The thon looked thoughtful “So that’s where my boots—”

“No doubt.”

“I set them out to be polished. They weren’t returned. That was the same day be tried to batter down my door.”

“Batter down — who the Poet?”

Thon Taddeo chuckled. “I’m afraid I’ve been having a little sport with him. I have his glass eye. You remember the night he left it on the refectory table?”

“Yes.”

“I picked it up.”

The thon opened his pouch, groped in it for a moment, then laid the Poet’s eyeball on the abbot’s desk. “He knew I had it, but I kept denying it. But we’ve had sport with him ever since, even to creating rumors that it was really the long-lost eyeball of the Bayring idol and ought to be returned to the museum. He became quite frantic after a time. Of course I had meant to return it before we go home. Do you suppose he’ll return after we leave?”

“I doubt it,” said the abbot, shuddering slightly as he glanced at the orb. “But I’ll keep it for him, if you like. Although it’s just as probable that he’d turn up in Texarkana looking for it there. He claims it’s a potent talisman.”

“How so?”

Dom Paulo smiled. “He says he can see much better when he’s wearing it.”

“What nonsense!” The thon paused; ever ready, apparently, to give any sort of outlandish premise at least a moment’s consideration, he added: “Isn’t it nonsense — unless filling the empty socket somehow affects the muscles of both sockets. Is that what he claims?”

“He just swears he can’t see as well without it. He claims he has to have it for the perception of ‘true meanings’ — although it gives him blinding headaches when he wears it. But one never knows whether the Poet is speaking fact, fancy, or allegory. If fancy is clever enough, I doubt that the Poet would admit a difference between fancy and fact.”

The thon smiled quizzically. “Outside my door the other day, he yelled that I needed it more than he did. That seems to suggest that he thinks of it as being, in itself, a potent fetish — good for anyone. I wonder why.”

“He said you needed it? Oh ho!”

“What amuses you?”

“I’m sorry. He probably meant it as an insult. I’d better not try to explain the Poet’s insult; it might make me seem a party to them.”

“Not at all. I’m curious.”

The abbot glanced at the image of Saint Leibowitz in the corner of the room. “The Poet used the eyeball as a running joke,” he explained. “When he wanted to make a decision, or to think something over, or to debate a point, he’d put the glass eye in the socket. He’d take it out again when he saw something that displeased him, when he was pretending to overlook something, or when he wanted to play stupid. When he wore it, his manner changed. The brothers began calling it ‘the Poet’s conscience,’ and he went along with the joke. He gave little lectures end demonstrations on the advantages of a removable conscience. He’d pretend some frantic compulsion possessed him — something trivial, usually — like a compulsion aimed at a bottle of wine.

“Wearing his eye, he’d stroke the wine bottle, lick his lips, pant and moan, then jerk his hand away. Finally it would possess him again. He’d grab the bottle, pour about a thimbleful in a cup and gloat over it for a second. But then conscience would fight back, and he’d throw the cup across the room. Soon he’d be leering at the wine bottle again, and start to moan and slobber, but fighting the compulsion anyhow—” the abbot chuckled in spite of himself “ — hideous to watch. Finally, when he became exhausted, he’d pluck out his glass eye. Once the eye was out, he’d suddenly relax. The compulsion stopped being compulsive. Cool and arrogant than, he’d pick up the bottle, look around and laugh. “I’m going to do it anyhow,’ he’d say. Then, while everyone was expecting him to drink it, he’d put on a beatific smile and pour the whole bottle over his own head. The advantage of a removable conscience, you see.”

“So he thinks I need it more than he does.”

Dom Paulo shrugged. “He’s only the Poet-sirrah!”

The scholar puffed a breath of amusement. He prodded at the vitreous spheroid and rolled it across the table with his thumb. Suddenly he laughed. “I rather like that. I think I know who does need it more than the Poet. Perhaps I’ll keep it after all.” He picked it up, tossed it, caught it, and glanced doubtfully at the abbot.

Paulo merely shrugged again.

Thon Taddeo dropped the eye back in his pouch. “He can have it if he ever comes to claim it. But by the way, I meant to tell you: my work is nearly finished here. We’ll be leaving in a very few days.”

“Aren’t you worried about the fighting on the Plains?”

Thon Taddeo frowned at the wall. “We’re to camp at a butte, about a week’s ride to the east from here. A group of, uh — Our escort will meet us there.”

“I do hope,” said the abbot, relishing the polite bit of savagery, “that your escort-group hasn’t reversed its political allegiance since you made the arrangements. It’s getting harder to tell foes from allies these days.”

The thon reddened. “Especially if they come from Texarkana, you mean?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Let’s be frank with each other, Father. I can’t fight the prince who makes my work possible — no matter what I think of his policies or his politics. I appear to support him, superficially, or at least to overlook him — for the sake of the collegium. If he extends his lands, the collegium may incidentally profit. If the collegium prospers, mankind will profit from our work.”

“The ones who survive, perhaps.”

“True-but that’s always true in any event.”

“No, no — Twelve centuries ago, not even the survivors profited. Must we start down that road again?”

Thon Taddeo shrugged. “What can I do about it?” he asked crossly. “Hannegan is prince, not I.”

“But you promise to begin restoring Man’s control over Nature. But who will govern the use of the power to control natural forces? Who will use it? To what end? How will you hold him in check? Such decisions can still be made. But if you and your group don’t make them now, others will soon make them for you. Mankind will profit, you say. By whose sufferance? The sufferance of a prince who signs his letters X? Or do you really believe that your collegium can stay aloof from his ambitions when he begins to find out that you’re valuable to him?”

Dom Paulo had not expected to convince him. But it was with a heavy heart that the abbot noticed the plodding patience with which the thon heard him through; it was the patience of a man listening to an argument which he had long ago refuted to his own satisfaction.

“What you really suggest,” said the scholar, “is that we wait a little while. That we dissolve the collegium, or move it to the desert, and somehow — with no gold and silver of our own — revive an experimental and theoretical science in some slow hard way, and tell nobody. That we save it all up for the day when Man is good and pure and holy and wise.”

“That is not what I meant—”

“That is not what you meant to say, but it is what your saying means. Keep science cloistered, don’t try to apply it, don’t try to do anything about it until men are holy. Well, it won’t work. You’ve been doing it here in this abbey for generations.”

“We haven’t withheld anything.”

“You haven’t withheld it; but you sat on it so quietly, nobody knew it was here, and you did nothing with it.”

Brief anger flared in the old priest’s eyes. “It’s time you met our founder, I think,” he growled, pointing to the wood-carving in the corner. “He was a scientist like yourself before the world went mad and he ran for sanctuary. He founded this Order to save what could be saved of the records of the last civilization. “Saved” from what, and for what? Look where he’s standing — see the kindling? the books? That’s how little the world wanted your science then, and for centuries afterward. So he died for our sake. When they drenched him with fuel oil, legend says he asked them for a cup of it. They thought he mistook it for water, so they laughed and gave him a cup. He blessed it and — some say the oil changed to wine when he blessed it — and then: “Hic est enim calix SanguinisMei ,” and he drank it before they hung him and set him on fire. Shall I read you a list of our martyrs? Shall I name all the battles we have fought to keep these records intact? All the monks blinded in the copyroom? for your sake? Yet you say we did nothing with it, withheld it by silence.”