Mike’s discorporation of about 150 people in the city is a consequential exercise of judgment: after months of observing the city, he removes people he considers persistently dangerous, including some in public office. He presents the act not as a lasting cure but as a temporary clearing of the field, governed by his belief that each case must reach fullness before he acts.

Background and Selection

Mike explains that his action followed his escape from jail. He had been unable to release some imprisoned people because he judged them vicious, and removed them before clearing the bars and doors. His concern extended beyond the imprisoned: over many months he had been observing the whole city and making a list of people he considered among its worst offenders. Some, he says, were not in jail; some even held public office. He waited and sought fullness in each case before acting.

The account therefore distinguishes this action from an indiscriminate response to the jail break. Mike describes a prolonged process of watching, selecting, and waiting. He says that those he removed no longer lived in the city, calling them missing, and frames their discorporation as a return to the beginning of the line to try again.

The Discorporations

Jubal asks how many people Mike judged fit to be removed. Mike estimates about 150, adding that he did not count and that the city was large. A sky car begins to land and disappears just before touching down; Jubal barely comments on it, as the extraordinary power involved has become part of the immediate circumstances of their departure.

Mike says the city will be unusually decent for a while, but insists there is no cure short of acquiring hard discipline. The scale of the removals produces a temporary change in the city, not a transformation of its inhabitants or institutions. His own estimate is approximate, and the text gives no individual names or further account of those selected.

Mike’s Rationale and Its Limits

When Jubal asks whether he is afraid of playing God, Mike answers through the principle that he and the people he removes are all God. He explains that divine attention to a sparrow cannot be separated from the sparrow’s own divinity, extending the idea to a cat and its prey. This is the theological frame through which he understands his power to judge and act; it does not erase the severity of his decision to remove people from the city.

Mike also describes a change in Jill’s response to discorporation. He says that she has come to understand that he acts only when fullness is reached, and that she helped him with this work the previous night. He attributes her change from squeamishness to approval to the understanding that discorporation does not kill a person, but is more like a referee removing someone from a game for unnecessary roughness. The explanation records Mike’s and Jill’s understanding of the act rather than presenting the city’s removal as a permanent remedy.

Consequences and Significance

The immediate consequence is a city Mike expects to be unusually decent for a limited time. His qualification—that there is no cure without hard discipline—keeps the removals from functioning as a simple triumph. Even after exercising power on a large scale, he recognizes that the underlying problem remains and turns to Jubal with a different concern: he fears that he has misled his followers into expecting that humanity as a whole will eventually attain the happiness and strength they have experienced.

The event thus joins extraordinary intervention to an explicit limit. Mike acts only after extended observation and a judgment of fullness, yet the result is temporary, and he doubts that the wider human race will reach the same state merely through the passage of time. The removals expose both the reach of his authority and his growing concern about what his followers believe that authority promises.