He observes as he undresses at night that a feeling of fear hangs over the room, and no one is willing to speak what all seem to feel. He wonders, as he lies in bed at night, what the secrets were of the Unmentionable Times that have been lost. He thinks of what he has been taught: of the great fighting, in which many fought on one side and only a few on the other. He remembers that those few were the Evil Ones, and that they were destroyed along with all that was theirs. All the books of the Evils Ones were burned in the fires that raged across the land. Then came the Great Rebirth. But the words of the Unmentionable Times, he wonders. What were the words?
He knows that one word especially must not be re-discovered and said. It is called the Unspeakable Word, but nobody knows what it is. He has seen, as a boy, what fate befalls the rare person who discovers this word. He saw such a fellow burned at the stake after his tongue had been ripped from his mouth. Before the flames consumed him, Equality 7-2521 believes that the Transgressor looked at him, making eye contact, as if to pass on some holy knowledge that he alone possessed. What, he wonders, is the Unspeakable Word?
