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. 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 free for the human heart to ponder. Never, not in the memory of
the Ancient Ones' Ancients, never have men done what 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.

Chapter 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