Earth Abides

“Communications,” he said. “Communications—maybe that’s the big thing! Take it anywhere in history. When a nation or a community got isolated all by itself, it went conservative and then retrograded. It got to acting just the way George and Maurine are over there, gathering in all the things out of the past, and freezing just at that point. That sort of thing, maybe, happened to Egypt and China. But then when there’s contact with some other civilization, everything loosens up again, and gets going. That’s the way it will be with us.”

She did not say anything, but he knew from the very fact of her silence, that she did not altogether agree.

“What is it, darling?” he asked.

“Well, you see, I was thinking maybe it wasn’t so good for the Indians when they got into communication with the white people, was it? Or how about all my people on the coast of Africa when they got into contact with the slavers?”

“Yes, but maybe that’s just my point. How would we like it if some slavers came over the hill some fine morning, and we had never known they were anywhere around before? Wouldn’t it have been better if the Indians could have sent some scouts over to Europe, and been ready for white men who came with horses and guns?”

He was pleased that he had countered so cleverly. After all, her argument had merely been for letting things slide and for living in ignorance. That kind of philosophy could never win in the long run. But all she said was: “Yes, perhaps, perhaps.”

“Do you remember?” he went on. “I was saying this a long time ago. We’ve got to live more creatively, not just as scavengers. Why, I was saying this way back even at the time our first baby was going to be born!”

“Yes, I remember. You’ve said it a great many times! And still some way or other, it seems to be easier just to go on opening cans.”

“But the end will come some time, and it shouldn’t come suddenly the way this stopping of the water has today.”

Chapter 3

When he awoke that next morning, Em was gone from the bed. He lay still, relaxed, calmly happy. Then his mind seemed to turn over suddenly and take hold—and there it was, starting to make plans, thinking.

After a minute, a slight sense of irritation came over him. “You think too much!” he said to himself.

Why did not his mind, like other people’s minds, allow him to rest and be happy without any planning ahead into the future, whether of the next twenty-four hours or of the next sixty seconds? No, something took over with a rush and a whir, and even though his body lay still, his mind turned over and started, and there it was running on, like an idling engine. Engine? Well, naturally, today he would think of engines!

But the quiet happiness between sleep and waking had definitely left him, and pure contentment was gone. With a resentful push of his arm he threw back the blankets.

This morning was bright and sunny. Though the air was cool, he went out to the little balcony, and stood there, looking off toward the west. During all these years the trees had everywhere grown taller, but he could still see, the mountaintop and much of the Bay with its two great bridges.

The bridges! Yes, the bridges! To him they still were the most poignant reminders of the great past. The children, indeed, as he had often observed, scarcely thought of bridges as anything different from hills or trees; they were just something that was there. But to him, Ish, the bridges stood testifying daily to the power and the glory that had been civilization. So, he thought, some tribesman—Burgund or Saxon—might once have looked at a strong-built, not yet decayed, Roman gateway or triumphal arch. But, no, that analogy did not hold. The tribesman was sure and content in his own ancient folkways; he was first of the new, confident master of his own world. He, Ish, was more like the last of the old, a surviving Roman—senator or philosopher—spared by barbarian swords and left to brood over an empty and ruinous city, anxious and uncertain, knowing that never again would he meet his friends at the baths or know the deep security that came to a man when he saw a cohort of the Twelfth march down the street. But no, he was not just like the Roman either.

“History repeats itself,” he thought, “but always with variations.”

Yes—he had had a chance to think a great deal about history! Its repetitions were not those of a stolid child going over and over the multiplication table. History was an artist, maintaining the idea but changing the details, like a composer keeping the same theme but dulling it to a minor or lifting by an octave, now crooning it with violins, now blaring it on trumpets.