"I'm a scholar, not a tactician," said Akma.

"Are you?" she asked. "I've thought about this a great deal, Akma, and when I look at you it's not a scholar that I see."

"No? What monster have you decided that I am?"

"Not a monster, either. Just a common thug. Your hands have torn holes in the wings of angel children. Diggers hide in terror during the night because they fear seeing your shadow come between them and the moonlight."

"Are you seriously accusing me of this? I have never raised my hand in violence against anyone."

"You caused it, Akma. You set them in motion, the whole army of them, the whole nasty, cruel, evil army of child-beaters."

He shuddered; his face contorted with some deep emotion. "You can't be saying this to me. You know that it's a lie."

"They're your friends. You're their hero, Akma. You and my brothers."

"I don't control them!" he said. He only barely controlled his voice.

"Oh, you don't?" she answered. "What, do they control you then?"

He rose from the table, knocking over his stool as he did. "If they did control me, Edhadeya, I'd be out preaching against Father's pathetic little religion right now. They beg, they plead. Ominer's all for doing it, Pour the bronze while it still flows, he tells me. But I refuse to lend my name to any of these persecutions. I don't want anybody hurt-not even diggers, despite what you think of me. And those angels, with holes torn in their wings-do you think I didn't hear that with the same rage as any decent person? Do you think I don't want the thugs who did that punished?" His voice trembled with emotion.

"Do you think they would have had the boldness to do it if it weren't for you?"

"I didn't invent this! I didn't create hatred and resentment of the diggers! It was our fathers who did it, when they changed the whole religious structure of the state to include the diggers as if they were people-"

"Thirteen years since they made those changes, and in all those years, nothing happened. Then you announce that you've ‘discovered' that there is no Keeper-in spite of my true dream by which the Keeper saved the Zenifi! In spite of knowing that it was only by the power of the Oversoul that the very records from which you took your ‘proof were translated. You persuade my brothers-even Mon, I don't know how-even Aronha, who always used to see through silliness-and then, the moment that Father's heirs are united in their unbelief, the floodgates open."

"You might as well blame my mother, then. After all, she gave birth to me."

"Oh, I think there is blame before you. I found out, for instance, that Bego has been part of a longtime conspiracy against Akmaro's teachings. If you search your memory honestly, I wonder if you won't find that it was Bego who led you to your ‘discovery' of the nonexistence of the Keeper."

"Bego isn't part of anything. He lives for his books. He lives in the past."

"And your father was inventing a new future, doing away with the past. Yes, Bego would hate that, wouldn't he? And he's never believed in the Keeper, I realize that now-insisting on a natural explanation for everything. No miracles, please-remember him saying that over and over? No miracles. The people of Akmaro escaped because it was in the best interest of the digger guards to let them go. The Keeper didn't make them sleep. Did anybody see them sleeping? No, Akmaro simply dreamed a dream. Go with the simplest explanation every time, that's what he taught us."

"He taught us that because it's true. It's intellectually honest."

"Honest? Akma, the simplest explanation of most of these stories is that the Keeper sends true dreams. The Keeper intervenes sometimes in people's lives. To avoid believing that you have to come up with the most convoluted, twisted, insulting speculations. You dare to tell me that my dream was only significant because it reminded people of the Zenifi, not because I was actually able to tell the difference between a true dream and a normal one. In order to disbelieve in the Keeper, you had to believe that I was and continue to be a self-deceptive fool."

"Not a fool," he said, with real pain in his expression.-"You were a child. It seemed real to you then. So of course you remember it as being real."

"You see? What you call intellectual honesty I call self-deception. You won't believe me, when I stand before you in flesh and blood and declare to you what I saw-"

"What you hallucinated among the dreams of the night."

"Nor will you even believe the simple truth of what the ancient records say-that the Rasulum, just like the Nafari, were brought back to Earth after millions of years of exile on another world. No, you can't stick with the simple explanation that the people who wrote these things actually knew what they were talking about. You have to decide that the books were created by later writers who simply wrote down old legends that accounted for the divinity of the Heroes by claiming that they came from the heavens. Nothing can be read straight. Everything has to be twisted to fit your one, basic article of faith that there is no Keeper. You can't know it! You have no proof of it! And yet faith in that one premise-against which you have a thousand written witnesses and at least a dozen living ones, including me-faith in that one premise leads you to set in motion the chain of events that leads to children being mutilated in the streets of the cities and villages of Darakemba."

"Is this why you came?" asked Akma. "To tell me that my disbelief in your true dream really hurts your feelings? I'm sorry. I had hoped you would be mature enough to understand that reason has to triumph over superstition."

She hadn't touched him. Hadn't reached that spark of decency hidden deep inside. Because there was no such spark, she knew that now. He rejected the Keeper, not because he was hurt so badly as a child, but because he truly hated the world the Keeper wanted to create. He loved evil; that's why he no longer loved her.

Without another word, she turned to go.

"Wait," he said.

She stopped; foolishly, she allowed another spark of hope to brighten.

"It's not in my power to stop these persecutions, but your father can."

"You think he hasn't tried?"

"He's going about it all wrong," said Akma. "The civil guard won't enforce the law. So many of them are actually involved in the Un-kept."

"Why don't you name names?" said Edhadeya. "If you truly meant what you said about wanting to stop the cruelty-"

"The men I know are all old and none of them are going out beating up children. Are you going to listen to me?"

"If you have a plan, I'll take it to Father."

"It's simple enough. The reason the Unkept feel such rage is because they only have two choices, either to join in with a state religion that forces them to associate with lower creatures-don't argue with me, I'm telling you what they think-"

"You think the same-"

"You've never listened to me long enough to know what I think, and it doesn't matter anyway. Listen now. They are rebelling out of a sense of helpless rage. They can't strike at the king, but they can strike at the priests and the diggers. But what if the king decreed that there no longer was a state religion?"

"Abolish the Houses of the Keeper!"

"Not at all. Let the Kept continue to assemble and share their beliefs and rituals-but on a completely voluntary basis. And let others who believe differently form their own assemblies, and without anyone's interference have their rituals and teachings. As many assemblies, as many beliefs as people want. And the government will simply look on and interfere with none of them."

"A nation should be of one heart and mind," said Edhadeya. "My father destroyed all hope of that thirteen years ago," said Akma. "Let the king declare religious belief and assembly a private matter, with no public interest at all, and there will be peace."