“Georgi wore them....” He answered. “I gave him mine....” “Then Georgi is a workman?” “Yes.... I found him before the Pater-noster machine. I took his place and sent him to you....” “Perhaps he’ll come yet,” answered Josaphat. Freder shook his head. “He should have been here hours ago. If he had been caught when leaving the New Tower of Babel, then someone would have come to me when I was standing before the machine. It is strange, but there it is; he has not come.” “Was there much money in the suit which you exchanged with Georgi?” asked Josaphat tentatively, as one who bares a wounded spot. Freder nodded. “Then you must not be surprised that Georgi has not come,” said Josaphat. But the expression of shame and pain on Freder’s face prevented him from continuing. “Won’t you sit down, Mr. Freder,” he begged. “Or lie down? You look so tired that it is painful to look at you.” “I have no time to sit down and not time to lie down, either,” answered Freder. He walked through the rooms, aimlessly, senselessly, stopping wherever a chair, a table, offered him a hold. “The fact, is this, Josaphat: I told Georgi to come here and to wait here for me—or for a message from me.... It is a thousand to one that Slim, in searching for me, is already on Georgi’s track, and it’s a thousand to one he gets out of him where I sent him....” “And you do not want Slim to find you?” “He must not find me, Josaphat—not for anything on earth....” The other stood silent, rather helpless. Freder looked at him with a trembling smile. “How shall we obtain money, now, Josaphat?” “That should offer no difficulty to Joh Fredersen’s son.” “More than you think, Josaphat, for I am no longer Joh Fredersen’s son....” Josaphat raised his head. “I do not understand you,” he said, after a pause. “There is nothing to misunderstand, Josaphat. I have set myself free from my father, and am going my own way....” The man who had been the first secretary to the Master over the great Metropolis held his breath back in his lungs, then released it in streams. “Will you let me tell you something, Mr. Freder?” “Well....” “One does not set oneself free from your father. It is he who decides whether one remains with him or must leave him. “There is nobody who is stronger than Joh Fredersen. He is like the earth. As regards the earth we have no will either. Her laws keep us eternally perpendicular to the centre of the earth, even if we stand on our head.... When Joh Fredersen sets a man free it means just as much as if the earth were to shut off from a man her powers of attraction. It means falling into nothing.... Joh Fredersen can set free whom he may; he will never set free his son....” “But what,” answered Freder, speaking feverishly, “if a man overcomes the laws of nature?” “Utopia, Mr. Freder.”