Samuel had leaned his elbows on the table and his hands covered his eyes and his forehead. “I want to think,” he said. “Damn you, I want to think. I’ll want to take this off alone where I can pick it apart and see. Maybe you’ve tumbled a world for me. And I don’t know what I can build in my world’s place.”

Lee said softly, “Couldn’t a world be built around accepted truth? Couldn’t some pains and insanities be rooted out if the causes were known?”

“I don’t know, damn you. You’ve disturbed my pretty universe. You’ve taken a contentious game and made an answer of it. Let me alone—let me think! Your damned bitch is having pups in my brain already. Oh, I wonder what my Tom will think of this! He’ll cradle it in the palm of his mind. He’ll turn it slow in his brain like a roast of pork before the fire. Adam, come out now. You’ve been long enough in whatever memory it was.”

Adam started. He sighed deeply. “Isn’t it too simple?” he asked. “I’m always afraid of simple things.”

“It isn’t simple at all,” said Lee. “It’s desperately complicated. But at the end there’s light.”

“There’s not going to be light long,” Samuel said. “We’ve sat and let the evening come. I drove over to help name the twins and they’re not named. We’ve swung ourselves on a pole. Lee, you better keep your complications out of the machinery of the set-up churches or there might be a Chinese with nails in his hands and feet. They like complications but they like their own. I’ll have to be driving home.”

Adam said desperately, “Name me some names.”

“From the Bible?”

“From anyplace.”

“Well, let’s see. Of all the people who started out of Egypt only two came to the Promised Land. Would you like them for a symbol?”

“Who?”

“Caleb and Joshua.”

“Joshua was a soldier—a general. I don’t like soldiering.”

“Well, Caleb was a captain.”

“But not a general. I kind of like Caleb—Caleb Trask.”

One of the twins woke up and without interval began to wail.

“You called his name,” said Samuel. “You don’t like Joshua, and Caleb’s named. He’s the smart one—the dark one. See, the other one is awake too. Well, Aaron I’ve always liked, but he didn’t make it to the Promised Land.”

The second boy almost joyfully began to cry.

“That’s good enough,” said Adam.

Suddenly Samuel laughed. “In two minutes,” he said, “and after a waterfall of words. Caleb and Aaron—now you are people and you have joined the fraternity and you have the right to be damned.”

Lee took the boys up under his arms. “Have you got them straight?” he asked.

“Of course,” said Adam. “That one is Caleb and you are Aaron.”

Lee lugged the yelling twins toward the house in the dusk.

“Yesterday I couldn’t tell them apart,” said Adam. “Aaron and Caleb.”

“Thank the good Lord we had produce from our patient thought,” Samuel said. “Liza would have preferred Joshua. She loves the crashing walls of Jericho. But she likes Aaron too, so I guess it’s all right. I’ll go and hitch up my rig.”