Professor Andersen paced round his apartment, from early morning to late at night. At midday he usually lay down in bed and, as a rule, he then slept for a few hours, in a kind of doze. The same at night. He slept fitfully, his dreams reduced to muddled thoughts, milling around. Nevertheless, he felt alert as he wandered restlessly around the apartment, and he also passed the time by doing daily chores, such as making food, eating, washing up, vacuuming, tidying. Indeed, he even made the bed, although he knew that he was going to lie in it most of the day, and that he would lie down in it again in a few hours’ time, for a rest of sorts after dinner. He felt his mind was crystal clear, but despite that he was at his wits’ end. He couldn’t understand his reluctance to report Henrik Nordstrøm for the murder he had seen him commit. Well, yes, he understood that he hadn’t reported him when it had happened, but why he was unable to report him now, when he had experienced, bodily and mentally, the impossible consequences it held for him was more than he could fathom. His sin of omission couldn’t be defended. Every civilisation is built on such actions being indefensible. That goes without saying. In all circumstances. When he didn’t report it, he had become an outcast, along with the murderer. An outcast in his own eyes, along with the murderer. And he deserved this. And behind it all was God. As the ultimate reason why breaking this natural order was a taboo which no living person can explain, touch or wipe from their memory. Professor Andersen was not a religious man, he was fairly unfamiliar with thinking along those lines, but now he couldn’t stop himself blurting out, when he thought and thought about what he had become entangled in, and couldn’t get untangled from, even though he desperately wanted to, ‘No one can have their own God. Not even the godless.’ He was startled when that thought struck him. But he was forced to realise that it was self-evident, and that he had no alternative but to take heed of it.