It rained for seven days, and on the seventh day, Abu and Thanakar and Charity Starbridge sat on the carpet in the prince’s room, smoking hashish. The prince had said something, and Thanakar was looking at his friend with a peculiar mix of tenderness and envy, because it seemed to him the prince had changed during the weeks he had spent cooped up, and not just gotten thinner. It was as if he had discovered a secret that had given him an answer, so that he didn’t have to fumble quite so much. He seemed less apologetic, surer of himself. “It’s a question of truth,” he said. “I’m sorry to disagree. You’re so clever, both of you. You can say what you want with words. But you missed the point. It’s not just that we should leave them alone—tolerance. It’s that we should learn to think as they do. Not like that, of course. We’re civilized men. Women.” He nodded to his sister. “We can’t turn back the clock. But we can learn something. Not to depend so much on other people.”

“But depending on other people, that’s what civilization is,” said Thanakar.

“Yes. I’ve heard you say that before. You’re right. So maybe I don’t mean that. Maybe I mean we should learn not to settle for things. You know how antinomials are. They act as if they want something desperately that doesn’t even exist, and they’re not going to rest until they get it. I mean if we could learn not to settle for happiness, or goodness, or usefulness. There must be something more.”

“There is,” answered Thanakar. “There’s misery, and badness, and futility. We know all about that.

Saying that you’re not going to settle for happiness is like standing on Earth and saying you’re not going to settle for eternity in Paradise. Why look beyond a goal you can’t reach?”

“But you can. We’ve made it so difficult. But it’s because we’ve kept happiness as a goal, far in the future, not even on this planet. But the antinomials are happy here and now. Or at least they were. Why do you think we hate them so much? If you look for happiness, it’s always out of reach. But they never worried about the future. They were always wanting something else.”

“What?”

“Freedom,” said the prince.

“But freedom doesn’t mean anything. It’s just talk,” protested Thanakar. “Do they seem free to you?

Even in their own minds?”

“No. But that’s not the point. Maybe that’s why they tried to cut loose from meaning, along with everything else. Why they tried to clear all that away. So that all that would be left would be that eternal hunger. That empty feeling in your heart. That’s what makes you happy.”

“An empty feeling in your heart? You’re on drugs. You don’t have to be a rich man for that. That’s within reach of the poorest.”

Abu laughed, foolish and embarrassed. “I can’t explain,” he said, passing the pipe. “But I’m not the only one. There are a lot of people who worship them, almost. The adventists. You told me that’s the only reason the bishop let them live. Because she didn’t want to make them into martyrs for the adventists.”