“And my system of negotiable and transferable apologetics would have been of particular value to you, Thon Taddeo.”

“Would have?”

“Yes. It's a pity. Someone stole my blue-headed goat.”

“Blue-headed goat?”

“He had a head as bald as Hannegan's, Your Brilliance, and as blue as the tip of Brother Armbruster's nose. I meant to make you a present of the animal, but some dastard filched him before I came.”

Thon Taddeo was frowning slightly, but he seemed determined to untangle the Poet's obscure skein of meaning.

“Do we need a blue-headed goat?” he asked his clerk.

“I can see no pressing urgency about it, sir,” said the clerk.

“But the need is obvious!” said the Poet. “They say you are writing equations that will one day remake the world. They say a new light is dawning. If there's to be light, then somebody will have to be blamed for the darkness of the past.”

“Ah, thence the goat.” Thon Taddeo glanced at the abbot. “A sickly jest. Is it the best he can do?”

“You'll notice he's unemployed. But let us talk of something sensib-”

“No, no, no, no!” objected the Poet. “You mistake my meaning, your brilliance. The goat is to be enshrined and honored, not blamed! Crown him with the crown Saint Leibowitz sent you, and thank him for the light that's rising. Then blame Leibowitz, and drive him into the desert. That way you won't have to wear the second crown. The one with thorns. Responsibility, it's called.”

The Poet's hostility had broken out into the open, and he was no longer trying to seem humorous. The thon gazed at him icily.

“And, when,” said the Poet, “your patron's army comes to seize this abbey, the goat can be placed in the courtyard and taught to bleat ‘There's been nobody here but me, nobody here but me' whenever a stranger comes by.”