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number of religious people dropped over the years. But one cannot limit another man’s beliefs under a system of complete freedom. Religious persons were allowed to practice their beliefs. Though their children might be born as mentally sound as possible, the parents raised them and passed their own superstitions on to their offspring. The number of religious dwindled. But as long as they procreated-and this is a strong part of their faith, these Christians-they would always have children to indoctrinate, to warp. It’s a pity, certainly. But, after all, they are responsible and it is their life and their child. A man can waste what is his if he so choose. I guess.”
        “Know the Word,” the Christian said as they drew abreast of him. He handed Gnossos and Sam pamphlets-yellow paper with red print. They were so wrinkled and tattered that it was evident many people had handed them right back in the past. The short-lived traffic of each pamphlet had worn it severely.
        “I’ll take one too,” Hurkos said, holding his hand out.
        The Christian made no reply. Hurkos asked again.
        “Will you ask this person of tainted blood to cease speaking to me?” the bearded one asked Sam. He was obviously distressed, running his thin, bony hands up and down the edges of the chest sign, toying with little splinters projecting from the edge of the plastic square.
        “Tainted blood?”
        “They don’t like Mues,” Gnossos explained. “They would never speak to one unless they were dying and needed help. Then, it would be God’s will that they spoke.”
        “Why are Mues-tainted?” Sam asked.
        “A Mue is not a creation of God, but the work of man,” the Christian snapped. “A Mue is a violation of God’s holy powers of creation.” His eyes gleamed fanatically.
        “Prejudice,” Gnossos said. “It’s part of the dogma of every religion-sometimes heavily disguised but always there. Do you know the history of your church, old man?”
        The Christian shuffled his feet. He was beginning to feel that it might be best to stay out of an argument with these particular pagans, but his fanatic devotion could not be totally denied. “Of course I do. In the beginning there was-”
        “It doesn’t start that far back.” Gnossos laughed. He licked his lips, anxious to launch into the old man. “It doesn’t start with the darkness and the light and the first seven days. It comes along much later. Millennia later. There’s no church until man decides he needs a means of social climbing, something to make him superior to his neighbors. So he forms a church, a religion. By forming it, he can say that he knows what and why God is. He can say he knows the purpose of all things and can, therefore, be a cut above other men.”
        “God chose Saint Peter to start the church, to be above other men.”
        Gnossos smiled patronizingly, almost a saint himself-except for the sharp blade that was his tongue. “I doubt that. You’ll pardon me if I sound distrustful, but I doubt that very much. History is simply littered with men who said God had chosen them to be a leader. Most of them fell flat on their faces. Most of them got trampled down and smashed in the flow of Time and History, which are two things bigger than any man.”
        “False prophets!” the sign-carrier growled.
        “So what makes you think Saint Peter wasn’t a false prophet?”
        “What he started is still with us.”
        “Duration does not prove worth. Wars lasted a damn sight longer than your religion has, but they were finished and done away with because they were not good things. Besides, your faith is just barely with us. It seems Saint Peter’s work is facing the end that war faced.”
        Sam made a face, launched into the conversation again. “But why hate Hurkos for not being directly God-created? If God gave men the power to invent and use the Artificial Womb, then He was involved in the