Butler chuckled. “There’s been a little family dispute,” he said. “We keep it out of the press because it really isn’t the concern of anybody but us, Cave’s servants. Don’t mind talking to you about it since you’ll be dead soon anyway and up here we’re all in the same boat, all Cavites. Anyway, some of the younger fellows, the bright ones like Jessup, have got attached to Iris ... not that we don’t all love her equally. It’s just that they’ve got in the habit of talking about death being the womb again, all that kind of stuff without any real basis in Cave.” “It runs all through his work, Bill. It’s implicit in all that he said.” Jessup was amiable but I sensed a hardness in his tone. It had come to this, I thought. “Well, we won’t argue about it,” said Butler, turning to me with a smile. “You should see what these Irisians can do with a Cavite text. By the time they finish you don’t know whether you’re coming or going.” “Were you at all active in the Mission?” asked Jessup, abruptly changing the subject. I shook my head. “I was one of the early admirers of Cave but I’m afraid I had very little contact with any of his people. I tried once or twice to get in to see him ... when they were in the yellow tower, but it was impossible. Only the Residents and people like that ever got to see him personally.” “He was busy those days,” said Jessup, nodding. “He must have dictated nearly two million words in the last three years of his life.” “You think he wrote all those books and dialogues himself?” “Of course he did.” Jessup sounded surprised. “Haven’t you read Iris’s accounts of the way he worked? The way he would dictate for hours at a time, oblivious of everything but Cavesword.” “I suppose I missed all that,” I mumbled. “In those days it was always assumed that he had a staff who did the work for him.” “The lutherists,” said Jessup, nodding. “They were extremely subtle in their methods but of course they couldn’t distort the truth for very long....” “Oh,” said Butler. “Mr Hudson asked me the other day if I knew what the word lutherist came from and I said I didn’t know. I must have forgotten for I have a feeling it _was_ taught us, back in the old days when we primitives were turned out, before you bright young fellows came along to show us how to do Caveswork.” Jessup smiled. “We’re not that bumptious,” he said. “As for lutherist, it’s a word based on the name of one of the first followers of Cave. I don’t know his other name or even much about him. All that I know I’ve been told ... as far as I remember, the episode was never even recorded. Much too disagreeable ... and of course we don’t like to dwell on our failures.” “I wonder what it was that he did,” I asked, my voice trembling despite all efforts to control it. “He was a nonconformist of some kind. He quarreled with Iris, they say.” “Wonder what happened to him?” asked Butler. “Did they send him through indoctrination?”