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was his, and only his.
        For six hundred years he had come here every week, sometimes for stretches that lasted days, most often for just a few hours. He came to look at the Shield. And what lay beyond, trapped by it. It was a weight that rested heavily on his shoulders at all times. It was insane to worry. He knew that. The Shield had held for over a thousand years; it would hold forever. It could not fail. It was maintained by machines, and machines had not been known to fail since his grandfather’s time. And these machines were tended, not by unreliable men, but by other machines that gained their power from still more machines. It was foolproof.
        Still, Alexander Breadloaf III came once a week, sometimes staying a long time, sometimes just for a few hours. Still he worried. Still-he was afraid.
        Crimson exploded across the screen, washed down and turned to ocher at the bottom. Explosions would not shatter the Shield, no matter how violent they might be. Didn’t it understand this by now? A thousand years of explosions, and it still did not understand. That thought left a sorry spot on his soul, but he reminded himself of what his father always said (said so often that it became the family motto): “There is no longer ignorance in men.” Maybe. Evidently. Although he feared that ignorance lurked just below the surface, waiting for a chance…
        There was a lovely pattern of blue and silver as it applied certain stress pattern sequences to the Shield. But it had tried that before. It had tried everything before…
        Breadloaf pushed himself out of the chair, walked toward the door that led into the hallway. He would get some simple foods, some coffee. And he would return. This was one of those times when a brief glance at it was not going to be enough. It was going to be one of those weeks. One of those long weeks.

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    VII
        
        In their wandering, they came across many things that amazed Sam despite the fact that he wholly or partially remembered most of them. It was as if he had been told of these things but had never actually seen them. In the seeing lay the wonder. They had gone to the light shows, the toto-experience places. They had seen the parks, the avenues of art. Gnossos knew the city well, that being one of the qualifications of a true poet-to know the beating heart of the metropolis. Or megalopolis? No matter. He explained all things they did not understand, clarified things they thought they knew. It was a marvelous time, save for the constant awareness that another hypnotic trance and order could be on the way, minutes from them, ready to swallow Sam into noisy chaos and use him.
        So it was, in the course of their aimless ramblings, they came upon the Christian. Sam noticed that Hurkos bristled at the sight of the man-not because of this individual, but because of the heedless god that supposedly stood behind him.
        The Christian was old. He was fifty, ancient in a world where all were eternally thirty or younger. He had evidently been a child of a strong Christian family, for he had not even received anti-beard elements; the heavy shadow on his face gave him an eerie, seldom-seen metallic look. His teeth were yellow and chipped. His skin was wrinkled. Across his chest and back hung the halves of a sandwich sign. The front said: GOD IS ASHAMED! When the man saw them coming, he executed a small heel-turn to reveal the letters on the back of the sign: HE SHALL COME AGAIN TO JUDGE!
        “I can’t understand them,” Hurkos said.
        Gnossos smiled a thin smile. “Some day, they will all be gone.”
        “But why are there these people?” Sam asked. “Don’t the medics prevent mental infirmities in babies?”
        “Well,” the poet said, shortening his giant strides to match the smaller steps of his companions, “the original concept of the empire was complete freedom. Mental infirmities were weeded out, true. As a result, the