The new wall went up in a day and a half. Piers had not believed a wall could be laid so quickly, and he said so to the gang’s foreman at first light on the second morning, through the slit in the Form’s brow, in the flat grey voice the Form gave him when he spoke. The foreman said the gang had learned to lay stone by watching the Form lay it. The Form had not once stopped to rest, and a man who watched a tool work for a week would learn its rhythm whether he wanted to or not.
“I am not a tool,” said Piers.
“No, sir.” The foreman was an honest man with a broken eyebrow and a wife in the Thornwick parish. He looked up at the Form’s blank face, at the two slits where eyes had been cast into it, and he said, with complete sincerity, “You are a lodger, sir, in a Charter’s spare copy, which is a tool in the Charter’s own words. I have read them. Mistress Crane read them out to me in the wagon yard, and she read the small print.”
Piers had no answer to that. He turned back to the course he was setting and went on setting it.
