The Celestial Blueprint and Others Stories by Philip José Farmer

deep powerful voice that sounded more like the roar of a motor than anything else answered, “Justice!”
    Justice was what the Elder had prayed for all of his life. Now he got it.
    The automaton lifted the sword and brought it down on the Elder’s chicken-skinny neck.
    “Chuck!” rasped the blade.
    “Bump!” replied the head.
    The white-bearded ball rolled on the pavement until it stopped against the curb. Upside down, it looked at everything from a new and possibly revelatory viewpoint, for its expression was not only bewildered and hurt but, for the first time, educated.
    Dafess City became bedlam, pandemonium, terror on a cataclysmic scale. The white body of the Truncated broke into fifty thousand fragments that fled here and there, circled, whirled, zigzagged, leaped, crawled, bounded, darted, and lunged.
    The legion of X stalked after them. They moved jerkily but swiftly. Above all, they moved relentlessly.
    When a cornered person could not get by the awesome figure, he or she would go down on his or her knees and clasp hands and howl, “Mercy! Mercy!”
    “Justice!” roared the immobile lips of the mask.
    “Slush!” smacked the lips of the blade.
    "Thud!” echoed the head.
    Though many skulls rolled, a more or less objective observer, such as Revanche, would have noticed that many more were spared.
    They were unharmed for a reason, however, for always the flailing swords forced the mob in a general direction.
    They were being herded towards the Temple of the Righteous, a truncated pyramid not far off the square. This pyramid also housed the First Dafess Sacred-Secular Bank and had grown to such proportions that it had crowded out the Finance Corporation. Peculiarly enough, the latter institution former and now occupied the center of the building. The Dafessians had accepted what seemed to them to be the will of X and had moved the holy section to one corner.
    Through the huge marble doors the multitude was forced. They had no place else to go, for, wherever they turned, the blazing eye and the flashing sword headed them off.
    B. T. Revanche allowed himself to be borne along with the current. Once inside the pyramid, however, he separated himself from the crowd and ran down a side-passage. The main body was being forced into the open door of the vault. He did not wish to go with them. He had persuaded Da Vincelleo to prepare a private entrance for him.
    He ran with all the speed his short legs could muster, puffing hard. When he rounded a comer, he stopped short. His heart, which had been pounding only moderately now suddenly went into the Walpurgisnacht terror music of Mous-sorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain. A Bioid X was stationed down the hall, exactly in front of the mural that concealed the secret door!
    He paused, sucked in oxygen and courage, and then walked briskly up to the thing, confident that the electronic “in-terferer” he wore strapped to his belt would neutralize it.
    But, when he got up to it, his suppressed doubt and suspicion were translated into action. The flame-eyed X lifted its sword, and lashed out at him.
    “You have been chosen!” the frozen lips roared.
    The keen tip missed by a spiderweb taking Revanche’s Adam’s apple out in one neat chunk.
    Appalled, the financier turned and fled.
    While he ran, he turned his head and shrilled back, “You are making a mistake!” It was a futile thing to scream out, for the plastiskin ears were deaf, to meaning, if not to noise.
    Revanche’s hand fumbled on the interferer’s switch, and clicked it back and forth. It seemed to be working; it was warm and humming. What then was the matter?
    He cursed Da Vincelleo for a strictly third-rate artisan—a bungler, botcher, and bonehead.
    Suddenly he was running down another empty corridor, his hard soles bouncing echoes off the faraway walls. S lap! Slap! Puff! Wheeze! There was an open window at the distant end of the hall. If only he could make that. ... 1
    Again, he stopped short. Half