History Lesson
By Arthur C. Clarke
Is history ever pure unadulterated fact?
No one could remember when
the tribe had begun its long journey. The land of great rolling plains that had
been its first home was now no more than a half-forgotten dream.
For many years Shann and his people had been fleeing through a country of
low hills and sparkling lakes, and now the mountains lay ahead. This summer
they must cross them to the southern lands. There was little time to lose. The
white terror that had come down from the Poles, grinding continents to dust and
freezing the very air before it, was less than a day's march behind.
Shann wondered if the glaciers could climb the mountains
ahead, and within his heart he dared to kindle a little flame of hope. This
might prove a barrier against which even the remorseless ice would batter in
vain. In the southern lands of which the legends spoke, his people might find
refuge at last.
It took weeks to discover a
pass through which the tribe and the animals could travel. When midsummer came,
they had camped in a lonely valley where the air was thin and the stars shone
with a brilliance no one had ever seen before.
The summer was waning when Shann took his two sons and went ahead to explore the way.
For three days they climbed, and for three nights slept as best they could on
the freezing rocks, and on the fourth morning there was nothing ahead but a
gentle rise to a cairn of gray stones built by other travelers, centuries ago.
Shann felt himself trembling, and not with cold, as they
walked toward the little pyramid of stones. His sons had fallen behind. No one
spoke, for too much was at stake. In a little while they would know if all
their hopes had been betrayed.
To east and west, the wall of
mountains curved away as if embracing the land beneath. Below lay endless miles
of undulating plain, with a great river swinging across it in tremendous loops.
It was a fertile land; one in which the tribe could raise crops knowing that
there would be no need to flee before the harvest came.
Then Shann
lifted his eyes to the south, and saw the doom of all his hopes. For there at
the edge of the world glimmered that deadly light he had seen so often to the
north-the glint of ice below the horizon.
There was no way forward.
Through all the years of flight, the glaciers from the south had been advancing
to meet them. Soon they would be crushed beneath the moving walls of ice . . .
Southern glaciers did not
reach the mountains until a generation later. In that last summer the sons of Shann carried the sacred treasures of the tribe to the
lonely cairn overlooking the plain. The ice that had once gleamed below the
horizon was now almost at their feet. By spring it would be splintering against
the mountain walls.
No one understood the treasures
now. They were from a past too distant for the understanding of any man alive.
Their origins were lost in the mists that surrounded the Golden Age, and how
they had come at last into the possession of this wandering tribe was a story
that now would never be told. For it was the story of a
civilization that had passed beyond recall.
Once, all these pitiful
relics had been treasured for some good reason, and now they had become sacred
though their meaning had long been lost. The print in the old books had faded
centuries ago though much of the lettering was still visible-if there had been
any to read it. But many generations had passed since anyone had had a use for
a set of seven-figure logarithms, an atlas of the world, and the score of Sibelius' Seventh Symphony printed, according to the
flyleaf, by H. K. Chu and Sons, at the City of
The old books were placed
reverently in the little crypt that had been made to receive them. There
followed a motley collection of fragments-gold and platinum coins, a broken
telephoto lens, a watch, a cold-light lamp, a microphone, the cutter from an
electric razor, some midget radio tubes, the flotsam that had been left behind
when the great tide of civilization had ebbed forever.
All these treasures were
carefully stowed away in their resting place. Then came three
more relics, the most sacred of all because the least understood.
The first was a strangely
shaped piece of metal, showing the coloration of intense heat. It was, in its way,
the most pathetic of all these, symbols from the past, for it told of man's
greatest achievement and of the future he might have known. The mahogany stand
on which it was mounted bore a silver plate with the inscription:
Auxiliary Igniter from
Starboard Jet Spaceship "Morning Star" Earth-Moon, A.D. 1985
Next
followed another miracle of the ancient science-a sphere of transparent plastic
with strangely shaped pieces of metal imbedded in it. At its center was a tiny capsule of synthetic radio
element, surrounded by the converting screens that shifted its radiation far
down the spectrum. As long as the material remained active, the sphere would be
a tiny radio transmitter, broadcasting power in all directions. Only a few of
these spheres had ever been made.-They had been designed as perpetual beacons
to mark the orbits of the asteroids. But man had never reached the asteroids
and the beacons had never been used.
Last of all was a flat,
circular tin, wide in comparison with its depth. It was heavily sealed, and rattled when shaken. The tribal lore predicted
that disaster would follow if it was ever opened, and no one knew that it held
one of the great works of art of nearly a thousand years before.
The work was finished. The
two men rolled the stones back into place and slowly began to descend the
mountainside. Even to the last, man had given some thought to the future and
had tried to preserve something for posterity.
That winter the great waves
of ice began their first assault on the mountains, attacking from north and
south. The foothills were overwhelmed in the first onslaught, and the glaciers
ground them into dust. But the mountains stood firm, and
)When the summer came the ice retreated for a while.
So, winter after winter, the
battle continued, and the roar of the avalanches, the grinding of rock and the
explosions of splintering ice filled the air with tumult. No war of man's had
been fiercer than this, and even man's battles had not quite engulfed the globe
as this had done.
At last the tidal waves of
ice began to subside and to creep slowly down the flanks of the mountains they
had never quite subdued. The valleys and passes were still firmly in their
grip. It was stalemate. The glaciers had met their match, but their defeat was
too late to be of any use to man.
So the centuries passed, and
presently there happened something that must occur once at least in the history
of every world in the universe, no matter how remote and lonely it may be.
The ship from Venus came five
thousand years too late, but its crew knew nothing of this. While
still many millions of miles away, the telescopes had seen the great shroud of
ice that made Earth the most brilliant object in the sky next to the sun
itself.
Here and there the dazzling
sheet was marred by black specks that revealed the presence of almost buried
mountains. That was all. The rolling oceans, the plains and forests, the
deserts and lakes -all that had been the world of man was sealed beneath the
ice, perhaps forever.
The ship closed in to Earth
and established an orbit less than a thousand miles away. For five days it
circled the planet, while cameras recorded all that was left to see and a
hundred instruments gathered information that would give the Venusian scientists many years of work.
An actual landing was not
intended. There seemed little purpose in it. But on the sixth day the picture
changed. A panoramic monitor, driven to the limit of its amplification,
detected the dying radiation of the five-thousand-year-old beacon. Through all the
centuries, it had been sending out its signals with ever-failing strength as
its radioactive heart steadily weakened.
The monitor locked on the
beacon frequency. In the control room, a bell clamored for attention. A little
later, the Venusian ship broke free from its orbit
and slanted down toward Earth, toward a range of mountains that still towered
proudly above the ice, and to a cairn of gray stones that the years had
scarcely touched . . . .
The great disk of the sun
blazed fiercely in a sky no longer veiled with mist, for the clouds that had
once hidden Venus had now completely gone. Whatever force had caused the change
in the sun's radiation had doomed one civilization, but had given birth to
another. Less than five thousand years before, the half-savage people of Venus
had seen sun and stars for the first time. Just as the science of Earth had
begun with astronomy, so had that of Venus, and on the warm, rich world that
man had never seen progress had been incredibly rapid.
Perhaps the Venusians had
been lucky. They never knew the Dark Age that held man enchained for a thousand
years. They missed the long detour into chemistry and mechanics but came at
once to the more fundamental laws of radiation physics. In the time that man
had taken to progress from the Pyramids to the rocket-propelled spaceship, the
Venusians had passed from the discovery of agriculture to antigravity
itself-the ultimate secret that man had never learned.
The warm ocean that still
bore most of the young planet's life rolled its breakers languidly against the
sandy shore. So new was this continent that the very sands were coarse and
gritty. There had not yet been time enough for the sea to wear them smooth.
The scientists lay half in
the water, their beautiful reptilian bodies gleaming in the sunlight. The
greatest minds of Venus had gathered on this shore from all the islands of the
planet. What they were going to hear they did not know, except that it
concerned the
. The Historian was standing
on the land, for the instruments he wished to use had no love of water. By his
side was a large machine which attracted many curious glances from his
colleagues. It was clearly concerned with optics, for a lens system projected
from it toward a screen of white material a dozen yards away.
The Historian began to speak.
Briefly he recapitulated what little had been discovered concerning the Third
Planet and its people.
He mentioned the centuries of
fruitless research that had failed to interpret a single word of the writings
of Earth. The planet had been inhabited by a race of great technical ability.
That, at least, was proved by the few pieces of machinery that had been found
in the cairn upon the mountain.
"We do not know why so
advanced a civilization came to an end," he observed. "Almost
certainly, it had sufficient knowledge to survive an ice Age. There must have
been some other factor of which we know nothing. Possibly disease or racial degeneration
may have been responsible. It has even been suggested that the tribal conflicts
endemic to our own species in prehistoric times may have continued on the Third
Planet after the coming of technology.
"Some philosophers
maintain that knowledge of machinery does not necessarily imply a high degree
of civilization, and it is theoretically possible to have wars in a society
possessing mechanical power, flight, and even radio. Such a conception is alien
to our thoughts, but we must admit its possibility. It would certainly account
for the downfall of the lost race.
"it
has always been assumed that we should never know anything of the physical form
of the creatures who lived on Planet Three. For centuries our artists have been
depicting scenes from the history of the dead world, peopling it with all
manner of fantastic beings. Most of these creations have resembled us more or
less closely, though it has often been pointed out that because we are reptiles
it does not follow that all intelligent life must necessarily be reptilian.
"We now know the answer
to one of the most baffling problems of history. At last, after hundreds of
years of research, we have discovered the exact form and nature of the ruling
life on the Third Planet."
There was a murmur of
astonishment from the assembled scientists. Some were so taken aback that they
disappeared for a while into the comfort of the ocean, as all Venusians were
apt to do in moments of stress. The Historian waited until his colleagues
reemerged into the element they so disliked. He himself was quite comfortable,
thanks to the tiny sprays that were continually playing over his body. With
their help he could live on land for many hours before having to return to the
ocean.
The excitement slowly
subsided and the lecturer continued:
"One of the most
puzzling of the objects found on Planet Three was a flat metal container
holding a great length of transparent plastic material, perforated at the edges
and wound tightly into a spool. This transparent tape at first seemed quite
featureless, but an examination with the new subelectronic
microscope has shown that this is not the case. Along the surface of the
material, invisible to our eyes but perfectly clear under the correct
radiation, are literally thousands of tiny pictures. It is believed that they
were imprinted on the material by some chemical means, and have faded with the
passage of time.
"These pictures
apparently form a record of life as it was on the Third Planet at the height of
its civilization. They are not independent. Consecutive pictures are almost
identical, differing only in the detail of movement. The purpose of such a
record is obvious. It is only necessary to project the scenes in rapid
succession to give an illusion of continuous movement. We have made a machine
to do this, and I have here an exact reproduction of the picture sequence.
"The scenes you are now
going to witness take us back many thousands of years, to the great days of our
sister planet. They show a complex civilization, many of whose activities we
can only dimly understand. Life seems to have been very violent and energetic,
and much that you will see is quite baffling.
"It is clear that the
Third Planet was inhabited by a number of different species, none of them
reptilian. That is a blow to our pride, but the conclusion is inescapable. The
dominant type of life appears to have been a two-armed biped. It walked upright
and covered its body with some flexible material, possibly for protection
against the cold, since even before the Ice Age the planet was at a much lower
temperature than our own world. But I will not try your patience any further.
You will now see the record of which I have been speaking."
A brilliant light flashed
from the projector. There was a gentle whirring, and on the screen appeared
hundreds of strange beings moving rather jerkily to and fro. The picture
expanded to embrace one of the creatures, and the scientists could see that the
Historian's description had been correct.
The creature possessed two eyes,
set rather close together, but the other facial adornments were a little
obscure. There was a large orifice in the lower portion of the head that was
continually opening and closing. Possibly it had something to do with the
creature's breathing.
The scientists watched
spellbound as the strange being became involved in a series of fantastic
adventures. There was an incredibly violent conflict with another, slightly
different creature. It seemed
certain that they must both be killed, but when it was all
over neither seemed any the worse.
Then came
a furious drive over miles of country in a four wheeled mechanical device which
was capable of extraordinary feats of locomotion. The ride ended in a city
packed with other vehicles moving in all directions at breathtaking speeds. No
one was surprised to see two of the machines meet head-on with devastating
results.
After that, events became
even more complicated. It was now quite obvious that it would take many years
of research to analyze and understand all that was happening. It was also clear
that the record was a work of art, somewhat stylized, rather than an exact
reproduction of life as it actually had been on the Third Planet.
Most of the scientists felt
themselves completely dazed when the sequence of pictures came to an end. There
was a final flurry of motion, in which the creature that had been the center of
interest became involved in some tremendous but incomprehensible catastrophe.
The picture contracted to a circle, centered on the creature's head.
The last scene of all was an
expanded view of its face, obviously expressing some powerful emotion. But
whether it was rage, grief, defiance, resignation or some other feeling could
not be guessed. The picture vanished. For a moment some lettering appeared on
the screen, then it was all over.
For several minutes there was
complete silence, save for the lapping of the waves upon the sand. The
scientists were too stunned to speak. The fleeting glimpse of Earth's
civilization had had a shattering effect on their minds. Then little groups
began to start talking together, first in whispers and then more and more
loudly as the implications of what they had seen became clearer. Presently the
Historian called for attention and addressed the meeting again.
"We are now
planning," he said, "a vast program of research to extract all
available knowledge from this record. Thousands of copies are being made for
distribution to all workers. You win appreciate the problems involved. The
psychologists in particular have an immense task confronting them.
"But I do not doubt that
we shall succeed. In another generation, who can say what we may not have
learned of this wonderful race? Before we leave, let us look again at our
remote cousins, whose wisdom may have surpassed our own but of whom so little
has survived."
Once more the final picture
flashed on the screen, motionless this time, for the projector had been
stopped. With something like awe, the scientists gazed at the stiff figure from
the past, while in turn the little biped stared back at them with its
characteristic expression of arrogant bad temper.
For the rest of time it would
symbolize the human race. The psychologists of Venus would analyze its actions
and watch its every movement until they could
reconstruct its mind. Thousands of books would be written about it. Intricate
philosophies would be contrived to account for its behavior.
But all. this labor, all this
research, would be utterly in vain. Perhaps the proud and lonely figure on the
screen was smiling sardonically at the scientists who were starting on their
age-long fruitless quest.
Its secret would be safe as
long as the universe endured, for no one now would ever read the lost language
of Earth. Millions of times in the ages to come those last few words would
flash across the screen, and none could ever guess their meaning:
............................A
Walt Disney Production.