We've often wondered what would happen if Robert Young should cease to bea lyrically intense writer for a story or two, forsaking the bright, poetic worldsof MISS KATY THREE and THE FIRST SWEET SLEEP OF NIGHT to become dispassionatelyanalytical on a cosmic scale. Now we know! He'd chill us to thebone by setting two squixes to brooding over a never-to-be born Earth, exactlyas he has done here. And thrill us, too—with the liveliest kind of entertainment.
Very trivial things can go into the weavingof a nest. The human race, for instance—
The condensation of the historiesof ten thousand races intoa text concise enough to fit into asingle volume had been a task ofunprecedented proportions. Therehad been times when the GalacticHistorian had doubted whethereven his renowned abilities were upto the assignment that the GalacticBoard of Education had so lightlytossed his way, times when he hadthrown up his hands—all five ofthem—in despair. But at last thecompleted manuscript lay beforehim on his desk with nothing butthe final reading remaining betweenit and publication.
The Galactic Historian repeatedlywiped his brows as he turned thepages. It was a warm night, evenfor Mixxx Seven. Now and then,a tired breeze struggled down fromthe hills and limped across the lowlandsto the Galactic Universitybuildings. It crept into the GalacticHistorian's study via the open doorand out again via the open windows,fingering the manuscript eachtime it passed but doing nothingwhatsoever about the temperature.
The manuscript was somethingmore than a hammered-down historyof galactic achievement. It wasthe ultimate document. The twoand seventy thousand jarring textsthat it summarized had been systematicallydestroyed, one by one,after the Galactic Historian hadstripped them of their objective information.If an historical eventwas not included in the manuscript,it failed as an event. It ceased tohave reality.
The responsibility was the GalacticHistorian's alone and he did nottake it lightly. But he had a lot onhis minds and, of late, he hadn'tbeen sleeping well. He was overworkedand over-tired and over-anxious.He hadn't seen his wivesfor two Mixxx months and he wasworried about them—all fifty ofthem.
He never should have let themtake the Hub cruise in the firstplace. But they'd been so enthusiasticand so eager that he simplyhadn't had the hearts to let themdown. Now, despite his betterjudgments, he was beginning towonder if they might not be on themake for another coordinator.
Wives trouble, on top of all hischronological trouble, was toomuch. The Galactic Historian couldhardly be blamed for wanting tosee the last of the manuscript, forwanting to transmit it to his publishers,potential hiatuses and all,and take the next warp for theHub.
But he was an historian—thehistorian, in fact—and he persistedheroically in his task, rereadingstale paragraphs and checkingdreary dates, going over battles andconquests and invasions and interregnums.Despite his mood anddespite the heat, the manuscriptprobably would have arrived at hispublishers chronologically complete.So complete, in fact, thatschoolteachers all over the galaxywould have gotten the textbookthey had always wanted—a concisechronicle of everything that hadever happened since the explosionof the primeval atom, a historytextbook that no other history textbookcould contradict for the simplereason that there were no otherhistory textbooks.
As