchbirds couldn't have carried out the ambitious project set
by the thousands.

The effect was of a murderous force, ten thousand bolts of irrational
lightning