Anthem
But we could not speak and we stood looking upon them.
They backed away, as if they dared not touch us. Then they
smiled, but it was not a gay smile; it was lost and pleading. But
still we could not speak. Then they said:
“We shall report our find to the City Council and both of us will
be rewarded.”
And then we spoke. Our voice was hard and there was no mercy in
our voice. We said:
“We shall not report our find to the City Council. We shall not
report it to any men.”
They raised their hands to their ears, for never had they heard
such words as these.
“International 4-8818,” we asked, “will you report us to the
Council and see us lashed to death before your eyes?”
They stood straight all of a sudden and they answered: “Rather
would we die.”
“Then,” we said, “keep silent. This place is ours. This place
belongs to us, Equality 7-2521, and to no other men on earth. And
if ever we surrender it, we shall surrender our life with it
also.”
Then we saw that the eyes of International 4-8818 were full to
the lids with tears they dared not drop. They whispered, and
their voice trembled, so that their words lost all shape:
“The will of the Council is above all things, for it is the will
of our brothers, which is holy. But if you wish it so, we shall
obey you. Rather shall we be evil with you than good with all our
brothers. May the Council have mercy upon both our hearts!”
Then we walked away together and back to the Home of the Street
Sweepers. And we walked in silence.
Thus did it come to pass that each night, when the stars are high
and the Street Sweepers sit in the City Theatre, we, Equality
7-2521, steal out and run through the darkness to our place. It
is easy to leave the Theatre; when the candles are blown out and
the Actors come onto the stage, no eyes can see us as we crawl
under our seat and under the cloth of the tent. Later, it is easy
to steal through the shadows and fall in line next to
International 4-8818, as the column leaves the Theatre. It is
dark in the streets and there are no men about, for no men may
walk through the City when they have no mission to walk there.
Each night, we run to the ravine, and we remove the stones which
we have piled upon the iron grill to hide it from the men. Each
night, for three hours, we are under the earth, alone.
We have stolen candles from the Home of the Street Sweepers, we
have stolen flints and knives and paper, and we have brought them
to this place. We have stolen glass vials and powders and acids
from the Home of the Scholars. Now we sit in the tunnel for three
hours each night and we study. We melt strange metals, and we mix
acids, and we cut open the bodies of the animals which we find in
the City Cesspool. We have built an oven of the bricks we
gathered in the streets. We burn the wood we find in the ravine.
The fire flickers in the oven and blue shadows dance upon the
walls, and there is no sound of men to disturb us.
We have stolen manuscripts. This is a great offense. Manuscripts
are precious, for our brothers in the Home of the Clerks spend
one year to copy one single script in their clear handwriting.
Manuscripts are rare and they are kept in the Home of the
Scholars. So we sit under the earth and we read the stolen
scripts. Two years have passed since we found this place. And in
these two years we have learned more than we had learned in the
ten years of the Home of the Students.
We have learned things which are not in the scripts. We have
solved secrets of which the Scholars have no knowledge. We have
come to see how great is the unexplored, and many lifetimes will
not bring us to the end of our quest. But we wish no end to our
quest. We wish nothing, save to be alone and to learn, and to
feel as if with each day our sight were growing sharper than the
hawk’s and clearer than rock crystal.
Strange are the ways of evil. We are false in the faces of our
brothers. We are defying the will of our Councils. We alone, of
the thousands who walk this earth, we alone in this hour are
doing a work which has no purpose save that we wish to do it. The
evil of our crime is not for the human mind to probe. The nature
of our punishment, if it be discovered, is not for the human
heart to ponder. Never, not in the memory of the Ancient Ones’
Ancients, never have men done that which we are doing.
And yet there is no shame in us and no regret. We say to
ourselves that we are a wretch and a traitor. But we feel no
burden upon our spirit and no fear in our heart. And it seems to
us that our spirit is clear as a lake troubled by no eyes save
those of the sun. And in our heart—strange are the ways of
evil!—in our heart there is the first peace we have known in
twenty years.
PART TWO
Liberty 5-3000... Liberty five-three thousand ... Liberty
5-3000....
We wish to write this name. We wish to speak it, but we dare not
speak it above a whisper. For men are forbidden to take notice of
women, and women are forbidden to take notice of men. But we
think of one among women, they whose name is Liberty 5-3000, and
we think of no others. The women who have been assigned to work
the soil live in the Homes of the Peasants beyond the City. Where
the City ends there is a great road winding off to the north, and
we Street Sweepers must keep this road clean to the first
milepost. There is a hedge along the road, and beyond the hedge
lie the fields. The fields are black and ploughed, and they lie
like a great fan before us, with their furrows gathered in some
hand beyond the sky, spreading forth from that hand, opening wide
apart as they come toward us, like black pleats that sparkle with
thin, green spangles. Women work in the fields, and their white
tunics in the wind are like the wings of sea-gulls beating over
the black soil.
And there it was that we saw Liberty 5-3000 walking along the
furrows. Their body was straight and thin as a blade of iron.
Their eyes were dark and hard and glowing, with no fear in them,
no kindness and no guilt. Their hair was golden as the sun; their
hair flew in the wind, shining and wild, as if it defied men to
restrain it. They threw seeds from their hand as if they deigned
to fling a scornful gift, and the earth was a beggar under their
feet.
We stood still; for the first time did we know fear, and then
pain. And we stood still that we might not spill this pain more
precious than pleasure.
Then we heard a voice from the others call their name: “Liberty
5-3000,” and they turned and walked back. Thus we learned their
name, and we stood watching them go, till their white tunic was
lost in the blue mist.
And the following day, as we came to the northern road, we kept
our eyes upon Liberty 5-3000 in the field. And each day
thereafter we knew the illness of waiting for our hour on the
northern road. And there we looked at Liberty 5-3000 each day. We
know not whether they looked at us also, but we think they did.
Then one day they came close to the hedge, and suddenly they
turned to us. They turned in a whirl and the movement of their
body stopped, as if slashed off, as suddenly as it had started.
They stood still as a stone, and they looked straight upon us,
straight into our eyes. There was no smile on their face, and no
welcome. But their face was taut, and their eyes were dark. Then
they turned as swiftly, and they walked away from us.
But the following day, when we came to the road, they smiled.
They smiled to us and for us. And we smiled in answer. Their head
fell back, and their arms fell, as if their arms and their thin
white neck were stricken suddenly with a great lassitude. They
were not looking upon us, but upon the sky. Then they glanced at
us over their shoulder, as we felt as if a hand had touched our
body, slipping softly from our lips to our feet.
Every morning thereafter, we greeted each other with our eyes. We
dared not speak. It is a transgression to speak to men of other
Trades, save in groups at the Social Meetings. But once, standing
at the hedge, we raised our hand to our forehead and then moved
it slowly, palm down, toward Liberty 5-3000. Had the others seen
it, they could have guessed nothing, for it looked only as if we
were shading our eyes from the sun. But Liberty 5-3000 saw it and
understood. They raised their hand to their forehead and moved it
as we had. Thus, each day, we greet Liberty 5-3000, and they
answer, and no men can suspect.
We do not wonder at this new sin of ours. It is our second
Transgression of Preference, for we do not think of all our
brothers, as we must, but only of one, and their name is Liberty
5-3000. We do not know why we think of them. We do not know why,
when we think of them, we feel all of a sudden that the earth is
good and that it is not a burden to live. We do not think of them
as Liberty 5-3000 any longer. We have given them a name in our
thoughts. We call them the Golden One. But it is a sin to give
men names which distinguish them from other men. Yet we call them
the Golden One, for they are not like the others. The Golden One
are not like the others.
And we take no heed of the law which says that men may not think
of women, save at the Time of Mating. This is the time each
spring when all the men older than twenty and all the women older
than eighteen are sent for one night to the City Palace of
Mating. And each of the men have one of the women assigned to
them by the Council of Eugenics. Children are born each winter,
but women never see their children and children never know their
parents. Twice have we been sent to the Palace of Mating, but it
is an ugly and shameful matter, of which we do not like to think.
We had broken so many laws, and today we have broken one more.
Today, we spoke to the Golden One.
The other women were far off in the field, when we stopped at the
hedge by the side of the road. The Golden One were kneeling alone
at the moat which runs through the field. And the drops of water
falling from their hands, as they raised the water to their lips,
were like sparks of fire in the sun. Then the Golden One saw us,
and they did not move, kneeling there, looking at us, and circles
of light played upon their white tunic, from the sun on the water
of the moat, and one sparkling drop fell from a finger of their
hand held as frozen in the air.
Then the Golden One rose and walked to the hedge, as if they had
heard a command in our eyes. The two other Street Sweepers of our
brigade were a hundred paces away down the road. And we thought
that International 4-8818 would not betray us, and Union 5-3992
would not understand. So we looked straight upon the Golden One,
and we saw the shadows of their lashes on their white cheeks and