Collector's Item
Fantastic Universe, September
1956
Very trivial things can go into the weaving of a nest. The human race,
for instance—
The condensation of the histories
of ten thousand races into a text concise enough to fit into a single volume
had been a task of unprecedented proportions. There had been times when the
Galactic Historian had doubted whether even his renowned abilities were up to
the assignment that the Galactic Board of Education had so lightly tossed his
way, times when he had thrown up his hands—all five of them—in despair. But at
last the completed manuscript lay before him on his desk with nothing but the
final reading remaining between it and publication.
The Galactic Historian repeatedly
wiped his brows as he turned the pages. It was a warm night, even for Mixxx
Seven. Now and then, a tired breeze struggled down from the hills and limped
across the lowlands to the Galactic University buildings. It crept into the
Galactic Historian's study via the open door and out again via the open
windows, fingering the manuscript each time it passed but doing nothing whatsoever
about the temperature.
The manuscript was something more
than a hammered-down history of galactic achievement. It was the ultimate
document. The two and seventy thousand jarring texts that it summarized had
been systematically destroyed, one by one, after the Galactic Historian had
stripped them of their objective information. If an historical event was not
included in the manuscript, it failed as an event. It ceased to have reality.
The responsibility was the
Galactic Historian's alone and he did not take it lightly. But he had a lot on
his minds and, of late, he hadn't been sleeping well. He was overworked and
over-tired and over-anxious. He hadn't seen his wives for two Mixxx months and
he was worried about them—all fifty of them.
He never should have let them
take the Hub cruise in the first place.
But they'd been so enthusiastic
and so eager that he simply hadn't had the hearts to let them down. Now,
despite his better judgments, he was beginning to wonder if they might not be
on the make for another coordinator.
Wives trouble, on top of all his
chronological trouble, was too much.
The Galactic Historian could
hardly be blamed for wanting to see the last of the manuscript, for wanting to
transmit it to his publishers, potential hiatuses and all, and take the next
warp for the Hub.
But he was an historian—the historian, in fact—and he persisted heroically
in his task, rereading stale paragraphs and checking dreary dates, going over
battles and conquests and invasions and interregnums. Despite his mood and
despite the heat, the manuscript probably would have arrived at his publishers
chronologically complete. So complete, in fact, that schoolteachers all over
the galaxy would have gotten the textbook they had always wanted—a concise
chronicle of everything that had ever happened since the explosion of the
primeval atom, a history textbook that no other history textbook could
contradict for the simple reason that there were no other history textbooks.
As it was, they got the textbook,
but it did not contain everything that had ever happened. Not quite.
Two factors were responsible for
the omission. The first was an oversight on the part of the Galactic Historian.
With so much on his minds, he had forgotten to number the pages of the
manuscript.
The second factor was the breeze.
The breeze was the ultimate
archfiend and there can be no question as to its motivation. Nothing short of
sheer malice could have caused it suddenly to remember its function after
neglecting that function all evening.
All evening it had been tiptoeing
down the hillsides and across the lowlands as though it was afraid of
disturbing a single blade of grass or a single drooping leaf. And then, at the
crucial moment, it huffed and puffed itself up into a little hurricane, charged
down upon the Galactic University buildings and whooshed through the Galactic Historian's
study like a band of interstellar dervishes.
Unfortunately, the Galactic
Historian had begun to wipe his brows at the very moment of the breeze's entry.
While the act was not a complicated one, it did consume time and monopolize
attention. It is not surprising, therefore, that he failed to witness the
theft. Neither is it surprising that he failed to notice afterwards that the
page he had been checking was gone.
He was, as previously stated,
overworked, over-tired, and over-anxious and, in such a state, even a Galactic
Historian can skip a whole series of words and dates and never know the
difference. A hiatus of twenty thousand years is hardly noticeable anyway.
Galactically speaking, twenty thousand years is a mere wink in time.
The breeze didn't carry the page
very far. It simply whisked it through a convenient window, deposited it
beneath a xixxix tree and then returned to the hills to rest. But the choice of
a xixxix tree is highly significant and substantiates the malicious nature of
the breeze's act. If it had chosen a muu or a buxx tree instead, the Galactic
Historian might have found the page in the morning when he took his
constitutional through the university grounds.
However, since a xixxix tree was
selected, no doubt whatever can remain as to the breeze's basic motivation.
Articles of a valuable nature just aren't left beneath xixxix trees. Everybody
knows that squixes live in xixxix trees and everybody knows that squixes are
collectors. They collect all sorts of things, buttons and pins and twigs and
pebbles—anything at all, in fact, that isn't too big for them to pick up and
carry into their xixxix tree houses.
They have been called less kind
things than collectors. Thieves, for example, and scavengers. But collectors
are what they really are. Collecting fulfills a basic need in their mammalian
makeup; the possession of articles gives them a feeling of security. They love
to surround their little furry bodies with all sorts of odds and ends, and their
little arboreal houses are stuffed with everything you can think of.
And they simply adore paper. They
adore it because it has a practical as well as a cultural value.
Specifically, they adore it
because it is wonderful to make hammocks out of.
When the two squixes in the
xixxix tree saw the page drift to the ground, they could hardly believe their
eyes. They chittered excitedly as they skittered down the trunk. The page had
hardly stopped fluttering before it was whisked aloft again, clenched in tiny
squix fingers.
The squixes wasted no time. It
had been a long while since the most cherished of all collector's items had
come their way and they needed a new hammock badly. First, they tore the page
into strips, then they began to weave the strips together.
—1456, Gut. Bi. pr.; 1492, Am. dis.; 1945, at. b. ex. Almgdo.; 1971, mn.
rchd., they
wove.
—2004, Sir. rchd.; 2005-6, Sir.—E. wr.; 2042, Btlgs. rchd.; 2043-4, Btlgs.—E.
wr.
They wove and wove and wove.
15,000, E. Emp. clpsd.; 15,038, E. dstryd.; Hist. E., end of.
It was a fine hammock, the best
the two squixes had ever wove. But they didn't sleep well that night. They
twisted and turned and tossed, and they dreamed the most fantastic dreams—
Which isn't particularly
surprising, considering what they were sleeping on. Sleeping on the history of
Earth would be enough to give anybody nightmares.
Even squixes.
End
What a squix actually looks like
is a very good question.
The image above has been adapted from a free wallpaper
which can
be had here.
Louis Shalako has books and short story collections available
from Createspace.
Thank you for reading.
