“He was busy those days,” said Jessup, nodding. “He must have dictated nearly two million words in the last three years of his life.”
“You think he wrote all those books and dialogues himself?”
“Of course he did.” Jessup sounded surprised. “Haven’t you read Iris’s accounts of the way he worked? The way he would dictate for hours at a time, oblivious of everything but Cavesword.”
“I suppose I missed all that,” I mumbled. “In those days it was always assumed that he had a staff who did the work for him.”
“The lutherists,” said Jessup, nodding. “They were extremely subtle in their methods but of course they couldn’t distort the truth for very long....”
“Oh,” said Butler. “Mr Hudson asked me the other day if I knew what the word lutherist came from and I said I didn’t know. I must have forgotten for I have a feeling it was taught us, back in the old days when we primitives were turned out, before you bright young fellows came along to show us how to do Caveswork.”
Jessup smiled. “We’re not that bumptious,” he said. “As for lutherist, it’s a word based on the name of one of the first followers of Cave. I don’t know his other name or even much about him. All that I know I’ve been told ... as far as I remember, the episode was never even recorded. Much too disagreeable ... and of course we don’t like to dwell on our failures.”
“I wonder what it was that he did,” I asked, my voice trembling despite all efforts to control it.
“He was a nonconformist of some kind. He quarreled with Iris, they say.”
“Wonder what happened to him?” asked Butler. “Did they send him through indoctrination?”