We've often wondered what would happen if
Robert Young should cease to be a lyrically intense writer for a story or two,
forsaking the bright, poetic worlds of MISS KATY THREE and THE FIRST SWEET
SLEEP OF NIGHT to become dispassionately analytical on a cosmic scale. Now we
know! He'd chill us to the bone by setting two squixes
to brooding over a never-to-be born Earth, exactly as he has done here. And
thrill us, too—with the liveliest kind of entertainment.
Very
trivial things can go into the weaving of a nest. The human race, for instance—
The
condensation of the histories of ten thousand races into a text concise enough
to fit into a single volume had been a task of unprecedented proportions. There
had been times when the Galactic Historian had doubted whether even his
renowned abilities were up to the assignment that the Galactic Board of
Education had so lightly tossed his way, times when he had thrown up his
hands—all five of them—in despair. But at last the completed manuscript lay
before him on his desk with nothing but the final reading remaining between it
and publication.
The
Galactic Historian repeatedly wiped his brows as he turned the pages. It was a
warm night, even for Mixxx Seven. Now and then, a
tired breeze struggled down from the hills and limped across the lowlands to
the Galactic University buildings. It crept into the Galactic Historian's study
via the open door and out again via the open windows, fingering the manuscript
each time it passed but doing nothing whatsoever about the temperature.
The
manuscript was something more than a hammered-down history of galactic
achievement. It was the ultimate document. The two and seventy thousand jarring
texts that it summarized had been systematically destroyed, one by one, after
the Galactic Historian had stripped them of their objective information. If an
historical event was not included in the manuscript, it failed as an event. It
ceased to have reality.
The
responsibility was the Galactic Historian's alone and he did not take it
lightly. But he had a lot on his minds and, of late, he hadn't been sleeping
well. He was overworked and over-tired and over-anxious. He hadn't seen his
wives for two Mixxx months and he was worried about
them—all fifty of them.
He never
should have let them take the Hub cruise in the first place. But they'd been so
enthusiastic and so eager that he simply hadn't had the hearts to let them
down. Now, despite his better judgments, he was beginning to wonder if they might
not be on the make for another coordinator.
Wives
trouble, on top of all his chronological trouble, was too much. The Galactic
Historian could hardly be blamed for wanting to see the last of the manuscript,
for wanting to transmit it to his publishers, potential hiatuses and all, and
take the next warp for the Hub.
But he was
an historian—the historian, in fact—and he persisted heroically in his task,
rereading stale paragraphs and checking dreary dates, going over battles and
conquests and invasions and interregnums. Despite his mood and despite the
heat, the manuscript probably would have arrived at his publishers
chronologically complete. So complete, in fact, that schoolteachers all over
the galaxy would have gotten the textbook they had always wanted—a concise
chronicle of everything that had ever happened since the explosion of the primeval atom, a history textbook that no other
history textbook could contradict for the simple reason that there were no
other history textbooks.
As it was,
they got the textbook, but it did not contain everything that had ever
happened. Not quite.
Two factors
were responsible for the omission. The first was an oversight on the part of
the Galactic Historian. With so much on his minds, he had forgotten to number
the pages of the manuscript.
The second
factor was the breeze.
The breeze
was the ultimate archfiend and there can be no question as to its motivation.
Nothing short of sheer malice could have caused it suddenly to remember its
function after neglecting that function all evening.
All evening
it had been tiptoeing down the hillsides and across the lowlands as though it
was afraid of disturbing a single blade of grass or a single drooping leaf. And
then, at the crucial moment, it huffed and puffed itself up into a little
hurricane, charged down upon the Galactic University buildings and whooshed
through the Galactic Historian's study like a band of interstellar dervishes.
Unfortunately,
the Galactic Historian had begun to wipe his brows at the very moment of the
breeze's entry. While the act was not a complicated one, it did consume time
and monopolize attention. It is not surprising, therefore, that he failed to
witness the theft. Neither is it surprising that he failed to notice afterwards
that the page he had been checking was gone.
He was, as
previously stated, overworked, over-tired, and over-anxious and, in such a
state, even a Galactic Historian can skip a whole series of words and dates and
never know the difference. A hiatus of twenty thousand years is hardly
noticeable anyway. Galactically speaking, twenty
thousand years is a mere wink in time.
The breeze
didn't carry the page very far. It simply whisked it through a convenient
window, deposited it beneath a xixxix tree and then
returned to the hills to rest. But the choice of a xixxix
tree is highly significant and substantiates the malicious nature of the
breeze's act. If it had chosen a muu or a buxx tree instead, the Galactic Historian might have found
the page in the morning when he took his constitutional through the university
grounds.
However,
since a xixxix tree was selected, no doubt whatever
can remain as to the breeze's basic motivation. Articles of a valuable nature
just aren't left beneath xixxix trees. Everybody
knows that squixes live in xixxix
trees and everybody knows that squixes are
collectors. They collect all sorts of things, buttons and pins and twigs and
pebbles—anything at all, in fact, that isn't too big for them to pick up and
carry into their xixxix tree houses.
They have
been called less kind things than collectors. Thieves, for
example, and scavengers. But collectors are what they really are.
Collecting fulfills a basic need in their mammalian makeup; the possession of
articles gives them a feeling of security. They love to surround their little
furry bodies with all sorts of odds and ends, and their little arboreal houses
are stuffed with everything you can think of.
And they
simply adore paper. They adore it because it has a practical as well as a
cultural value.
Specifically,
they adore it because it is wonderful to make hammocks out of.
When the
two squixes in the xixxix
tree saw the page drift to the ground, they could hardly believe their eyes.
They chittered excitedly as they skittered down the
trunk. The page had hardly stopped fluttering before it was whisked aloft
again, clenched in tiny squix fingers.
The squixes wasted no time. It had been a long while since the
most cherished of all collector's items had come their way and they needed a
new hammock badly. First, they tore the page into strips, then
they began to weave the strips together.
—1456, Gut. Bi. pr.;
1492, Am. dis.; 1945, at. b. ex. Almgdo.; 1971, mn. rchd., they wove.
—2004, Sir.
rchd.;
2005-6, Sir.—E. wr.; 2042, Btlgs.
rchd.; 2043-4, Btlgs.—E. wr.
They wove
and wove and wove.
15,000, E.
Emp. clpsd.;
15,038, E. dstryd.; Hist. E., end of.
It was a
fine hammock, the best the two squixes had ever wove. But they didn't sleep well that night. They twisted
and turned and tossed, and they dreamed the most fantastic dreams—
Which isn't particularly surprising, considering what they were sleeping
on. Sleeping on
the history of Earth would be enough to give anybody nightmares.
Even squixes.