Anthem | Page 9

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