No, Alvin's real journeyman work was yet to come. After Makepeace declared the plow good enough, then Alvin had yet another work to perform.

“I'm going to turn it gold,” said Alvin.

Miss Larner raised an eyebrow. “And what then? What will you tell people about a golden plow? That you found it somewhere? That you happened to have some gold lying about, and thought– this is just enough to make a plow?”

“You're the one what told me a Maker was the one who could turn iron to gold.”

“Yes, but that doesn't mean it's wise to do it.” Miss Larner walked out of the hot forge into the stagnant air of late afternoon. It was cooler, but not much– the first hot night of spring.

“More than gold,” said Alvin. “Or at least not normal gold.”

“Regular gold isn't good enough for you?”

“Gold is dead. Like iron.”

“It isn't dead. It's simply earth without fire. It never was alive, so it can't be dead.”

“You're the one who told me that if I can imagine it, then maybe I can make it come to be.”

“And you can imagine living gold?”

“A plow that cuts the earth with no ox to draw it.”

She said nothing, but her eyes sparkled.

“If I could make such a thing, Miss Larner, would you consider as how I'd graduated from your school for Makers?”

“I'd say you were no longer a prentice Maker.”

“Just what I thought, Miss Larner. A journeyman blacksmith and a journeyman Maker both, if I can do it.”

“And can you?”

Alvin nodded, then shrugged. “I think so. It's what you said about atoms, back in January.”

“I thought you gave up on that.”

“No ma'am. I just kept thinking– what is it you can't cut into smaller pieces? And then I thought– why, if it's got any size at all, it can be cut. So an atom, it's nothing more than just a place, one exact place, with no width at all.”

“Euclid's geometric point.”

“Well, yes ma'am, except that you said his geometry was all imaginary, and this is real.”

“But if it has no size, Alvin–”

“That's what I thought– if it's got no size, then it's nothing. But it isn't nothing. It's a place. Only then I thought, it isn't a place– it just has a place. If you see the difference. An atom can be in one place, one pure geometric point like you said, but then it can move. It can be somewhere else. So, you see, it not only has place, it has a past and a future. Yesterday it was there, today it's here, and tomorrow over yonder.”

“But it isn't anything, Alvin.”

“No, I know that, it isn't anything. But it ain't nothing, neither.”

“Isn't. Either.”

“I know all that grammar, Miss Larner, but I'm not thinking about that right now.”

“You won't have good grammar unless you use it even when you're not thinking about it. But never mind.”

“See, I start thinking, if this atom's got no size, how can anybody tell where it is? It's not giving off any light, because it's got no fire in it to give off. So here's what I come up with: Just suppose this atom's got no size, but it's still got some kind of mind. Some kind of tiny little wit, just enough to know where it is. And the only power it has is to move somewhere else, and know where it is then.”

“How could that be, a memory in something that doesn't exist?”

“Just suppose it! Say you got thousands of them just lying around, just going any which way. How can any of them tell where they are? Since all the others are moving any which way, nothing around it stays the same. But then suppose somebody comes along– and I'm thinking about God here– somebody who can show them a pattern. Show them some way to set still. Like he says– you, there, you're the center, and all the rest of you, you just stay the same distance away from him all the time. Then what have you got?”

Miss Larner thought for a moment. “A hollow sphere. A ball. But still composed of nothing, Alvin.”

“But don't you see? That's why I knew that this was true. I mean, if there's one thing I know from doodlebugging, it's that everything's mostly empty. That anvil, it looks solid, don't it? But I tell you it's mostly empty. Just little bits of ironstuff, hanging a certain distance from each other, all patterned there. But most of the anvil is the empty space between. Don't you see? Those bits are acting just like the atoms I'm talking about. So let's say the anvil is like a mountain, only when you get real close you see it's made of gravel. And then when you pick up the gravel, it crumbles in your hand, and you see it's made of dust. And if you could pick up a single flock of dust you'd see that it was just like the mountain, made of even tinier gravel all over again.”

“You're saying that what we see as solid objects are really nothing but illusion. Little nothings making tiny spheres that are put together to make your bits, and pieces made from bits, and the anvil made from pieces–”

“Only there's a lot more steps between, I reckon. Don't you see, this explains everything? Why it is that all I have to do is imagine a new shape or a new pattern or a new order, and show it in my mind, and if I think it clear and strong enough, and command the bits to change, why, they do. Because they're alive. They may be small and none too bright, but if I show them clear enough, they can do it.”

“This is too strange for me, Alvin. To think that everything is really nothing.”

“No, Miss Larner, you're missing the point. The point is that everything is alive. That everything is made out of living atoms, all obeying the commands that God gave them. And just following those commands, why, some of them get turned into light and heat, and some of them become iron, and some water, and some air, and some of them our own skin and bones. All those things are real– and so those atoms are real.”

“Alvin, I told you about atoms because they were an interesting, theory. The best thinkers of our time believe there are no such things.”

“Begging your pardon, Miss Larner, but the best thinkers never saw the things I saw, so they don't know diddly. I'm telling you that this is the only idea I can think of that explains it all– what I see and what I do.”

“But where did these atoms come from?”

“They don't come from anywhere. Or rather, maybe they come from everywhere. Maybe these atoms, they're just there. Always been there, always will be there. You can't cut them up. They can't die. You can't make them and you can't break them. They're forever.”

“Then God didn't create the world.”

"Of course he did. The atoms were nothing, just places that didn't even know where they were. It's God who put them all into places so he'd know where they were, and so they'd know where they were– and everything in the whole universe is made out of them.

Miss Larner thought about it for the longest time. Alvin stood there watching her, waiting. He knew it was true, or at least truer than anything else he'd ever heard of or thought of. Unless she could think of something wrong with it. So many times this year she'd done that, point out something he forgot, some reason why his idea wouldn't work. So he waited for her to come up with something. Something wrong.

Maybe she would've. Only while she was standing there outside the forge, thinking, they heard the sound of horses cantering up the road from town. Of course they looked to see who was coming in such a rush.

It was Sheriff Pauley Wiseman and two men that Alvin never saw before. Behind them was Dr. Physicker's carriage, with old Po Doggly driving. And they didn't just pass by. They stopped right there at the curve by the forge.

“Miss Larner,” said Pauley Wiseman. “Arthur Stuart around?”

“Why do you ask?” said Miss Larner. “Who are these men?”

“He's here,” said one of the men. The white-haired one. He held up a tiny box between his thumb and forefinger. Both the strangers looked at it, then looked up the hill toward the springhouse. “In there,” said the white-haired man.