Arthur C. Clarke - History Lesson

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History Lesson

Arthur C. Clarke

1949 Better Publications Inc.

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

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Arthur C. Clarke - History Lesson

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