Now I perceived that behind Sanson and between the two thrones stood a telephone funnel, attached to some mechanism. It was from this that the voice had issued. It was followed by the clacking sound of a riband of paper being run off a reel. Sanson stepped back, picked up the riband, and ran it through his fingers, glancing at it indifferently. “The speaker lives in District 9, Block 47, but we do not yet know his name. A trapper is watching,” said the voice in the funnel. A bell rang, the door on the left of the Council Hall was opened by a guard, and a girl of about eighteen entered. She was robed in white and on her shoulder was the sign of a palm tree. She stood before Boss Lembken’s throne with downcast face and clasped hands, trembling violently. “They sent for me,” she said in a low voice. I saw the smile deepen on Lembken’s face. He sat leering at her; then he shifted each foot down from the stool and gathered himself, puffing, upon his feet. He put his hand under her chin and raised it, looking into her face. The girl twisted herself away, screamed and began running toward the door. “Let me go home! Please—please!” she cried. The guard at the door placed one hand over her mouth and dragged her, struggling, through a small door behind the funnel, which I had not seen. I clenched my fists; only the thought of Esther held me where I was. “Ascribe the heretics,” said Lembken to the deputy priest, and puffed out behind the guard. Sanson stepped backward and touched the funnel mechanism, which instantly began to scream. “Heresy in the paper shops!” it howled. “Examine District 5. They say there is a God. Weed out the morons there!” The writing mechanism began to clack again. I saw the paper riband coil like a snake along the floor between the thrones. Sanson stopped the machine, which was beginning to screech once more. He moved to the vacant throne and sat down. Again the bell tinkled, and there came in a man of about thirty years, in blue, leading a little boy by the hand. He looked about him in bewilderment, and then, seeing the priest, flung himself on his knees and pressed his lips to the hem of his robe. “It is not true that I am a heretic, as they say,” he babbled. “I believe in Science Supreme, and Force and Matter, coexistent and consubstantial, according to the Vienna Creed, and in the Boss, the Keeper of Knowledge. That man dies as the beast dies. And that we are immortal in the germ-plasm, through our descendants. I believe in Darwin, Hæckel, and Wells, who brought us to enlightenment—” “That boy is a moron!” screamed Sanson, interrupting the man’s parrot-rote by leaping from his chair. He dragged the child from the father, switched on the solar light, and set him down, peering into his face. He took the child’s head between his hands and scanned it. His expression was transformed; he looked like a madman. And then I realized that the man was really mad; a madman ruled the world, as in the time of Caligula.