Fear that man

energies.”
        “That’s absurd!”
        Breadloaf tried to shake his head, only succeeded in making his lips quiver and his eyes tremble. “No. The Prisoner concentrated, summed up all his resources, and shaped a man and a ship. The ship was not a machine, for machines are alien to the Prisoner’s mind. Some places, the dimensions are rather close, due to the warping of the higher dimension. Perhaps at one of these places he forced his thoughts through the thin barrier and made Sam and the ship.”
        “But why not force himself through at one of those spots?” Hurkos asked.
        “He could not do that with what energies he had left. You see, he is much, much larger than the ship and Sam put together, larger by an infinite degree. He is the entire higher dimension!”
         Ocher birds flittered over green and blue oceans…
        “One creature is an entire dimension?”
        Breadloaf coughed. “If that creature is God, yes. And that is precisely who the Prisoner of the Shield is!”

----

    X
        
        “God!” Gnossos shouted.
        Hurkos wandered next to the Shield, pressed his face to it, looking into the colors that swirled, folded upon themselves and became new colors, Here, brought to him through modern science, was the being that prayer could not yield. Technology had replaced faith and with far better results.
        “The dreams,” Gnossos said, turning to the dazzling display on the screen. “The dreams Hurkos took from it were the dreams of a paranoid, then; they were the dreams of a being obsessed with demon-persecution.”
        Sam’s mind whirled in a nighmare landscape of doubt and nearly unconquerable mountains of unbelief. “And the machines were not machines at all, for God is not the Father of the machine. God is the Father of life, the Father of man who makes the machines. God could imitate the exterior of a machine, but the only way He could make it work was to create a life form-the jelly-mass-to imitate the workings of one. He knows us, physically, but He doesn’t know what we have within us.”
        “And God feared machines because they were something above His abilities. He feared the Mues and chose to ignore their existence in your training because they were things beyond His powers-the results of men usurping His rights.”
        “A thousand years,” Breadloaf muttered.
        “How could you stand it?” Gnossos asked, turning from the Shield. “How could you sit there, knowing?”
        “Sometimes, after I had left here and gone into the streets and smelled the fresh air, I thought I could never come back. But when I thought of how much worse it would be if He ever escaped…”
        “Of course,” Gnossos said sympathetically. “For a thousand years, men have grown gradually saner, have broken communications with their barbaric past. It’s all because He’s been trapped in your warped dimension tank and can’t influence anything. Isn’t that it?”
        Breadloaf sighed. He was able to make fists of his hands now, and he sat exercising them. “That’s it exactly. My father thought he could enslave the Prisoner and make Him work for the family. We knew who He was. He wasted no time in telling us that, in demanding to be set free. But we could not master Him. It became clear that we could never let Him out. At first, of course, it was for the family’s safety. He could, and would, wipe out every Breadloaf. Then, after a few hundred years, when we saw what the empire was becoming, how much better it seemed, how much saner were the councils of man, we realized that much of the ugliness of life had been God’s doing. We had even stronger reasons for keeping Him locked up. If He were ever released”-Breadloaf wriggled an arm at last-“war would come again. Famine as we have never known it. Pestilence. Disease. We have but one choice: keep Him contained.”
        “Correction, please. You have no choice but to release Him!”
        The voice drew their attention to the door. A man stood there-a Christian judging from his beard. There were a dozen others standing behind him, dirty, unshaven, dressed in the rags of self-denial. One of them was the sign-carrier Gnossos had argued with in the streets what seemed like an eternity ago. He was smiling now, sans sign. He stepped into the room. “Isn’t it strange whom God should choose as His liberators?”
        “How did they-” Breadloaf began, struggling against his stiff