The coffee cup trembled in my hand. I set it carefully on the table. I wondered if _his_ hearing was sound. I repeated my own name, long lost to me, but mine still in the secret dimness of memory. “I don’t place the name. Was he a friend of the Liberator?” “Why, yes. I even used to know him slightly but that was many years ago, before your time. I’m curious to know what might have become of him. I suppose he’s dead.” “I’m sorry but I don’t place the name.” He looked at me with some interest. “I guess you must be almost old enough to have seen _him_.” I nodded, lowering my lids with a studied reverence, as though dazzled at the recollection of great light. “I saw him several times.” “Boy, I envy you! There aren’t many left who have seen _him_ with their own eyes. What was he like?” “Just like his photographs,” I said, shifting the line of inquiry: there is always the danger that a trap is being prepared for me. I was noncommittal, preferring to hear Butler talk of himself. Fortunately, he preferred this too and for nearly an hour I learned as much as I shall ever need to know about the life of at least one Communicator of Cavesword. While he talked, I watched him furtively for some sign of intention but there was none that I could detect; yet I _was_ suspicious. He had not known my name and I could not understand what obscure motive might cause him to pretend ignorance unless of course he _does_ know who I am and wishes to confuse me, preparatory to some trap. I excused myself soon afterwards and went to my room, after first accepting a copy of the newest Testament handsomely bound in Plasticon (it looks like leather) and promising to give him my old proscribed copy the next day. The first thing that I did, after locking the door to my room, was to take the book over to my desk and open it to the index. My eye traveled down that column of familiar names until it came to the L’s. At first I thought that my eyes were playing a trick upon me. I held the page close to the light, wondering if I might not have begun to suffer delusions, the not unfamiliar concomitant of solitude and old age. But my eyes were adequate and the hallucination, if real, was vastly convincing: my name was no longer there. Eugene Luther no longer existed in that Testament which was largely his own composition. I let the book shut of itself, as new books will. I sat down at the desk, understanding at last the extraordinary ignorance of Butler: I had been obliterated from history; my place in time erased. It was as if I had never lived. THREE 1