Since there are no communications with the world outside the wall and all the news we get are the tales told by occasional travelers, we cannot pretend to know what may be happening otherwhere than here. Many events may be taking place of which we know nothing. But in the small area that we do know, or of which we have some fragmentary knowledge, the highest level of social organization seems to be the tribe or those farming communes, with one which we have set up rudimentary trade relations. Immediately to the east and west of us, in what once were fair and pleasant cities, now largely gone to ruin, are several tribes grubbing a bare existence from the land and occasionally warring with one another over imagined grievances or to gain some coveted territory (although only Cod knows why coveted) or simply for the illusionary glory that may be gained from combat. To the north is a farm commune or perhaps a dozen families with which we have made trade accommodations, their produce serving to augment the vegetables we grow in gardens and our potato patches. For this food, we pay in trinketry—beadwork, badly constructed jewelry, leather goods—which they, in their simple-mindedness, are avid to obtain for their personal adornment. To such an extent have we fallen—that a once-proud university should manufacture and trade trinkets for its food.
At one time, family groups may have held on to small homesteads, hiding from the world. Many of these homesteads no longer exist, either wiped out or their members forced to join a tribe for the protection that it offered. And there are always the nomads, the roving, far-wandering bands with their cattle and their horses, at times sending out war parties to pillage, although there now is little enough to pillage. Such is the state of the world as we are acquainted with it; such is our own state, and sorry as it may be, in certain ways we are far better off than many of the others.
To a certain small extent we have kept alive the flame of learning. Our children are taught to read and write and cipher. Those who wish may gain additional rudimentary learning and there are books to be read, of course, tons of books, and from the reading of those, many in the community are fairly well informed. Reading and writing are skills that few have today, even those basic skills being lost through the lack of anyone to teach them. Occasionally, there are a few who make their way to us to gain the little education we can offer, but not many, for education apparently is not highly regarded. Some of those who come continue to stay on with us and thus some diversity is added to our gene poe1, a diversity of which we stand in need. It may be that some of those who come to us, professing a wish for education, may actually come to seek the security of our walls, fleeing the rough justice of their fellows. This we do not mind; we take them in. So long as they come in peace and keep the peace once they are here, they are welcome.
Anyone with half an eye, however, should be able to see that we have lost much of our effectiveness as an educational institution. We can teach the simple things, but since the second generation of the enclave's establishment, there has been none qualified to teach anything approaching a higher education. We have no teachers of physics or chemistry, of philosophy or psychology, of medicine or of many other disciplines. Even if we had, there would be little need. Who in this environment needs physics or chemistry? What is the use of medicine if drugs are unobtainable, if there is no equipment for therapy of surgery?
We have often idly speculated among ourselves whether there may be other colleges or universities still existing in the same manner as we exist. It would seem reasonable that there might be, but we've had no word of them. In turn, we have not attempted to find out and have not seen fit to unduly advertise our presence.
In books that I have read, there are contained many considered and logical prophesies that such a catastrophe as came about would come to pass. But, in all cases, war was foreseen as the cause of it. Armed with incalculable engines of destruction, the major powers of that olden day possessed the capability to annihilate one another (and, in a smaller sense, the world) in a few hours ‘time. This, however, did not come about. There is no evidence of the ravages of war and there are no legends that tell of such a war.
From all indications that we have at this date, the collapse of civilization came about because of an outrage on the part of what must have been a substantial portion of the Populace against the kind of world that technology had created, although the outrage, in many instances, may have been misdirected…
Dwight Cleveland Montrose was a lithe, lean man, his face a seasoned leather, the brownness of it set off by the snow-white hair, the bristling grayness of the mustache, the heavy eyebrows that were exclamation points above the bright eyes of washed-out blue. He sat straight upright in the chair, shoving away the dinner plate he had polished clean. He wiped his mustache with a napkin and pushed hack from the table.
"How did the potatoes go today?" he asked.
"I finished hoeing them," said Cushing. "I think this is the last time. We can lay them by. Even a spell of drought shouldn't hurt them too much now."
"You work too hard," said Nancy. "You work harder than you should."
She was a bright little birdlike woman, shrunken by her years, a wisp of a woman with sweetness in her face. She looked fondly at Cushing in the flare of candlelight.
"I like to work," he told her. "I enjoy it. And a little proud of
it, perhaps. Other people can do other things. I grow good potatoes."
"And now," said Monty, brusquely, brushing at his mustache, "I suppose you will be leaving."
"Leaving!"
"Tom," he said, "you've been with us how long? Six years, am I right?"
"Five years," said Cushing. "Five years last month."
"Five years," said Monty. "Five years. That's long enough to know you. As close as we all have been, long enough to know you. And during the last few months, you've been jumpy as a cat. I've never asked you why. We, Nancy and I, never asked you why. On anything at all."
"No, you never did," said Cushing. "There must have been times when I was a trial
"Never a trial," said Monty. "No, sir, never that. We had a son, you know…
"He was with us just a while," said Nancy. "Six years. That was all. If he had lived, he'd be the same age as you are now.
"Measles," said Monty. "Measles, for the love of God. There was a time when men knew how to deal with measles, how to prevent them. There was a time when measles were almost never heard of."
"There were sixteen others," Nancy said, remembering. "Seventeen, with John. All with measles. It was a terrible Winter The worst we've ever known."
"I am sorry," Cushing said.
"The sorrow is over now," said Monty. "The surface sorrow, that is. There is a deeper sorrow that will be with us all our lives. We speak very seldom of it because we do not want you to think you are standing in his stead, that you are taking his Place, that we love you because of him."
"We love you," said Nancy, speaking gently, "because you're Thomas Cushing. No one but yourself. We sorrow less, I think, because of you. Some of the old-time hurt is gone because of you. Tom, we owe you more than the two of us can tell you.
"We owe you enough," said Monty, "to talk as we do now—a strange kind of talk, indeed. It was becoming intolerable, you know. You not saying anything to us because you thought we'd not understand, held to us because of a mistaken loyalty. We knowing from the things you did and the way you acted what you had in mind and yet compelled to hold our peace because we did not think we should be the ones who brought what you were thinking out into the open. We had feared that if we said anything about it, you might think we wanted you to leave, and you know well enough that we never would want that. But this foolishness has gone on long enough and now we think that we should tell you that we hold enough affection for you to let you go if you feel you really have to, or if you only want to. If you must leave us, we would not have you go with guilt, feeling you have run out on us. We've watched you the last few months, wanting to tell us, shying away from telling us. Nervous as a cat. Itching to go free."