“What is your name?” she asked.

“Aton Five,” he said, proud of a proud name. “I’m seven years old yesterday.”

“Seven,” she said, making him feel that it was indeed the right age to be. “And what is this burden you have undertaken?” she inquired, touching the volume in his arms and smiling.

“This is my book,” he said with diffident vanity. “It has my name.”

“May I see it?”

Aton stumbled back a step. “It’s mine!”

She looked at him, making him feel ashamed for his selfishness. “It’s locked,” he explained.

“But are you able to read it, Aton?”

He tried to tell her that he knew that the big LOE spelled The Literature of Old Earth, and that the rest was his own name, to show that it belonged to him; but the words got all tangled up in his throat as he encountered her deep and silent eyes. “It’s locked,” he repeated.

“You must never tell the numbers to anyone, ever,” she said. “But I will close my eyes and let you open it yourself.

She closed her eyes, her features as calm and perfect as those of a statue, and Aton felt somehow committed and not a little confused. He fumbled with the lock, turning the dial in the pattern so recently memorized. The clasp popped open and the tinted pages were exposed.

Her lashes lifted at the sound and her gaze fell upon him once more, as warm and bright as a sunbeam. He pushed the volume into her waiting hands and watched, half fearfully, as she turned the fine sheets.

“It is a beautiful book, Aton,” she said, and he flushed with pride. “You will have to learn to read the old language, English, and this is a difficult thing, because the symbols do not always match the words. They are not so clear as those of Galactic. Do you think you can do that?”

“I don’t know.”

She smiled. “Yes, you can, if you try.” She found a place and spread the pages flat. “You are a child, Aton, and this book will have meaning for you. Here is what Mr. Wordsworth says about the immortality of childhood: ‘O joy! That in our embers/ Is something that doth live, / That nature yet remembers / What was so fugitive!’”

Aton listened blankly. “It only seems obscure,” she said, “because your symbols do not quite match those of the poet. But when you begin to grasp it, the language of poetry is the most direct route to the truth you can find. You will understand, Aton, perhaps when you are twice seven.

“And when you are twice seven—what will you be, what will you be doing?”

“I’ll be farming hvee,” he said.

“Tell me about the hvee.”