The Coming of the Ice Read online

observed the end of speech, of all perceptions except one,when men learned to communicate directly by thought, and to receivedirectly into the brain all the myriad vibrations of the universe.

  All these things I saw, and more, until that time when there was no morediscovery, but a Perfect World in which there was no need for anythingbut memory. Men ceased to count time at last. Several hundred yearsafter the 154th Dynasty from the Last War, or, as we would have countedin my time, about 200,000 A.D., official records of time were no longerkept carefully. They fell into disuse. Men began to forget years, toforget time at all. Of what significance was time when one was immortal?

  * * * * *

  After long, long uncounted centuries, a time came when the days grewnoticeably colder. Slowly the winters became longer, and the summersdiminished to but a month or two. Fierce storms raged endlessly inwinter, and in summer sometimes there was severe frost, sometimes therewas only frost. In the high places and in the north and thesub-equatorial south, the snow came and would not go.

  Men died by the thousands in the higher latitudes. New York became,after awhile, the furthest habitable city north, an arctic city, wherewarmth seldom penetrated. And great fields of ice began to make theirway southward, grinding before them the brittle remains ofcivilizations, covering over relentlessly all of man's proud work.

  Snow appeared in Florida and Italy one summer. In the end, snow wasthere always. Men left New York, Chicago, Paris, Yokohama, andeverywhere they traveled by the millions southward, perishing as theywent, pursued by the snow and the cold, and that inevitable field ofice. They were feeble creatures when the Cold first came upon them, butI speak in terms of thousands of years; and they turned every weapon ofscience to the recovery of their physical power, for they foresaw thatthe only chance for survival lay in a hard, strong body. As for me, atlast I had found a use for my few powers, for my physique was the finestin that world. It was but little comfort, however, for we were allunited in our awful fear of that Cold and that grinding field of Ice.All the great cities were deserted. We would catch silent, fearfulglimpses of them as we sped on in our machines over the snow--greathungry, haggard skeletons of cities, shrouded in banks of snow, snowthat the wind rustled through desolate streets where the cream of humanlife once had passed in calm security. Yet still the Ice pursued. Formen had forgotten about that Last Ice Age when they ceased to reckontime, when they lost sight of the future and steeped themselves inmemories. They had not remembered that a time must come when Ice wouldlie white and smooth over all the earth, when the sun would shinebleakly between unending intervals of dim, twilight snow and sleet.

  Slowly the Ice pursued us down the earth, until all the feeble remainsof civilization were gathered in Egypt and India and South America. Thedeserts flowered again, but the frost would come always to bite the tinycrops. For still the Ice came. All the world now, but for a narrow stripabout the equator, was one great silent desolate vista of starkice-plains, ice that brooded above the hidden ruins of cities that hadendured for hundreds of thousands of years. It was terrible to imaginethe awful solitude and the endless twilight that lay on these places,and the grim snow, sailing in silence over all....

  It surrounded us on all sides, until life remained only in a fewscattered clearings all about that equator of the globe, with an eternalfire going to hold away the hungry Ice. Perpetual winter reigned now;and we were becoming terror-stricken beasts that preyed on each otherfor a life already doomed. Ah, but I, I the archaic survival, I had myrevenge then, with my great physique and strong jaws--God! Let me thinkof something else. Those men who lived upon each other--it was horrible.And I was one.

  * * * * *

  So inevitably the Ice closed in.... One day the men of our tiny clearingwere but a score. We huddled about our dying fire of bones and straylogs. We said nothing. We just sat, in deep, wordless, thoughtlesssilence. We were the last outpost of Mankind.

  I think suddenly something very noble must have transformed thesecreatures to a semblance of what they had been of old. I saw, in theireyes, the question they sent from one to another, and in every eye I sawthat the answer was, Yes. With one accord they rose before my eyes and,ignoring me as a baser creature, they stripped away their load oftattered rags and, one by one, they stalked with their tiny shrivelledlimbs into the shivering gale of swirling, gusting snow, anddisappeared. And I was alone....

  So am I alone now. I have written this last fantastic history of myselfand of Mankind upon a substance that will, I know, outlast even the snowand the Ice--as it has outlasted Mankind that made it. It is the onlything with which I have never parted. For is it not irony that I shouldbe the historian of this race--I, a savage, an "archaic survival?" Whydo I write? God knows, but some instinct prompts me, although there willnever be men to read.

  I have been sitting here, waiting, and I have thought often of Sir Johnand Alice, whom I loved. Can it be that I am feeling again, after allthese ages, some tiny portion of that emotion, that great passion I onceknew? I see her face before me, the face I have lost from my thoughtsfor eons, and something is in it that stirs my blood again. Her eyes arehalf-closed and deep, her lips are parted as though I could crush themwith an infinity of wonder and discovery. O God! It is love again, lovethat I thought was lost! They have often smiled upon me when I spoke ofGod, and muttered about my foolish, primitive superstitions. But theyare gone, and I am left who believe in God, and surely there is purposein it.

  I am cold, I have written. Ah, I am frozen. My breath freezes as itmingles with the air, and I can hardly move my numbed fingers. The Iceis closing over me, and I cannot break it any longer. The storm criesweirdly all about me in the twilight, and I know this is the end. Theend of the world. And I--I, the last man....

  The last man....

  ... I am cold--cold....

  But is it you, Alice? Is it you?

  THE END