 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Cherie Terrio. Anthem by Anne Ran. Chapter 12. It was when I read the first of the books I found in my house that I saw the word I, and when I understood this word, the book fell from my hands, and I wept. I, who had never known tears, I wept in deliverance and in pity for all mankind. I understood the blessed thing which I had called my curse. I understood why the best in me had been my sins and my transgressions, and why I had never felt guilt in my sins. I understood that centuries of chains and lashes will not kill the spirit of man, nor the sense of truth within him. I read many books for many days, then I called the golden one, and I told her what I had read and what I had learned. She looked at me and the first words she spoke were, I love you. Then I said, my dearest one, it is not proper for men to be without names. There was a time when each man had a name of his own to distinguish him from all other men. So let us choose our names. I have read of a man who lived many thousands of years ago, and of all the names in these books, his is the one I wished to bear. He took the light of the gods and brought it to men, and he taught men to be gods. And he suffered for his dean, as all bearers of light must suffer. His name was Prometheus. It shall be your name, said the golden one. And I have read of a goddess, I said, who was the mother of the earth and of all the gods. Her name was Gaia. Let this be your name, my golden one, for you are to be the mother of a new kind of gods. It shall be my name, said the golden one. Now I look ahead. My future is clear before me. The saint of the pyre had seen the future when he chose me as his heir, as the heir of all the saints and all the martyrs who came before him and who died for the same cause, for the same word, no matter what name they gave to their cause and their truth. I shall live here in my own house. I shall take my food from the earth by the toil of my own hands. I shall learn many secrets from my books. Through the years ahead, I shall rebuild the achievements of the past and open the way to carry them further. The achievements which are open to me, but close forever to my brothers, for their minds are shackled to the weakest and dullest among them. I have learned that the power of the sky was known to men long ago. They called it electricity. It was the power that moved their greatest invention. It lit this house with light that came from those globes of glass on the walls. I have found the engine which produced this light. I shall learn how to repair it and how to make it work again. I shall learn how to use the wires which carry this power. Then I shall build a barrier of wires around my home and across the paths which lead to my home. A barrier light as a cobweb. More impassable than a wall of granite. A barrier my brothers will never be able to cross. I have nothing to fight me with, save the brute force of their numbers. I have my mind. Then here, on this mountaintop, with the world below me and nothing above me but the sun, I shall live my own truth. Gaia is pregnant with my child. He will be taught to say I and to bear the pride of it. He will be taught to walk straight on his own feet. He will be taught reverence for his own spirit. When I shall have read all the books and learned my new way, when my home will be ready and my earth tilled, I shall steal one day for the last time into the cursed city of my birth. I shall call to me my friend who has no name, save International 48818 and all those like him, Fraternity 25503 who cries without reason and Solidarity 96347 who calls for help in the night and a few others. I shall call to me all the men and women whose spirit has not been killed within them and who suffer under the yoke of their brothers. They will follow me and I shall lead them to my fortress. And here, in this uncharted wilderness, I and they, my chosen friends, my fellow builders shall write the first chapter in the new history of man. These are the last things before me. And as I stand here at the door of glory, I look behind me for the last time. I look upon the history of men which I have learned from the books and I wonder. It was a long story. And the spirit which moved it was the spirit of man's freedom. But what is freedom? Freedom from what? There is nothing to take a man's freedom away from him, save other men. To be free, a man must be free of his brothers. That is freedom. That and nothing else. At first, man was enslaved by the gods, but he broke their chains. Then he was enslaved by the kings, but he broke their chains. He was enslaved by his birth, by his kin, by his race, but he broke their chains. He declared to all his brothers that a man has rights, which neither god nor king nor other men can take away from him, no matter what their number. For hid is the right of man. And there is no right on earth above this right. And he stood on the threshold of freedom for which the blood of the centuries behind him had spilled. But then he gave up all he had won and fell lower than his savage beginning. What brought it to pass? What disaster took their reason away from men? What whiplashed them to their knees in shame and submission? The worship of the word we. When men accepted that worship, the structure of centuries collapsed about them. The structure whose every beam had come from the thought of some one man, each in his day down the ages, from the depths of some one spirit, such as spirit existed, but for its own sake. Those men who survived, those eager to obey, eager to live for one another, since they had nothing else to vindicate them, those men could neither carry on nor preserve what they had received. Thus did all thought, all science, all wisdom perish on earth. Thus did men, men with nothing to offer save their great numbers, lose the steel towers, the flying ships, the power wires, all the things that had not created and could never keep. Perhaps later some men had been born with the mind and the courage to recover these things which were lost. Perhaps these men came before the counselor of scholars. They answered as I had been answered and for the same reasons. But I still wonder how it was possible in those graceless years of transition long ago that men did not see whether they were going and went on in blindness and cowardice to their fate. I wonder, for it is hard for me to conceive how men who knew the word I could give it up and not know what they had lost. But such has been the story, for I have lived in the city of the damned and I know what horror men permitted to be brought upon them. Perhaps in those days there were a few among men, a few of clear sight and clean soul who refused to surrender that word. What agony must have been theirs before that which they saw coming and could not stop? Perhaps they cried out in protest and in warning, but men paid no heed to their warning. And they, those few, fought a hopeless battle and they perished with their banners smeared by their own blood and they chose to perish for they knew. To them I send my salute across the centuries and my pity. There's is the banner in my hand and I wish I had the power to tell them that the despair of their hearts was not to be final and their night was not without hope. For the battle they lost can never be lost. For that which they died to save can never perish. Through all the darkness, through all the shame of which men are capable, the spirit of man will remain alive on this earth. It may sleep, but it will awaken. It may wear chains, but it will break through. And man will go on. Man, not men. Here on this mountain I and my sons and my chosen friends shall build our new land and our fort and it will become as the heart of the earth. Lost and hidden at first, but beating, beating louder each day. And word of it will reach every corner of the earth and the roads of the world will become as veins which will carry the best of the world's blood to my threshold. And all my brothers and the councils of my brothers will hear of it, but they will be impotent against me. And the day will come when I shall break the chains of the earth and raise the cities of the enslaved and my home will become the capital of a world where each man will be free to exist for his own sake. For the coming of that day I shall fight. I and my sons and my chosen friends for the freedom of man, for his rights, for his life, for his honor. And here over the portals of my fort I shall cut in the stone the word which is to be my beacon and my banner the word which will not die should we all perish and battle the word which can never die on this earth for it is the heart of it and the meaning and the glory the sacred word ego End Chapter 12 End of Anthem by Anne Rand