Anthem Page #13

Anthem is a dystopian fiction novella by Russian-American writer Ayn Rand, written in 1937 and first published in 1938 in the United Kingdom. The story takes place at an unspecified future date when mankind has entered another Dark Age.

• Science fiction

								

      come to us again, as we walk in silence. If that which we have
      found is the corruption of solitude, then what can men wish for
      save corruption? If this is the great evil of being alone, then
      what is good and what is evil?

      Everything which comes from the many is good. Everything which
      comes from one is evil. This have we been taught with our first
      breath. We have broken the law, but we have never doubted it. Yet
      now, as we walk through the forest, we are learning to doubt.

      There is no life for men, save in useful toil for the good of all
      their brothers. But we lived not, when we toiled for our
      brothers, we were only weary. There is no joy for men, save the
      joy shared with all their brothers. But the only things which
      taught us joy were the power we created in our wires, and the
      Golden One. And both these joys belong to us alone, they come
      from us alone, they bear no relation to all our brothers, and
      they do not concern our brothers in any way. Thus do we wonder.

      There is some error, one frightful error, in the thinking of men.
      What is that error? We do not know, but the knowledge struggles
      within us, struggles to be born. Today, the Golden One stopped
      suddenly and said:

      “We love you.”

      But they frowned and shook their head and looked at us
      helplessly.

      “No,” they whispered, “that is not what we wished to say.”

      They were silent, then they spoke slowly, and their words were
      halting, like the words of a child learning to speak for the
      first time:

      “We are one... alone... and only... and we love you who are
      one... alone... and only.”

      We looked into each other’s eyes and we knew that the breath of a
      miracle had touched us, and fled, and left us groping vainly.

      And we felt torn, torn for some word we could not find.

      PART TEN

      We are sitting at a table and we are writing this upon paper made
      thousands of years ago. The light is dim, and we cannot see the
      Golden One, only one lock of gold on the pillow of an ancient
      bed. This is our home.

      We came upon it today, at sunrise. For many days we had been
      crossing a chain of mountains. The forest rose among cliffs, and
      whenever we walked out upon a barren stretch of rock we saw great
      peaks before us in the west, and to the north of us, and to the
      south, as far as our eyes could see. The peaks were red and
      brown, with the green streaks of forests as veins upon them, with
      blue mists as veils over their heads. We had never heard of these
      mountains, nor seen them marked on any map. The Uncharted Forest
      has protected them from the Cities and from the men of the
      Cities.

      We climbed paths where the wild goat dared not follow. Stones
      rolled from under our feet, and we heard them striking the rocks
      below, farther and farther down, and the mountains rang with each
      stroke, and long after the strokes had died. But we went on, for
      we knew that no men would ever follow our track nor reach us
      here.

      Then today, at sunrise, we saw a white flame among the trees,
      high on a sheer peak before us. We thought that it was a fire and
      stopped. But the flame was unmoving, yet blinding as liquid
      metal. So we climbed toward it through the rocks. And there,
      before us, on a broad summit, with the mountains rising behind
      it, stood a house such as we had never seen, and the white fire
      came from the sun on the glass of its windows.

      The house had two stories and a strange roof flat as a floor.
      There was more window than wall upon its walls, and the windows
      went on straight around the corners, though how this kept the
      house standing we could not guess. The walls were hard and
      smooth, of that stone unlike stone which we had seen in our
      tunnel.

      We both knew it without words: this house was left from the
      Unmentionable Times. The trees had protected it from time and
      weather, and from men who have less pity than time and weather.
      We turned to the Golden One and we asked:

      “Are you afraid?”

      But they shook their head. So we walked to the door, and we threw
      it open, and we stepped together into the house of the
      Unmentionable Times.

      We shall need the days and the years ahead, to look, to learn,
      and to understand the things of this house. Today, we could only
      look and try to believe the sight of our eyes. We pulled the
      heavy curtains from the windows and we saw that the rooms were
      small, and we thought that not more than twelve men could have
      lived here. We thought it strange that men had been permitted to
      build a house for only twelve.

      Never had we seen rooms so full of light. The sunrays danced upon
      colors, colors, more colors than we thought possible, we who had
      seen no houses save the white ones, the brown ones and the grey.
      There were great pieces of glass on the walls, but it was not
      glass, for when we looked upon it we saw our own bodies and all
      the things behind us, as on the face of a lake. There were
      strange things which we had never seen and the use of which we do
      not know. And there were globes of glass everywhere, in each
      room, the globes with the metal cobwebs inside, such as we had
      seen in our tunnel.

      We found the sleeping hall and we stood in awe upon its
      threshold. For it was a small room and there were only two beds
      in it. We found no other beds in the house, and then we knew that
      only two had lived here, and this passes understanding. What kind
      of world did they have, the men of the Unmentionable Times?

      We found garments, and the Golden One gasped at the sight of
      them. For they were not white tunics, nor white togas; they were
      of all colors, no two of them alike. Some crumbled to dust as we
      touched them. But others were of heavier cloth, and they felt
      soft and new in our fingers.

      We found a room with walls made of shelves, which held rows of
      manuscripts, from the floor to the ceiling. Never had we seen
      such a number of them, nor of such strange shape. They were not
      soft and rolled, they had hard shells of cloth and leather; and
      the letters on their pages were so small and so even that we
      wondered at the men who had such handwriting. We glanced through
      the pages, and we saw that they were written in our language, but
      we found many words which we could not understand. Tomorrow, we
      shall begin to read these scripts.

      When we had seen all the rooms of the house, we looked at the
      Golden One and we both knew the thought in our minds.

      “We shall never leave this house,” we said, “nor let it be taken
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