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III
Perrin: Ihate you.
Herrin: Yes. I know.
Perrin: You wanteverything.
Herrin: Yes. I do.
Perrin: That’s notfair. What doI get?
Herrin: Take what you want from me.
Perrin: How?
Herrin: Just do it. Be stronger. Take it.
Perrin:How?
Herrin: (Silence).
He felt pain when he parted with his family, seventeen and bound for University in Kierkegaard. They cried, even Perrin, but his parents cried because they were hurting at losing him and Perrin cried because.... Perrin’s tears were more complex constructions, he thought, jouncing along in the leather seat of the Camus bus over the dirt roads, and eventually over the smoother road on the weekly Camus-Kierkegaard run. Perrin cried for herself, and that she saw a chance departing which had never been hers.
They would all be happier without him, he reckoned, leaning his head disconsolately against the window brace and watching the cultivated fields roll past the unwashed windows. He had been too strong for them, and despite all the tears of various quality shed at his parting—the wound would heal now; Perrin might blossom in her share of the sun, a belated, slightly twisted blossoming, to be sure, but it was possible now; and his parents could devote themselves to their more comfortable offspring and he— hecould draw breath in a somewhat wider room. That reasoning did not entirely cure the loneliness, but he was used to separation in all its aspects. He did not, with the confidence he possessed, brood overmuch on other possibilities. He would not choose to be anyone but Herrin Law, eminently satisfied with his fortunes. He had seen Perrin, who was popular, and unlike Perrin, he understood the reason of her popularity, and he was too kind to explain it to her: he simply congratulated himself that he was notPerrin, or anyone else he had met in Law’s Valley or in Camus, even citizen Harfeld, who, from his almost adult perspective, was considerably diminished, a rather sad man who sought out and encouraged an excellence which Harfeld himself was not competent to comprehend—a useful job, but a depressing one.
Herrin created. He had discovered in himself an aptitude for art; and while he pursued the literary and philosophical and musical studies the school of Caraus had promoted, his real joy was in form and substance. He worked in clay and in stone, finally settling on stone as his greatest love, work with old-fashioned chisel and more modern tools, with ambitions still greater than his young hands could yet achieve. He had, boarding that bus for Kierkegaard, left every item of his art behind as inadequate, incomplete, a provincial past to be forgotten along with every other taint of his upbringing.
If anything frightened him at this stage it was his own power, his own intellect, which was in steady ascension. He realized that he was dependent on such as Harfeld, educators of less than his ability, who yet possessed the experience he knew he lacked.
He knew that he could be warped, even destroyed, by inexpert guidance, like some machine of vast power which, set off balance, could destroy itself by its own force. He knew that he must analyze all the help that he was offered for fear of being misdirected; that he must, in essence, trainthose who were to help him in the proper handling of Herrin Alton Law, and that mere good intent or worldly wisdom in those about him was not sufficient, because most people were not capable of comprehending the logic on which he functioned or of comprehending the abilities which he felt latent within himself. This made him uneasy in going among strangers ... not the strangeness itself, because he was perfectly confident that his own grasp of a situation was superior to that of others, and that, if anything, it would be a relief to be safe within the environment of the great University, where he could reasonably anticipate that his instructors might be more competent to direct him and that his companions—perhaps a few of them—might be strong enough to withstand his strength at full stretch. He was just generally cautious.
He feared ... that Kierkegaard itself might be a disappointment, that perhaps nowhere in all Freedom was there a place of sufficient stretch for him and that somehow his self might still fray its edges at the limits of what Freedom could offer. He was young; he was not sure that the universe itself could contain him.
He got off the bus on hedge-rimmed Port Street, and walked the short distance to the University, which was, like the Residency near it, of sufficient magnificence compared to Camus to reassure him. He registered, received all the suitable authorizations in his papers, and settled into the very comfortable apartment the government allotted him.
IV
Senior Student: What do you see on the streets of Kierkegaard?
Herrin: What I wish, sir.
Senior Student: Are you aware of things you would not wish, Citizen Law?
Herrin: I am aware of everything I wish.
Senior Student: You’re evading the question.
Herrin: I’m aware of everything I wish to be aware of. I do not, sir, evade the question.
Senior Student: That is a correct answer.
Master: How large is the universe?
Herrin: How long is a string?
Master. Should Freedom concern itself with space?
Herrin: The universe is irrelevant: the possibilities of Freedom are as infinite as the possibilities of all other locations in the universe.
Master: Should Freedom concern itself with Others?
Herrin: The only meaningful concern of man is man.
Kierkegaard was a city growing according to plan, now three hundred years old and acquiring some sense of time. There was of course the Residency of the First Citizen, Cade Jenks, descended from the original Pla
There were ten streets in Kierkegaard itself, excluding Port Street, which everyone did. The central street at a right angle to Port Street, beyond an archway and footpath through the firebush hedge, was called Main. Two vertical streets ran on either side; there was a central east-west named Jenks with two laterals paralleling it, and a paved commons where Jenks and Main intersected: Jenks Square. Warehouses, manufactories, apartment houses, all production and residence fit, completely mingled, within the geometry of the City Plan; an apartment might stand next a mill or a manufactory next a warehouse. The port’s near edge was the site of all small trade, in a daylight market. Of construction, there was great regularity: a company in Kierkegaard turned out building slabs, all concrete on a meter of the upper section and a meter of the lower, and covered with river pebbles on the middle; there was one completely without openings, one with a warehouse-size door; one with a double door; one with a single. There was one with a window, a meter square. Out of these the whole city of Kierkegaard was built, with such conformity that it seemed all one building. It was an eye-pleasing coherency. Only the port escaped it. It was a city without ornament or variance. The whole world lay at its vulnerable begi