Earth Abides

He looked. This building also was half masked by the shrubbery. One window was broken, apparently because the branch of a pine tree had grown out across it, and then slapped back and forth in some high wind. That accident had happened since he had last been here, several years back. He kept the University Library as a reserve for the future. He had even taught the children to respect it. Yes, he had even, he was afraid, put a kind of taboo upon it. In fact, not only here but everywhere, he had always tried to impress the children with an almost mystical value of books. Still he kept the symbol of the burning of the books as one of the worst things that men could do.

He circled the Library, here and there having difficulty in breaking his way through bushes. Once he had to crawl over the fallen trunk of a pine tree. The building, as far as he could see, was still in sound condition. He came at last to the window which he had broken many years before, and then boarded up. With the hammer he began to knock off a board. He was careful not to break the board, so that he could replace it. After all, he realized with pleasure, there had been a rational background for his bringing the hammer along with him.

Having knocked off the board, he was able to climb through into the building. Now he recalled the first time that he had gained entrance through the window. He had come when Em had told him she was going to have a baby, and he had been hunting for books on obstetrics. All that had seemed a tremendous problem at the time, and yet it had solved itself without difficulty. Why could he never learn to worry less about problems? Problems not infrequently solved themselves.

He went on through the hall, and found the old door into the stacks. Things were not as clean as they might be. In spite of his precautions, bats had apparently found their way into the building, perhaps through the recently broken window. There was also the litter of some kind of rodent. But the droppings had done no damage to the books. He put out a finger, rubbed the tops of some books, and brought it away dusty. That was natural, and there was not even a very surprising amount of dust.

Yes, they were all still there—well over a million volumes, almost all the accumulated learning of the world still safe within these four wals. He felt a sudden sense of security and safety and hope. He gloated, like a miser.

He went down one flight of the little circular stairway, and headed toward the part of the library, the geography section, which as a graduate student he had known best. He came to the familiar alcoves, and in spite of all the years he felt a sense of having come home. Looking at the shelves, he began to spot books which he had read and studied.

One, in particular, caught his attention, a well-worn volume, rebound in red buckram. He stretched out a hand, took it from the shelf, and blew the dust from its top. Looking at his find, he saw the name Brooks and the title: Climate through the Ages. He remembered the book. Opening it, he saw the card, and noticed that the last borrower of the book—the date only a month before the Great Disaster—had been someone named with the unusual name of Isherwood Williams. Only after a few seconds did he realize that he himself was Isherwood Williams. Nobody had called him by his full name for many years. Now he could actually remember that he had been reading this book during his last semester. It was a good book and interesting, although largely superseded, he curiously found himself remembering, by the later studies of—well, someone with a German name—Zeimer, perhaps.

He laid the hammer down, so as to have both hands for the book. Then he went to where light shone in through a dusty window, and looked curiously through the pages. Actually, this book was not of the slightest value to human progress. Climatic change was not a practical problem. In any case, this book had been superseded. He could just as well throw it away or tear it to pieces, but he did not. He went back, and put it almost reverently into its place.

He walked away, and then suddenly everything was dust and ashes in his mind again. What would be the use of all these books now? Why worry about one of them? Why worry about all the millions of them? There was no one left, now, to carry on. Books themselves, mere wood-pulp and lamp-black, were nothing—without a mind to use them.

Sorrowfully he went away, and he was just starting to climb the circular stairway when he realized that something was missing. He no longer had the hammer. He was suddenly frightened, and returned rapidly to the alcove from which he had taken the book. He had a great feeling of relief when he saw the hammer still resting where he had laid it on the floor when he wanted both hands for the book. He took it up and retraced his steps.