Anthem Page #9

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

								

      It is a great Council, to which the wisest of all lands are
      elected, and it meets once a year in the different Cities of the
      earth. We shall go to this Council and we shall lay before them,
      as our gift, this glass box with the power of the sky. We shall
      confess everything to them. They will see, understand and
      forgive. For our gift is greater than our transgression. They
      will explain it to the Council of Vocations, and we shall be
      assigned to the Home of the Scholars. This has never been done
      before, but neither has a gift such as ours ever been offered to
      men.

      We must wait. We must guard our tunnel as we had never guarded it
      before. For should any men save the Scholars learn of our secret,
      they would not understand it, nor would they believe us. They
      would see nothing, save our crime of working alone, and they
      would destroy us and our light. We care not about our body, but
      our light is...

      Yes, we do care. For the first time do we care about our body.
      For this wire is as a part of our body, as a vein torn from us,
      glowing with our blood. Are we proud of this thread of metal, or
      of our hands which made it, or is there a line to divide these
      two?

      We stretch out our arms. For the first time do we know how strong
      our arms are. And a strange thought comes to us: we wonder, for
      the first time in our life, what we look like. Men never see
      their own faces and never ask their brothers about it, for it is
      evil to have concern for their own faces or bodies. But tonight,
      for a reason we cannot fathom, we wish it were possible to us to
      know the likeness of our own person.

      PART SIX

      We have not written for thirty days. For thirty days we have not
      been here, in our tunnel. We had been caught. It happened on that
      night when we wrote last. We forgot, that night, to watch the
      sand in the glass which tells us when three hours have passed and
      it is time to return to the City Theatre. When we remembered it,
      the sand had run out.

      We hastened to the Theatre. But the big tent stood grey and
      silent against the sky. The streets of the City lay before us,
      dark and empty. If we went back to hide in our tunnel, we would
      be found and our light found with us. So we walked to the Home of
      the Street Sweepers.

      When the Council of the Home questioned us, we looked upon the
      faces of the Council, but there was no curiosity in those faces,
      and no anger, and no mercy. So when the oldest of them asked us:
      “Where have you been?” we thought of our glass box and of our
      light, and we forgot all else. And we answered:

      “We will not tell you.”

      The oldest did not question us further. They turned to the two
      youngest, and said, and their voice was bored:

      “Take our brother Equality 7-2521 to the Palace of Corrective
      Detention. Lash them until they tell.”

      So we were taken to the Stone Room under the Palace of Corrective
      Detention. This room has no windows and it is empty save for an
      iron post. Two men stood by the post, naked but for leather
      aprons and leather hoods over their faces. Those who had brought
      us departed, leaving us to the two Judges who stood in a corner
      of the room. The Judges were small, thin men, grey and bent. They
      gave the signal to the two strong hooded ones.

      They tore the clothes from our body, they threw us down upon our
      knees and they tied our hands to the iron post. The first blow of
      the lash felt as if our spine had been cut in two. The second
      blow stopped the first, and for a second we felt nothing, then
      the pain struck us in our throat and fire ran in our lungs
      without air. But we did not cry out.

      The lash whistled like a singing wind. We tried to count the
      blows, but we lost count. We knew that the blows were falling
      upon our back. Only we felt nothing upon our back any longer. A
      flaming grill kept dancing before our eyes, and we thought of
      nothing save that grill, a grill, a grill of red squares, and
      then we knew that we were looking at the squares of the iron
      grill in the door, and there were also the squares of stone on
      the walls, and the squares which the lash was cutting upon our
      back, crossing and re-crossing itself in our flesh.

      Then we saw a fist before us. It knocked our chin up, and we saw
      the red froth of our mouth on the withered fingers, and the Judge
      asked:

      “Where have you been?”

      But we jerked our head away, hid our face upon our tied hands,
      and bit our lips.

      The lash whistled again. We wondered who was sprinkling burning
      coal dust upon the floor, for we saw drops of red twinkling on
      the stones around us.

      Then we knew nothing, save two voices snarling steadily, one
      after the other, even though we knew they were speaking many
      minutes apart:

      “Where have you been where have you been where have you been
      where have you been?...”

      And our lips moved, but the sound trickled back into our throat,
      and the sound was only:

      “The light... The light... The light....”

      Then we knew nothing.

      We opened our eyes, lying on our stomach on the brick floor of a
      cell. We looked upon two hands lying far before us on the bricks,
      and we moved them, and we knew that they were our hands. But we
      could not move our body. Then we smiled, for we thought of the
      light and that we had not betrayed it.

      We lay in our cell for many days. The door opened twice each day,
      once for the men who brought us bread and water, and once for the
      Judges. Many Judges came to our cell, first the humblest and then
      the most honored Judges of the City. They stood before us in
      their white togas, and they asked:

      “Are you ready to speak?”

      But we shook our head, lying before them on the floor. And they
      departed.

      We counted each day and each night as it passed. Then, tonight,
      we knew that we must escape. For tomorrow the World Council of
      Scholars is to meet in our City.

      It was easy to escape from the Palace of Corrective Detention.
      The locks are old on the doors and there are no guards about.
      There is no reason to have guards, for men have never defied the
      Councils so far as to escape from whatever place they were
      ordered to be. Our body is healthy and strength returns to it
      speedily. We lunged against the door and it gave way. We stole
      through the dark passages, and through the dark streets, and down
      into our tunnel.

      We lit the candle and we saw that our place had not been found
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