The confrontation between power and the people can take many forms. Terror and dictatorship are terrible—but no less terrible is a decaying dictatorship. It is willing, for the sake of self-preservation, to sacrifice the best that the country has—its smartest and most gifted people. They are not needed: they are dangerous. They think for themselves and make the people think too.
They can be destroyed physically, loaded with useless work, or… yes, you can turn this very people against them—and quietly steer this silent genocide.
And the few who have survived try to find ways to save themselves. There are very few of these ways—and salvation does not lead to victory. Each hero of the novella passes his own personal “path of the defeated,” and even the choice can be made for him by others, completely regardless of whether he agrees with that choice or not.