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The Coming of the Ice · Astounding Sci-Fi Story Collection

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Speaker 1: The Coming of the Ice. This is a LibriVox recording.
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Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
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Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
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Speaker 1: by Giles Baker. The Coming of the Ice by g.
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Speaker 1: Peyton Wertenbaker. It's strange to be alone and so cold,
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Speaker 1: to be the last man on earth. The snow drives
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Speaker 1: silently about me, ceaselessly, drearily, and I am isolated in
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Speaker 1: this tiny, white, indistinguishable corner of a blurred world. Surely
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Speaker 1: the loneliest creature in the universe. How many thousands of
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Speaker 1: years is it since I last knew the true companionship?
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Speaker 1: For a long time I have been lonely. But there
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Speaker 1: were people, creatures of flesh and blood. Now they are gone.
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Speaker 1: Now I have not even the stars to keep me company,
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Speaker 1: for they are all lost in an infinity of snow
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Speaker 1: and twilight here below. If only I could know how
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Speaker 1: long it has been since first I was imprisoned upon
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Speaker 1: the earth. It cannot matter now. And yet some strange dissatisfaction,
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Speaker 1: some faint instinct, asks over and over in my throbbing ears,
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Speaker 1: what year, what year it was? In the year nineteen thirty,
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Speaker 1: that the great thing began in my life. There was
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Speaker 1: then a very great man who performed operations on his
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Speaker 1: fellows to compose their vitals. We called such men surgeons.
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Speaker 1: John Grandon wore the title Sir before his name in
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Speaker 1: indication of nobility by birth, according to the prevailing standards
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Speaker 1: in England. But surgery was only a hobby of Sir John's,
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Speaker 1: if I must be precise. For while he had achieved
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Speaker 1: an enormous reputation as a surgeon, he always felt that
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Speaker 1: his real work lay in the experimental end of his profession.
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Speaker 1: He was, in a way a dreamer, but a dreamer
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Speaker 1: who could make his dreams come true. I was a
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Speaker 1: very close friend of Sir John's. In fact, we shared
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Speaker 1: the same apartments in London. I've never forgotten that day
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Speaker 1: when he first mentioned to me his momentous discovery. I
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Speaker 1: had just come in from a long sleigh ride in
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Speaker 1: the country with Alice. I was seated drowsily in the
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Speaker 1: window seat, writing idly in my mind a description of
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Speaker 1: the wind and the snow and the gray twilight of
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Speaker 1: the evening. That's strange, is it not? That my tale
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Speaker 1: should begin and end with the snow and the twilight.
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Speaker 1: Sir John opened suddenly a door at one end of
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Speaker 1: the room, and came hurrying across to another door. He
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Speaker 1: looked at me, grinning rather like a triumphant maniac. It's coming,
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Speaker 1: he cried, without pausing. I've almost got it. I smiled
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Speaker 1: at him. He looked very ludicrous at that moment. What
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Speaker 1: have you got? I asked, good lord man. The secret,
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Speaker 1: the secret? And then he was gone again, the door
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Speaker 1: closing upon his victorious cry the secret. I was, of
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Speaker 1: course amused, but I was also very much interested. I
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Speaker 1: knew Sir John well enough to realize that, however amazing
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Speaker 1: his appearance might be, there would be nothing absurd about
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Speaker 1: his secret, whatever it was. But it was useless to speculate.
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Speaker 1: I could only hope for enlightenment at dinner, so I
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Speaker 1: immersed myself in one of the Surgeon's volumes from his
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Speaker 1: fine library of imagination and waited. I think the book
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Speaker 1: was one of mister H. G. Wells, probably The Sleeper Awakes,
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Speaker 1: or some other of his brilliant fantasies and predictions, for
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Speaker 1: I was in a mood conducive to belief in almost anything.
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Speaker 1: When later we sat down together across the table. I
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Speaker 1: only wish I could give some idea of the atmosphere
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Speaker 1: that permeated our apartments, the reality it lent to whatever
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Speaker 1: was vast and amazing and strange. You could, then, whoever
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Speaker 1: you are, understand a little the ease with which I
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Speaker 1: accepted Sir John's new discovery. He began to explain it
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Speaker 1: to me at once, as though he could keep it
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Speaker 1: to himself no longer. Did you think I gone mad? Dnel,
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Speaker 1: he asked, I quite wonder that I haven't. Why. I've
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Speaker 1: been studying for many years, for most of my life,
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Speaker 1: on this problem, and suddenly I've solved it. Or rather,
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Speaker 1: I'm afraid I've solved another one much greater. Tell me
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Speaker 1: about it, but for God's don't be technical, right he said.
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Speaker 1: Then he paused, Dnel, it's magnificent. It will change everything
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Speaker 1: that's in the world. His eyes held mine suddenly, with
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Speaker 1: a fatality of hypnotists, Denel, it's the secret of eternal life,
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Speaker 1: he said, Good Lord, Sir John, I cried, half inclined
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Speaker 1: to laugh. I mean it, he said. You know, I've
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Speaker 1: spent most of my life studying the processes of birth,
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Speaker 1: trying to find out precisely what went on in the
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Speaker 1: whole history of conception you have found out. No, that's
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Speaker 1: just what amuses me. I've discovered something else without knowing
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Speaker 1: yet what causes either process. I don't want to be technical,
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Speaker 1: and I know very little of what actually takes place myself,
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Speaker 1: but I can try to give you some idea of it.
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Speaker 1: It's thousands, perhaps millions of years since Sir John explained
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Speaker 1: to me what little I understood at the time. I
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Speaker 1: may have forgotten, yet I try to reproduce what I
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Speaker 1: can of his theory. In my study of the processes
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Speaker 1: of birth, he began, I discovered the rudiments of an
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Speaker 1: action which takes place in the bodies of both men
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Speaker 1: and women. There are certain properties in the foods we
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Speaker 1: eat that remain in the body for the reproduction of life,
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Speaker 1: two distinct essences, so to speak, of which one is
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Speaker 1: retained by the woman, another by the man. It is
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Speaker 1: the union of these two properties that, of course creates
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Speaker 1: the child. Now, I made a slight mistake one day
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Speaker 1: in experimenting with a guinea pig, and I re arranged
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Speaker 1: certain organs which I need not describe, so that I
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Speaker 1: thought I had completely messed up the poor creature's abdomen.
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Speaker 1: It lived, however, and I laid it aside. It was
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Speaker 1: some years later that I happened to notice it again.
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Speaker 1: It had not given birth to any young but I
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Speaker 1: was amazed to note that it had apparently grown no older.
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Speaker 1: It seemed precisely in the same state of growth in
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Speaker 1: which I had left it. From that I built up.
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Speaker 1: I re examined the guinea pig and observed it carey.
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Speaker 1: I need not detail my studies, but in the end
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Speaker 1: I found that my mistake had in reality been a
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Speaker 1: momentous discovery. I found that I had only to close
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Speaker 1: certain organs, to rearrange certain ducts, and to open certain
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Speaker 1: dormant organs, and where I be lady to, the whole
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Speaker 1: process of reproduction was changed. You have heard, of course,
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Speaker 1: that our bodies are continually changing, hour by hour, minute
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Speaker 1: by minute, so that every few years we have been
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Speaker 1: literally reborn. Some such principle as this seems to operate
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Speaker 1: in reproduction, except that instead of the old body being
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Speaker 1: replaced by the new, and in its form approximately the
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Speaker 1: new body is created apart from it. It is the
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Speaker 1: creation of children that causes us to die. It would
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Speaker 1: seem because if this activity is, so to speak, damned
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Speaker 1: up or turned aside into new channels, the reproduction operates
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Speaker 1: on the old body, renewing it continually. It's very obscure,
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Speaker 1: very absurd, is it not. But the most absurd part
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Speaker 1: of it is that it's true. Whatever the true explanation
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Speaker 1: may be, the fact remains that the operation can be done,
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Speaker 1: that it actually prolongs life indefinitely, and that I alone
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Speaker 1: know the secret. Sir John told me a great deal more,
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Speaker 1: But after all I think it amounted to little more
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Speaker 1: than this. It would be impossible for me to express
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Speaker 1: the great hold this discovery took upon my mind the
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Speaker 1: moment he recounted it. From the very first, under the
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Speaker 1: spell of his personality, I believed, and I knew he
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Speaker 1: was speaking the truth. And it opened up before me
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Speaker 1: new vistas. I began to see myself become suddenly eternal,
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Speaker 1: never again to know the fear of death. I could
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Speaker 1: see myself storing up, century after century an amplitude of
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Speaker 1: wisdom and experience that would make me truly a god.
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Speaker 1: Sir John, I cried long before he was finished. You
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Speaker 1: must perform the operation on me. But Danel, you're too hasty.
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Speaker 1: You must not put yourself so rashly into my hands.
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Speaker 1: You have perfected the operation, haven't you. That's true? He said,
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Speaker 1: you must try it out on somebody, must you not? Yes? Course,
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Speaker 1: And yet somehow, Danel, I'm afraid I can't help feeling
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Speaker 1: that man is not yet prepared for such a vast thing.
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Speaker 1: There are sacrifices. One must give up, all love and
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Speaker 1: all sensual pleasure. This operation not only takes away the
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Speaker 1: mere fact of reproduction, but it deprives one of all
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Speaker 1: the things that go with sex, all love, all sense
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Speaker 1: of beauty, all feeling for poetry and the arts. It
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Speaker 1: leaves only the few emotions, selfish emotions that are necessary
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Speaker 1: to self preservation. Do you not see? One becomes an intellect,
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Speaker 1: nothing more, a cold apotheosis of reason. And I, for one,
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Speaker 1: cannot face such a thing calmly. But Sir John, like
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Speaker 1: many fears, it's largely horrible in the foresight. After you've
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Speaker 1: changed your nature, you cannot regret it. What you are
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Speaker 1: would be as horrible an idea to you afterwards as
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Speaker 1: the thought of what you will be seems now true. True,
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Speaker 1: I know, but it's hard to face. Nevertheless, I am
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Speaker 1: not afraid to face it. You don't understand, Dennel, I
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Speaker 1: am afraid, and I wonder whether you or I, or
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Speaker 1: any of us on this earth are ready for such
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Speaker 1: a step. After all, to make a race deathless, one
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Speaker 1: should be sure it's a perfect race, Sir John, I said,
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Speaker 1: it's not you who have to face this, nor any
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Speaker 1: one else in the world till you're ready. But I'm
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Speaker 1: firmly resolved, and I demand it of you as my friend.
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Speaker 1: Well we argued much further, but in the end I won.
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Speaker 1: John promised to perform the operation three days later. But
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Speaker 1: do you perceive now what I had forgotten during all
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Speaker 1: that discussion. The one thing I had thought I could
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Speaker 1: never forget so long as I lived, not even for
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Speaker 1: an instant. It was my love for Alice. I had
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Speaker 1: forgotten that I cannot write here all the infinity of
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Speaker 1: emotions I experienced. Later, when with Alice in my arms,
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Speaker 1: it suddenly came upon me what I had done ages ago.
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Speaker 1: I have forgotten how to feel. I could name now
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Speaker 1: a thousand feelings I used to have, but I can
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Speaker 1: no longer even understand them, For only the heart could
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Speaker 1: understand the heart, and the intellect only the intellect with
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Speaker 1: Alice in my arms. I told the whole story. It
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Speaker 1: was she who, with her quick instinct, grasped what I
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Speaker 1: had never noticed. But Karl, she cried, don't you see
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Speaker 1: it will mean that we can never be married. And
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Speaker 1: for the first time I understood, if only I could
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Speaker 1: recapture some conception of that love I have always known
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Speaker 1: since the last shred of comprehension slipped from me, that
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Speaker 1: I lost something very wonderful when I lost love. But
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Speaker 1: what does it matter. I lost Alice too, and I
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Speaker 1: could not have known love again without her. We were
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Speaker 1: very sad and very tragic that night. For hours and
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Speaker 1: hours we argued the question over. But I felt somewhat
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Speaker 1: that I was inextricably caught in my fate, that I
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Speaker 1: could not retreat now from my resolve. I was perhaps
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Speaker 1: very schoolboyish, but I felt it would be cowardice to
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Speaker 1: back out now. But it was Alice again who perceived
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Speaker 1: a final aspect of the matter. Karl. She said to me,
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Speaker 1: her lips very close to mine. It need not come
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Speaker 1: between our love. After all, ours would be a poor
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Speaker 1: sort of love if it were not more of the
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Speaker 1: mind than of the flesh. We shall remain lovers but
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Speaker 1: we shall forget mere carnal desire. I shall submit to
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Speaker 1: that operation too, And I could not shake her from
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Speaker 1: her resolve. I would speak of danger, that I could
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Speaker 1: not let her face. But after the fashion of women,
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Speaker 1: she disarmed me with the accusation that I didn't love her,
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Speaker 1: that I did not want her love, that I was
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Speaker 1: trying to escape from love. What answer had I for that,
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Speaker 1: but that I loved her and would do anything in
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Speaker 1: the world not to lose her. I have wondered some
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Speaker 1: time since whether we might have known the love of
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Speaker 1: the mind. Is love something entirely of the flesh, something
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Speaker 1: created by an ironic god merely to propagate his race?
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Speaker 1: Or can there be love without emotion, love without passion,
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Speaker 1: love between two cold intellects. I don't know. I did
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Speaker 1: not ask. Then I accepted anything that would make our
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Speaker 1: way more easy. There's no need to draw out the tail.
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Speaker 1: Already my hand waivers, and my time grows short. Soon
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Speaker 1: there will be no more of me, no more of
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Speaker 1: my tail, no more of mankind. There will be only
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Speaker 1: the snow and the ice and the cold. Three days
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Speaker 1: later I entered John's hospital with Alice on my arm.
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Speaker 1: All my affairs and they were few enough were in order.
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Speaker 1: I had insisted that Alice wait until I had come
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Speaker 1: safely through the operation before she submitted to it. I
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Speaker 1: had been carefully starved for two days, and I was
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Speaker 1: lost in an unreal world of white walls, white clothes,
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Speaker 1: and white lights, drunk with my dreams of the future.
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Speaker 1: When I was wheeled into the operating room on the long,
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Speaker 1: hard table, for a moment, it shone with brilliant distinctness,
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Speaker 1: a neat, methodical white chamber, tall and more or less circular.
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Speaker 1: Then I was beneath the glare of soft white lights,
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Speaker 1: and the room faded into a misty vagueness, from which
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Speaker 1: little steel rays flashed and quivered from silvery cold instruments.
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Speaker 1: For a moment, our hands, Sir John's and mine, gripped,
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Speaker 1: and we were saying good bye for a little while,
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Speaker 1: in the way men say these things. Then I felt
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Speaker 1: the warm touch of Alice's lips upon mine, and I
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Speaker 1: felt sudden, painful things I can't describe that I could
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Speaker 1: not have described. Then, for a moment I felt that
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Speaker 1: I must rise and cry out that I could not
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Speaker 1: do it. But the feeling past, and I was passive.
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Speaker 1: Something was pressed about my mouth and nose. Something with
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Speaker 1: an ethereal smell. Staring eyes swam about me from behind
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Speaker 1: their white masks. I struggled instinctively, but in vain. I
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Speaker 1: was held securely. Infinitesimal points of light began to wave
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Speaker 1: back and forth on a pitch black background. A great
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Speaker 1: hollow buzzing echoed in my head. My head seemed suddenly
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Speaker 1: to have become all throat, a great cavernous, empty throat,
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Speaker 1: in which sounds and lights were mingled together in a
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Speaker 1: swift rhythm, approaching, receding eternally. Then I think there were dreams,
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Speaker 1: but I've forgotten them. I began to emerge from the
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Speaker 1: effects of the ether. Everything was dim, but I could
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Speaker 1: perceive Alice beside me, and Sir John bravely done so.
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Speaker 1: John was saying, and Alice too, was saying something, but
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Speaker 1: I cannot remember what. For a long while we talked,
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Speaker 1: I speaking the nonsense of those who were coming out
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Speaker 1: from under the ether. They teasing me a little solemnly.
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Speaker 1: But after a while I became aware of the fact
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Speaker 1: that they were about to leave. Suddenly, God knows why,
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Speaker 1: I knew that they must not leave. Something cried in
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Speaker 1: the back of my head that they must stay. One
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Speaker 1: cannot explain these things except by after events. I began
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Speaker 1: to press them to remain, but they smiled and said
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Speaker 1: they must get their dinner. I commanded them not to go,
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Speaker 1: but they spoke kindly and said they would be back
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Speaker 1: before long. I think I even wept a little, like
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Speaker 1: a child. But Sir John said something to the nurse,
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Speaker 1: who began to reason with me firmly. And then they
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Speaker 1: were gone, and somehow I was asleep. When I awoke again,
17:58
Speaker 1: my head was fairly clear, but there was an abominable
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Speaker 1: reek of ether all about me. The moment I opened
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Speaker 1: my eyes, I felt that something had happened. I asked
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Speaker 1: for Sir John and for Alice. I saw a swift,
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Speaker 1: curious look that I could not interpret come over the
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Speaker 1: face of the nurse, and she was calm again, her
18:18
Speaker 1: countenance impassive. She reassured me in quick, meaningless phrases and
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Speaker 1: told me to sleep. But I could not sleep. I
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Speaker 1: was absolutely sure that something had happened to them, to
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Speaker 1: my friend, and to the woman I loved. Yet all
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Speaker 1: my insistence profited me nothing, for the nurses were a
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Speaker 1: silent lot. Finally, I think they must have given me
18:39
Speaker 1: a sleeping potion of some sort, for I fell asleep again.
18:43
Speaker 1: For two endless, chaotic days, I saw nothing of either
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Speaker 1: of them, Alice or Sir John. I became more and
18:51
Speaker 1: more agitated, the nurse more and more taciturn. She would
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Speaker 1: only say that they had gone away for a day
18:57
Speaker 1: or two. And then on the third day I found
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Speaker 1: out they thought I was asleep. The night nurse had
19:06
Speaker 1: just come in to relieve the other. Has he been
19:08
Speaker 1: asking about them again? She asked, yes, poor fellow, I've
19:13
Speaker 1: hardly managed to keep him quiet. We will have to
19:15
Speaker 1: keep it from him until he's recovered. Fully. There was
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Speaker 1: a long pause, and I could hardly control my labored breathing.
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Speaker 1: How sudden was it? One of them said to be killed?
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Speaker 1: Like that? I heard no more, for I leapt suddenly
19:30
Speaker 1: up in bed, crying out, quick, for God's sake, tell
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Speaker 1: me what has happened. I jumped to the floor and
19:36
Speaker 1: seized one of them by the collar. She was horrified.
19:39
Speaker 1: I shook her with superhuman strength. Tell me, I shouted,
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Speaker 1: Tell me, or I'll She told me what else could
19:47
Speaker 1: she do? They were killed in an accident, She gasped
19:50
Speaker 1: in her taxi, a collision the strand, and at that
19:54
Speaker 1: moment a crowd of nurses and attendants arrived, called by
19:57
Speaker 1: the other frantic woman, and they put me to bed again.
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Speaker 1: I have no memory of the next few days. I
20:04
Speaker 1: was in delirium, and I was never told what I
20:06
Speaker 1: said during my ravings, Nor can I express the feelings
20:10
Speaker 1: I was saturated with when at last I regained my
20:13
Speaker 1: mind again. Between my old emotions and any attempt to
20:16
Speaker 1: put them into words or even to remember them, lies
20:19
Speaker 1: always that insurmountable wall of my change. I can't understand
20:25
Speaker 1: what I must have felt. I cannot express it. I
20:29
Speaker 1: only know that for weeks I was sunk in a
20:31
Speaker 1: misery beyond any misery I had ever imagined before. The
20:36
Speaker 1: only two friends I had on earth were gone to me.
20:39
Speaker 1: I was left alone, and for the first time I
20:43
Speaker 1: began to see before me all these endless years that
20:46
Speaker 1: would be the same, dull, lonely. Yet I recovered I
20:54
Speaker 1: could feel each day the growth of a strange new
20:57
Speaker 1: vigor in my limbs, a vast for that was something
21:01
Speaker 1: tangibly expressive to eternal life. Slowly my anguish began to die.
21:07
Speaker 1: After a week more I began to understand how my
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Speaker 1: emotions were leaving me. How love and beauty and everything
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Speaker 1: of which poetry was made, How all this was going.
21:19
Speaker 1: I couldn't bear the thought. At first. I would look
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Speaker 1: at the golden sunlight and the blue shadow of the wind,
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Speaker 1: and I would say, God, how beautiful, and the words
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Speaker 1: would echo meaninglessly in my ears. Or I would remember
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Speaker 1: Alice's face, that face I had once loved so inextinguishably,
21:40
Speaker 1: and I would weep and clutch my forehead and clench
21:43
Speaker 1: my fists, crying, Oh God, how can I live without her?
21:48
Speaker 1: Yet there would be a little strange fancy in my
21:51
Speaker 1: head at the same moment, saying, who is this Alice?
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Speaker 1: You'd know no such person, And truly I would wonder
21:59
Speaker 1: whether she had ever existed. So slowly the old emotions
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Speaker 1: were sheared away from me, and I began to joy.
22:08
Speaker 1: In a corresponding growth of my mental perceptions, I began
22:12
Speaker 1: to toy idly with mathematical formulae I had forgotten years ago,
22:16
Speaker 1: in the same fashion that a poet toys with a
22:18
Speaker 1: word and its shades of meaning. I would look at
22:22
Speaker 1: everything with new seeing eyes, new perception, and I would
22:25
Speaker 1: understand things I had never understood before, because formerly, my
22:29
Speaker 1: emotions had always occupied me more than my thoughts. And
22:33
Speaker 1: so the weeks went by until one day I was well, what,
22:40
Speaker 1: after all, is the use of this chronicle? Surely there
22:45
Speaker 1: will never be men to read it. I have heard
22:48
Speaker 1: them say that the snow will never go. I will
22:52
Speaker 1: be buried. It will be buried with me, and it
22:56
Speaker 1: will be the end of us both. Yet, somehow, how
23:00
Speaker 1: it eases my weary soul a little to write. Need
23:05
Speaker 1: I say that I lived thereafter many thousands of thousands
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Speaker 1: of years until this day. I cannot detail that life.
23:13
Speaker 1: It's a long round of new, fantastic impressions, coming dream like,
23:17
Speaker 1: one after another, melting into each other. In looking back,
23:24
Speaker 1: as in looking back upon dreams, I seem to recall
23:26
Speaker 1: only a few isolated periods clearly, And it seems that
23:30
Speaker 1: my imagination must have filled in the swift movement between episodes.
23:34
Speaker 1: I think now of necessity in terms of centuries and
23:38
Speaker 1: millenniums rather than days and months. The snow blows terribly
23:44
Speaker 1: about my little fire, and I know it will soon
23:47
Speaker 1: gather courage to quench us. Both years passed at first
23:54
Speaker 1: with a sort of clear wonder. I watched things that
23:57
Speaker 1: took place everywhere in the world I studied. The other
24:00
Speaker 1: students were much amazed to see me, a man of
24:02
Speaker 1: thirty odd coming back to college. But Judas Dennel, you've
24:07
Speaker 1: already got your pH d. What more do you want? So,
24:10
Speaker 1: they would all ask me, and I would reply, I
24:13
Speaker 1: want an m d and an f R c S.
24:17
Speaker 1: I didn't tell them that I wanted degrees in law too,
24:21
Speaker 1: and in biology and chemistry, in architecture and engineering, in
24:25
Speaker 1: psychology and philosophy. Even so, I believe they thought me mad.
24:30
Speaker 1: But poor fools, I would think, they can hardly realize
24:34
Speaker 1: that I have all of eternity before me to study.
24:37
Speaker 1: I went to school for many decades. I would pass
24:40
Speaker 1: from university to university, leisurely, gathering all the fruits of
24:44
Speaker 1: every subject. I took up, reveling in study as no
24:48
Speaker 1: student reveled ever before. There was no need of hurry
24:51
Speaker 1: in my life, no fear of death too soon. There
24:54
Speaker 1: was a magnificence of vigor in my body, and a
24:57
Speaker 1: magnificence of vision and clarity in my brain. I felt
25:01
Speaker 1: myself a superman. I had only to go on storing
25:05
Speaker 1: up wisdom until the day should come when all knowledge
25:08
Speaker 1: of the world was mine, and then I could command
25:10
Speaker 1: the world. I had no need for hurry, Oh vast life,
25:15
Speaker 1: How I gloried in my eternity, and how little good
25:20
Speaker 1: it has ever done me by the irony of God.
25:24
Speaker 1: For several centuries, changing my name and passing from place
25:28
Speaker 1: to place, I continued my studies. I had no consciousness
25:32
Speaker 1: of monotony, for to the intellect, monotony cannot exist. It
25:36
Speaker 1: was one of those emotions I had left behind. One day, however,
25:41
Speaker 1: in the year twenty one thirty two, a great discovery
25:45
Speaker 1: was made by a man called Zorentzov. It had to
25:48
Speaker 1: do with the curvature of space, quite changing the conceptions
25:52
Speaker 1: that we had all followed since Einstein. I had long
25:55
Speaker 1: ago mastered the last detail of Einstein's theory, as had
25:59
Speaker 1: in time the rest of the world world. I threw
26:01
Speaker 1: myself immediately into the study of this new epoch, making conception.
26:06
Speaker 1: To my amazement, it all seemed to me curiously dim
26:09
Speaker 1: and elusive. I could not quite grasp what Zorentsov was
26:13
Speaker 1: trying to formulate. Why I cried, the thing is a
26:18
Speaker 1: monstrous fraud. I went to the professor of physics in
26:22
Speaker 1: the university I then attended, and I told him it
26:24
Speaker 1: was a fraud, a huge book of mere nonsense. He
26:28
Speaker 1: looked at me rather pityingly. I am afraid Modevski, he said,
26:34
Speaker 1: addressing me by the name I was at the time using.
26:37
Speaker 1: I am afraid you do not understand it. That is all.
26:40
Speaker 1: When your mind has broadened, you will you should apply
26:44
Speaker 1: yourself more carefully to your physics. But that angered me,
26:48
Speaker 1: for I had mastered my physics before he was ever born.
26:52
Speaker 1: I challenged him to explain the theory, and he did.
26:56
Speaker 1: He put it obviously, in the clearest language he could.
27:00
Speaker 1: Yet I understood nothing. I stared at him dumbly, until
27:04
Speaker 1: he shook his head impatiently, saying that it was useless
27:07
Speaker 1: and if I could not grasp it, I would simply
27:10
Speaker 1: have to keep on studying. I was stunned. I wandered
27:14
Speaker 1: away in a daze. For do you see what happened?
27:19
Speaker 1: During all those years I had studied ceaselessly, and my
27:22
Speaker 1: mind had been clear and quick as the day I
27:23
Speaker 1: first had left the hospital. But all the time I
27:27
Speaker 1: had been able to only remain what I was an
27:30
Speaker 1: extraordinary intelligent man of the twentieth century, and the rest
27:35
Speaker 1: of the race had been progressing. It had been swiftly
27:39
Speaker 1: gathering knowledge and power and ability all that time, faster
27:43
Speaker 1: and faster, while I had been only remaining still. And
27:47
Speaker 1: now here was Tzorentzov and the teachers of the universities,
27:51
Speaker 1: and probably a hundred intelligent men who had all outstripped me.
27:55
Speaker 1: I was being left behind. And that is what happened.
28:00
Speaker 1: I need not dilate further upon it. By the end
28:02
Speaker 1: of that century I had been left behind by all
28:05
Speaker 1: the students of the world, and I never did understand Zarentsov.
28:09
Speaker 1: Other men came with other theories, and these theories were
28:12
Speaker 1: accepted by the world, but I could not understand them.
28:16
Speaker 1: My intellectual life was at an end. I had nothing
28:20
Speaker 1: more to understand. I knew everything I was capable of knowing,
28:24
Speaker 1: and thenceforth I could only play wearily with the old ideas.
28:31
Speaker 1: Many things happened in the world. A time came when
28:34
Speaker 1: the East and West, two mighty unified hemispheres, rose up
28:38
Speaker 1: in arms, the civil war of a planet. I recall
28:42
Speaker 1: only chaotic visions of fire and thunder and hell. It
28:47
Speaker 1: was all incomprehensible to me, like a bizarre dream. Things happened.
28:52
Speaker 1: People rushed about, but I never knew what they were doing.
28:56
Speaker 1: I lurked during all that time in a tiny shuddering hole,
29:00
Speaker 1: and the city of Yokohama, and by miracle I survived,
29:04
Speaker 1: and the East one. But it seems to have mattered
29:08
Speaker 1: little who did win. For all the world had become,
29:11
Speaker 1: in all except its few remaining prejudices, a single race,
29:15
Speaker 1: and nothing was changed when it was all rebuilt again
29:18
Speaker 1: under a single government. I saw the first of the
29:22
Speaker 1: strange creatures who appeared among us in the year sixty
29:25
Speaker 1: three seventy one, men who were later known to be
29:29
Speaker 1: from the planet Venus. But they were repulsed, for they
29:32
Speaker 1: were savages compared with the earthmen, although they were about
29:35
Speaker 1: equal to the people of my own century nineteen hundred.
29:39
Speaker 1: Those of them who did not perish of the cold
29:41
Speaker 1: after the intense warmth of their world, and those who
29:44
Speaker 1: were not killed by our hands, those few returned silently
29:49
Speaker 1: home again, and I have always regretted that I had
29:52
Speaker 1: not the courage to go with them. I watched a
29:56
Speaker 1: time when the world reached perfection in mechanics, when men
29:59
Speaker 1: could accomplish anything with a touch of the finger. Strange
30:03
Speaker 1: men these creatures of the hundredth century, men with huge
30:07
Speaker 1: brains and tiny shriveled bodies, atrophied limbs, and slow ponderous
30:13
Speaker 1: movements on their little conveyances. It was I, with my
30:18
Speaker 1: ancient compunctions, who shuddered when at last they put to
30:22
Speaker 1: death all the perverts, the criminals, and the insane, ridding
30:26
Speaker 1: the world of the scum for which they had no
30:28
Speaker 1: more need. It was then that I was forced to
30:31
Speaker 1: produce my tattered old papers proving my identity and my story.
30:36
Speaker 1: They knew it was true in some strange fashion of theirs,
30:39
Speaker 1: and thereafter I was kept on exhibition as an archaic survival.
30:45
Speaker 1: I saw the world made immortal through the new invention
30:49
Speaker 1: of a man called Cathol, who used somewhat the same
30:52
Speaker 1: method legend decreed had been used upon me. I observed
30:56
Speaker 1: the end of speech, of all perceptions except one, when
31:00
Speaker 1: men learned to communicate directly by thought, and to receive
31:04
Speaker 1: directly into the brain, all the myriad vibrations of the universe.
31:08
Speaker 1: All these things I saw and more, until that time,
31:12
Speaker 1: when there was no more discovery, but a perfect world
31:16
Speaker 1: in which there was no need for anything but memory.
31:20
Speaker 1: Men ceased to count time. At last, several hundred years
31:24
Speaker 1: after the one hundred and fifty fourth Dynasty from the
31:27
Speaker 1: Last War, or as we would have counted in my time,
31:30
Speaker 1: about two hundred thousand a d. Official records of time
31:34
Speaker 1: were no longer kept carefully. They fell into disuse. Men
31:39
Speaker 1: began to forget years, to forget time at all. Of
31:43
Speaker 1: what significance was time when one was immortal. After long, long,
31:50
Speaker 1: uncounted centuries, a time came when the days grew noticeably colder. Slowly,
31:57
Speaker 1: the winters became longer, and the summer's demianished to but
32:01
Speaker 1: a month or two. Fierce storms raged endlessly in winter,
32:06
Speaker 1: and in summer. Sometimes there was severe frost. Sometimes there
32:10
Speaker 1: was only frost. In the high places. And in the north,
32:15
Speaker 1: and in the sub equatorial south, the snow came and
32:19
Speaker 1: would not go. Men died by the thousands in the
32:23
Speaker 1: higher latitudes. New York became after a while the furthest
32:27
Speaker 1: habitable city north, an arctic city where warmth seldom penetrated,
32:33
Speaker 1: and great fields of ice began to make their way southward,
32:37
Speaker 1: grinding before them. The brittle remains of civilizations, covering over
32:42
Speaker 1: relentlessly all of man's proud work snow appeared in Florida
32:47
Speaker 1: and Italy one summer. In the end, snow was there always.
32:53
Speaker 1: Men left New York, Chicago, Paris, Lukohama, and everywhere. They
32:58
Speaker 1: traveled by the millions southward, perishing as they went, pursued
33:04
Speaker 1: by the snow and the cold and that inevitable field
33:08
Speaker 1: of ice. They were feeble creatures when the cold first
33:12
Speaker 1: came upon them, But I speak in terms of thousands
33:16
Speaker 1: of years, and they turned every weapon of science to
33:19
Speaker 1: the recovery of their physical power, for they foresaw that
33:22
Speaker 1: the only chance for survival lay in a hard, strong body.
33:28
Speaker 1: As for me, at last, I had found a use
33:30
Speaker 1: for my few powers, for my physique was the finest
33:34
Speaker 1: in that world. It was but little comfort, however, for
33:39
Speaker 1: we were all united in our awful fear of that
33:42
Speaker 1: cold and that grinding field of ice. All the great
33:46
Speaker 1: cities were deserted. We would catch silent, fearful glimpses of
33:51
Speaker 1: them as we sped on in our mechanics over the snow,
33:55
Speaker 1: great hungry, haggard skeletons of cities shrouded in banks of snow,
34:01
Speaker 1: snow that the wind rustled through desolate streets, where the
34:04
Speaker 1: cream of human life had once passed in calm security.
34:09
Speaker 1: Yet still the ice pursued. For men had forgotten about
34:14
Speaker 1: that last ice age, when they ceased to reckon time,
34:19
Speaker 1: when they lost sight of the future and steeped themselves
34:22
Speaker 1: in memories. They had not remembered that a time must
34:26
Speaker 1: come when ice would lie white and smooth over all
34:29
Speaker 1: the earth, when the sun would shine bleakly between unending
34:35
Speaker 1: intervals of dim twilight, snow and sleet. Slowly, the ice
34:42
Speaker 1: pursued us down the earth until all the feeble remains
34:46
Speaker 1: of civilization were gathered in Egypt and India and South America.
34:51
Speaker 1: The deserts flowered again, but the frost would come, always
34:55
Speaker 1: to bite the tiny crops. For still the ice came.
35:01
Speaker 1: All the world now, but for a narrow strip around
35:03
Speaker 1: the equator was one great, silent, desolate vista of stark
35:09
Speaker 1: ice plains, ice that brooded above the hidden ruins of
35:13
Speaker 1: cities that had endured for hundreds of thousands of years.
35:18
Speaker 1: It was terrible to imagine the awful solitude and the
35:21
Speaker 1: endless twilight that lay on these places, and the grim
35:25
Speaker 1: snow sailing in silence. Over all. It surrounded us on
35:31
Speaker 1: all sides, until life remained only in a few scattered
35:36
Speaker 1: clearings all about that equator of the globe, with an
35:40
Speaker 1: eternal fire going to hold away the hungry ice. Perpetual
35:44
Speaker 1: winter reigned now, and we were becoming terror stricken beasts
35:50
Speaker 1: that preyed on each other for a life already doomed. Ah,
35:55
Speaker 1: But I the archaic survival. I had my revenge then,
36:01
Speaker 1: with my great physique and strong jaws. God, let me
36:06
Speaker 1: think of something else. Those men who lived upon each other.
36:11
Speaker 1: It was horrible, and I was one. So inevitably the
36:17
Speaker 1: ice closed in one day. The men of our tiny
36:22
Speaker 1: clearing were but a score. We huddled about our dying
36:26
Speaker 1: fire of bones and stray logs. We said nothing. We
36:30
Speaker 1: just sat in deep, wordless, thoughtless silence. We were the
36:35
Speaker 1: last outpost of mankind. I think suddenly, something very noble
36:40
Speaker 1: must have transformed these creatures to a semblance of what
36:44
Speaker 1: they had been of old. And I saw in their
36:46
Speaker 1: eyes the question they sent from one another, and in
36:50
Speaker 1: every eye I saw the answer was yes. With one accord,
36:56
Speaker 1: they rose before my eyes, and, ignoring me as a
36:58
Speaker 1: blaser creature, they stripped away their load of tattered rags,
37:03
Speaker 1: and one by one they stalked with their tiny, shriveled
37:07
Speaker 1: limbs into the shrivering gale of swirling, dusting snow, and disappeared,
37:14
Speaker 1: and I was alone. So am I alone? Now? I
37:21
Speaker 1: have written this last fantastic history of myself and of
37:25
Speaker 1: mankind upon a substance that will, I know, outlast even
37:29
Speaker 1: the snow in the ice, as it has outlasted mankind
37:33
Speaker 1: that made it. It's the only thing with which I
37:36
Speaker 1: have never parted. For It's not irony that I should
37:41
Speaker 1: be the historian of this race. I a a savage,
37:45
Speaker 1: an archaic survival. Why do I write? God knows, but
37:51
Speaker 1: some instinct prompts me although there will be never men
37:56
Speaker 1: to read. I have been sitting here waiting, and I
38:02
Speaker 1: have thought often of Sir John and Alice, whom I loved.
38:06
Speaker 1: Can it be that I am feeling again, after all
38:10
Speaker 1: these ages, some tiny portion of that emotion, that great
38:14
Speaker 1: passion I once knew. I see her face before me,
38:19
Speaker 1: the face I've lost from my thoughts for eons, and
38:23
Speaker 1: something is in it that stirs my blood again. Her
38:27
Speaker 1: eyes are half closed and deep, her lips are parted,
38:32
Speaker 1: as though I could crush them with an infinity of wonder.
38:34
Speaker 1: And discovery. Oh God, is it love again? Love that
38:41
Speaker 1: I thought was lost. They have often smiled upon me
38:45
Speaker 1: when I spoke of God and muttered about my foolish,
38:49
Speaker 1: primitive superstitions. But they are gone, and I am left
38:54
Speaker 1: who believe in God, and surely there's purpose in it.
39:00
Speaker 1: I am cold, I writ I am frozen. My breath
39:07
Speaker 1: freezes as it mingles with the air, and I can
39:10
Speaker 1: hardly move my numbed fingers. The ice is closing over me,
39:16
Speaker 1: and I cannot break it any longer. The storm cries
39:21
Speaker 1: weirdly all about me in the twilight, and I know
39:24
Speaker 1: this is the end, the end of the world, and
39:29
Speaker 1: I I the last man, the last man. I am cold, cold,
39:43
Speaker 1: But is it you, Alice? Is it you? End of
39:56
Speaker 1: the Coming of the Ice? By G. E. Peyton Wertenbaker
40:03
Speaker 1: recording by Giles Baker.