Equality 7-2521 has noticed Liberty 5-3000 and thinks of her above all others. He wants to write her name, barely whispering it in the dark emptiness of the tunnel.

The women who live at the Home of the Peasants work the land. The Home for Peasants is located on a road five miles outside of the City, and the Street Sweepers have to keep the road clean up to the first mile-marker. The road is lined with a hedge, and beyond the hedge are the fields where the women wearing white tunics work. When Equality 7-2521 first sees Liberty 5-3000, he feels pain and fear for the first time. He stands perfectly still so that he “might not spill this pain more precious than pleasure.” He hears someone call her name (which is how he learns it) and watches her walk away, white tunic moving in the wind.

The next day, Equality 7-2521 watches her again in the field. This happens for many days, and he thinks Liberty 5-3000 is watching him as well. One day Liberty 5-3000 comes close to the hedge and suddenly turns to him. She stands “still as a stone” and looks at him with a taut, unsmiling face and dark eyes before turning and walking away. The next day, however, Liberty 5-3000 smiles at Equality 7-2521, and he smiles back at her. The glance is short, but he feels as if her hand has caressed him.

Every morning from then on, the couple greets one another with their eyes. It is against the law for people of different Trades to talk to each other except in groups at the Social Meetings, but the couple develops a subtle gesture with which they speak without anyone else noticing. It is a new sin for Equality 7-252, but he is not ashamed. It is his second Transgression of Preference, for he no longer thinks of all his brothers—which is required—but thinks only of one. Thinking of Liberty 5-3000 makes him feel as if “the earth is good and that it is not a burden to live.”

Equality 7-2521 thinks of her as the Golden One, although it is a sin to give anyone a name that might distinguish him from anyone else. He ignores the law that prohibits men from thinking about women except at the Time of Mating. This happens each spring, when men older than twenty and women older than eighteen are sent to the City Palace of Mating for one night. They are each assigned a partner, the babies are born each winter, and the children and parents never know one another. Equality 7-2521 has been sent twice, and it was a shameful thing.

Today Equality 7-2521 breaks another law—he speaks to the Golden One. The other women are far off in the field; when the Golden One sees him, she rises and walks toward Equality 7-2521 as if she has heard his silent command. He tells Liberty 5-3000 she is beautiful. Her face reveals nothing; she asks him his name. They speak rather meaningless words, but what they mean is clear: they think of one another as more than brother and sister.

Liberty 5-3000 asks if Equality 7-2521 always works here; he tells her he does. He asks her how old she is and is relieved that she is only seventeen and too young for the Palace of Mating. His goal now is to keep her from ever going. As they stand on each side of the hedge, Equality 7-2521 seethes with anger toward his fellow men; the Golden One sees it and seems to understand.

At dinner that night, Equality 7-2521 sings and is reprimanded for singing without cause. Now he sits in the tunnel and wonders why happiness is forbidden except for the happiness that comes from the will of all for the good of all. Yet each night Equality 7-2521 looks at his brothers and feels the fear hovering everywhere around them. They all feel it, but none dares to speak of it. In the tunnel there is no fear, and his three hours below ground strengthen Equality 7-2521 for his life above ground.

The others suffer horrible things in their fear but are afraid to speak in case others are not thinking such things. They have all heard about the Unchartered Forests through which some men escape and never return; they are the overgrown ruins of many cities of the Unmentionable Times. The legend is that fires burned the Evil Ones and everything made by them and was followed by the Great Rebirth.

There is an Unspeakable Word, the only word that will get the writer or speaker of it killed, and only one Transgressor of the Unspeakable Word has been burned at the stake for saying it. Equality 7-2521 saw the burning, and the Transgressor looked directly at him from the pyre. Equality 7-2521 saw no pain in the man’s eyes, only joy and a holy pride. The man’s eyes seemed to be begging Equality 7-2521 to collect the Unspeakable Word and never let it go, but Equality 7-2521 does not know the word.