This was the Tower of Silence; to get there, the captain led Thanakar up stairs and down stone corridors, and out into an open space several acres in extent, where the air seemed different from below: wetter, colder, whiter. The sun was in the center of a swirl of mist.

Because it was unfinished, the tower had no roof. Masons worked in the open air 700 feet above Thanakar’s head as he entered through a metal door. At that distance he couldn’t see them, but he could hear the chink of their hammers, and occasionally some pieces of stone or mortar dust would fall down through the vast, empty cylinder, down past him into nothingness, for the void stretched down into darkness as well as up into light, until the eye was lost. He stood on a narrow metal balcony, riveted to the inside of the stone chimney, and looked up past the spiral tiers of cells. The sky was white and far away, a little white disk.

Like all parts of the prison, it was very quiet. There were no wardens or guards. No movement caught his eye. The place seemed uninhabited.

“Is there a section for antinomials?” he asked.

Without speaking, Captain Locke led the way to the end of the spiral, rising some distance away out of the circular balcony on which they stood. He unchained a steel gate, and they started up a track of welded steel, circling gradually upward along the inside of the tower. The metal rang under their footsteps. To their left was the empty void, lit from above through the open roof. At intervals below, lamps rimmed balconies similar to the one they had just left. Looking down, Thanakar could see them, rings of light, gradually diminishing in size until they resolved into an evil glow. To the right were the cells, piled three high, the top ones reached by metal ladders. Inside, they were dark, illuminated only by fitful gleams from the captain’s torch. He swung it carelessly to mark their way, and occasionally the light would flit into a cell and catch some object there in its moving circle, a heap of bedding, a glint of metal, a living shape, the striped bars of the cage.

“How many people are imprisoned here?” whispered Thanakar.

“Capacity is one hundred thousand.” The captain spoke in his normal voice. In the half-dark, it sounded like shouting. “Present occupancy is almost two,” he added expressionlessly.

“All heretics?”

“One kind or another. These are lunatics, here. Paranoids.” The captain paused and shone his light into a cell they were just passing. In the middle of a tiny room, a woman sat, completely motionless, tied to a chair. Bound hand and foot, nevertheless, she gave the impression of movement, of implacable energy, as if she were straining every muscle against the cords that confined her. They cut into her flesh. Her wrists were bound to the arms of her chair, but her fingers stretched trembling at their furthest extent. Her head was sunk low on her breast, but as they passed she raised her head slowly into the light, and Thanakar gasped because for an instant it was as if she had no mouth. The lamp had resolved her white gag into her white face, a square piece of tape stuck to her lips. Above it, her eyes stared at him, insane, malignant, her pupils bleached white in the glare. Her hair was long and neatly brushed.