h the magter were blank, without emotions.
There was a barely sensed surge and return that must have been
neural impulses on a basic level--the automatic adjustments of nerve
and muscle that keep an organism alive. Nothing more. Brion reached
for other sensations, but there was nothing there to grasp. Either
these men were without emotions, or they were able to block them
from his detection; it was impossible to tell which.

Very little time had passed while Brion made these discoveries. The
knot of men still looked at him, silent and unmoving. They weren't
expectant, their attitude could not have been called one of
interest. But he had come to them and now they waited to find out
why. Any questions or statements they spoke would be superfluous,
so they didn't speak. The responsibility was his.

"I have come to talk with Lig-magte. Who is he?" Brion didn't like
the tiny sound his voice made in the immense room.

One of the men gave a slight motion to draw attention to himself.
None of the others moved. They still waited.

"I have a message for you," Brion said, speaking slowly to fill the
silence of the room and the emptiness of his thoughts. This had to
be handled right. But what was right? "I'm from the Foundation in
the city, as you undoubtedly know. I've been talking to the people
of Nyjord. They have a message for you."

The silence grew longer. Brion had no intention of making this a
monologue. He needed facts to operate, to form an opinion. Looking
at the silent forms was telling him nothing. Time stretched taut,
and finally Lig-magte spoke.

"The Nyjorders are going to surrender."

It was an impossibly strange sentence. Brion had never realized
before how much of the content of speech was made up of emotion.
If the man had given it a positive emphasis, perhaps said it with
enthusiasm, it would have meant, "Success! The enemy is going to
surrender!" This wasn't the meaning.

With a rising inflection on the end it would have been a question.
"Are they going to surrender?" It was neither of these. The sentence
carried no other message than that contained in the simplest
meanings of the separate words. It had intellectual connotations,
but these could only be gained from past knowledge, not from the
sound of the words. There was only one message they were prepared
to receive from Nyjord. Therefore Brion was bringing the message.
If that was not the message Brion was bringing the men here were
not interest