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never worked out the way he planned. If people wanted him to do one thing he’d do it. If they wanted him to do something else he’d do that. No questions asked. La vida, as Delia Hunt also observed, es un sueño.

    Later, walking back to 16th Street, his father said, “You know what you should do, don’t you?”
    “What?”
    “Use some of that money they gave you and get somebody really smart to write the thing for you.”
    “Can’t. They got computers that can tell if you do that.”
    “They do?” Mr. Ludd sighed.
    A couple blocks farther on he asked to borrow ten dollars for some Fadeout. It was a traditional part of their reunions and traditionally Birdie would have said no, but having just been bragging about his stipend? He had to.
    “I hope you’re able to be a better father than I’ve been,” Mr. Ludd said, putting the folded-up bill into his card-carrier.
    “Yeah. Well, I hope so, too.”
    They both got a chuckle out of that.

    Next morning, following the single piece of advice he’d been able to get out of the advisor he’d paid twenty-five dollars for, Birdie made his first solo visit (years ago he’d been marched through the uptown branch with a few dozen other fourth graders) to the National Library. The Nassau branch was housed in an old wrapped-glass building a little to the west of the central Wall Street area. The place was a honeycomb of research booths, except for the top floor, 28, which was given over to the cables connecting Nassau to the uptown branch and then, by relays, to every other major library outside of France, Japan, and South America. A page who couldn’t have been much older than Birdie showed him how to use the dial-and-punch system. When the page was gone Birdie stared glumly at the blank viewing screen. The only thought in his head was how he’d like to smash in the screen with his fist: dial and punch!
    After a hot lunch in the basement of the library he felt better. He recalled Socrates waving his arms in the air and the blind girl’s essay on philosophy. He put out a call for the five best books on Socrates written at a senior high school level and began reading from them at random.

    Later that night Birdie finished reading the chapter in Plato’s Republic that contains the famous parable of the cave. Dazedly, dazzled, he wandered through the varied brightness of Wall Street’s third shift. Even after twelve o’clock the streets and plazas were teeming. He wound up in a corridor full of vending machines, sipping a hot Koffee, staring at the faces around him, wondering did any of them—the woman glued to the Times , the old messengers chattering—suspect the truth? Or were they, like the poor prisoners in the cave, turned to the rockface, watching shadows, never imagining that somewhere outside there was a sun, a sky, a whole world of crushing beauty?
    He’d never understood before about beauty—that it was more than a breeze coming in through the window or the curve of Milly’s breasts. It wasn’t a matter of how he, Birdie Ludd, felt or what he wanted. It was there inside of things, glowing. Even the dumb vending machines. Even the blind faces.
    He remembered the vote of the Athenian Senate to put Socrates to death. Corrupting the youth, ha! He hated the Athenian Senate but it was a different sort of hate from the kind he was used to. He hated them for a reason: Justice!
    Beauty. Justice. Truth. Love, too, probably. Somewhere there was an explanation for everything. A meaning. It all made sense. It wasn’t just a lot of words.
    He went outside. New emotions kept passing over him faster than he could take account of them, like huge speeded-up clouds. One moment, looking at his face reflected in the darkened window of a specialty food shop, he wanted to laugh out loud. The next moment, remembering the young prostitute in the room downstairs from where he lived now, lying on her shabby bed in a peekaboo dress, he wanted to cry. It seemed to Birdie that he