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He remembered, once again, that rainy day of early spring when he had sat at a desk in the library stacks. What he had been doing there he had now forgotten—perhaps simply sitting there while he read a book which presently he would replace upon the shelves. But he did recall with startling clarity how, in an idle moment, he had pulled out the desk drawer and there had found the small pile of notes written on flyleaves that had been torn from books, written in a small and crabbed hand, niggardly of space. He recalled that he had sat there, frozen in surprise, for there was no mistaking that cramped and economic writing. He had read the Wilson history time and time again, strangely fascinated by it, and there was no question in his mind, not the slightest question, that these were Wilson's notes, left here in the desk drawer to await discovery a mille
With trembling hands he had taken them from the drawer and laid them reverently on the desk top. Slowly he read through them in the waning light of the rainy afternoon and there was in them much material that he recognized, material that eventually had found its way into the history. But there was a page of notes—really a page and a half—that had not been used, a myth so outrageous that Wilson must finally have decided it should not be included, a myth of which Cushing had never heard and of which, he found upon cautious inquiry later, no one else had ever heard.
The notes told about a Place of Going to the Stars, located somewhere to the west, although there was no further clue to its location—simply "in the west." It all was horribly fuzzy and it sounded, in all truth, more like myth than fact—too outrageous to be fact. But ever since that rainy afternoon, the very Outrageousness of it had haunted Cushing and would not let him be.
Across the wide turbulence of the river, the bluffs rose sheer above the water, topped by a heavy growth of trees. The river made sucking sounds as it rushed along, a hurrying tide that stormed along its path and, beneath the sucking sounds, a rumbling of power that swept all in its course. A powerful thing, the river, and somehow conscious and jealous of its power, reaching out and taking all that it could reach—a piece of driftwood, a leaf, a bevy of potato bugs, or a human being, if one could be caught up. Looking at it, Cushing shivered at its threat, although he was not one who should have felt its threat. He was as much at home in or on the river as he would be in the woods. This feeling of threat, he knew, was brought on only by a present weakness, born of vague indecision and not knowing.
Wilson, he thought—if it had not been for that page and a half of Wilson's notes, he'd be feeling none of this. Or would he? Was it only Wilson's note, or was it the urge to escape these walls, back to the untrammeled freedom of the woods?
He was, he told himself somewhat angrily, obsessed with Wilson. Ever since the day he had first read the history, the man had lodged himself inside his mind and was never far away.
How had it been with Wilson, he wondered, on that day of almost a thousand years ago, when he first had sat down to begin the history, haunted by what he knew would be its inadequacy? Had the leaves outside the window whispered in the wind? Had the candle guttered (for in his mind the writing always took place in candlelight)? Had there been an owl outside, hooting in derision at the task the man had set himself to do?
How had it been with Wilson, that night in the distant past?
I must write it clearly, Hiram Wilson told himself, so that in the years to come all who wish may read it. I must compose it clearly and I must inscribe it neatly, and most importantly, I must write it small, since I am short of paper.
I wish, he thought, that I had more to go on, that I had more actual fact, that the myth content were less, but I must console myself in the thought that historians in the past have also relied on myth, recognizing that although myth maybe romanticized and woefully short of fact, it must, by definition, have some foundation in lost happenings.
The candle's flame flared in the gust of wind that came through the window. In a tree outside, a tiny fluffed-out screech owl made a chilling sound.
Wilson dipped the quill in ink and wrote, close to the top of the page, for he must conserve the paper:
An Account of Those Disturbances Which Brought About an End to the First Human Civilization (always
in the hope there will be a second, for
what we have now is no civilization,
but an anarchy)
Written by Hiram Wilson at the University of Mi
Being Started the First Day of October, 2952
He laid the quill aside and read what he had written. Dissatisfied, he added another line:
Composed of Facts Gathered From Still Existing Books Dating From Earlier Days, From Hearsay Evidence
Passed on by Word of Mouth From the Times of Trouble and From Ancient Myths and Folklore Assiduously
Examined for Those Kernels of Truth That They May Contain
There, he thought, that at least is honest. It will put the reader on his guard that there may he errors, but giving him assurance that I have labored for the truth as best I can.
He picked up the quill again and wrote:
There is no question that at one time, perhaps five hundred years ago, Earth was possessed of an intricate and sophisticated technological civilization. Of this, nothing operational remains. The machines and the technology were destroyed, perhaps in a few months' time. And not only that, but, at least at this university, and we suppose otherwhere as well, all or most of the literary mention of the technology also was destroyed. Here, certainly, all the technological texts are gone and in many instances allusions to technology contained in other books, not technological in nature, have been edited by the ripping out of pages. What remains of the printed word concerning technology and science is only general in nature and may relate to a technology that at the time of the destruction was considered so outdated there seemed no threat in allowing it to survive. From these remaining allusions we get some hint of what the situation might have been, but not enough information to perceive the full scope of the old technology nor its impact upon the culture. Old maps of the campus show that at one time there were several buildings that were devoted to the teaching of technology and engineering. These buildings now are missing. There is a legend that the stones of which the buildings were constructed were used to build the defensive wall that now rings in the cam-
The completeness of the destruction and the apparently methodical ma
A technological society, to be utilized to its fullest, would call for bigness…..bigness in the corporate structure, in government, in finance and in the service areas. Bigness, so long as it is manageable offers many advantages, but at a certain point in its growth it becomes unmanageable. At about the time bigness reaches that critical size where it tends to become unmanageable, it also develops the capability to run on its own momentum and, in consequence, gets even farther out of control. Ru