“And will men follow you for only questions?”

“Of course they will, for nothing else will have esteem. Your myths grow weak when sciences grow strong I shall expose you, Anthem—you will see. I’ll ask you in the crowded market place just how it is that science is defied by all your magic claims that executed Singers come to life again.”

When Sarkon stood, he truly seemed the ideal man, a standard towards which all men would strive, what every man would want to be, at least the ones content with merely being men.

Then Sarkon snapped his fingers and called out, “Old Woman, come at once and stand again alive …”

And Anthem shuddered as he felt his neck hair bristle. It was incredible, but standing there beside the rugged youth was the old woman who had died before the city well.

“She is dead,” stammered Anthem. “The sexton buried her and I now have her scroll.”

“No, Anthem. Look! She’s alive just as you claim your Great Lover is alive.”

“I see a replica and that is all …”

Anthem stopped his speaking, and looking up he called for more authority than he alone possessed. “Earthmaker, Father of the Singer, remove the woman’s mask and let us see what treachery this is.”

The woman groaned and stumbled to her knees. At once a hideous strength fell scaled upon the floor and slithered over Sarkon’s feet. Its green-brown gills croaked out a strange defiance of the presence in the life of Anthem.

“Sarkon,” he said, “it was nothing but a trick. It was only a dragon that you feed in your great pit.”

“Perhaps,” replied the youth. “But some who do not know the Singer will believe this monster is the author of the scroll you have. Between this woman and myself will lie a path of blood for you. You cannot win, poor Anthem.”

“Take your ugly pet and go,” he cried. They left in fiendish laughter that rattled windows and vanished in the air.

Then peace acquired the place that conflict had so lately held, and stayed the night. Anthem slept.

But Sarkon waited for a student whose troubled mind and heart had never met. Sarkon vowed they never would.

IX

Science can change the compound states of matter easier than it can change its mind.

The student known as Everyman was indeed a troubled youth but grateful for the wind and rain. Though he often hungered to be free, he was not among the thousand who had been unchained.

He accepted all the sciences as truth but rejected all ideas that Earthmaker could exist. Yet he sometimes wished such mystic falsehoods true. For those who claimed to be unchained seemed so naive to Everyman. And yet they seemed to own contentment he had never managed in pursuing all his sciences. He could not make himself believe the Singer was the Father-Spirit’s Son. Nor did he trust the rumor that the Singer had returned to life. Yet the Singer haunted all his idle hours.