As if the number mattered! If so much as one person is suffering unjustly, and I can put an end to it, and the only reason I don’t is because I’m a coward and prefer peace and quiet, then…

At this point, he doesn’t dare to think any further. He’s afraid, really afraid, of where a thought like that, taken to its conclusion, might lead. He would have to change his whole life!

Instead, he stares again at the girl with “In the Name of the German people” over her head. If only she wasn’t crying against this particular poster. He can’t resist the urge to pull her shoulder away from the wall, and says, as softly as he can, “Come away from that poster, Trudel…”

For an instant she looks uncomprehendingly at the printed words. Her eyes are dry once more, her shoulders no longer heaving. Now there is life in her expression again—not the luster that she had when she first set foot in this corridor, but a darker sort of glow. With her hand she gently and firmly covers the word “hanging.” “Papa,” she says, “I will never forget that when I stood crying over Otto, it was in front of a poster like this. Perhaps—I don’t want it to be—but perhaps it’ll be my name on a poster like that one day.”

She looks at him hard. He has a feeling she’s not really sure what she’s saying. “Girl!” he cries out. “Stop and think! Why would your name end up on a poster like that? You’re young, you’ve got your whole life ahead of you. You will laugh again, you will have children.”

She shakes her head stubbornly. “I’m not going to bring children into this world to be cannon fodder. Not while some general can say ‘March till you drop!’ Papa,” she goes on, clasping his hand firmly in hers, “Papa, do you think you can carry on living as before, now that they’ve shot your Otto?”

She looks at him piercingly, and once again he tries to fight off the alien influence. “It was the French,” he mumbles.

“The French!” she shouts indignantly. “What sort of excuse is that? Who invaded France? Come on, Papa!”

“But what can we do?” Otto Quangel says, unnerved by this onslaught. “There are so few of us, and all those millions for him, and now, after the victory against France, there will be even more. We can do nothing!”

“We can do plenty!” she whispers. “We can vandalize the machines, we can work badly, work slowly, we can tear down their posters and put up others where we tell people the truth about how they are being cheated and lied to.” She drops her voice further: “But the main thing is that we remain different from them, that we never allow ourselves to be made into them, or start thinking as they do. Even if they conquer the whole world, we must refuse to become Nazis.”

“And what will that accomplish, Trudel?” asks Otto Quangel softly. “I don’t see the point.”

“Papa,” she replies, “when it began, I didn’t understand that either, and I’m not sure I fully understand it now. But, you know, we’ve formed a secret resistance cell in the factory, very small for now, three men and me. A man came to us, and tried to explain it to me. He said we are like good seeds in a field of weeds. If it wasn’t for the good seeds, the whole field would be nothing but weeds. And the good seeds can spread their influence…”

She breaks off, deeply shocked about something.

“What is it, Trudel?” he asks. “That thing with the good seeds makes sense. I will think about it. I have such a lot to be thinking about now.”

But she says, full of shame and guilt, “I’ve gone and blabbed about the cell, and I swore I wouldn’t tell a soul about it!”

“Don’t worry, Trudel,” says Otto Quangel, and his calm is such as to immediately help to settle her agitation.” “You know, with Otto Quangel a thing goes in one ear and out the other.